Vinyl Me Please Anthology

pijo said:
Damn, for the price we're paying for a premium all round experience I honestly would expect replacements. I can't help but feel slightly trolled by VMP posting tips on fixing seam splits recently (insta story maybe? I've seen it somewhere in the last day or two). Part of this anthology was we were assured shipping practises would be reviewed/separate from regular vmp shipping practise. I'm sorry you guys have received these, good on you @A Lost Highway for being cool with it. I still haven't received mine, hoping it turns up ok but the familiar vmp delivery anxiety is kicking in!
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To be fair, looking back on the emails, I didn’t make it clear I was talking about Anthology, although I emailed the anthology email and made it clear in the follow up email. I’ll let people know what they say once I’ve sent a photo.

As I’ve said before, I haven’t had as many problems with VMP in the past as others in this forum (although I understand why others are getting fed up with them). Been a member since Webster. Only a couple of warped records and they’ve generally made it right. I’m part of the Weyes Blood issue, so we’ll see. So I’ve perhaps been a lot more forgiving. But I’ve also only ever looked at it as the records as being the reason I’m subscribing and everything else is extra, including the forums. So it’s a different attitude.
 
seeirwin said:
Hi there. I tried to do something akin to what you mentioned, but it got buried pretty fast by other posts. In case you didn't see it, here it is:


How is this bebop?

Like many of you, I held off on listening to any of the albums until I had the Blue Note Anthology records to hear (I wasn't familiar with any of the albums prior to this). Having listening to both The Horace Silver Trio and Dexter Calling, I am struck by what a bold decision it was to put the Horace Silver box in the set! Including it in any Blue Note retrospective would be an interesting decision, but to put it in as the exemplar of the bebop style took real courage!

I've had this album on nonstop for a few days now, and it's a fascinating winner in my book! It did strike me, however, that I was relying on some music theory knowledge in order to feel like this was a great choice to be THE bebop record (and I think it was a fantastic choice!). Without some experience playing and analyzing this music, I would have a hard time getting into the feel of the record, and it would be difficult to really hear how this is related to more typical bebop records (e.g. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, etc.).
I have a few ideas that I hope will help people appreciate this album as much as I do. There are three that jumped out at me that weren't too in-the-weeds of music theory, so here they are. Please enjoy!


How is The Horace Silver Trio bebop?
The song lengths, for starters! The whole conception of this as a series of mostly 3-minute pieces really calls back to the days of issuing music on 78 RPM records and 10" LPs (much of this album was originally issued on 10" 33 RPM LPs, which held about 12 minutes per side). It's no coincidence that the two songs that are most obviously different (Message From Kenya and Nothing But The Soul) are the longest tracks on the record. Records as a medium are inextricably tied to the evolution of jazz

Keeping the songs to around 3 minutes in length is just as much part of the bebop records idiom as chord changes or melodic lines.

There are a few melodic and rhythmic ideas that scream "bebop" on The Horace Silver Trio, but they are tough to explain with words! I threw these videos together (low production value but I'm hoping the educational value is high!) to illustrate some of these.

The lead off track (Safari) is a cool hybrid of Silver's unique style and a melodic bebop mainstay. Here's how I hear it:

https://youtu.be/skO7qZvwI_c
https://youtu.be/SP3Lbe85jSw
The rhythm I mention can be heard in the wild here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8rrsfRC-sk
at 0:53, 0:55, 1:17, 1:21, 1:25, and many other places!
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I’ve always connected the least with bebop As far as the schools of jazz. You video helped me out with understanding part of the reason why. All the incessant 8th notes and adherence to chord structure leave it hard to really sing or develop a personal style for a player. I think hard bop was better for that and maybe that why it’s had more staying power. People can connect with it better.
 
