| The word ‘jazz’ to me only means ‘I dare you.’ |
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| Wayne Shorter in Marciac, France, Aug. 13, 2005. |
| (Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“The word ‘jazz’ to me only means ‘I dare you.’”
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- Wayne Shorter, 1933 – 2023
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| rantnrave:// |
Mysterious Traveller
WAYNE SHORTER, the tenor and soprano sax great who died Thursday in Los Angeles at age 89, was one of the most consequential, influential and fluid (in so many definitions of the word) players and composers in the history of jazz. He was also one of the most quotable.
Two particular quotes that jumped out at me as I pored through a warm pile of old interviews and new appreciations Thursday while listening to his music playing nonstop on WKCR (where it will continue playing nonstop through midnight tonight):
"Jazz is not supposed to be something that's required to *sound like jazz*,” Shorter told an NPR reporter in 2013. “For me, the word 'jazz' means, 'I dare you.'” It meant escaping, not conforming. Exploring, not settling. Waking, not sleeping. During his six earth-shaking years with MILES DAVIS’ Second Great Quintet in the 1960s, Shorter said, the group never talked about music and never, ever rehearsed. “How do you rehearse the unknown?,” he asked.
Around the same time, Shorter talked to the New York Times about the improvisational nature of the quartet that accompanied him for much of the 2000s and 2010s, which was fond of bridging musical eras and styles. That group, too, never, ever rehearsed. He used another variation of the “I dare you” quote in that interview, but added: “I always say don’t discard the past completely because you have to bring with you the most valuable elements of experience, to be sort of like a flashlight. A flashlight into the unknown.”
He was big on the unknown, which he flew into constantly without fear. The flashlight no doubt helped as he moved through an astonishing number of jazz groups and movements: The hard bop of ART BLAKEY’s JAZZ MESSENGERS in the 1950s and early ‘60s. The post bop of the Miles Davis years, which led directly into the electric shock of the two groundbreaking jazz-rock-fusion albums he made with Davis after the Second Great Quintet splintered: IN A SILENT WAY and BITCHES BREW. He and fellow Davis alum JOE ZAWINUL followed that line forward into the ‘70s jazz fusion (and related adventures) of their group WEATHER REPORT, which brought Shorter a measure of commercial pop stardom. A long association with JONI MITCHELL. Albums and cameos with the likes of Brazil’s MILTON NASCIMENTO and America’s STEELY DAN. Like an improviser starting with a melody and seeing where he can take it, but also where it might take him, Shorter’s career was a through line with a map but no agenda, a question but no predetermined answer. His acclaimed 2000s quartet. Another long association with the acclaimed bassist ESPERANZA SPALDING, half a century his junior.
And like any great improviser, he was secretly rehearsing all along, even if his groups didn’t rent rehearsal studios and carefully run through their sets. “Life, itself, is the real rehearsal,” he and another longtime musical partner, HERBIE HANCOCK, wrote a few years ago in “An Open Letter to the Next Generation of Artists.” “Every relationship, obstacle, interaction, etc. is a rehearsal for the next adventure in life. Everything is connected. Everything builds. Nothing is ever wasted.”
For Wayne Shorter, at least, nothing ever was. RIP.
It’s Friday
And that means DE LA SOUL’s Tommy Boy catalog—the hip-hop visionaries’ first six albums, including 3 FEET HIGH AND RISING and DE LA SOUL IS DEAD—has arrived on streaming services for the first time, after years of battling the sampling gods and, more to the point, the rightsholders of the more than 200 samples that appear on those six albums. This is how it was done, finally. Hallelujah, with a heavy side of melancholy. (And note that sample-clearer-to-the-star Deborah Mannis-Gardner didn’t have a 100 percent success rate. Some rerecorded and reimagined bits—“minor replays,” to quote Maseo”—are scattered throughout De La’s streaming catalog as a result).
MORGAN WALLEN, who makes solid, breezy, hook-filled country and terrible life choices, follows up his chart-dominating 2021 double album, “Dangerous,” with a 36-song Nashville brain dump, ONE THING AT A TIME. What happened in between will follow the singer/songwriter for the rest of his life (“Been chasin’ songs and women / Makin’ some bad decisions,” he understates on one of the album’s early singles) but probably won’t slow him down. A certain segment of the country base will never forgive him but the industry, for better or worse, already has. There will be hits, alternately rooted in honky-tonk, soft-rock, country-pop and, ironically, hip-hop... WILLIE NELSON will see those 36 songs and raise them with what, according to Texas Monthly, is his 150th (!!!) album. I DON’T KNOW A THING ABOUT LOVE is his tribute to his late songwriter friend Harlan Howard and is a honky-tonk throwback with “instruments like steel guitar and tic-tac bass... and more Trigger on the record than in most recent efforts,” the magazine reports, referring to Willie’s guitar.
Pitchfork says Colombian soul/R&B explorer KALI UCHIS’ third album, RED MOON IN VENUS, is “a bottomless plunge into the waters of love and loss.” Uchis herself says the album evokes, for her, “laying in the sun listening on my headphones,” and she’s already planning a louder followup that will show off her “bitchier side.”
