Mike Zwerin
April 05, 2007 | Great Music Quotes
"Never look at the trombones, it only encourages
> them."
> Richard Strauss >
>
> "Hell is full of musical amateurs."
> George Bernard Shaw
>
> > "We never play anything the same way once."
> Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians
>
> "Someone who knows how to play the accordion, and
> doesn't."
> Al Cohn's definition of a gentleman
>
> > "The only tune they play in 4/4 is 'Take Five!'"
> (unknown-talking about the Don Ellis band)
>
> "If I could play like Wynton, I
> wouldn't play like Wynton.
> Chet Baker
>
> > "I would rather play Chiquita Banana and have my
> swimming pool than play Bach and starve."
> Xavier Cugat
>
> > "I am not handsome, but when women hear me play,
> they come crawling to my feet."
> Niccoló Paganini
> >
> "Critics can't even make music by rubbing their
> back legs together."
> Mel Brooks
>
> "Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
> Mark Twain
>
> "God tells me how the music should sound, but
> you stand in the way."
> Arturo Toscanini to a trumpet player
>
> "When she started to play, Steinway himself came
> down personally and rubbed his name off the piano."
> Bob Hope, on comedienne Phyllis Diller
> >
> "In opera, there is always too much singing."
> Claude Debussy
February 25, 2007 | BORING!!! BORING!!!
MARIO LAGO, a friend who lives in Milan, sent me the following commentary.
Last Friday I went to hear Billy Cobham with his jazz/fusion group at the
Blue Note. Huge noise volume, a cascade of beats and continuos fill-ins, a
bit like a locomotive, (Billy has huge energy and lots of 'prespiration' )
was rendered on two base drums, 5 toms, 5 cymbals etc etc plus all of the five pieces played were rythmically nearly identical and impossible to remember or discern: Frankly cannot be called Jazz..
Unfortunately this also happens often in most of the various summer festivals
which the organisers try to promote as a Jazz Festival to the innocent and
naive (not to say ignorant) general public. The music played is usually without swing, lasting endless number of choruses with no end in sight: Final result BORING!!! Boring!!!
MARIO LAGO
October 13, 2006 | THE BALLAD OF VALERY PONOMAREV: Or... It's Their Way Or It's Their Way
I met Valery Ponomarev in Moscow in 1967 when I was on tour for the US State Department with Earl Fatha Hines, and he was, like 20. He could play Lee Morgan solos note for note - unusual for a soviet citizen. “Holy sheeit!” said the band, with hipster lucidity. Then he comes to NY ten years later and, ain't God great, ends up playing with Art Blakey.
Lately Valery has been in the news. Here's a story about him I picked up from the internet.
by roysol
(Front Paged at MLW)
Let me tell you a story...it won't take very long...about how far the Bushist doctrine of fear and power has spread.
How far, how deeply and how dangerously it has spread.
Security people at Charles DeGaulle airport broke the arm of the internationally famous jazz trumpet player Valery Ponomarev last week...an American citizen for over 30 years...because he argued with the gate people at an Air India flight to New York when they demanded that he gate check his trumpet rather than bring it onto the plane. A trumpet that:
A-Fits with no problem whatsoever in the overheads.
and
B-Had been properly tagged as carry-on baggage before he got to the gate.
Read on.
Now you must know that musicians try very hard to get their instruments onto planes whenever they can do so. Baggage handlers are notorious for breaking things, and a broken instrument is painful in any number of ways. So is a lost or misrouted instrument. It's not like you can just pick up another one before the gig and play at your usual level of competence. Even if you are lucky enough to FIND one, every instrument has its own quirks and personality, and most professional musicians own instruments that are not easily replaceable. Older instruments or ones that were custom built or modified to their specifications. And since 9/11 and the whole Homeland Security/Terrorism scare-scam, if you DO carefully pack an instrument in a special ape-proof flight case and allow it to be checked as baggage, the minimum wagers that are doing "security" work in the baggage department are often capable of opening the case, taking the instrument out to see if it's a bomb (Duh...a trumpet or violin REALLY looks bomb-like on an X-ray machine.) repacking it backwards and upside down and then forgetting to close the latches.
