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"There is no one about whom one can be certain that the Philistine in him won't come out someday." --Johannes Brahms
Hugo Wolf: "Hold my beer..."
"Brahms' output is crablike. It has never reached beyond mediocrity, but such nothingness, emptiness and hypocrisy has never appeared in such an alarming manner."
“And it was loud, even outside. In those days, musically, Clapton was a total wild man. He stood there, not moving a muscle, while he issued the most savage assault you had ever experienced, unless you were at the debut of Tchaikovsky's “1812 Overture” and your seat was in front of the cannon.”
Little Steven on Eric Clapton, 2004 (Rolling Stone article)
"If there were a conservatory in Hell, and if one of its talented students were to compose a programme symphony based on the story of the Ten Plagues of Egypt, and if he were to compose a symphony like Mr. Rachmaninoff’s, then he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and would delight the inhabitants of Hell."
-César Cui, reviewing Rachmaninoff's First Symphony
The NovaMenco brothers are long on hair and short on everything else. From the reviews I expected to hear something new and different. ("Best modern flamenco-jazz fusions," one said.) Regrettably, it was nothing of the sort. "New flamenco," "jazz-flamenco fusion," etc., are labels that are both extremely inaccurate and highly misleading because this is no more nor less than muzak carried on the back of a rumba flamenca rhythm—which latter, unfortunately, it succeeds in smothering. But there's your "fusion": Muzak +rumba.
The folks who keep calling this stuff "new" flamenco are, very obviously, extremely ignorant of flamenco. There are only two things that this music has in common with flamenco: (1) The use of the flamenco rumba's rhythm, and (2) the occasional use of the Andalusian cadence (a modal sequence of four chords, one minor followed by three major). Flamenco's forms are much, much, MUCH larger than just rumba (there's approximately 106 different forms altogether, give or take a few, with innumerable variations) and the rumba is one of the most minor. Yes, it is fun, it is fiesta music—but flamencos, whether Gypsy or non-Gypsy, don't play it at all like this. The Gypsy Kings, for example, play almost solely rumbas, and the rumbas they play are anything but traditional, yet what they do play has the drive and "umph" of flamenco, particularly of the Gypsy style. There's no Gypsy in this music.
There's likewise little to no "jazz" here either. Real jazz musicians wince as hard as flamenco artists when they hear this stuff called "jazz-flamenco fusion." Add the title of this album and you've succeeded in insulting jazz, flamenco and Gypsies all at the same time.
“My earliest memory of my dad is probably of him somewhere in a garden covered in dirt, somewhere hot, a tropical garden, in jeans, khakis, covered in dirt just continuously planting trees. I think that’s what I thought he did for the first seven years of my life. I was completely unaware that he had anything to do with music. I came home one day from school […] and I freaked out on my dad: ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were in The Beatles?’ And he said, ‘Oh, sorry. Probably should have told you that.’ ”
“I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain’t music, it's close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.”
“[Mitch] Miller exemplified the worst in American pop. He first aroused the ire of intelligent listeners by trying to turn—and darn near succeeding in turning—great artists like Sinatra, Clooney, and Tony Bennett into hacks. Miller chose the worst songs and put together the worst backings imaginable—not with the hit-or-miss attitude that bad musicians traditionally used, but with insight, forethought, careful planning, and perverted brilliance”
“[A]ny musician who has not experienced—I do not say understood, but truly experienced—the necessity of dodecaphonic music is useless. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch”
‘Some people have told me that I compose in a musical language of the past, and that this is not allowed in the 21st century. In the past, it was possible to compose beautiful melodies, and beautiful music; but today, they say, I’m not allowed to compose like this any more, because I need to discover the “complexity of the modern world”, and the point of music is to show the complexity of the world.
‘Well, let me tell you a huge secret: I already know that the world is complex, and can be very ugly. But I think that these people have just got a little bit confused: if the world is so ugly, then what’s the point of making it even uglier, with ugly music?’
