From: gwl@world.std.com (Glenn W Lea)
Subject: Weird Nightmare -- Gary Giddins review **LONG**
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 03:32:17 GMT

BLACK SAINT AND DOWNTOWN SINNERS
Gary Giddins, Village Voice, 10/27/92,
reprinted with no permission.

The more tiresome stretches in "Hal Willner Presents Weird Nightmare:
Meditations on Mingus" (Columbia) remind me of the scene in "Roman
Scandals" when Eddie Cantor, trying to frighten himself out of the
hiccups, waves his fingers in front of his narrowed eyes and blurts,
"Boogie! Boogie! Boogie!"  As the album title suggests, Willner
accentuates not the ebullient Mingus or the Jazz Workshop Mingus, not
even the romantic or angry Mingus, but instead a presumptuous pomo Mingus
of neurotic melancholy, midnight poetry, and spooky effects.  In one of
five often defensive liner essays, Frannie Thumm, who introduced
percussion instruments built by Harry Partch into the project, defined
it against objections from the "fanatical followings" of Partch and
Mingus by quoting Stravinsky: "You 'respect', but I love."  Yes it is
precisely respect bordering on fake reverence that makes this album so
stupefying.  I should think that loving Mingus means embracing his
vitlity.  It might even mean honoring the context in which his music
was produced. 

The pitfall in divorcing notes fron context and intent can be, as it is
in this instance, an oddly stilted homage.  Many of the
musicians assembled here could not have passed muster in the Jazz
Workshop; they bring the music down to a level that makes themselves
feel comfortable.  Even when the composer's distinctive lyricism pokes
through the alien bric-a-brac, arrangements that seem to pale before the
threat of improvisational brio cloud it in smoke and mirrors -- the
smoke of Partch's glass instruments, the mirror of an overstressed
admiration for Mingus the poet.  It's true that Mingus used words with
great effect -- his famous titles, his recitations, his memoir, even his
interviews.  But he cautiously sprinkled them.  On Weird Nightmare,
nearly half the selections are high-tech poetry and jazz, enforcing the
suspicion that Willner's reverence is less musical then metaphorical: He
likes the _idea_ of Mingus. 

The title selection was, in its copmoser's debut, oneof the less
prepossessing pieces on the often brilliant 1960 album, Pre-Bird Mingus,
which included the youthfully ardent "Half-Mast Inhibition", itself a
through-composed and genuinely compelling musical dreamscape.  Yet if
Willner -- not a musician or arranger, but a conceptualizer and
collector of talented people (much like Kip Hanrahan) -- has largely
abandoned the racy, exuberant canvas that, as Mingus often insisted,
followed directly from his meditations on Ellington, Tatum, and Parker,
he has replaced it with a not entirely disagreeable canvas of his own. 
the shimmery plinking and plonking of the Partch instruments (never
previously used on a commercial recording of music not composed by
Partch) combine fitfully with some of the more conventional voicing,
especially those by Bill Frisell; and the eclectic mix of musicians
produces a few jolts.  A short and evocaive "Self-Portrait in 3 Colors"
is decorously imbued by the unison blend of Frisell and clarinetist Don
Byron; Chuck D's spirited recitation on "Gunslinging Bird" makes for a
dynamic 97 seconds; and guitarist Keith Richards spins a lean blues
solo -- one of the album's strongest -- on a somewhat slobbery "Oh Lord
Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bonb on Me."

Elsewhere a collegiate pall settles over things.  During "Purple Heart",
Henry Rollins reads Mingus's unpublished peroration on the word groovy. 
When Mingus delivered a similar one on a talk show 20 years ago, he
ridiculed the expression as old-time black jive that had become white,
effete, hippie, and meaningless.  More than a touch of grooviness
permeates this recording, despite the fact that the sessions were
integrated, racially and generically.  The feeling persists that a group
of respectful white boys who've had one joint too many while digging
platters back at the dorm came up with several genius ideas they ought
to have been allowed to sleep off -- like a jug-band version of "Open
Letter to Duke", complete with an interlude for spoons and a harmonica
solo that transforms a loving theme into a mournful one (Bobby Previte,
arranger).  Or a heavy metal "Pithecantrhopus Erectus" (arranger
uncredited).  Or a versionof the serene "Reincarnation of a Lovebird"
outfitted with a starchy rhythm that ultimately suggests something
configured for Spike Jones (Frisell arranged).  It ends with a brief
bottleneck guitar solo by Gary Lucas, nicely done but entirely unrelated
to the piece.  Or reading sby Hubert Selby Jr., obscuring a good Frisell
chart on "The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife"; Robbie Robertson, solemnly
intoning "Nice of you to come to my funeral" on "Canon (Part 2)"
(Boogie!); and Dr.  John, proffering his authentic Negro diction on
"Freedom," as he pronounces music as myews or myew.  Groovy. 

