[NewMusic] Usual Suspectory/Promiscuity

[Matt Davignon]

As a listener, I prefer the promiscuity model a bit over the
established band model. Or, maybe a selective promiscuity model -
where you're not doing it with everyone, just the people with whom you
think doing it would be particularly good. After all, there must be
room for other people to get it on too, right?

I also enjoy seeing solo sets a lot, but maybe that's the electronic
musician in me. When I hear solo sets I feel like I'm getting the pure
person. In group settings, sure you hear how the person musically
socializes, but in many cases the musicians resort to middle ground,
resulting same-isms that you see in different improvised groupings. To
me these middle grounds start to sound like when a rock band does a
cover song. Now we're doing that bug music song - remember this?
Here's our rendition of the everybody chaotically play as many notes
as possible song.

Matt

On 8/21/07, Damon Smith <Damon at balancepointacoustics.com> wrote:
> On the other hand the more of us who participate in the "Promiscuous"
> idea the more it develops the sound of whole scene and our ability to
> work together in different situations.
>
> On Aug 21, 2007, at 10:55 AM, Matthew Goodheart wrote:
>
> > On Aug 21, 2007, at 10:08 AM, Phillip Greenlief wrote:
> >
> >> I know I often compare our scene to jazz, but no one complained when
> >> Bird was playing 52nd street nearly every night of the week -
> >
> > This may seem to imply I'm against the "promiscuous" scene, and I'm
> > not by any means. The difference between the what you are talking
> > about here (or Monk and Coltrane at the 5-Spot)- is that it was
> > essentially the same band, playing mostly the same material, each
> > time. What happened was that it allowed them to refine what they were
> > doing based on the interactions of that particular group. It's a very
> > different dynamic that a large number of "one offs" with different
> > people each time. The "promiscuous" scene promotes a different
> > modality of development- a more individualistic one (which fits with
> > the more libertarian philosophy of many of it's practitioners, and
> > the times themselves, really). It tends to concentrate more on "what
> > do I bring to this particular group of individuals," rather than
> > being a member of an ensemble where the playing of each member is as
> > intimately familiar one's own.
> >
> > I've only recently started looking at this thread, so maybe this was
> > mentioned earlier: a couple of times a decade or so ago there was
> > this "52nd Street" model, and I think it worked quite nicely with
> > those who had that sort of musical interaction as it's goal. One was
> > the month of gigs with Marco's American Jungle Orchestra at Venue 9,
> > the other was the type of booking: Don Alan would do at  Radio
> > Valencia in the early 90's: he would book your group for a whole
> > month, specifically so you could develop in that particular way. It
> > really allowed me to refine things with some of my early groups, and
> > have a platform to develop new material.  I feel like I took some big
> > leaps because of it.   I understand why he went to the other format
> > later, but it was so nice that way at the beginning.  "Jazzed," a now
> > defunct cafe in San Rafael, was really supportive in the same way,
> > too.
> >
> > mg
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bay Area New Music Discussion Group
> > NewMusic at music.mills.edu
> > http://music.mills.edu/mailman/listinfo/newmusic
> >
> >
>
> Damon Smith
>
> http://www.balancepointacoustics.com
> http://myspace.com/smithdamon
> New solo project:
> http://www.myspace.com/damonsmithsolo
>
>
>
>
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