Dtknuckles said:
I’ve always connected the least with bebop As far as the schools of jazz. You video helped me out with understanding part of the reason why. All the incessant 8th notes and adherence to chord structure leave it hard to really sing or develop a personal style for a player. I think hard bop was better for that and maybe that why it’s had more staying power. People can connect with it better.
Click to expand...
I think you're right and that's a great (and succinct) way to explain the problem with bebop from an artist's standpoint. I put a much less succinct piece on the facebook page about the same topic:


The conscious decisions that went into the creation of bebop as a style that was characterized by both high technical and intellectual demands also imposed severe constraints on the style that ultimately proved to be its undoing as the vanguard of contemporary jazz. Rather than a philosophy of songwriting, bebop began as a set of guidelines for improvising solos over pre-existing songs. The bebop guidelines had the [very intentional] effect of increasing the harmonic (i.e. chordal) complexity of songs for the performer, and they served as both fuel for creativity-via-artificial-constraints and a substantial barrier to entry for the uninitiated. One of the new features of bebop, for example, was to systematize the addition of extra chords to familiar songs. While performing, a soloist would either prove to be able to handle the extra detours within the song form or be perceived to be “skating through” the chord changes without asserting a fluency in the language of bebop.

For all of their innovation, however, artists in the bebop idiom (or concert-going and record-buying audiences) proved to be unwilling to abandon many conventional aspects of music (e.g. repetitive structure, 4/4 and 3/4 time signatures, music firmly in major or minor keys, etc.). This, in turn, established an upper limit to how complex bebop music could be made (using added tonal centers via two-five-ones and tritone substitutions), while otherwise sticking to pre-existing rules. Furthermore, since the rules of complexity are straightforward in principle (e.g. adding strings of two-five-ones to create extra movement in the space provided by periods of relative chordal stasis), even the ultimate in bebop complexity is understandable and explainable in a way that, say, a freely-improvised 45-minute solo flute performance might not be. Consequently, and like a chemistry or math problem, bebop proved to be “solvable,” and finite in its possibilities.

Side-stepping the matter of whether or not to call it bebop, it is certainly a fair question as to whether John Coltrane’s Giant Steps represents that maximum of bebop-derived complexity applied to the chords in a song. As mentioned in a previous post, Giant Steps was complex enough that accomplished pianist Tommy Flanagan had trouble improvising a solo that asserted the chord sequences in the song:

And yet the concept underlying everything-but-the-bebop-kitchen-sink song is fully explainable to non-musicians:

The upshot of the comprehensibility of bebop is that, although Charlie Paker, Dizzy Gillespie, and others got off to an early lead in the bebop race, it was possible for newcomers to bebop to “catch up” and attain fluency. Listen to the saxophone solo on this Miles Davis recording of “I’ll Remember April:”

Can you tell whether or not the soloist is Charlie Parker?
If not, you’re in good company. The great jazz bassist Charles Mingus (who played and recorded with Charlie Parker) misidentified the saxophonist Dave Schildkraut as Charlie Parker in a blind test.

Mingus’s mix-up begs two interesting questions:

  1. For the established bebop player (Parker, in this case), how artistically fulfilling (and economically sustainable) can it be to exist alongside indistinguishable imitators?
  2. For the earnest and dedicated up-and-coming artist (e.g.Schildkraut), how fulfilling (and economically sustainable) can it be to master your instrument, master a new style, and put your whole self into your music, only to be dismissed as a Charlie Parker knockoff?
Add in the question of how listenable (and, therefore, economically viable) the record-purchasing public would find end-stage bebop, and it is not difficult to understand why artists might want to find new idioms that would allow greater individuality and freedom of expression than bebop.

As artists felt chafed by different aspects of bebop, correspondingly unique solutions began to take root.

