Though Emanem has long been synonymous with state-of-the-art English free improv, Martin Davidson also annexes catalog space for the occasional free jazz project. These entries may constitute a minority, but as this recent John Stevens reissue assays, their quality is often on excellent. Stevens was a consummate ambassador to both camps and was especially adept at blurring, sometimes even erasing, the boundaries between the two. New Cool follows on the heels of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble’s A New Distance released earlier this year in presenting one of last free jazz ensembles, taped in performance at the Crawley Jazz Festival several years prior to his passing.
Describing Stevens’s skills and influence as a drummer and improviser, the temptation often exists to employ that trite journalistic device of comparing him to other influential bandleaders. There’s his Blakey-like aptitude for discovering and nurturing talented younger players, a skill on substantial display here through a quartet rounded out by then twentysomethings Byron Wallen, Ed Jones, and Gary Crosby. Stevens treats them as peers and the disc’s five tracks, including a previously unreleased alternate of the Ornette-oriented freebop homage “Dudu’s Gone” dedicated to the dearly departed Pukwana, encompass ample space for discursive solos.
Oddly enough, or perhaps not, Stevens’ playing suggests the spirit, if not the letter, of Shelly Manne: lithe and effervescent rather than punishingly fast or loud, and possessing a similarly orchestral sense of percussive color. His sticks skip across the skins, never prodding or shoving, but instead coaxing malleable rhythms for his colleagues to ride. His supple brushwork shaping textured rolls on “Do Be Up” and “2 Free 1” is just as responsive and nuanced.
Jones shares Coltrane’s reed choices and his improvisations evince a comparable note pregnant style, phrases spouting from his ceiling-angled saxophone bell in a bobbing phraseology that also recalls Rollins. Byron Wallen’s brass personifies the intimations of the album’s title, particularly when he opts for flugelhorn. His improvisations exude a breezy nonchalance and tone largely devoid of smear or slur that made me mindful of Kenny Wheeler. Lastly, there’s the proactive Crosby who receives the favorable comparison to Wilbur Ware in Steve Beresford’s original liner notes. Wielding a roly-poly articulation and adaptable harmonic acumen, he not only plugs the cracks, but also propels the band right alongside Stevens’ signaling cymbal flares, particularly so on the disc’s centerpiece “You’re Life.”
As mentioned track lengths are uniformly long and the Emanem standard of maxing the capacity of the compact disc medium is maintained. The loose, relaxed mood of a band in their element plying the solace of melodic improv to receptive audience sustains for the duration. Reveling in the music of this disc it’s hard not to miss Stevens’ elder statesman presence on the British scene all the more.
~ Derek Taylor
Posted by derek on November 13, 2005 5:44 PMI just glanced over your review so tell me if this isn't the case but you seem to be not that fond of this, Derek. Pretty much everything else I've read heaps praise on it and it's high on my to-get list (and get it I will), and so I'm wondering why the cool tone?
Posted by: gokhan at November 15, 2005 8:07 AMGokhan, I’m actually very fond of this disc & intend to include it on my year-end list of reissues. So get it you most certainly should & my apologies for the confusion :-) The Manne & “Cool School” comparisons were actually meant as compliments. The communication breakdown is most likely an aftereffect of my purple & clunky prose, but I thought at the very least the review’s last sentence would convey my enthusiasm.
If possible, can other readers please tell me if they gleaned similar lukewarm impressions about the disc from the review?
Posted by: derek at November 15, 2005 11:52 AMDerek, well reading your review more carefully I did notice some (more?) words of praise, and thanks for clarifying your opinion of the disc, but the fact of the matter is, having read and coded thousands of reviews for my dissertation data set (and I will ask some others to code their reviews for me but my star-coding from text reviews aling *very* well with the two reviewers who have so far been kind enough to star-code their own reviews for me), the review resembles many of those reviews which damn by faint praise. I'm probabaly not just to you here but I think you get the types of reviews I have in mind.
Posted by: gokhan at November 15, 2005 1:21 PMHmm. This is good & interesting information. So how many stars would you code to this review? I’m not a fan of the whole star rating scale, mainly because it ultimately strikes me as just as subjective as straight prose (though I can understand how it could be very helpful from a statistical standpoint)- reductive without yielding much more in the way of meaningful opinion about a disc's quality (ie. Scott Yanow gives Duane Tatro's Jazz for Moderns 2 stars. What does this really signify? That Yanow doesn't dig it? That the album is a flop? Some combination of both?) But if polled, I’d be comfortable ascribing 4 out 5 stars to New Cool. I’m also curious what praise in the review you consider “faint” and by association damning?
Please know that none of these questions are meant to be the least bit flippant. I’m genuinely curious since the meaning I intended & the meaning you gleaned were so divergent. My suspicion still stands that it’s my writing that’s the culprit, but I’m so close to it I can’t clearly see the specifics behind its guilt.
Posted by: derek at November 15, 2005 4:28 PMUgh, the star system. The one thing I hate about writing for AMG. But are you asking us to rate the album Derek, or the review? ;-)
Posted by: Dan Warburton at November 15, 2005 10:02 PMIt's grade inflation, Derek. You gotta really kvell these days, or else.
