Evaluating the 80's

[Reid]

We've had 10 to 20 years to evaluate the 80's (depending on what part of the 80's we're talking about). What are historians going to say when they write about jazz in the 80's? What were some of the major developments during that time period, if any? Who were the significant musicians during that time? Will historians look back at that time as a good time for jazz or a bad one? Write your thoughts about jazz in the 80's.

[Nate Dorward]

Well, it's a good question, but jeez, one question at a time, Reid--I just looked at this forum & you've launched ten threads in the past few days in this forum alone. No offence, but surely it's best to hold some questions in reserve till the threads you've already started have had time to run....!

[Reid]

Man, what can I say? My work sucks, and the world situation is not so positive as well. I need some good conversation to escape to. Besides, the thread topics don't always flow like this, so I gotta milk it while I can.

I have a genuine question: what's the problem with starting too many threads? Do you have a problem with the threads that I have been starting? I've been one to talk about the dearth of interesting discussions, and I'm trying to start threads that I think could lead to interesting discussions. I can see if you thought my threads were bad for this site or something, but other than, I don't see what the problem is.

[Nate Dorward]

Well, I guess it's just a matter of differing personal styles--I do try to hold back a bit (& post to a diversity of forums). Besides, if one wants good answers to one's questions then it seems counterproductive to start up all the threads simultaneously (since busy posters will be unable to follow & participate in all of them at once). -- Anyway, just my 2 cents: I certainly don't mean to discourage posters from answering the original question.

[Salvador Dali Lama]

Last Exit!

[Reid]

Yeah, Last Exit. Nuff said.

Seriously, I really loved their self-titled album. Hey, I don't know if you're familiar with Keiji Haino, but I would love to see him play with Brotzmann,
Laswell and Shannon-Jackson.

[Vince Kargatis]

Well, since I was a teenager in the 80s, and think that the teenage years are where most of one's musical tastes form and gel, I'll always be biased towards the period, and do think highly of its peaks. I'd say the 80s saw a healthy and creative synthesis of previously frequently disparate threads in jazz/improv, especially regarding composition + 'out', exploring the doors Mingus opened but weren't all that well-explored in the freedom found in the 60s (and certainly extended by Braxton, Hemphill, etc in the 70s). An excellent period for this kind of thing, artists like Henry Threadgill, David Murray, John Carter, Tim Berne, Rova, Dave Holland.

But heck, with 4 of my top 5 favorite artists (Berne, Braxton, Frisell, Rova [the other being Ornette]) doing lots of great work in the 80s, it's impossible for me to be very objective.

[Salvador Dali Lama]

Yeah Rova and Braxton too. and Zorn was really getting his shit together in the 80s also.

Haino I dont know, but I hear the name constantly. I'm usually a little weary of the japanese noise guys

[Brian Olewnick]

Sal, if you can find them, check out the Fushitsusha albums on PSF (Fushitsusha being Haino's power trio), especially "Pathetique". Or the more recent one on Victo with the typically arcane, pseudo-Middle English title that I'm forgetting at the moment. imho, his output can be rather inconsistent but at his best, he rocks severely.

In the 80's, Brax, Breuker, Murray, Threadgill among others.

[Reid]

Brian,

I picked up that victo disc, Withdrawe This Sable Disclosure Ere Devot'd based on the AMG review.

Do you know if there has been any talk of Haino playing with the remaining members of Last Exit?

Also, have you heard Haino and the Ruins on the Knead album? If so, how does that one compare to the first couple of Fushitsusha albums?

[Brian Olewnick]

Haven't heard of any Haino/Last Exit collab and haven't heard the recording with Ruins either. Sorry.

[Uli]

For jazz, Oliver Lake made a lot of great records in the 80'ies, imho.

[Tanager]

Woody Shaw, methinks.

[Reid]

Two things come to mind when it comes to the 80's:

1. The Bop revival
2. Fusion off-shoots--contemporary/smooth jazz; M-base; avant-fusion (ie Last Exit, James Blood Ulmer, John Zorn).

What interesting developments were occuring outside of the US in the 80's?

Re: the Bop revival. In the mid to early 80's, there seemed to be a mini-revival of Swing. The Concord label developed a stable of "young lion" swing players (ie Howard Alden, Scott Hamilton, Ken Peplowski). Similarly, in the mid 90's until now, there seemed to be a mini-revival of Fusion. Musicians like Dave Douglas, Tim Hagans, Christian McBride, seemed to be re-investigating that style.

However, both styles never seemed to catch on like be-bop/hard-bop. Why is that? Is it simply because the Swing and Fusion never had someone as marketable as Wynton Marsalis? Was it just a matter of timing?

[lazarus]

Reid,
I have a 2-cd with Keijo Haino, Bill Laswell and Rashied Ali with the strange title "Dediced...Already The Motionless Heart Of Tranquility, Tangling The Prayer Called "I".
The group is called Purple Trap and the cd is issued in 1999 on the Tzadik label.
Recommended!

[michaelr]

I thought that Arthur Blythe was doing some amazing music in the '80s. "Lenox Avenue Breakdown" and "Illusions" are two albums that I just about wore thin. Blythe managed to extend Ornette's music (with his killer band of Blood Ulmer, Abdul Wadud, Bob Stewart, and Bobby Battle) while simultaneously pushing "the tradition" with the quartet of John Hicks, Fred Hopkins, and Steve McCall. (The choice of Hopkins and McCall as the rhythm section for a "traditions band" is worth checking out.)

