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I enjoyed Derek's book. In particular, I resonated
very well with explanation of what has happened to jazz since the
50's.
"It was probably during the 1950's that jazz first
gave signs of running out of steam...In recent years the news from America has
been mainly in the form of obituaries and the surviving 'stars' perambulate the
world of displaying their wares in an endless round of festivals, unchallenged
by the arrival of new players and seemingly divorced from any sort of indigenous
activity or musical development. Each successive jazz revival leaves the music
more firmly established as a bulwark of the nostalgia industry".
The long passage from Steve Lacie is my
favorite. "Jazz got to so that it wasn't improvised anymore. A lot of
music that was going on was really not improvised. It got so that everybody knew
what was going to happen and, sure enough, that's what happened. Maybe the order
of the phrases and tunes would be a little different every night, but for me
that wasn't enough. It reached a point where I, and many other people, got sick
and tired of the 'beat' and the '4 bars' - everybody got tired of the systematic
playing, and we just said 'Fuck it'."...some people are interested in carrying
on an old tradition and they can find their kicks in shifting round patterns and
they are not in any rush to find new stuff. They can rummage around the old
stuff their whole lives. People become obsessed with not just maintaining a
tradition but with perfecting it...[cut] "And you have to keep it going
otherwise you lose that freedom. And then the music is finished. It's a matter
of life and death. The only criterion is - 'Is this stuff alive or
dead?'".
I also like Bailey's interpretation of the value of
transcribing in jazz or in learning to improvise. I've never found that as a
useful tool, in terms of making me a better player or increasing my
improvisation skills...maybe making it easier for me to copy other players'
licks and clichés, but nothing from a creative standpoint.
Basically, Derek's book is condensed catalogue
of various forms of improvisation, based on interviews he conducted on a radio
show. And of course, he integrates a bit of his own opinions, observations, and
biases throughout this format.
Kris
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