Jazz Inquest

blissblogger

Well-known member
Well, it's not some late-blooming perversity on my part, or getting soft and accepting in old age.

Got into that Weather Report album in the mid-Eighties when I moved to London for the first time and the friends whose West Norwood flat I stayed in had it on cassette.

Particularly dug "River People" and also "The Elders" - this really haunting Wayne Shorter tune.


Later on got a bunch of Weather Report LPs from Music and Tape Exchange.

There was even then a certain kitsch appeal to the florid artwork. And florid song titles. But mostly it just sounded great

Musically I could probably find some commonality with Gilles and Kirk - it's more the whole sweep of it as a credo and a set of assumptions / biases. A view of history and where music goes wrong, the righteous path etc - that's what doesn't sit well with me.

But he's a good bloke Kirk actually. Since that blog-launching fiery exchange I've had a few pleasant chats with him over the years.

He does bang the "it all comes from black music, ALL of it," drum a bit stridently. There was some debate in which he was involved a few years back - it may have spilled onto the pages of Dissensus actually, via Zhao - about how Kraftwerk were deeply influenced by the Isley Brothers. I thought this was a silly claim. for sure, like anyone with any taste, Kraftwerk may have liked some Isley Bros tunes, the Motown stuff or the later "That Lady" guitartastic stuff. But to say that this would have been a formative thing in their music, more so than the Beach Boys and Schubert and minimalism and the Velvets - seems a bit like daft anti-Eurocentric overcompensation.

He's a relative of Marc Bolan's, Kirk, would you believe?
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
I draw the line at acid jazz though. I can't go for that.

Woebot can though. He wrote a whole piece on his blog about having had an acid jazz phase. I was quite taken aback!
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I think we can all draw a line at Acid Jazz which was lame for all time.

But have you yet got over your Whitney-phobia? Because the rest of us have.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
This sounds exactly like Drexciya.

Weird how ‘rare groove’ and ‘jazz funk’ sounded so toxic in the 90s and yet now we are all turning into Giles Peterson and Kirk Degiorgio

nah, it was just you whiteboys being contrary for the sake of it.

Kirk is a scholar and a gentleman but there is one thing missing in his taste, I agree with matthew/woebot. terror is necessary in music.

I don't know about Gilles Peterson tho so I won't comment.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Well, it's not some late-blooming perversity on my part, or getting soft and accepting in old age.

Got into that Weather Report album in the mid-Eighties when I moved to London for the first time and the friends whose West Norwood flat I stayed in had it on cassette.

Particularly dug "River People" and also "The Elders" - this really haunting Wayne Shorter tune.


Later on got a bunch of Weather Report LPs from Music and Tape Exchange.

There was even then a certain kitsch appeal to the florid artwork. And florid song titles. But mostly it just sounded great

Musically I could probably find some commonality with Gilles and Kirk - it's more the whole sweep of it as a credo and a set of assumptions / biases. A view of history and where music goes wrong, the righteous path etc - that's what doesn't sit well with me.

But he's a good bloke Kirk actually. Since that blog-launching fiery exchange I've had a few pleasant chats with him over the years.

He does bang the "it all comes from black music, ALL of it," drum a bit stridently. There was some debate in which he was involved a few years back - it may have spilled onto the pages of Dissensus actually, via Zhao - about how Kraftwerk were deeply influenced by the Isley Brothers. I thought this was a silly claim. for sure, like anyone with any taste, Kraftwerk may have liked some Isley Bros tunes, the Motown stuff or the later "That Lady" guitartastic stuff. But to say that this would have been a formative thing in their music, more so than the Beach Boys and Schubert and minimalism and the Velvets - seems a bit like daft anti-Eurocentric overcompensation.

He's a relative of Marc Bolan's, Kirk, would you believe?

I saw zhao defending the USSR in a marxist group I was in the other day lol. thought who was this tankie and why do i have a mutual with him and then saw his soundcloud/mixclouds.

As for kraftwerk, it would be strange to think they weren't influenced by James Brown.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
no i still don't like Whitney (apart from "it's not all alright, but it's okay" or whatever it's called - the one sanctified by the UK garage massive)

don't like Mariah either

it is actually hip now to think of both of them as proper artists of stature

also Sade - she featured high in the Pitchfork list of great albums of the Eighties.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
He does bang the "it all comes from black music, ALL of it," drum a bit stridently.

yeah but how many white rockists do you get defending revolting music like the beatles or *despairing fucking hell, post-ummagumma floyd.*

And even when they defend good shit like killing joke or bauhaus its politic to ignore their disco/funk/dub influences.

this is why i like reading you on the more rock music stuff, actually. bbigups.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
like thats sort of the point, post-punk only owed to *punk rock* what it did dialectically, not linearly.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
I can't really hear the James Brown in Kraftwerk to be honest

it seems like there should be some connection - "Sex Machine" / "Man Machine"

but i think they found their way to a similar machinic aesthetic by different routes
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
well euro-american minimalism also owed to gamelan and nubian oud records like hamza el din waterwheel, ghanaian drumming, etc.

But ultimately this is conjecture right. we can go round and round in circles but is there really a point speculating?
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
the internet means you can make connections that might not have been there though in different cultural contexts. I guess I'd have to read a lot of kw interviews to see what they were actually listening to. but then there's a say what the interviewers want to here thing (every artist does this to an extent.)

So yeah, i personally do here a James Brown connection but i don't want to declare it to be definitive.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
kind of like the post dubstep convo on here recently i think jazz suffered from gentrification. it got way too academic. the originators moved on, because that's what they do and what's left behind is mostly a bunch of people trying to keep their idea of the pure form alive. a few forays here and there into modernising but i've yet to hear anything substantial from the last 15 years. jazz jam sessions all over the world are full of the same old standards. the recording artists who are supposedly keeping it new and exciting are playing it tame and politely. guys like Avishai Cohen are just made for the stages of Montreaux. Robert Glasper sends me to sleep. don't even get me started on Kamasi Washington. Chris Dave/Chris Corsano spawned a million wack assed experimental drummers who find it hard to keep a groove going for more than 12 seconds. and they like to cellotape the contents of their dads tool shed to their kits. it's all just a bit fucking lame.
 
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