I have SEEN this happen.
So Valery... 63 years old, maybe 5' 5" tall, 140 lbs... pitched a bitch at the gate when some pissed-off functionary at a loading gate decided to pull rank on him. They called security and four (as he so colorfully put it to me today when he told me the story) "giant asshole cops" took him someplace where there were no witnesses, tried to forcibly take his trumpet away and when he would not let go of it with his right hand, pulled his left arm behind his back and broke it.
And people sniff and moan when the word "fascism" is used to describe what is happening in America and in much of Western Europe as well.
Vaslery did not try to fight these people. As he related today (I wish I could reproduce his great Russan accent) "I grew up in Soviet Union under Stalin and Khruschev. I know enough not to try to hit a cop. Let alone four of them. Big, stupid motherfuckers." (Here he stands on tiptoe and raises his remaining functioning hand as high in the air as he can.) "They were THS BIG!!! FOUR of them!!! I am not THAT stupid."
And indeed he is not.
Here is a man who grew up in Russia when playing "jazz" was almost an act of open rebellion and got so good that Art Blakey hired him to join the Jazz Messengers in the late '60s. And if you do not know how serious THAT was...Blakey was possibly the only equal to Miles Davis in terms of hearing and hiring the best of the best in the post-bop era.
Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter...that level.
The BEST of the best.
So here we have this INSATIABLY positive little Russian guy, authentically playing in an idiom that had its genesis in the riot-torn black ghettos of America during the Civil Rights era. Moving to New York, getting his citizenship, re-starting a life here...a true "American" success story, when there really was such a thing. Now seriously crippled...they had to operate because it was a complex break...and unable to even HOLD a trumpet, because George fucking Bush and his handlers have decided that they are the deciders and we are their subjects.
I just thought I would bring this general "fascism" discussion down to a more personal level. This can happen to ANY of us who do not totally surrender on any level whatsoever to the madness of these people.
It's their way or it's their way.
June 22, 2006 | Don't Count Sheep
The days start getting shorter today, always a big day on my scale of small horrors. It's all downhill from here. Of course, it's always downhill from everywhere. That's the lay of the land. Why does that not depress me?
Actually, I know why. I'm stoned, and I've been listening to Steely Dan, Sonny Rollins, and Count Basie. When you can't sleep, don't count sheep Count Basie.
June 12, 2006 | "Let's Start A Magazine"
by ee cummings
"let's start a magazine, to hell with literature, we want something redblooded, lousy with pure, reeking with stark, and fearlessly obscene, but really clean, get what I mean, let's not spoil it, let's make it serious, something authentic and delirious, you know something genuine like a mark, in a toilet, graced with guts and gutted, with grace, squeeze your nuts and open your face."
May 25, 2006 | Review of “The Parisian Jazz Chronicles” by Nick Catalano on Allabout jazz.com
Mike Zwerin gave up his status as CEO of a steel company to play jazz trombone, winding up in Europe eventually earning his living as the jazz writer for the International Herald Tribune. His book The Parisian Jazz Chronicles (Yale University Press, 2005) offers unique glimpses into the lives of such luminaries as Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Wayne Shorter and Dexter Gordon. Actually, Zwerin has chosen to write his “improvisational memoir” in a manner which interfuses his own life in Europe (he recounts love affairs, substance episodes, and expatriate alienation) with chapters in the careers of his interviewees. His writing style contains abrupt segues and changes (he describes these as “interludes, modulations, codas...”) from planned outlines to improvisatory notes in a sort of journalistic stream-of-consciousness. It represents a writing adventure that many who plod along with their have-to-do-it-to-make-a-living newspaper writing would love to try.
Zwerin began at the “Trib” in 1979 and was able to trace the development of European jazz innovators like Michel Petrucciani and Burhan Ocal. He reviewed them and many others in the context of festivals at Siena, Viennes, Agadir as well larger ones like Nice and Montreux (better known to Americans) and recorded their accomplishments. The sum total of his experiences leads him to recognize that jazz, long ago, evolved into a world music or “musica franca”- a development that has been largely ignored by his colleagues of the press here in the U.S.A.
