A Personal Miscellany

Music and culture, mostly.

1. Doug W 29.04.06 / 2am

   Ah, the perennial Kirk Degiorgio moment! What could be the message in Herbie’s shirt?

   Okay, I cheated — the Synthforums posting estimates the shot to be ca. late 77 or early 1978. Beige synthetics had long replaced multihued dashikis and yes, SUNLIGHT was a ghastly record. Still… perhaps worth owning for only the Synth 101 study included in the back picture.

   While speaking of the cosmic witch doctor himself, have you read Pat Gleeson’s impressions of Sextant on Amazon.com? “But, darnit, they weren’t Herbie’s innovations, they were mine… history has apparently decided otherwise (which is why we need better historians) and I’ve been “disappeared” in favor of a simpler story, where Herbie introduced synths to jazz. Not quite.”

   New Bennie Maupin on Cryptogramophone this month, BTW.
2. Gutta 29.04.06 / 12pm

   yeah nice. i’ve got this shot in a book somewhere. that’s an Emu modular synth Herbie’s tweaking, trainspotters!
3. 11V 29.04.06 / 5pm

   As you say about beige nylon, the message in Herbie’s shirt is probably don’t stand too close unless you enjoy getting shocked by static electricity… Fascinating that Gleeson’s posted to Amazon – I guess not a bad place to get heard. I’ll have to go and have a look. Sounds a bit of a similar complaint to the ill-treated-by-historians Teo Macero. I wonder – did Gleeson do anything else worthwhile apart from his involvement with Mwandishi? That Driving While Black was pretty awful.

   Oh and regarding Mr Degiorgio – he emailed me out of the blue as he’d read and liked my review of his most recent As One release. I offered him a copy of one of my Mwandishi bootlegs which I thought he’d enjoy. Never heard from him again. Maybe I got lost in a spam filter, who knows.
4. peter 04.05.06 / 3pm

   i think pat did some stuff on the apocalypse now soundtrack. i had this album many years ago, but it wasn’t great. and i think he had something to do with devo’s first album, which is great.
5. Pat Gleeson 06.12.06 / 8pm

   I’ll just repeat here my comment to another or your soul-mates re all this:

   What I love about the jazz police, even in their new hip clothes, is that they consistently praise as jewels the albums I’ve produced, arranged and played on (Crossings, Sextant, Realization, Love Love, Driving While Black,etc), while still managing to be as consistently unkind as possible about me, my music, and my having commited the outrage of introducing the synthesizer to jazz. Probably the first reviewer said it best in the 1 star Downbeat review of Crossings. After trashing Herbie and the rest of the band by name he concluded: “And about that synthesizer player: the less said the better.” Nothing much has changed in the past 40 years apparently, but I’m still here, I’m still composing and recording every day and it gives me great pleasure that my newest album, with Bennie Maupin, Wallace Roney and Jim Lang, is dedicated to y’all and is titled: Jazz Criminal. Out in a few weeks. Look for it, be sure to praise Bennie and Wallace and don’t forget to give me my usual good thrashing.

   Pat Gleeson (AKA Dr. Patrick Gleeson)
6. Doug W 07.12.06 / 12am

   Pat, it’s unfortunate that you’ve taken this thread so far out of context. I can accept your being defensive after having endured unfair abuse for your innovations– it took balls to stand up to that crap and much respect to you for it. But if you’d bothered to check any other postings by 11v, peter or gutta (click on their respective names for the blogger links), you’d have realized how ludicrous it is to file any of us alongside the Downbeat jazz police or indeed any of those who turn their noses up to electronics in jazz. As for my own views on the genre, you can check http://www.dwacres.com/node/71 where the light shines favourably on both Sextant and your contributions.

   FYI, the “cosmic witch doctor” tag was intended as flattery, not a slam. And while I wasn’t that taken by Driving While Black, I still look forward to hearing your new one.
7. 11V 07.12.06 / 8pm

   Doug says it better than I could – those three Mwandishi albums are some of my absolute favourites of Electric Jazz with Sextant the peak. I think my feelings are made clear by this article: ‘Two Sentinels, Three Decades Apart: Thinking About Herbie Hancock Group’s Sextant and Matthew Bourne’s The Electric Dr M’ in Perfect Sound Forever. If there’s anything factually inaccurate, please feel free to let me know. All credit to you.

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