Posted by: walto at November 16, 2005 4:35 AMSolution? The dreaded stars, which, unlike Dan, I very much like. People will say "superb" or "one of my very favorite" in review after review after review, but will feel funny about giving every single review 4 (or 9) stars (which I believe constitutes about half of the resistance to such a system). As I've said before just give me the name of the reviewer, the stars and the players/instruments (or garters)--the rest is entertainment--which I personally prefer to get from listening to music or watching hoops.
Posted by: walto at November 16, 2005 4:39 AM"A commentary on a poem may be useful as material on which to form an estimate of the commentator, but the poem itself is the most important document you can consult, and it is impossible to know it too intimately if you want to form an opinion about it and its author."
Samuel Butler
Posted by: walto at November 16, 2005 6:58 AMWalter: FWIW when Gokhan asked me to participate in his survey he went through a few score reviews & assigned a star rating to them, then (without showing me his ratings) asked me to provide ratings for them myself. Virtually all our ratings were within a half-star of each other. Maybe Gokhan can say whether the same thing occurred with his other coded samples; but anyway that's some concrete information that readers can form a pretty accurate gauge of a reviewer's opinion without an explicit numerical rating.
Posted by: nd at November 16, 2005 11:39 AMDan, the review, or more specifically its ability to convey a positive opinion of the album. But opinions of the album itself would be great too.
And for Walt: Derek Taylor… John Stevens- drums; Byron Wallen- trumpet & flugelhorn; Ed Jones- tenor & soprano saxophones; Gary Crosby- double bass… 4 Stars. BUY IT!
That's about all I need, Derek--so long as I have some idea about the reviewer's likes & dislikes (though I have to admit, I would have missed that John Stevens/Shelly Manne comparison).
Of course, the best thing an online mag could provide would be clips....For me, having an actual taste of the music would make 95% of almost everybody's musical commentary entirely superfluous.
Posted by: walto at November 17, 2005 11:33 AMApologies for not replying earlier, I was away for two days and some browser issues have kept me from being able to post anything on bags since this morning.
Derek - It makes little sense for me say this now but your review I would have coded as either a 3.5 or, more likely, a 4. Still, as I said, on first reading it *resembled* some of those reviews which I *had* to code a 4 but which were not particularly enthusiastic about the album in question. This, too, would most likely have been a 4 (to be honest, it's one of those reviews for which I would have liked to use an even finer-grained rating system, in which case this would have been 3.75) but no way would I have coded it as a 4.5 let alone a 5.
In general, I very much agree with Walto on ratings. Still, you can provide ratings and have the text to elaborate on any point you like or justify your rating (a la BBC Music). Now if for same reason the mag editor or the reviewer does not like ratings, well then I would, as a listener not as a researcher you understand, at least appreciate a sentence somewhere which unambiguously conveys how much he likes the music (which that might be ambiguous, of course) - this, I think, touches on Nate's comment about how readers can come to a reliable assessment of that of the reviewer. And yes, reviews in general are high (I understand part of this is self-selection), just below 4 stars, and thus you really need to almost not hold back to draw attention to an album you're particularly enthusiastic about.
Some numbers:
Both Nate and I star coded 68 of his reviews. 63 of these, 93%, were within half-a-star within each other - which gives a sense of how much we agreed in absolute. The correlation between our ratings was 0.9, which shows that relatively speaking, too, our assessments were very close to each other.
I hope he won't mind my mentioning this, but the other reviewer to help in assessing the reliability of my coding was Walto. Of the 158 reviews we both had coded, 137 were within half-a-star of each other, 88% (which would likely be a little higher but Walter and I used different increments, I used half-a-star, his corresponds to one-star increments and I left both our ratings untouched, did not recode either to match the scale of the other). The correlation between our ratings was 0.93.
(for the uninitiated, these correlation figures are very strong and way above conventional thresholds)
One final thing, for both Walter's and Nate's reviews, I actually assigned higher star ratings for their ratings than they did (I also have an idea why this is, but that's for another post) - this is a slight but consistent difference.
I will also try to enlist the help of two, possibly, other reviewers - J.Biv was willing and so were you, Derek? - and have a non-reviewer code another 100 or so reviews, which is as much as I can do, really.
Posted by: gokhan at November 18, 2005 11:06 AMGokhan, looks like we were on the same basic page after all :) Points taken about grade inflation & the perceived need to sing strong praises to single a disc out. Thanks for posting those particulars on your project. I’d still be happy to help out in any way I can. Just let me know.
Posted by: derek at November 18, 2005 7:08 PMSuch a game!
I like this record, it shows the incredible "elasticity" of the taste and range of Stevens.
Like to give him four stars (on a max of five)to "New Cool".
Stevens has certainly done more important music in his time and life but this one is very enjoyable.
3.99 for your review. Is that okay with you?
I mean "Is that okay with you, DEREK?"
Posted by: LeMo at November 19, 2005 2:08 PMMore than generous, LeMo. Glad to hear you're among those with thumbs hoisted toward this disc.
Posted by: derek at November 19, 2005 2:17 PM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................