Jazz has always had an enormous following of knowledgeable fans all over Europe. Actually, the French wish they had invented the music and often claim that they established it, through their critics, as a true art form. There is much truth in this latter statement. As far back as the early 20’s, French writers were hailing the music’s praises and extolling Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins and others with insight that eluded many early American critics. It is in this context that Mike Zwerin’s book is so valuable. He is the best kind of commentator—a successful musician in his own right—and his comments are uttered in an adventurous style which should delight even readers who aren’t jazz aficionados.
March 31, 2006 | Don't Blink
I wrote the following while sitting in the gentle April sun on the terrace of the Café Flore in downtown Saint-Germain des Pres. Not really, I just wanted to fuck with your head.
A friend of mine who fucked Daryl Hannah told me that she had a perfect ass. I always imagined that she had small tits - not that there's anything wrong with it. I like tits of any size, except when they are made of plastic. If it were possible to transplant Daryl Hannah's ass on Yasmeen, my opthomologist, she'd be perfect. But that's not necessary. When you have a bright face and a sexy bearing like Yasmeen, a fat ass is not a liability. A sight for sore eyes, she resembles an intelligent Dominique Sanda, if that makes any sense. I once fucked Dominique Sanda, though neither one of us was really there. In any case, I fell in love with Yasmeen when she was looking me in the eye, and she said, in English: "Don't blink."
After the eye exam, I couldn't see very well because of all the gooey drops in my eyes. so instead of reading Tolstoy, I watched a tennis match. Eyes were on my mind. Anastasia Myskina the Russian tennis player has eyes like two cunts. They suck you in. When she plays tennis, she gives the impression of trying to seduce her opponent rather than competing. While Maria Sharapova, on the other side of the net, is 100% will. She needs to dominate, to overpower. At the age of 18, her eyes are already like two $ signs. She doesn't blink.
March 30, 2006 | Incendiary Comments
People discuss Bob Dylan's lyrics and his singing and what's wrong or right with his bands, but nobody ever seems to talk about just how good his time is. This may sound incendiary, but let me suggest that next time you listen you forget about the words, and listen to how he places his notes. The music, not the poetry. He sounds like a soulful horn player. He has an absolutely consistant groove, and he always swings. Has any jazzman thought about playing instrumental versions of Bob Dylan songs? And just when is Dylan going to win the Nobel Prize for literature he so richly deserves?
***
The left-wing Catholic philosopher Simone Weil, a convert from Judaism, and the role-model of my first wife Norma, who was in love with doom, once wrote: "Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty."
She also wrote: "Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer."
***
William Pfaff, one of the few interesting columnists remaining in the International Herald Trombone, wrote the following on Thursday, March 30, 2006:
"The [Capitalist} system in the advanced countries has been rejigged since the 1960s to take wealth from the workers, and from the funding of government, and transfer it to stockholders and corporate executives.
"While that may seem an incendiary comment, it seems to me a simple factual observation."
While this is not exactly news, who says the press no longer prints the truth?
***
March 18, 2006 | Paul Haines: Not Making What Is Laughingly Called Sense.
Jo Hayward Haines, the widow of my late very special friend the poet, critic, and teacher Paul Haines, who wrote the libretto for Carla Bley's "Elevator Over The Hill," has asked people for their recollections of this "complex, funny, contradictory man." Here are mine.
I first met Paul Haines - it was either the very late 40s or the very early 50s - in Coconut Grove in Miami, where he was living, obviously really happy about it, on Bird Road.
I was majoring in sailing at the U of Miami, and I had just married a woman named Norma, who had three sisters. The older two were already heavily into jazz and drugs. Them was the good old days. Norma’s youngest sister Rosemary, who played basketball, was constantly being nagged by the “hipper” members of the family about going out with all of those dumb football players. I’ll never forget the proud look on Rosemary’s face when she introduced Paul to us. Her first hipster. She later married Don Martin, the cartoonist. (Eventually, when Rosemary found out she had cancer, she said: “Well at least I won’t have to floss any more.”)
