epitaph: killed by sunday
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Track:Freedom-Part One - 3:50
(written 19 hours ago; the title jinxed me, ya think?)it is mid-day where many of you are and midnight for me. i retire to my room pondering Sunday night, the last day of summer break, 12:59 - times having the misfortune of being decided as gloomy for no other reason than what they precede. i turn to iTunes feeling like John Patton or Billie Holiday but instead browse Charles Mingus. more to the point, i play something i would list under "favorite mistakes": The Complete Town Hall Concert, performed in 1962, released in 1994.the previous incarnation that was Town Hall Concert is long plagued with thumbs-down's, declared a misstep and product of ambition. in 1989, a decade after his death, Mingus's widow got Gunther Schuller to conduct the premiere performance of Epitaph in its entirety (it is a two-hour piece, after all), which became a possibility only after its complete parts were unearthed post-humously. and then the world understood what Charlie was up to in '62. when he was 40.
in my mind, that concert preceded what would've been a really good day. present incarnations, Epitaph and The Complete Town Hall Concert, vindicate (sort of) the ill-fated performance. the one horrible reaction of which i keep reading is that it was just badly timed - that Mingus was not done writing when musicians started rehearsing.i am reminded of saying to mogger scotfree some time ago that i am far less interested in results than in searches; i almost know Epitaph had been perfect in Mingus's head from the time he first thought it. i have no doubt some linear notion of time contributed to what i still think, despite the vindications, was a disjointed gig but, for the sake of all brilliance in the world, i prefer to think it fell short of genius because genius is just harder to pull off than greatness.i start playing this record and even for the umpteenth time it gives me the chills to listen to track one alone. it sounds like Charlie flashing a fuck finger to everyone who was about to misjudge, or judge, the result. so on this dreary Sunday night of mine, i have the heads and tails of an oddly regarded record to make me hope for the best.(epilogue: monday sucked ...'though no more than usual.)
in my mind, that concert preceded what would've been a really good day. present incarnations, Epitaph and The Complete Town Hall Concert, vindicate (sort of) the ill-fated performance. the one horrible reaction of which i keep reading is that it was just badly timed - that Mingus was not done writing when musicians started rehearsing.i am reminded of saying to mogger scotfree some time ago that i am far less interested in results than in searches; i almost know Epitaph had been perfect in Mingus's head from the time he first thought it. i have no doubt some linear notion of time contributed to what i still think, despite the vindications, was a disjointed gig but, for the sake of all brilliance in the world, i prefer to think it fell short of genius because genius is just harder to pull off than greatness.i start playing this record and even for the umpteenth time it gives me the chills to listen to track one alone. it sounds like Charlie flashing a fuck finger to everyone who was about to misjudge, or judge, the result. so on this dreary Sunday night of mine, i have the heads and tails of an oddly regarded record to make me hope for the best.(epilogue: monday sucked ...'though no more than usual.)
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