A fair criticism of bebop is that playing that is focused on effectively asserting complex chord progressions that occur in the standard AABA song form means that the soloist merely outlines the same idea three times per chorus (i.e. the “goal” in each of the three A sections is to outline the exact same chords). “Third stream” music evolved as a direct response to this problem of repeated short segments of music, by mixing classical composition (and longer forms) with improvised music to create longer, and more spacious works:

Some artists grew tired of the sonic palette of the standard bebop lineup (typically drums, bass, piano, saxophone, and trumpet), and sought to broaden the instrumentation used in their music. Gil Evans and Miles Davis, for example, began to explore the sounds of using brass instruments to mimic human soprano, alto, tenor, and bass vocal ranges. These experiments resulted in the famous Birth of the Cool recordings with a nonet led by Davis:

Neither Third Stream nor the French-Horn-and-Tuba-based jazz of the Davis-Evans nonet proved to be the next big thing. While interesting and innovative, both failed to generate much of a listening audience. In fact, listenability would be the key innovation of the next big thing: West Coast Jazz.
 
A Lost Highway said:
To be fair, looking back on the emails, I didn’t make it clear I was talking about Anthology, although I emailed the anthology email and made it clear in the follow up email. I’ll let people know what they say once I’ve sent a photo.

As I’ve said before, I haven’t had as many problems with VMP in the past as others in this forum (although I understand why others are getting fed up with them). Been a member since Webster. Only a couple of warped records and they’ve generally made it right. I’m part of the Weyes Blood issue, so we’ll see. So I’ve perhaps been a lot more forgiving. But I’ve also only ever looked at it as the records as being the reason I’m subscribing and everything else is extra, including the forums. So it’s a different attitude.
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It's a good attitude (y)
 
seeirwin said:
I think you're right and that's a great (and succinct) way to explain the problem with bebop from an artist's standpoint. I put a much less succinct piece on the facebook page about the same topic:


The conscious decisions that went into the creation of bebop as a style that was characterized by both high technical and intellectual demands also imposed severe constraints on the style that ultimately proved to be its undoing as the vanguard of contemporary jazz. Rather than a philosophy of songwriting, bebop began as a set of guidelines for improvising solos over pre-existing songs. The bebop guidelines had the [very intentional] effect of increasing the harmonic (i.e. chordal) complexity of songs for the performer, and they served as both fuel for creativity-via-artificial-constraints and a substantial barrier to entry for the uninitiated. One of the new features of bebop, for example, was to systematize the addition of extra chords to familiar songs. While performing, a soloist would either prove to be able to handle the extra detours within the song form or be perceived to be “skating through” the chord changes without asserting a fluency in the language of bebop.

For all of their innovation, however, artists in the bebop idiom (or concert-going and record-buying audiences) proved to be unwilling to abandon many conventional aspects of music (e.g. repetitive structure, 4/4 and 3/4 time signatures, music firmly in major or minor keys, etc.). This, in turn, established an upper limit to how complex bebop music could be made (using added tonal centers via two-five-ones and tritone substitutions), while otherwise sticking to pre-existing rules. Furthermore, since the rules of complexity are straightforward in principle (e.g. adding strings of two-five-ones to create extra movement in the space provided by periods of relative chordal stasis), even the ultimate in bebop complexity is understandable and explainable in a way that, say, a freely-improvised 45-minute solo flute performance might not be. Consequently, and like a chemistry or math problem, bebop proved to be “solvable,” and finite in its possibilities.

Side-stepping the matter of whether or not to call it bebop, it is certainly a fair question as to whether John Coltrane’s Giant Steps represents that maximum of bebop-derived complexity applied to the chords in a song. As mentioned in a previous post, Giant Steps was complex enough that accomplished pianist Tommy Flanagan had trouble improvising a solo that asserted the chord sequences in the song:

And yet the concept underlying everything-but-the-bebop-kitchen-sink song is fully explainable to non-musicians:

The upshot of the comprehensibility of bebop is that, although Charlie Paker, Dizzy Gillespie, and others got off to an early lead in the bebop race, it was possible for newcomers to bebop to “catch up” and attain fluency. Listen to the saxophone solo on this Miles Davis recording of “I’ll Remember April:”

Can you tell whether or not the soloist is Charlie Parker?
If not, you’re in good company. The great jazz bassist Charles Mingus (who played and recorded with Charlie Parker) misidentified the saxophonist Dave Schildkraut as Charlie Parker in a blind test.