When I remember Paul’s face back in those days, the word that comes to mind is clean. It was mostly just being young – we were all around 20, clean, open, stoned, whatever. But mostly, Paul seemed to be more dedicated to curiosity than the rest of us. Dedicated to not making what is laughingly called sense, if that makes any sense.
After Norma left me, I spent the winter of 57/58 in Paris, “finding myself.” I drove my Citroen 2 CV, that classic sardine can of a car held together by rubber bands, down to Nice to hang out with Barney Wilen, and I drove back north through the French Alps so I could stop off and see Paul, who was studying at, if I remember right, the University of Grenoble. I played in some sort of a local jam session and somehow or other I still have a photo of that with Paul listening carefully – boy, he knew how to listen - at a table.
We drove on to Paris together, and it was then that we became close. It was then that I started to learn about how to blow words – I would not become a professional writer until ten years later – how to stretch and bend them. I had read my share of Dostoevsky, and James, and so on, but before that the only thing I really thought about was bebop. I started to take words a lot more seriously after that trip.
Paul’s highly developed senses of irony, ambiguity, and silliness harmonized with my own ditto in a way I’d never experienced with anybody else – except, let me hasten to add, with Norma. I was made what I am verbally, whatever the fuck that means, by Paul Haines, with some help from Bob Dylan, John Cage, and Lenny Bruce.
I pride myself on being marginal. A plague on all your houses. Paul taught me to choose my words more carefully. I guess you could say that he taught me how to communicate with the people who were in the same margin as me. Which is nothing to sneeze at, although, thanks to Paul, I later had to crumple a whole lot of drafts learning how to communicate with ordinary people - but that’s another story.
No it’s not. Paul did not often compromise verbally, something I’ve always admired him for. Self-censorship did not seem to occur to him. If you didn’t understand him it was your fault. He always seemed to be slightly askew. He had a sideways take on life, and I suspect that he must have paid a high price for it.
The last time I saw him was on the “Elevator Over The Hill” tour with Carla Bley. I forget the year, around the millennium sometime in some provincial place, at a festival in Brittany, or Normandy, maybe - Le Mans or Reims perhaps. There were a lot of people around; producers, locals, fans, French musicians, an entire big band doing sound-checks and interviews and stuff, and although Paul was very much a part of, even central to the event, I remember him as being somehow out of focus.
Although I considered him one of my closest friends, I had not seen him in decades. For someone who was so important to me, I spent precious little precious time with Paul. You should know that I am of the impression that I make a better impression when I am not around, so it is possible that it was I who was was out of focus, and that I was just seeing a reflection of my own alienation in somebody with whom I identified so strongly.
But Paul was even more alienated than me (that’s a compliment, I think). He was on a planet of his own. On his planet, people spoke in free verse, and they were of good heart and open ears.
March 12, 2006 | Bob Dylan on new songs
"The world don't need any more songs. They've got enough. They've got way too many. As a matter of fact, if nobody wrote any songs from this day on, the world ain't gonna suffer from it. Noibody cares. There's enough songs for people to listen to, if they want to listen to songs. For every man, woman and child on earth, they could be sent, probably, each of them, a hundred records, and never be repeated. There's enough songs. Unless someone's gonna come along with a pure heart and has something to say. That's a different story"
Bob Dylan, interviewed by Paul Zollo in "Songwriters on Songwriting"
February 06, 2006 | Anthems for People Who Don't Like Anthems
La Marseillaise, Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli
America The Beautiful, Jaco Pastorius
The Star Spangled Banner, Jimi Hendrix
Imagine, John Lennon
I’m Black and I’m Proud, James Brown
L'Internationale, Jean-Jacques Milteau
My Way, the Sex Pistols
Precious Lord, sung and recited by James Baldwin (with Bob Stewart, tuba)
Chimes of Freedom, Bruce Springsteen
Get Up Stand Up, Bob Marley
Let It be, The Beatles
Respect, Aretha Franklin
February 01, 2006 | Interview on Bloomberg News
Jazz Critic Zwerin Remembers Miles, Chet and `Cool': Interview
2005-12-04 21:10 (New York)
(Farah Nayeri is a reporter for Bloomberg News. The views
expressed are her own.)
