Response to Ethan Iverson's response to André 3000
"Just awful" is how Iverson describes André's new piano recordings. I agree, but still felt a rebuttal was in order.
I felt, shall we say… moved to respond, and posted the following comment on his post:
I agree with Ethan as far as this new André 3000 "album" being indulgent and careless. Hitting record while haphazardly mimicking Monk, Brubeck, and Guaraldi is disrespectful to them and to jazz as a whole, not to mention to André's own audience.
I disagree with the offhanded dismissal of André's bass flute album as "appropriate for getting high or doing yoga." It makes me wonder whether Ethan would disparage—or just not be open enough to get—the music of figures like Jon Hassell, Arve Henriksen, Nicolás Jaar, most of the ECM catalog, or any of the wealth of releases that fall under the "spiritual"/ambient-jazz umbrella. (I'd have to look up his old posts to see how much he gives that type of music a fair shake. If he does, I stand corrected.)
Here, Ethan's assessment really underscores his blind spot, which is the focus on the procedural rigor of jazz composition over the emotion people can convey with sound—precisely what made him such a poor fit to be out there trotting out FM radio rock hits with The Bad Plus.
If we were to apply Ethan's harsh critical tone toward The Bad Plus, we could say their appropriation of rock was just as ham-fisted as André's intrusion into piano jazz. Sure, they actually made an effort to learn the songs, re-arrange them, and perform them with care in the studio—unlike André, who basically farted piano notes into his iPhone on a lazy afternoon—but no amount of lipstick can conceal the fact that The Bad Plus squeezed every last drop out of a contrived angle for years on end.
Let's not forget that The Bad Plus were savaged by the jazz media establishment when These Are The Vistas began to generate hype in '03. As I remember it (and correct me if I'm wrong), all that noise and furor spilling over into the mainstream, when it caught the attention of the rock-crit cognoscenti, is what helped fuel the band's rise to fame. If we want to knock André for his attention-seeking Met Gala antics—and we should—then that sword cuts both ways: The Bad Plus benefitted mightily from the very ignorance of jazz that Ethan has spent his career decrying.
I should note that I interviewed Ethan around that time and found him delightful, sharp, and thought-provoking. I also saw The Bad Plus last year and was enthralled by the show—not because Ethan wasn't there, but because they finally dropped the faux "populism" schtick and just played their own music in a format that comes naturally to them. (And, much to my delight, Dave King didn't just bash the shit out of his drums.)
My point is that this criticism from Ethan, though spot-on in so many ways, is a little rich considering that his main claim to fame is that he was able to carpet-bag rock tunes that real fans of rock music were sick of hearing. And that The Bad Plus were just as much of a self-conscious meta-exercise as what André is doing now, even if they, technically speaking, could actually play the music they were attempting. I'm all for challenging our relationships with the so-called attention economy, but a little self-awareness goes a long way.
Elsewhere in this comment thread,
laments the "tragedy" of newspaper journalists being laid off, resulting in a dearth of cultural reporting. The implication, of course, is that society suffers when music critics aren't there to serve as gatekeepers—a galactic-scale delusion if I've ever seen one. I will always marvel at critics' myopic ability to insert themselves in the creative process as somehow being vital to it.There's a world of difference between curation (necessary, beneficial, wonderful) and a self-appointed class of high clerics acting as music-seminar teachers with red pens in their hands (absurdly unnecessary, low-vibrational, parasitic). I say this as someone who's been a music journalist for over 20 years, as someone who's been friends since high school with the late Ira Gitler's son, and as someone who devours old online Siskel and Ebert clips any chance I get.
The post-Lester Bangs boom that provided rich soil for non-creatives to sustain themselves off the fat of creative people's accomplishments is over*. Stop crying, adapt, and find something else to do. (*Well, not exactly: there's plenty of space for you on Substack and YouTube. Knock yourselves out.)
Lastly, the parallels between Trump's celebrity-fueled administration and André dropping a barely half-assed piano recording is completely gratuitous. I hear your bigger point about the state of culture and society that people can simply bluster their way through anything as long as they're getting attention, but it's unfair to point your crosshairs at André on that basis.
Moreover, it lacks context:
If you read André's statement about the 7 Piano Sketches release, it's clear that he's struggling with a kind of debilitating ambivalence towards rapping, which is where his musical gifts are most abundant. For him, the recording is simply a snapshot of a moment where he felt free of the weight of expectations. I would have advised him against releasing the fuckin' thing, and I find the piano-on-my-back posturing rather hollow, but there's more going on here than someone just arrogantly manhandling a musical tradition they don't have the proper respect for.
If André had actually made it a point to do, say, 2-3 days' worth of focused piano improvisations and put care into editing them and adding post-production touches with the aid of a real producer, then released the seven sketches as a kind of after-dinner mint, or a postcard from his personal life to his fans, then we'd see this new release in a whole new light—that is, if we stopped to pay attention, which is what André himself didn't do this time.
If Ethan wants to decry how hype blinds us to gimmicks, that's good and fine but the same metric of hype-to-substance must apply to The Bad Plus too.
(Read André's full statement here.)
FYI, I discussed 7 Piano Sketches at length in my most recent post and YouTube livestream:
Creation as a cross to bear. Does it have to be that way? (Maybe... but maybe that's okay.)
André 3000 has just released a new collection of music titled 7 Piano Sketches. I hesitate to call this release an “album” because, for starters, it’s just too short. It’s also way too underdeveloped (and that’s putting it kindly). Some commentators, like…
Hasn’t jazz always used pop music as its source material? From the Gershwin, Berlin, Porter-composed jazz standards to Sonny Rollins doing “I’m an Old Cowhand” and later Dolly Parton and “Sweet Leilani” to Coltrane doing “My Favorite Things” to the Bad Plus doing “Film.” Iverson may not be Monk, and Richard James may not be Porter,, but what’s the difference?
Also, I think OutKast is great, and I thought both Ethan Iverson and Matthew Shipp were respectful of Andre 3000’s talent and accomplishment if not his years-old and apparently dashed off piano recording.