Well, despite Jazz On 3's attempts to present at least vaguely interesting music (as a non-radio listener I've heard very little output, but it's more adventurous than the awards list, by about 3-5 miles), the ceremony seems to pick the blandest, most obvious choices for an award. Not quite Digby Fairweather but about as establishment as possible. What little I've heard of Gilad Atzmon (who in print comes across as a self-hating Israeli, infact he pretty much says that every chance he gets), is pseudo ECM world jazz lite - very little risks are taken, but it's easy to present it as a clash of cultures or something else worthy.

Guy Barker from the very little I've heard, appears to be approximating a UK version of Wynton, which is why I've not bothered to check out any more than that.

Don't know Chris Bowden at all. But it seems the list is culled from NYC/Downtown wannabees and ECM wannabees with no recognition of the musicians in London who a) make even slightly interesting music b) get any kind of genuine international recognition at all. Those half interesting players who make the list are pretty much on it every year.

Well, why get so exercised about such things. Awards are simply one of the many forms that publicity takes, & complaining that publicity is untrustworthy as a guide to artistic merit is merely to state the obvious. It's not as if polls & awards that are slanted towards the avantgarde end of things are any less untrustworthy & ridiculous. Take a look at the absurd poll results for _The Wire_ in the January issue for improv & jazz. Most awards of any kind are a con.

I agree with everything you just wrote, Nate, but I'm curious exactly what you found absurd about the year-end Wire improv list. I found it fairly parochial/absurd because of how London- and Bailey-centric it was, but I wonder if that's what you mean also, since you and I come from very different perspectives.

Nate, why not? I'm obvious & I like my exercise.

On the one hand, I'm inclined to write off all such awards, but on the other hand, I'm not a practicing musician. There's more at stake here than just publicity, I think. There are gigs and recording offers and radio play at stake; hence, livelihoods are at stake. It would be nice if this kind of recognition weren't the modus operandi, but such as it ever was. We still have Nobel Prizes after all.

What's needed these days is another musician with the huevos and talent of a Roland Kirk, the man who took Ed Sullivan's stage away from him...

Would Lol Coxhill paint SOY BOMB on his chest and writhe onstage for "the cause"? He has the political and theatrical background.

Nat, thanks for the rundown of some of the BBC nominees. It's good to hear that their programming doesn't necessarily mirror the myopia of their selections. I stopped by the Radio 3 site & noticed that Dunmall's actually received some props over there. Looks like the station fronted the cash to rent him studio space for a day to record his Moksha Big Band (a very formidable looking group).

Nate mentioned avant garde slanted polls as being similar shams & most awards as being cons. I'm curious as to which ones are not. They are completely subjective & largely superfluous when it comes to musical merit, but like it or not these things are noticed & can have a positive effect on musicians' careers/exposure. I guess what I'm looking for is a poll or award event that actively attempts to represent as many facets of the music as possible (maybe that's a pipe dream). The very idea there needs to be 'mainstream' or 'avant garde' awards/polls seems part of the problem. It all falls under the same umbrella of music as far as I'm concerned.

Jon--unfortunately Stuart Broomer has my copy of the magazine at the moment so I'm going on memory. Yes, your reaction is about the same as mine: the thing that stood out to me was the parochialism of the improv list (virtually all British)--_four_ discs by Derek Bailey? I admire the man as much as anyone, but turning over 1/3rd of the list to him is a bit much. & the inclusion of the Bennink/Parker disc didn't boost my confidence: admittedly Parker had a fairly quiet year in terms of genuinely notable releases, but _The Grass Is Greener_ was one of his few duds (though not really his fault: Bennink's surprisingly limited bag of ideas, once he drops the schtick to concentrate on straightahead improv drumming, is what sinks the date). (More to the point: I've yet to talk to anyone--even among real Parker fans--who actually likes the disc, so I'm curious who voted for it...or is it just there as a little internal-political move, given the antagonisms between Bailey & Parker...?) -- There were other oddities in the jazz list I recall--e.g. how many people _really_ selected the Doyle electroacoustic ensemble disc?

I think in general the reason I'm suspicious of _The Wire_'s yearend lists is that the issue didn't actually print an explanation of who was polled (readers? their staff? both?) & how the results were tabulated (mathematical exactness? editorial discretion? some mix of them?).

Re: Derek's question: can't say much about awards given that there aren't any really in the avantgarde area (unless we're talking about things like the MacArthur Genius Grant for KVDM). But re: polls & so forth: I pay greater attention to any recommendations & rankings & the like when the process has genuine transparency. Something like the 40-odd critics' top-tens in the Jan/Feb _Coda_ is genuinely useful, for instance, & when Stuart informally extracted some of the more frequently occurring discs for reproduction in the artwork that gave a useful portrait of the notable discs from the past year. (Not, I should note, a _strictly_ tabulated poll, though it's roughly accurate: e.g. he made sure to stick a Canadian disc in a prominent place on the cover, despite its appearing all of two times in the lists.)

FWIW on the one occasion I ran a reader's poll in a magazine--this was in issue 8 of _The Gig_, a poetry magazine I edit--I actually published the full texts of the votes received. Some people simply provided lists; others turned in dense little mini-essays; most of them were somewhere in between. It provided very interesting, in part because it was just as much as portrait of the magazine's contributors (many of them poets or notable critics, but not always: sometimes just the disparate but informed readers who are somehow plugged into the poetry world) as it was of "the best poetry books of 1995-2000" (the remit of the poll).

Nate, I see your point about the worth of poll transparency & like your idea of featuring comments as to how pollsters arrived at their opinions. Coda's and even Cadence's (w/ its constrictive rulebook of qualifiers) are entertaining & often enlightening tools- relatively refreshing respites from the usual publicity-driven popularity contests, though they're far from immune. I don't read The Wire or follow its polls, but those omissions you mentioned in reporting the who & how behind the results seem fairly egregious.

Don't know if I qualify as a 'real' Parker fan, but I enjoyed THE GRASS IS GREENER. It seemed more of a lark than a serious shot at something enduring in either man's improv portfolio.

I'd be no more interested in the awards if they were giving them to different musicians. However, this comes just a couple of months after the BBC withdrew funding from the Freedom of the City Festival. JO3 is run by a private subcontractor, so it's probably got nothing to do with this poll (and the subcontractor fulfilled their agreement to record the festival). However, there was still BBC sponsorship banners, which with no money going in seems a bit much. All in all, I'd prefer them to fulfil their funding commitments and not spend time and money on superficial awards ceremonies.

Yes, that's precisely it: awards ceremonies, no matter _who_ the awards go to, are basically a distraction & the moneys might be better spent in other ways. The moneys (private or public) that go into such things could much better be spent on the infrastructure of the music (e.g. supporting worthy music festivals....).

Sure, _The Grass Is Greener_ isn't _bad_ exactly & I can see how others might enjoy it more....but to put it on the shortlist for improv records of the year...?!

Fishes & Loaves Improv Comedy