| So why get started on this piece at all in the first
place? Why not take Manishevitz's City Life, a bizarre and
wonderful collection of songs that will doubtless make my year's-ten-best
list,
and riff on that? Well, because: I just want to listen to Albert
Ayler. I know what I think about his melodies: that they're "primitive," which
is a word I love in theory but not in practice; and I think I have
some idea of what's going on with these "primitive" melodies
and the readings that Ayler and his quartet give them. Specifically,
I think it has something to do with thinking about childhood from
an adult perspective, which has been a major concern of western art
since William Blake got all excited about it but which jazz has tended
to avoid (and why? probably because jazz, historically, has been
the intellectual domain of Young Men, capital-Y capital-M, and Young
Men don't like to be reminded that they still have children who rock
and rail inside of them). When the short version of "Ghosts" lets
its sing-song melody foam up on the crest of Murray's ride-cymbal
waves, it's instantly hummable; almost ridiculously so. It reminds
me of the little songs one sings to oneself to keep from going insane
when one is, say, five years old and suffering through Easter Sunday
services. It sounds like a first draft. Unlike much "freer"/wilder
jazz, you can pin it down: it's a song! |