Part Eight of a year-end email conversation with David Adler, Chris Barton, Shaun Brady and Jennifer Odell (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 )
From: David Adler
Dear all,
Glad to get Shaun’s report on happenings South of the Border. Me, I’ve been living under a rock, remember? So, no travel. Not even any Maxwell or Flying Lotus concerts. And for certain sustained periods, no Twitter, no Facebook.
My take on the repeated “friending” question: I held to a policy of not friending musicians for a while, but it crumbled -- for me, maintaining the wall of separation was a pure hassle, an attempt to solve a problem that I concluded didn’t really exist.
That doesn’t mean I discount the idea of an Objectivity Wall, to use Nate’s semi-facetious term. In my view, objectivity means fairness, plain and simple. I was struck by something Jack Shafer said in a recent column on the Olbermann suspension. Citing the 2001 book The Elements of Journalism, Shafer noted: “[T]raditionally, it was the journalistic method that was supposed to be objective, not the journalist.” Works for me.
My view of Twitter is much like my view of Olbermann: I’m glad it’s there but I find it irritating. I know, new media is here to stay and will only grow, and the need to develop multimedia, multiplatform skills (or rather, skillz) is inescapable. But sometimes the hivemind, or “throbbing networked intelligence” as someone recently called it, makes me want to move to Montana and tend cattle. Also, I got into this to be a writer. To paraphrase Robert Plant, does anybody remember writing?
Enough gripes and on to the shameless plugs. One of my projects this year was the launch of JJA News, the new online publication of the Jazz Journalists Association (JJA), devoted to news and ideas relevant to the profession. So let me point everyone to the JJA’s upcoming “New Media for New Jazz” conference, Jan. 7-11 in New York, an effort connected to the annual APAP proceedings. I’ll be speaking on a panel, “Jazz Journalism Now and Future Prospects,” Jan. 8 at 2p.m.
A final trickle of thoughts about 2010:
- two solo bass albums (did I miss others?), by Jason Roebke, pictured at the top of this post (In the Interval) and Boris Kozlov (Double Standard).
- Florian Ross’s gorgeous solo piano disc Mechanism, lost in the shuffle amid entries by Geri Allen, Vijay Iyer and other higher-profile cats.
- Eric Hofbauer’s wild solo guitar disc American Fear! – also lost next to Marc Ribot’s far more talked-about Silent Movies. Hofbauer covers “Hot for Teacher” in a way that, to me, serves as the ultimate rebuke to ELEW.
- I agree with Nate about Herbie’s uninspired Imagine Project, but on a brighter note, anyone catch how many people are covering “I Have a Dream”? Check the track lists on David Weiss’s Snuck In, Wallace Roney’s If Only for One Night, Pablo Held’s Music and Dana Hall’s Into the Light.
I could go on, but time to stop. Thanks again everyone, and thanks to Nate for throwing open the doors and organizing this forum. Onward to 2011!
Joe Morris put out a solo bass album in 2010, too, and it was an ALBUM - vinyl-only.
Posted by: pdfreeman | 12/17/2010 at 02:13 PM