Mingus’s mix-up begs two interesting questions:

  1. For the established bebop player (Parker, in this case), how artistically fulfilling (and economically sustainable) can it be to exist alongside indistinguishable imitators?
  2. For the earnest and dedicated up-and-coming artist (e.g.Schildkraut), how fulfilling (and economically sustainable) can it be to master your instrument, master a new style, and put your whole self into your music, only to be dismissed as a Charlie Parker knockoff?
Add in the question of how listenable (and, therefore, economically viable) the record-purchasing public would find end-stage bebop, and it is not difficult to understand why artists might want to find new idioms that would allow greater individuality and freedom of expression than bebop.

As artists felt chafed by different aspects of bebop, correspondingly unique solutions began to take root.

A fair criticism of bebop is that playing that is focused on effectively asserting complex chord progressions that occur in the standard AABA song form means that the soloist merely outlines the same idea three times per chorus (i.e. the “goal” in each of the three A sections is to outline the exact same chords). “Third stream” music evolved as a direct response to this problem of repeated short segments of music, by mixing classical composition (and longer forms) with improvised music to create longer, and more spacious works:

Some artists grew tired of the sonic palette of the standard bebop lineup (typically drums, bass, piano, saxophone, and trumpet), and sought to broaden the instrumentation used in their music. Gil Evans and Miles Davis, for example, began to explore the sounds of using brass instruments to mimic human soprano, alto, tenor, and bass vocal ranges. These experiments resulted in the famous Birth of the Cool recordings with a nonet led by Davis:

Neither Third Stream nor the French-Horn-and-Tuba-based jazz of the Davis-Evans nonet proved to be the next big thing. While interesting and innovative, both failed to generate much of a listening audience. In fact, listenability would be the key innovation of the next big thing: West Coast Jazz.
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56AA87C0-C82B-4477-81E6-5126A1BF7E7B.jpeg
 
Lee Newman said:
It’s not available anymore. It was to retail for $280, it sold out during the presale at $230.
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My perception is that the $280 was put out there to give the perception that early-birds would save $50, but I think they knew it would sell out during the pre-sale based on it being offered to Blue Note's mailing list (IIRC) members too. I assumed it would sell out in an hour - I was confident it wouldn't last past the pre-sale. IMO it was always meant to be $230.

Teeeee said:
War and Peace
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Dang, you've got a killer memory! As for the Ben Webster thing, I believe it was supposed to be a December ROTM (It was supposed to be my firs VMP record) but it was going to be delayed for a month, so they sent another record at no extra charge to arrive during December.
 
seeirwin said:
I think you're right and that's a great (and succinct) way to explain the problem with bebop from an artist's standpoint. I put a much less succinct piece on the facebook page about the same topic:


The conscious decisions that went into the creation of bebop as a style that was characterized by both high technical and intellectual demands also imposed severe constraints on the style that ultimately proved to be its undoing as the vanguard of contemporary jazz. Rather than a philosophy of songwriting, bebop began as a set of guidelines for improvising solos over pre-existing songs. The bebop guidelines had the [very intentional] effect of increasing the harmonic (i.e. chordal) complexity of songs for the performer, and they served as both fuel for creativity-via-artificial-constraints and a substantial barrier to entry for the uninitiated. One of the new features of bebop, for example, was to systematize the addition of extra chords to familiar songs. While performing, a soloist would either prove to be able to handle the extra detours within the song form or be perceived to be “skating through” the chord changes without asserting a fluency in the language of bebop.

For all of their innovation, however, artists in the bebop idiom (or concert-going and record-buying audiences) proved to be unwilling to abandon many conventional aspects of music (e.g. repetitive structure, 4/4 and 3/4 time signatures, music firmly in major or minor keys, etc.). This, in turn, established an upper limit to how complex bebop music could be made (using added tonal centers via two-five-ones and tritone substitutions), while otherwise sticking to pre-existing rules. Furthermore, since the rules of complexity are straightforward in principle (e.g. adding strings of two-five-ones to create extra movement in the space provided by periods of relative chordal stasis), even the ultimate in bebop complexity is understandable and explainable in a way that, say, a freely-improvised 45-minute solo flute performance might not be. Consequently, and like a chemistry or math problem, bebop proved to be “solvable,” and finite in its possibilities.