Also today: New albums from Slowthai (leaning into indie-rock, he says, with help from Fontaines DC and Shygirl), the Weeknd (live album from the same November 2022 show where his HBO concert special "Live at SoFi Stadium" was filmed), Young Nudy, Masego, Adi Oasis (formerly known as Adeline), Macklemore, Kate NV, Optometry (electronic producer John Tejada and singer March Adstrum), Nyokabi Kariūki, Chiiild, Rogê, Gayance, Yazmin Lacey, Deem Spencer, Chunky, Weval, Jawny, Mimi Webb, Kendrick Scott, Thomas Fujiwara’s Triple Double, Alex Ward, William Basinski, Fake Names (members of Minor Threat, Bad Religion, Refused and Fugazi), Zulu, Faim, Truth Cult, Majesties, Enslaved, Full of Hell/Primitive Man, Jen Cloher, Amanda Brown (ex Go-Betweens), Steve Mason (ex-Beta Band), Luke Laird/Lori McKenna/Barry Dean (first of a series of EPs by the country songwriters), Drayton Farley, Slaid Cleaves, Xiu Xiu, Tanukichan, the Veils, Ron Gallo, Hello Mary, Constant Smiles, babybaby_explores, Gee Tee, Nuovo Testamento, Redlight King, Marc Broussard, the Panhandlers, Karen Jonas...
And "Aurora" by Daisy Jones & the Six, the fictional rock band from Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel of the same name and the Amazon Prime series that premieres today. The fictional band’s real album was produced by Blake Mills with songs co-written by artists including Phoebe Bridgers, Madison Cunningham, Marcus Mumford and Jackson Browne.
Dot Dot Dot
UMG adds DEEZER to its list of streaming partners with whom it’s trying to rethink streaming economics (and explains why it’s steering clear of “almost everything” in the catalog rights market, its past spending in that market notwithstanding)... A note about fear, depression, anxiety, songwriting and recording from ED SHEERAN... JONI MITCHELL onstage again.... Surf-rock band KING STINGRAY wins the prestigious AUSTRALIAN MUSIC PRIZE... Controversial Aussie rock band STICKY FINGERS gets bounced from the lineup of the country’s upcoming BLUESFEST, following a litany of complaints from other bands on the bill... BRIAN ENO, JACOB COLLIER, FRASER T. SMITH and ANNA CALVI are among the musicians who’ve pledged to list EARTH, as in the planet, as a co-writer on upcoming songs to raise money for the environment. Earth’s portion of songwriting royalties will go the charity EARTHPERCENT, of which Eno is a co-founder.
Rest in Peace
Longtime Pulp bassist STEVE MACKEY... Legendary San Francisco street drummer LARRY HUNT, aka “Bucket Man,” who played a homemade kit of five-gallon buckets, pots and a cowbell on Market Street for decades. He had a cameo in the 2006 movie “The Pursuit of Happyness.”
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| - Matty Karas, curator |
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Time Magazine |
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| Phoebe Bridgers Is Singing Her Truth |
| By Annabel Gutterman |
| The singer-songwriter has catapulted to indie-rock stardom. Along the way, she's been honest about the things that matter to her. |
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Pitchfork |
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| The Untold Story of Elliott Smith’s Teenage Band |
| By Jayson Greene |
| The singer-songwriter became famous for a style so intimate it resembled confession, but six recently unearthed albums made with his high school friends trace the surprising musical path he took to get there. |
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The Roots |
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| Questlove Supreme Podcast: Wayne Shorter |
| By Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, Suga Steve, Laiya S... |
| Questlove Supreme interviews a true living legend of sound. Wayne Shorter tells Team Supreme about his time with Weather Report, The Jazz Messengers, and Miles Davis. Wayne also speaks about his earliest music memories and his draw to Buddhism. |
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GQ |
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| The Nas Renaissance Has Hit a New Peak |
| By Elliott Wilson |
| Backstage at Madison Square Garden, the rap legend reflects on his early triumphs--and a late-career resurgence unprecedented in hip-hop. |
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The FADER |
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| The Making of Mach-Hommy, Part 3: The Neverending Story |
| By Paul Thompson |
| In the third and final part of his cover story, Mach-Hommy remembers going to Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s house to record a feature for Jay Electronica’s latest album and considers the influence of one of his mentors, Pierre Bernard Francillon, a close friend of the late Jean-Michel Basquiat. |
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Music Ally |
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| Creative AI’s next big discussion: art, plagiarism, and copyright |
| By Stuart Dredge |
| There are understandable reasons for musicians to hold back from using creative AIs themselves until there is more clarity on which services have gone about their businesses in the right or wrong way, and how they are working with the creators in the longer term. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “Nefertiti” |
| Miles Davis |
| Mesmerizing title track from a 1968 album by Miles Davis' Second Great Quintet, featuring Wayne Shorter on tenor sax. Shorter also composed the piece. |
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| Music | Media |
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| “REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” |
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