"He is known for collaborations with artists such as Pat Metheny and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead." That's the BBC website tonight on Ornette Coleman who has collapsed at a music festival at the age of 77. The BBC website really has become the toothless mouthpiece of the conventional wisdom, up to here with words written by people with not the remotest understanding of the subjects they're called upon to update us on, all delivered in a language which is half Daily Mail gossip page and half Wikipedia. I know a little about Ornette Coleman but I was not even aware that he'd played with Jerry Garcia, let alone that he was "known" for it. Presumably had he not played with a few white guys who had at one time or another flitted across the night time sky of the writer's cavernous ignorance and then, when he was no longer any threat to anyone, been given a lifetime's achievement Grammy for outliving his peers, he would have been "unknown". Why can't these clowns speak the truth? We've just read an agency report about some weird old jazz guy who's collapsed in the states. Black, apparently. Never mind. On Radio Two a bunch of hamfisted British bands are remaking Sergeant Pepper.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Nation shall read Wikipedia to nation
"He is known for collaborations with artists such as Pat Metheny and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead." That's the BBC website tonight on Ornette Coleman who has collapsed at a music festival at the age of 77. The BBC website really has become the toothless mouthpiece of the conventional wisdom, up to here with words written by people with not the remotest understanding of the subjects they're called upon to update us on, all delivered in a language which is half Daily Mail gossip page and half Wikipedia. I know a little about Ornette Coleman but I was not even aware that he'd played with Jerry Garcia, let alone that he was "known" for it. Presumably had he not played with a few white guys who had at one time or another flitted across the night time sky of the writer's cavernous ignorance and then, when he was no longer any threat to anyone, been given a lifetime's achievement Grammy for outliving his peers, he would have been "unknown". Why can't these clowns speak the truth? We've just read an agency report about some weird old jazz guy who's collapsed in the states. Black, apparently. Never mind. On Radio Two a bunch of hamfisted British bands are remaking Sergeant Pepper.
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Easy, Feller. Spleen replacements aren't as easy to come by as they once were you know...
ReplyDeleteOooh can we talk about the Sgt Pepper remake thing? I've got my knives all sharpened and lined up in order of pointiness!!
ReplyDeleteI think we're all sitting comfortably.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to work out whether I imagined, or really heard, the following: a trail, possibly disguised as a news item, on Radio 2 Saturday am for the Pepper thing in which the Oasis lads were talking about their choice of track to cover (Within You Without You). Playing in the background was... Tomorrow Never Knows. Had a sleepy researcher confused one lot of sitar music for another? Possibly further confused by the Beatles Love interpretation? Or did I dream it all...
ReplyDeletedidn't he play with John Colrane fella? You know the one from Cracker?
ReplyDelete