Side-stepping the matter of whether or not to call it bebop, it is certainly a fair question as to whether John Coltrane’s Giant Steps represents that maximum of bebop-derived complexity applied to the chords in a song. As mentioned in a previous post, Giant Steps was complex enough that accomplished pianist Tommy Flanagan had trouble improvising a solo that asserted the chord sequences in the song:

And yet the concept underlying everything-but-the-bebop-kitchen-sink song is fully explainable to non-musicians:

The upshot of the comprehensibility of bebop is that, although Charlie Paker, Dizzy Gillespie, and others got off to an early lead in the bebop race, it was possible for newcomers to bebop to “catch up” and attain fluency. Listen to the saxophone solo on this Miles Davis recording of “I’ll Remember April:”

Can you tell whether or not the soloist is Charlie Parker?
If not, you’re in good company. The great jazz bassist Charles Mingus (who played and recorded with Charlie Parker) misidentified the saxophonist Dave Schildkraut as Charlie Parker in a blind test.

Mingus’s mix-up begs two interesting questions:

  1. For the established bebop player (Parker, in this case), how artistically fulfilling (and economically sustainable) can it be to exist alongside indistinguishable imitators?
  2. For the earnest and dedicated up-and-coming artist (e.g.Schildkraut), how fulfilling (and economically sustainable) can it be to master your instrument, master a new style, and put your whole self into your music, only to be dismissed as a Charlie Parker knockoff?
Add in the question of how listenable (and, therefore, economically viable) the record-purchasing public would find end-stage bebop, and it is not difficult to understand why artists might want to find new idioms that would allow greater individuality and freedom of expression than bebop.

As artists felt chafed by different aspects of bebop, correspondingly unique solutions began to take root.

A fair criticism of bebop is that playing that is focused on effectively asserting complex chord progressions that occur in the standard AABA song form means that the soloist merely outlines the same idea three times per chorus (i.e. the “goal” in each of the three A sections is to outline the exact same chords). “Third stream” music evolved as a direct response to this problem of repeated short segments of music, by mixing classical composition (and longer forms) with improvised music to create longer, and more spacious works:

Some artists grew tired of the sonic palette of the standard bebop lineup (typically drums, bass, piano, saxophone, and trumpet), and sought to broaden the instrumentation used in their music. Gil Evans and Miles Davis, for example, began to explore the sounds of using brass instruments to mimic human soprano, alto, tenor, and bass vocal ranges. These experiments resulted in the famous Birth of the Cool recordings with a nonet led by Davis:

Neither Third Stream nor the French-Horn-and-Tuba-based jazz of the Davis-Evans nonet proved to be the next big thing. While interesting and innovative, both failed to generate much of a listening audience. In fact, listenability would be the key innovation of the next big thing: West Coast Jazz.
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Wow...This is the most informative thing I've read since joining the Anthology. Thank you for taking the time to do this.
 
seeirwin said:
I think you're right and that's a great (and succinct) way to explain the problem with bebop from an artist's standpoint. I put a much less succinct piece on the facebook page about the same topic:


The conscious decisions that went into the creation of bebop as a style that was characterized by both high technical and intellectual demands also imposed severe constraints on the style that ultimately proved to be its undoing as the vanguard of contemporary jazz. Rather than a philosophy of songwriting, bebop began as a set of guidelines for improvising solos over pre-existing songs. The bebop guidelines had the [very intentional] effect of increasing the harmonic (i.e. chordal) complexity of songs for the performer, and they served as both fuel for creativity-via-artificial-constraints and a substantial barrier to entry for the uninitiated. One of the new features of bebop, for example, was to systematize the addition of extra chords to familiar songs. While performing, a soloist would either prove to be able to handle the extra detours within the song form or be perceived to be “skating through” the chord changes without asserting a fluency in the language of bebop.

