Now that the Jazz Biz elements are in remission and bloat stuff crashes and burns all around, it is time to address the disheveled condition of touring in America.
If baby boomers were responsible for destructive aesthetic misconceptions about what would sell, the blame for the grotesque and pathetic lack of a working circuit belongs to a cohort of career ambitious Gen X curators squatting on nearly every significant larger budget non profit venue in the land.
What remains is a cobbled mosaic of resource starved small venues and fading gin mills with few robust points anywhere. Matthew Shipp and Sabir Mateen were just able to go from Lisbon to Novosibirsk on a 20 day run with good compensation and minimal fuss. Here, it is a handful to get him from Boston to Lowell for a few pathetic 200 buck door gigs.
And yet, if he were Yo La Tengo, doors would open wide at Boston's Museum of Fine arts, Mass MOCA and similar places around the US. These people routinely coordinate block bookings while hogging public funding. Since Gen X wormed its way into all this stuff it expresses its particular flavor of narcissism by holding it's various Alternative Rock hero's up for public adulation and aggrandizement writ large.
It generally resembles the preppy circle jerk I observed when I was the hapless invisible booking agent at the Middle East. A surprising number of the 'stars' of that scene were trust fund cases because, by then, no one else could afford to promenade around the country through an array of dogshit gin mills and door gigs to 'build an audience'. They perversely got 'cred' because the hidden parental subsidies were not mentioned, a dirty little secret.
In their minds, the various white-folk 'experimental' scenes were the truely neglected underdogs while the African American core of what is called 'free jazz' got shafted. That much of this experimental stuff might reasonably be seen as dilettante navel gazery was also swept under the rug. While there is no reason to assume this was a racist motivation, more likely an aspect of the clannish narcissism of that curious generation, the outcome has most certainly been racist. Mass MOCA and its ilk are the new Greensboro lunch counter models 50 years after that problem.
The curator conceits tend to be weak at all sorts of diversity and prone to overinflated tokenism. I have a feeling if they get pounded a bit, they'll probably roll over so have at it. And what is strange is how so many actual rank and file members of the Gen X cohort are among the best audiences 'free jazz' has known. There are many notable helpers, mainly among record label owners such as Aum and Eremite. This facet of Gen X just hasn't had much input in the institutional world. Instead, it's the fawking english majors.
Beyond this sort of avarice, the deeper problem of America has been well described in a recent essay by Micheal Tomasky. He sifts through the myths of mid 20th century liberalism from FDR to LBJ and concludes it was anomalous. The Depression forced people to cooperate more and the golden prosperity following World War Two left us in a generous mood. But our default point as a national culture has always been 'rugged individualist' dickheads. Since Carter, we've been reverting to a norm.
Over the next few weeks I'll look into the facets of this all and see what can be found. I have a thoughtful presenter from the tidewater lands who may be coaxed to describe his efforts. Jacob Zimmerman has already done a good job of describing what it's like to attempt roaming around the land hoping to connect with some good natured humans.
Oh and will someone please haul 'This American Life' out back and put it out of its misery. Get some meds for the whiny neurotic woman at “A Blog Supreme" who agonizes over her capacity to care about jazz after she did her doctoral fawking thesis on Peggy fawking Lee. This speaks volumes on what crap academia nuts have become. I call it gaming the system.
I want, no DEMAND, my worthless sheepskin credentials for my take on the cultural significance of Tiny Tim and Topo Gigio..motherfuckers.
