do any of the Charlie Haden/Ornette Coleman albums you guys are talking about have singers?

Offhand I can't think of any Ornette with singers, but he's been recording for fifty years, and started in R&B bands, so I wouldn't be shocked. He doesn't record much as a sideman either, and I can't think of any sessions backing a singer.

Haden, on the other hand, leads a lot of sessions, but like every bass player not named Charles Mingus the lion's share of his discography is as part of the rhythm section for a bandleader. He did a series of albums with Abbey Lincoln in the early nineties. I love them, but Abbey's singing is more than a bit, oh, eccentric. A lot of people find it off-putting. Try the Quartet West disc I referenced above, Haunted Heart. It's central conceit is that it's a soundtrack to a non-existent film. Haden really loves old film and film scores, especially from the noir era. His romantic streak gets a real workout. The other distinctive thing about it is that on about half the tracks he incorporates older recordings by Jo Stafford, Jeri Southern and Billie Holiday. The Quartet West play intros which meld (very successfully in my opinion) into the old records. Holiday's "Deep Song" and Southern's "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" are gorgeous. Some people found it too gimmicky. But they were wrong.

Almost forgot... the band I used to manage did a cover of Zappa's "Cosmik Debris" that was really great. I was thinking they did it as medley with Funkadelic's "Cosmic Slop" (which was also in the repertoire), but now that I think about it I'm conflating it with the dual cover called "Loose Rider," a combo of Funkadelic's "Loose Booty" and the Dead's "I Know You Rider". I'm blanking on what the Zappa was mixed with, one of the band's originals maybe. Anyway, I do like "Cosmik Debris". Of course, Zappa's basically to blame for the Wild Man Fischer covers that the boys liked to do that were guaranteed to clear out any crowd. Miss Jennifer Jones is lying dead... On my porch

find it kind of charming because there always seemed to be a certain bone-dry wit about it, and he never seemed to be a snob about it

Exactomundo.

Offhand I can't think of any Ornette with singers, but he's been recording for fifty years, and started in R&B bands, so I wouldn't be shocked. He doesn't record much as a sideman either, and I can't think of any sessions backing a singer.

There's singers on The Science Fiction Sessions, but the tracks with singers are almost uniformly well nigh unto impossible to listen to, sort of like when Ornette plays violin and puts his 10-yr-old on drums, only more so.

Did I mention that I finally saw Jandek on Corwood? 'Cause that movie goes a long way towards making Jandek sound like someone you could listen to at parties. Admittedly, they would be very depressing parties, and no one who came would ever speak to you again.

Anyway, it ends with parts of a phone interview between Jandek and a guy who wrote for Spin in the mid 80s, and damn if Jandek doesn't sound just like some regular ol' Texas dude. If you heard the interview, you'd never know that guy is responsible for some of the most whacked-out space blues from Hell ever recorded, and I'm using the word "recorded" liberally.

Huh. Jandek on Corwood is on Netflix. It has been queued!

Excellent! FWIW, the makers of that movie agree with me that Blue Corpse is Jandek's bellweather album.

(Or perhaps, I agree with them. They made the movie before I wrote the review, even though I haven't seen it until now.)

I think the first name is "The," and the last name is "Edge."

I dig how in the middle of a concert or an interview, Bono will say something like, "What do you think of that, The Edge?"

I want someone to start calling me The Alicia.

but not confident in himself enough to attempt other types of music

Is this a joke?

Is this a joke?

We know he wrote symphonies and such. It's just that he dabbled in pop music while treating it as contemptible, and didn't simply become the kind of composer (Boulez?) he respected.

FWIW, I think his lyrics are one-dimensional and ill-thought, but his guitar playing was frequently quite beautiful.

We know he wrote symphonies and such. It's just that he dabbled in pop music while treating it as contemptible, and didn't simply become the kind of composer (Boulez?) he respected.

Then it should have been "but not confident in himself enough to devote his entire career to other types of music".

I'd argue the "not confident" as well. Zappa went well past confident, past arrogant and up to being a full-of-himself asshole.

Why didn't he devote himself to atempting to be the next Boulez (or Varese)? He said he went into pop music in order to be able to afford having his serious compositions played by orchestras (See title of 3rd Mothers album). He saw the amount of attention (and money) the public gave to serious 20th century composers, and he had too much of an ego to settle for that.

But I wouldn't characterize his attitude toward pop music are entirely "contempt". It's more complicated than that, more like love/hate. He sincerely loved doo-wop. He understood how a couple of chords and a simple melody could affect people emotionally, even if he considered the words and song structure to be trivial and banal. On the other hand, he had nothing but contempt for punk. Sad.

Beefheart, on the other hand, does everything Zappa was trying to do, but does it right.

Beefheart got what he was doing right for the most part (we'll forgive him '74), but what he was doing and what Frank was doing (or "trying to do") are quite different. They were childhood friends, worked togther occasionally, and were both "freaks", but there's really not much similarity in their respective bodies of work. "...does everything Zappa was trying to do"? Not even close.

I can't really listen to a lot of his work

Hey, me neither! He wrote tons of bad songs with appallingly half-assed and offensive lyrics. On the other hand, his best work thrills me in a way that only a handful of others can. But hey, if you prefer the sharp stick...

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