By Farah Nayeri
Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Mike Zwerin got his first break jamming
with Miles Davis a half-century ago. Miles has been with him ever
since.
The Paris-based jazz critic (for Bloomberg News and The
International Herald Tribune), also a trombonist, has just released
an entertaining mix of flashbacks, ``The Parisian Jazz Chronicles''
(Yale University Press, 214 pages, $26). In it, his life story is
interlaced with that of the legends he encountered: Dexter Gordon,
Chet Baker, Bob Dylan, Wayne Shorter -- and Miles, the man
``everything comes back to.''
Zwerin, 75, looked back on his life last week in a telephone
conversation with Bloomberg's Farah Nayeri.
Nayeri: Why is your book called an improvisational memoir?
Zwerin: It's always been my ambition to create my own form, not
just copy other forms.
The publishers came up with that term ... It's not really
improvised, because I wrote about 85 drafts. I rewrite myself all
the time.
Nayeri: Why did you not do music all your life?
Zwerin: I never got enough of a name to have my own band and
play with it all the time. That's partly because I wasn't practicing
enough, because I was writing and reading. I had split myself, which
is great. Eclecticism.
On the other hand, if you don't really concentrate on music 100
percent of the time, you're never going to be what you could be.
Music is a tyrant. I was just not ready to submit to that tyrant. I
didn't like to practice.
Meeting Miles
Nayeri: In the book, you don't describe your very first
encounter with Miles Davis.
Zwerin: I've told that in previous books.
Nayeri: Please tell it again.
Zwerin: When I was 18, I was living with my parents in Forest
Hills, the place where they used to play tennis, in Queens, in New
York City. I used to take my horn, drive their car into Manhattan
and sit in. Sometimes I went to strip clubs in Brooklyn. This one
time, I went to Harlem, to 117th Street, a club called Minton's
where bebop was supposedly born. (Thelonious) Monk played there very
early in his career, so did Charlie Parker.
The night I went, there was Art Blakey. He was going through
his Muslim phase, so he was known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina. And he
was a fearful cat. He didn't like white people, and he was strong,
and he had muscles, and he was the best drummer around, and he knew
it.
Dumb or Courageous?
I don't know where I got the courage; I was either dumb or
courageous. I walked in with my horn and asked him if I could play.
He said sure, and he couldn't have been sweeter. He was nicer than
his reputation, that's for damn sure. A lot of those guys were. So
was Miles.
When I was packing up my horn, I saw that Miles had been at the
bar. I hadn't seen him before. He walked over to me and said would I
like to come to a rehearsal tomorrow. We were, you better know it,
cool. And I said okay, sure. He had just played with Charlie Parker.
Miles was 22, four years older than me, and this was his first
band. So I knew who he was, but the world didn't know who he was.
This was his first time as a leader. When I came to rehearsal, it
was the band called Birth of the Cool. Much later, he told me, ``I
like your sound,'' which was the biggest compliment I ever got.
Soundtrack of Life
Nayeri: Why do you say everything always goes back to Miles?
Zwerin: Miles has made the soundtrack of the movie of my life.
When I hear his early records with Charlie Parker, that's my teenage
years. ``Tutu'' was my old age. That's the urban music of our time.
Nayeri: Beyond his music, you often go back to what he said.
Zwerin: Sure. His mystique. He was an amazing guy. He's the guy
who told (John) Coltrane to take the saxophone out of his mouth. He
couldn't stand him playing these long solos. Miles said ``Please,
man, can't you play shorter solos?'' And Coltrane said, ``I try, but
I can't seem to figure out how to end it, I keep going!'' So Miles
said, ``Why don't you try taking the saxophone out of your mouth?''
That's getting to the heart.
