[NewMusic] Prolificity - from some critic's blog

Mon Aug 24 18:17:59 PDT 2009

I can't pretend to like Mats' recent work, but Joe sort of has two  
careers, his bass playing and guitar playing are related but  
ultimately very different. I have most of the releases in question  
and I have enjoyed them. Also, with downloads people will buy/steal  
more of an artist's work they like. You either want your work out  
there or not.

On Aug 24, 2009, at 5:49 PM, Sarah - 21 Grand wrote:

> [The following is not meant as a personal attack on Joe Morris. I  
> know Joe,
> I like him, I am a fan of his music. This is a statement about free  
> jazz in
> general, with him as an example.]
>
> Do relentlessly prolific out-jazz musicians sabotage themselves by  
> tossing
> new CDs into a flood-tide of superficially similar releases? Today I
> listened to two upcoming albums - Fire!'s You Liked Me Five Minutes  
> Ago, on
> Rune Grammofon <http://www.runegrammofon.com> , and the Joe Morris  
> Quartet's
> Today on Earth, on AUM Fidelity <http://www.aumfidelity.com> . Fire!
> (punctuation in original) is a new project featuring saxophonist Mats
> Gustafsson (who also plays electronics and Fender Rhodes); this is  
> but the
> latest entry in an intimidatingly deep catalog that includes work  
> with the
> groups The Thing, Two Bands and a Legend, Original Silence,  
> Diskaholics
> Anonymous Trio, and collaborations with Peter Brötzmann and equally
> session-happy drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. (All this was garnered from a
> cursory glance at the website for the Smalltown Superjazz
> <http://www.smalltownsuperjazz.com/> label, which puts most of this  
> material
> out.) The Joe Morris Quartet album is his eighth full-length  
> release of
> 2009, his sixth as a leader or co-leader. (I've heard four of the  
> discs he
> led or co-led, and the two on which he was a sideman. They're all very
> good.) He appeared on 11 albums in 2008, and has played on  
> approximately 45
> releases (my eyes may have glazed over while counting) since the  
> turn of the
> millennium. Now granted, this doesn't come close to the audio diary- 
> keeping
> of Anthony Braxton, but is Braxton really a model to be emulated in  
> this
> regard? I guess what I'm wondering is, what's the business  
> rationale for
> doing this? I assume that there must be one. Can it be pure  
> fatalism - a
> conviction that one is destined to sell only a few hundred or a  
> couple of
> thousand copies of each album, so frequent trips to the well (the  
> well being
> the free jazz fan's wallet/bank account) are excusable? Is there a
> presumption that free jazz fans are, indeed, willing to subsidize a  
> favorite
> artist to this degree? Because speaking from personal experience, I  
> can
> offer a few reasons why I think this is an ill-advised strategy.
>
> 1) I just don't think there are that many people willing to buy  
> five or ten
> Joe Morris CDs every year. I am a free jazz fan, but I am also a  
> critic;
> therefore, I get albums in the mail, for free. As much as I enjoy  
> these
> records, and have written favorable reviews of some of them, if I  
> wasn't
> getting them for free I don't think I could be convinced to  
> purchase more
> than one or two of them. Because...
>
> 1a) A flood-tide of material, to me at least, only serves to  
> devalue each
> individual disc. Again, drawing from personal experience: I decided  
> I wanted
> to hear all the Blue Note releases by Freddie Hubbard. There were  
> eight of
> them (Blue Spirits, Breaking Point, Goin' Up, Here to Stay, Hub Cap,
> Hub-Tones, Open Sesame and Ready for Freddie - if I'm missing any,  
> please
> alert me in comments). I found that totally manageable. Joe Morris's
> discography, by contrast, numbers in the dozens and is scattered  
> across 26
> labels, some of which no longer exist. Hearing all of it is pretty  
> clearly
> an unmanageable task. And even if I was able to stack all of his  
> releases up
> in front of me, how would I decide which to prioritize? Sure, each  
> one is a
> beautiful and unique snowflake, but taken together they are a  
> snowdrift.
> Each piece of the whole becomes insignificant, each album or CD no  
> more than
> proof that a recording session occurred. In this way, the title of  
> the new
> album, Today on Earth, appears heavy with irony. Today, Joe Morris  
> went into
> the recording studio with some other musicians. In a week or so, he'll
> probably do it again. And on and on. When an artist puts out one  
> album every
> two or three years, that album has a gravity, an impact, that  
> simply would
> be lost if it were the third release to hit stores under his name that
> month. Which leads me to...
>
> 1b) What is a neophyte listener to make of this? For decades, it's  
> been
> pretty easy to trace your way through jazz if you so choose. Pick  
> up an
> album someone more knowledgeable recommends. If you like it, make a  
> list of
> the personnel, whose names will more than likely be on the back. Go  
> find
> some more records they play on. Repeat as often as you like. And  
> that can
> still happen. But it seems to me that the almost compulsive  
> productivity of
> some in the free/avant-jazz community only serves to baffle and  
> intimidate
> the new listener, who will gaze upon a shelf in, say, Downtown  
> Music Gallery
> <http://www.downtownmusicgallery.com> containing a dozen or more  
> titles by a
> single musician and say, in effect, "I don't know...this one? That  
> one? Ah,
> the hell with it." You know those scenes in movies where the  
> immigrant from
> some impoverished nation arrives in America and is dumbstruck by the
> awe-inspiring variety of, say, the grocery store's breakfast cereal  
> aisle?
> That's how a brand-new potential free jazz fan will feel, gazing  
> upon the
> shelves in a record store that even stocks this stuff - or, say, the
> vendors' section at the Vision Festival <http:// 
> www.visionfestival.org>  or
> a similar event.
>
> It may seem weird and counterintuitive, but I believe that if free  
> jazz
> artists want to start playing to audiences beyond the already  
> converted,
> they need to make fewer records, not more. Let people catch up,  
> dammit!
>
>
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Damon Smith

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