Somehow, Blythe never quite lived up to these recordings, which was a real let-down.

[Captain Hate]

Michaelr, I agree with you to an extent on Arthur Blythe but I think that he has been more consistent than you give him credit for. Who knows what pressures he was under while recording for Columbia? Lennox Avenue Breakdown was, as you state, a great release but it was kind of like an Africa Brass in that it wasn't by a working group that was going to remain together and tour. I think that his playing remains at a very high level, as witnessed by Spirits in the Field. Blythe isn't particularly prolific regarding the number of songs that he writes, but that's been the case going back to his Columbia years.

Regarding the '80s, that's when most of my current musical tastes began to really get set. The number of Black Saint/Soul Note releases that I purchased in this time period was huge and it became evident that I was eventually going to leave bop behind and go more for the post-Coltrane stuff. I got exposed to Breuker and Mengelberg at this time and liked them a lot. Machine Gun pretty much gave me a headache then, but the fuse was lit...

[Vince Kargatis]

Originally posted by Reid
2. Fusion off-shoots--contemporary/smooth jazz; M-base; avant-fusion (ie Last Exit, James Blood Ulmer, John Zorn).

Reid, perhaps this is better stated in the 'post-70s fusion' thread, but I think you give way too much weight to fusion as the dominant influence in many of these sub-genres you refer to as descendants. I think fusion, and its related marketing phenomena, is the dominant background for "pop-jazz" and "smooth jazz" (it's fairly easy to chart their evolution in the 70s), but with the other stuff, particularly when you mention Zorn, Berne, Frisell, I just don't see/hear it - fusion is no more important an influence and "method" than numerous other threads in jazz/improv, including free, composition, instrumentation, etc. In fact, I think "rock" itself is often a more direct influence, rather than the jazz-rock fusion phenomena.

Honestly, I think any significant emphasis on fusion as the foundation for lots of the later music you talk about is mostly misguided, and not very fruitful.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

Actually, I feel the '80s were a rejection of the excesses of fusion in the '70s. And when I say fusion I'm talking about the jazz rock fusion that deteriorated into a bunch of mindless grove/funk.

The major happening in the '80s was the return of young black musicians to acoustic jazz. Up to that point everyone seemed to wan to be the next Grover Washington.

Of course the '80s also saw the advent of the smooth jazz format which is probably the most notable outgrowth of fusion.

[Tanager]

Yeah, I'd have to say the birth of the "Young Lion" phenomenon has to be, for better or worse, one of the biggest sea changes in jazz in the 80s.

It's strange, and I have no good explanation, but in looking over my record collection, I notice a distinct lack of 80s recordings (in jazz, specifically, NOT in other genres). There's no good reason for that, because I know of a number of great recordings made in the 80s, many of which I wish I had (and I'm not just talking YL stuff, either).

Darryl, I would say, however, that lots of young black (and white) musicians were (and still are) trying to be Grover Washington in the 80s, and I don't think Fusion is solely to blame for "Smooth Jazz" - if anything, Smooth might be seen as a bit of a reaction against Fusion, given the move away from virtuosic excesses (although I'll admit that they both share the obsession with mindless grooves as accompaniment - and I'm talking about later Fusion, not interesting early-Mahavishnu-style stuff). You'd be hard pressed to blame stuff like "Breezin'" on Fusion, IMHO - it's almost a retro "Jazz Singer as Pop Artist" mentality, a longing for the days when jazz singers could pack in the masses and an attempt to recapture that, albeit at considerable artistic cost. (I am talking about a specific album here, not necessarily all of SJ - but I think you could apply the analogy to a greater or lesser extent to the majority of SJ.)

[Darryl G. Thomas]

Tanager,

The whole point of the fusion movement was to attract the R&B/Rock audiences. Financially, jazz was being crushed by the popularity of rock and roll in the late '60s. Plus, the music was in the air and naturally jazz musicians would try to incorporate it, especially the younger ones.

The stuff the pioneers of fusion were doing was pretty creative. I've got a lot of '70's fusion, some of which still sounds good to me.

But here's what happened. Herbie's "Headhunters" hit big. There used to be a cat who posted on the old Jazz Central Station site named Billy Baltimore who was involved with hancock back during those days. His tours were like rock concerts. I remember my high school band performing one time. Kids were sitting nodding out until they played the first few notes from Chameleon. A big whoa went out.

Anyway, music labels saw that there was a form of jazz that could really crossover. And like the good capitalists they were they examined the elements of Headhunters that made it a hit. Jazz wasn't selling shit, so it had to be the pop elements. So if you water the jazz element down to the basic minimum you could make so money while maintaining te sophisticated "adult" cachet of the jazz label. The smooth format was just a continuation of the fusion format except the balance between jazz and pop became more skewered to the point where a decent fusion band can't get played on a smooth station.

[Reid]

Vince,

See my reply in the "Post-70's Fusion" thread. Btw, part of the point of that thread is to tell the other story of Fusion that Darryl doesn't mention.

Laz,

Thanks for the tip. That album definitely interested me, but I've heard unfavorable reviews. (Btw, you never commented on the compilation I sent you. I'm assuming you didn't care for it.)

[Monte Smith]

I came of age in the late 80s. When I think 80s jazz, I think chiefly of one of two Marsalises plus Kenny Kirkland, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and Robert Hurst III.