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15+ Obras 804 Miembros 8 Reseñas 2 Preferidas

Series

Obras de Richard Cook

Obras relacionadas

NME 27 April 1985 (1985) — Sub-Editor, algunas ediciones1 copia

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Nombre legal
Cook, Richard David
Fecha de nacimiento
1957-02-07
Fecha de fallecimiento
2007-08-25
Género
male
Lugares de residencia
London, England, UK
Ocupaciones
jazz writer
magazine editor
record company executive

Miembros

Reseñas

The author announces in the intro that the book won't be just reviews of Blue Note albums, but in fact much of the book is just that. The amount of information on the history of the label is spotty and generalized. And the author ignores some of the most popular titles from the label, dismisses some artists (such as Dexter Gordon, not even mentioning his most popular titles), instead gushing about more obscure ones (and what is his fascination with jazz organists, who hardly any jazz fans collect?). Very opinionated, and light on interesting anecdotes.… (más)
½
 
Denunciada
nog | otra reseña | Aug 27, 2021 |
No asides from the editor, but otherwise not very different to July 1990. The Wire is a cosy jazz magazine, cosy enough to make an appeal on behalf of one of its writers who has 300 albums stolen, though curious enough to sometimes prod at other areas: there's a feature Can and a brief hip hop round up (LL Cool J "displays all the signs of stagnation", Boogie Down Productions "just gets better and better", NWA are "a gross cocktail of fascistic abuse"). What else did I learn... There was a new music magazine called Audion run by someone called Alan Freeman, and someone called Jonathan Coe contributes a review of La Monte Young (probably this is the same Jonathan Coe; his conclusion is: more historically important than entertaining, which always has the whiff of a copout to it - if the music isn't entertaining then why should it be important?). Keith Jarrett threw a man out of a Manchester concert in 1982 for taking flash photography ("Jarrett fell back as if shot... With all that self-importance, [Jarrett reminded me of] John McEnroe"). A piece on Blue Note raises some important questions: is Jimmy Smith "absurdly overrecorded"? Is The Sidewinder the jazz equivalent of Mull of Kintyre? The back cover advert, dominated in our own time by Soul Jazz, is for Special Brew. Albert Ayler continues to be namechecked more often than anybody else (by contrast I can't recall a single mention of Coltrane), and Lester Bowie owns a fax machine.… (más)
 
Denunciada
stilton | Jul 16, 2017 |
It's 1990 and the Wire is a jazz magazine. McCoy Tyner is on the cover (he's hard to arrange an interview with and when he shows up he's got nothing to say) and there are features on Kenny Barron, Carol Kidd and Mary Lou Williams. The tone is lighter than it is today, less concerned, more easy going, jokier. A gossip column is signed "The Big Cat", there are Private Eye-style editorial interjections undercutting anything too weird or sincere, the letter of the month wins a bottle of Jim Beam. It's a magazine on the sidelines, not today's venerable publication of record.

But jazz in 1990 is in trouble. Look again at those featured artists: Kidd and Barron are both in their 40s, Tyner in his 50s. Williams would have been 80. Other covers this year featured Miles (in his 60s) and Hendrix (dead). The Big Cat tells us that Kenny G has just been voted Billboard's jazz artist of the 80s, so you know things are bad. And you get the feeling the Wire realises it has to expand its horizons if it's going to survive. Perhaps the nods to classical music were always there (reviews of Feldman, Sariaaho and Satie, a Pärt premiere is mentioned, Nono's death noted), but there's also a brief "round-up of offbeat rock and more" (presumably the Merzbow LP falls under "more"), a feature on sampling ("Will Adamski replace Oscar Peterson?") and, maybe tying in with that, reviews of Christian Marclay's More Encores (his next move will be CD scratching) and John Oswald's Plunderphonics (no longer on CD since the courts have destroyed his stock, but available on cassette from ReR at cost).

The live reviews are much more prominent than they are today, and they seem especially keen to emphasise the live experience as live and unrepeatable - live as in living, a participatory event, not something you consume passively at home. This feels significant. It fits in, I suppose, with the emphasis on improvisation (improvised music will never be the same twice, recording it is arguably rather stupid), but also with the lighter tone. Perhaps to become more serious, as the Wire is now, you have to focus more on recordings. It is difficult to have serious considered opinions about something as fleeting as a live gig; but records you can study, pore over, consider and reconsider. "This was the best free improvised gig I have witnessed for years", writes Richard Scott of a Corbett/Parker/Turner show, and you realise we've no way of experiencing it now - music journalism as an act of reportage from the front line. Though in this section, too, you can see things are changing. There's Charlie Collins's Unity Orchestra at Sheffield's Merlin Theatre, but also writeups of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and, most surprisingly, Stock, Hausen and Walkman.

Still, jazz dominates. And it isn't the Wire we know now. "Wanna hear a twelve bar blues played on the musical saw? Accompanied by steel drums? And a tap dancer?" Today this wouldn't even be worth mentioning unless it was happening in Bolivia or somewhere, but the 1990 version of the Wire concludes: "No, me neither." Oh, also there are fag adverts. A different time.
… (más)
 
Denunciada
stilton | Jul 15, 2017 |
This and the all music guide are both great resources.
These will save you time and get you where you want.
 
Denunciada
PaulRx04 | otra reseña | Apr 15, 2016 |

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Obras
15
También por
1
Miembros
804
Popularidad
#31,726
Valoración
4.2
Reseñas
8
ISBNs
47
Idiomas
5
Favorito
2

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