Drugs
I feel somehow very close to Miles, and when I interviewed (the
drummer) Tony Williams and he said ``I haven't been the same since
Miles died,'' I thought, neither have I. He was somebody who I
didn't really know. I wasn't a friend of his. But he was really
important to me.
Didn't the drugs in my book shock you?
Nayeri: They did initially, but then I thought, whatever.
Zwerin: Nobody really cares anymore. It is in the past tense. I
decided I would say what I think. I'm 75, and if I don't say it now,
gosh, goddarn, heck.
Nayeri: You thought it would wash because of your age?
Zwerin: I was having my say, and part of my say was the drug
thing. It's in the past tense, part of my life. I'm not the first
one to have that experience, or, unfortunately, the last one. That
was part of the ethic of what I thought was being hip, which is
really stupid.
When you're that age you're immortal.
Classic Junkie
Nayeri: Tell me about Chet and his importance to you.
Zwerin: He wasn't all that important.
Nayeri: Why not?
Zwerin: On a good night -- and there weren't enough of them --
towards the end of his life, in his 50s, Chet was playing jazz as
well as anybody has ever played it. It's not a popular thing to say
to Wynton Marsalis. I told him once, and he looked at me as if I was
crazy.
Chet was the classic junkie. He lasted longer than anybody. He
hit the age of 60.
Nayeri: He was sad.
Zwerin: Except in a way he wasn't. He liked being a junkie. He
never got tired of it. He was like a kid who found the candy jar and
just kept raiding it.
Plus he could play really well. The trouble is, he made so many
records that most of them were bad. You'd give him $2,000 and he'd
make a record. A lot of those records are bad. When you find the
good ones, it's really exciting.
Age Brings Peace
Nayeri: Do you still play?
Zwerin: I've started playing again. A friend of mine has a
little club and he asked me. I played a couple of times. I play bass
trumpet, cousin to the trombone.
Nayeri: You sound pretty happy, on the whole.
Zwerin: I'm in very good shape.
Nayeri: Why is that?
Zwerin: It's the cliche: You do get some peace with age. For
one thing, I'm not worried about chasing women. I look a lot, I'm a
real voyeur, but I don't need women anymore. I don't mean it
personally. I never knew how to handle women, relate to them. They
were always a mystery to me.
Also, I understand stuff that I didn't understand before. There
is no reason to get depressed about stuff, because it's just
inevitable. That's what I've come to realize: Dust unto dust is OK.
Nayeri: Do you have more books in you?
Zwerin: I am thinking now of another one. I don't know. I hope
so. Right now, I'm only writing an article every two weeks. It's not
enough. What do I do in the week in between?
January 29, 2006 | Botox Vs Steroids
I had a thought today, looking at pictures of Oprah Winfrey and Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister of Italy, in the papers. Both are obviously botoxed, or worse. That’s fine. Nobody minds that. But if athletes are fined for taking steroids, shouldn’t public personalities be fined for their artificially young faces? Or should we just accept the realities of cutting edge technologies?
January 28, 2006 | Review in The Guardian
The Parisian Jazz Chronicles by Mike Zwerin (Yale, £15.95)
My heart sank when I saw that this was subtitled "An Improvisational Memoir", since in such cases "improvisational" is usually code for tedious stream-of-consciousness reminiscence. But Zwerin, an American trombonist and music critic long resident in Paris, pulls it off superbly, riffing in blue and hot moods, and generally clambering around the staves of his pages like someone for whom the only possible description is a "hep cat". Even his decision to refer to himself in the third person - "Mike" (or sometimes his drug-fuelled alter ego, "Johnny Staccato") - works, probably because he loves also to mock himself.
It also works because Zwerin has such great stories to tell about the giants he met: Dexter Gordon growling at a French policeman who has dared to touch his hat; Bob Dylan in a café confessing to no sense of self; Count Basie deconstructing the inverview scenario, and numerous apparitions by Miles Davis ("everything comes back to Miles"), with whom Zwerin played, and who is the book's guardian angel. There is also a mischievously satirical profile of slush-pop saxist Kenny G, written entirely in the victim's own words. Nice.
by Steven Poole
|