The adaptations, edited together into a continuous if hardly seamless
whole, were written by eight arrangers largely associated with the
downtown bounding line where the academy, jazz and pop meet and attempt
to melt.  Much of the playing, on he other hand, is left to studio
musicians who ought to be at least a little chagrined by Mingus's
alternative title to "Gunslinging Bird": "If Charlie Parker Were a
Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats." On the rare
attempt to restore Mingus to the context in which he actually created his
extraordinary body of music, four wind players who call themselves the
Uptown Horns, drummer Charlie Watts, and bassist Greg Cohen perform
"Tonight at Noon".  Cohen begins with a fair replication of a Mingus
vamp, but as the solos kick in, his bass line becomes stiff and
unswinging.  The brief solos take no risks, exert no effort. 
Incredibly, only Watts exudes anything resembling emotioal involvement,
and he, too, is out of his element. 

The general lack of saxophones -- Mingus's music was a territory haunted
by the biggest, brashest saxophonists around: Eric Dolphy, Booker Ervin,
Roland Kirk, Jackie McLean, John Handy, for starters -- is
disconcerting.  Willner was probably quite right to eschew strict
instrumental authenticity, but to extract from the music its very sinew
and bone in favor of fashionable references trivializes Mingus's
achievement.  By choosing musicians or bands that reflect the impact of
Mingus's work as a composer and bandleader (David Murray's octet and
Henry Threadgill's Very Very Circus are obvious examples), he might
have restored some of the bite and extravagance of his sound.  He might
at least have kept this album from becoming the one thing a Mingus
homage has no business being -- dull. 

But something larger is involved here.  To the degree that Mingus is a
serious composer, an argument put forth in four of the five liner
essays, his melodies are one with his voicing and conceptual ideas. 
Isolating them, as Willner has done, and setting them adrift among Harry
Partch's globes and mallets, reduces them to a sequence of heads or
samplings.  Worse, it robs Mingus of the identity he fought so long to
maintain.  A decade of academic experiments divides the early Mingus
(pre- and cum Bird) from the stage when he achieved his maturity as an
artist.  His genius flourished from the mid '50s on, when he renewed
himself as a jazz composer, as a jazz instrumentalist, as leader of the
Jazz Workshop.  It's a weird nightmare indeed that promotes Mingus as
too grand for jazz, not to be limited by jazz's marginal concerns,
rather like arguing Mozart is too grand for 19th centruy musical
practices and attenuating his music to a sampling of favorite melodies. 

Charles Mingus and his music gave the impression of howling assurance
and terrifying emotions.  His bass echoed like thunder, his exhortations
had musicians quaking on the bandstand.  One quality that distingushed
him from the other jazz composers of his generation was a willingness to
confront his own fears and to force his musicians to confront theirs.  He
was authoritative and demagogic, irreverent and funny, tender and zealous
-- a far cry from the cool and collected brainy music on Weird
Nightmare.  Whatever you think of those meditations, you might crave the
remedy of Mingus at full strength.  Much of his best work is readily
available.  Among more than two dozen exceptional works, here are a few
benchmarks that seem especially relevant with respect to Weird
Nightmare: Tijuana Moods (1957, Bluebird), Charles Mingus Presents
Charles Mingus (1960, Candid), Mingus at Antibes (1960, Atlantic),
Mingus Revisited (originally Pre-Bird Mingus, 1960, EmArcy), Black Saint
and the Sinner Layd (1963, Impulse!), and Let My Children Hear Music
(1972, Columbia). 









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