“Podicicinist: One who breaks wind as a form of public entertainment. Skilled exponents of the art could imitate sounds, extinguish candles, and even play musical instruments.”
Bulletin of the University of London, Nº 26 (1975)
Review of Jazz Flamenco, by Lionel Hampton and his orchestra Discus*, BMG magazine, December 1957
We have not had a more hideous experience for years!
Lionel Hampton’s contributions to Jazz have been several and considerable but they are, unfortunately, topped by his mastery of vulgarity.
This horrifying album is said to have resulted from Hampton’s enthusiasm for Spain and its music and that after a 48-hour session in a Flamenco “spot” he came “roaring out” and made this album. What a pity he did not trip over the step!! The result is an unlovely melange of crude “bop”; flashy “mainstream”; mambo; and unclassified hideous noises—much of William Mackel’s guitar falls under this last heading; especially his “contribution” to I've Got a Brand New Baby which must rank with the late Len Fillis’ Dipsomania as the last word in horridness.
The nearest this album gets to Spain (except that it was recorded there) is that a well-known flamenco artist played the castanets through much of the noise. Her feeling for the jazz beat is remarkably good but in this context the effect is one of chattering teeth.
The credit side goes almost exclusively to Oscar Dennard for his musicianly pianistic oases and even to Hampton for Tenderly—which, with Spain, is in a class apart from the rest of the record. In the “Understatement of the Year” the sleeve notes say this is “a crazy mixed-up record.” We will strain charity to the limit and agree.
*Discus was in fact largely Jack Duarte (as those familiar with his style will be unsurprised to learn).
"I've been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
Mark Twain
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
“How can less be more? MORE is more!” - Yngwie something or other.
“The girls today all sound like dogs. Because they copy Camaron, who sang like a dog…Bow Wow Wow!” - Manuel Agujeta.
[on having good tempo] “You need to go south, near the equator….Asians? Not likely” - Al Dimeola
“The only egoless persons are saints. And you don’t find Saints playing the guitar” - John Mclaughlin
“Play like you don’t know how to play guitar” - Miles Davis to John Mclaughlin on Bitches Brew.
“Dr. Beat was my new best friend” - Deen Castronovo, upon advice of Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain.
“Sometimes you have to lose your self in the image of someone else, in order to find your own voice” - Steve Vai on imitating other musicians.
“He is the mirror, where we guitar players see ourselves” - Vicente Amigo on PDL
“If you think you are going to make a mistake, you are lost” “Most of them are missing that smell and the taste of ancient things that you have to have to play flamenco. And that you get from the cante. The cante gives you the inspiration. The secret of the flamenco language is in the cante….the essence of flamenco lies in the cante…heavy stuff and not everybody gets it….the real message, the pure expression of flamenco is in the cante”
“I think one of the most idiotic questions anyone can ask is whether white people can play the blues. If you need to know, go listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan at his peak. Playing blues is not about what part of town you come from or what country. No one race owns it. Some people might think they do, but they don’t. I can hear blues in the music of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan. Flamenco players have got the blues. The Moors singing to Allah have got the blues. The Hebrew people in their prayers have got the blues. The blues is like chicken soup – it wasn’t invented in America, and we don’t own the recipe.”
“I think one of the most idiotic questions anyone can ask is whether white people can play the blues. If you need to know, go listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan at his peak. Playing blues is not about what part of town you come from or what country. No one race owns it. Some people might think they do, but they don’t. I can hear blues in the music of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan. Flamenco players have got the blues. The Moors singing to Allah have got the blues. The Hebrew people in their prayers have got the blues. The blues is like chicken soup – it wasn’t invented in America, and we don’t own the recipe.”
Carlos Santana
“Since when is Carlos Santana an authority on the blues?”
Review of The Guitar That Changed the World, by Scotty Moore Discus, BMG magazine, September 1965
Scotty Moore, whose claim to fame rests on his presence in Elvis Presley's supporting group, merely makes quivering, booming, mushy noises (mostly on one string) and suggests that if his guitar did in fact change the world, it was to leave it an uglier place. […]
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