For all of their innovation, however, artists in the bebop idiom (or concert-going and record-buying audiences) proved to be unwilling to abandon many conventional aspects of music (e.g. repetitive structure, 4/4 and 3/4 time signatures, music firmly in major or minor keys, etc.). This, in turn, established an upper limit to how complex bebop music could be made (using added tonal centers via two-five-ones and tritone substitutions), while otherwise sticking to pre-existing rules. Furthermore, since the rules of complexity are straightforward in principle (e.g. adding strings of two-five-ones to create extra movement in the space provided by periods of relative chordal stasis), even the ultimate in bebop complexity is understandable and explainable in a way that, say, a freely-improvised 45-minute solo flute performance might not be. Consequently, and like a chemistry or math problem, bebop proved to be “solvable,” and finite in its possibilities.

Side-stepping the matter of whether or not to call it bebop, it is certainly a fair question as to whether John Coltrane’s Giant Steps represents that maximum of bebop-derived complexity applied to the chords in a song. As mentioned in a previous post, Giant Steps was complex enough that accomplished pianist Tommy Flanagan had trouble improvising a solo that asserted the chord sequences in the song:

And yet the concept underlying everything-but-the-bebop-kitchen-sink song is fully explainable to non-musicians:

The upshot of the comprehensibility of bebop is that, although Charlie Paker, Dizzy Gillespie, and others got off to an early lead in the bebop race, it was possible for newcomers to bebop to “catch up” and attain fluency. Listen to the saxophone solo on this Miles Davis recording of “I’ll Remember April:”

Can you tell whether or not the soloist is Charlie Parker?
If not, you’re in good company. The great jazz bassist Charles Mingus (who played and recorded with Charlie Parker) misidentified the saxophonist Dave Schildkraut as Charlie Parker in a blind test.

Mingus’s mix-up begs two interesting questions:

  1. For the established bebop player (Parker, in this case), how artistically fulfilling (and economically sustainable) can it be to exist alongside indistinguishable imitators?
  2. For the earnest and dedicated up-and-coming artist (e.g.Schildkraut), how fulfilling (and economically sustainable) can it be to master your instrument, master a new style, and put your whole self into your music, only to be dismissed as a Charlie Parker knockoff?
Add in the question of how listenable (and, therefore, economically viable) the record-purchasing public would find end-stage bebop, and it is not difficult to understand why artists might want to find new idioms that would allow greater individuality and freedom of expression than bebop.

As artists felt chafed by different aspects of bebop, correspondingly unique solutions began to take root.

A fair criticism of bebop is that playing that is focused on effectively asserting complex chord progressions that occur in the standard AABA song form means that the soloist merely outlines the same idea three times per chorus (i.e. the “goal” in each of the three A sections is to outline the exact same chords). “Third stream” music evolved as a direct response to this problem of repeated short segments of music, by mixing classical composition (and longer forms) with improvised music to create longer, and more spacious works:

Some artists grew tired of the sonic palette of the standard bebop lineup (typically drums, bass, piano, saxophone, and trumpet), and sought to broaden the instrumentation used in their music. Gil Evans and Miles Davis, for example, began to explore the sounds of using brass instruments to mimic human soprano, alto, tenor, and bass vocal ranges. These experiments resulted in the famous Birth of the Cool recordings with a nonet led by Davis:

Neither Third Stream nor the French-Horn-and-Tuba-based jazz of the Davis-Evans nonet proved to be the next big thing. While interesting and innovative, both failed to generate much of a listening audience. In fact, listenability would be the key innovation of the next big thing: West Coast Jazz.
Click to expand...

Let me echo what others here have said: Your content is great. I have some formal musical training, and I think your videos and explanations hit the sweetspot between musical theory and your plainsman's explanation.
I would love it if you could post somethin explaining the difference between Hard Bop and BeBop, because I think the boundaries between both can be pretty blurry. I struggled to hear the difference for a while, until a (pretty theory-oriented) video helped me appreciate the blues, r&b and gospel influences on hard bop.
 
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