One man bows while another man plucks

I saw Tony Buck with Dave Rempis, Nate McBride and Kent Kessler and it was ... eh. Nothing at all like the Necks, obviously, but then I wasn't expecting that. Primarily, I'm not too enamored of Rempis' improv playing; in the first two improvs they did, he mostly just played rapid-fire, nonstop, and loud, first on alto (incidentally there are probably few sights funnier than a big, tall man playing an alto sax; you'd think you could improve it by having him play, say, a piccolo but that would just be absurd) and then tenor, which just becomes kind of boring and samey after a while—sort of a Standard Fast Free Jazz Improv.  The fact that there was only one really melodic instrument didn't help. In the first one—in which everyone just started playing with a bang right off—Kessler and McBride played pretty frenetically, and weren't that easy to tell apart (or even make out with much distinctness); Buck's drumming, though, was excellent.  I don't really know from jazz/improv drumming but in the first piece they played it was consistently interesting to me.  The second was much more of a mixed bag; it started off great with Kessler bowing and Buck agitating a chain on the floor with his foot before first McBride and then Rempis came in (this was when he switched to tenor), for more quick wankery.  But then it ended very well (Rempis had quieted down), in a way I liked a lot at the time but now can't remember because the third piece they played was so much better than what had come before.

It started off with Buck playing various bells and cymbals so that they rang for a while; he was then joined by McBride playing chords, and then later by Kessler playing more of an ordinary bass line.  Eventually Rempis, who had moved to a baritone sax, started making sort of breathy sounds (I don't know how better to describe this, honest).  Restrained and pretty. A few minutes after I had thought to myself that it would be great if he did so, stopped with the breathy sax noises and started playing, you know, a melody.  How about that.  By this time the rest had started playing louder and looser, then Rempis eased off and stopped playing and Kessler had an honest-to-god (and really good) bass solo.  Rempis picked up the alto again and made some clicky sounds, then launched into another loud'n'fast excursion, except this time it was actually good—for one thing, it sounded appropriate in context, and not simply perfunctory or done in default of anything else; for another, there was more melodic content and it didn't just sound like blurting.  (Though that didn't last.)  Then they brought it down in some manner I can't recall and that was the end of the first set, and I left before the second set began, mostly out of habit.

Comments

[Adam Kotsko]

Remember that part in Anchorman where Will Ferrell turns out to be a genius on jazz flute? That was funny.

[ben wolfson]

I didn't see Anchorman. To my knowledge I have never seen any movie starring Will Ferrell.

I do remember that part, though, since all learning is remembering, nicht wahr?

[tammy]

What, haven't you seen Zoolander? Actually, that's not so surprising.

But the real question is, could you say that you don't remember that part?

[ben wolfson]

I have seen parts of Zoolander, when it was shown on the quads (this is a Summer Breeze thing, yes?) one spring. Part of the end. I am prepared to believe it's a good, even a funny, movie, but—I haven't seen it.

As for whether you can say that you don't remember something you never knew, I'm pretty sure we've "discussed" that before.

[tammy]

Oh, we have. We "have."

[Matt Weiner]

I do remember that part, though, since all learning is remembering, nicht wahr?

What makes this a sequitur?

[ben wolfson]

Since I had never seen the movie, I learned of that scene when I read Adam's comment. I therefore answered the question in the affirmative, and gave a supporting reason.

[Matt Weiner]

BZZZT! "Remembering that part" != "Remembering that that part exists." So even if the inference from "I know that that part exists" to "I remember that that part exists" is valid, the further inference to "I remember that part" is not.

Unfortunately James Higginbotham's excellent paper on such subjects, "Remembering, Imagining and the First Person," is now in print and consequently no longer on line. Some discussion here.

This may be the nadir of my commenting career.

[ben wolfson]

I would think that it's obvious to anyone who has ever remembered that something exists without being able to remember what it was precisely that remembering that something exists and remembering that thing are wholly distinct (I also hope that lots of people have experienced that phenomenon because god knows it happens to me ALL THE FUCKING TIME).

My prodigious powers of bullshitting are such that I feel comfortable asserting that I remember that part even though I actually just learned of its existence.