Shuffle Boil magazine

[Nate Dorward]

Just got issue 2 of Shuffle Boil magazine from Steve Dickison, the co-editor (with David Meltzer)--it's not new (dated Summer 2002) but he neglected to mail the stack of copies going to Canada at the time so it's new to me! Anyway, in some ways it's a pleasant surprise. It's a magazine of writing on music, mostly jazz, by poets--mostly prose, though some poems. I'd received issue 1 & ended up writing a fairly negative review of it in the poetry journal I run, The Gig, because it seemed to me not to live up to the promise of a very illustrious list of contributors. However, issue #1 had a terrific part-one of an interview with Brubeck's original drummer Joe Dodge, conducted by the poet Clark Coolidge who's been a long-time fan of Dodge's. Issue #2 contains the second part of that piece; it also has a long interview with Marilyn Crispell conducted by the poet Anne Waldman. Lots of crud about astrology & shamanic dreams & the like in it but also some pertinent comments about Amaryllis & Complicité & so forth, & some comments about her depression about current difficulties in gigging in Europe &c. A fair amount of Amiri Baraka content here (take that as an invitation or a warning, depending on your perspective), including his tribute to Fred Hopkins & a (reverential) piece by Aldon Nielson on Baraka's recordings of poetry&jazz. There's a long section in the middle on clarinetists from Pee Wee Russell to Jimmy Giuffre. There's a long section by Roswell Rudd: "Primordial Music Workbook: A Tonary for Improvisors of the 21st Century": this is a 5-page sketch for a full-length book on improvisation he's trying to get published. Frankly it's pretty woolly & dull: lots of prose like this:

This is the chief synchrony: you are fully autogenerative at this point: rhythm, sound, words, look, movement, dynamics......

For vocables see list of onomatopoeia/behind "conventional" words.

Shamanizing....

The ONOMATOPOEIAC world

These words/sounds are the basis of scat.

etc. etc. A fair bit on Morton Feldman in the issue. Lots of other stuff, most strikingly a letter from James Newton dealing his court case against the Beastie Boys for their use of an extract from Newton's "Choir" in their "Pass the Mic". Newton lost the case & at the time of writing the Beastie Boys had filed a motion against Newton demanding that he pay their legal fees of $492,000. Anyone know anything about all this, or if the situation has changed since Summer 2002?

Like the 1st issue this one has one completely inexplicable inclusion. In #1 it was a bizarre piece providing Gaelic origins for jazz slang & other American idioms like "Jim Crow"--all without the slightest documentary evidence & in the teeth of the etymologies provided by any slang dictionary I've seen. I suppose it could have been a hoax piece but I don't think it was--I think it was meant seriously. -- In #2 the off-the-wall inclusion is a page of "Moondoggerel" presented without any kind of framing comment. It's a series of extracts of couplets reprinted from Louis Hardin/Moondog's The Milleniad, Book I (1959), most of them virulently antisemitic & racist. I've no idea why this is included in the issue.

Anyway, if anyone wants the details for getting a hold of the mag then just backchannel me. Definitely a better issue than #1, & worth a look despite a few things that leave me scratching my head.

[mke]

Originally Posted by Nate Dorward

Lots of other stuff, most strikingly a letter from James Newton dealing his court case against the Beastie Boys for their use of an extract from Newton's "Choir" in their "Pass the Mic". Newton lost the case & at the time of writing the Beastie Boys had filed a motion against Newton demanding that he pay their legal fees of $492,000. Anyone know anything about all this, or if the situation has changed since Summer 2002?

Beastie Boys win sampling battle

US rappers Beastie Boys have won their long-running battle over the use of a sample in their song Pass the Mic.
The punk-rappers used three notes of music from flautist James Newton's Choir in their track from 1992.

Although the group had paid a licence fee for the sample, Mr Newton said his copyright had been infringed.

But the US Court of Appeal upheld its original decision that the group did not have to pay an additional fee to license the underlying composition.

The Beastie Boys - Michael Diamond, Adam Horowitz, and Adam Yauch - are considered to be one of early pioneers of sampling music.

Sampling

Sampling, now a standard practice among musicians, involves taking a segment of one track and using it in a different song.

A three-judge panel of the court held in 2003 that the band had abided by copyright protections by paying a licence fee for a sample of Mr Newton's recording.

That finding upheld a lower-court dismissal of the case in favour of the Beastie Boys.

"We hold that Beastie Boys' use of a brief segment of that composition, consisting of three notes separated by a half-step over a background C note, is not sufficient to sustain a claim for infringement of Newton's copyright," Chief Judge Mary Schroeder wrote in her opinion.

Mr Newton is a critically acclaimed jazz and classical flutist, composer, performer, and university professor.

Mr Newton and the Beastie Boys were not available for comment.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/3998905.stm)

[Nate Dorward]

Hm, I'm not sure who I'm rooting for here--I love Newton & would hate to see him gypped, but it does seem odd he's gotten so worked up about the use of just three notes when the BBs actually paid a licensing fee to use those notes. I guess I should dig up the Newton letter in that magazine. Considering the use of sampling & collage in a lot of the music that concerns us at JC (e.g. the lengthy extract from "Preacher Man" in the new ErstLive Beins/Rowe) it'd be a little inconsistent to turn around & jump on the BBs for doing the same.