Re: George Lewis Pdf

["Charlie Milkey" <pilotcp@gmail.com>]

The long passage from Steve Lacie is my 
favorite.  "Jazz got to so that it wasn't improvised anymore. A lot of 
music that was going on was really not improvised. It got so that everybody knew 
what was going to happen and, sure enough, that's what happened. Maybe the order 
of the phrases and tunes would be a little different every night, but for me 
that wasn't enough. It reached a point where I, and many other people, got sick 
and tired of the 'beat' and the '4 bars' - everybody got tired of the systematic 
playing, and we just said 'Fuck it'."...some people are interested in carrying 
on an old tradition and they can find their kicks in shifting round patterns and 
they are not in any rush to find new stuff. They can rummage around the old 
stuff their whole lives. People become obsessed with not just maintaining a 
tradition but with perfecting it...[cut] "And you have to keep it going 
otherwise you lose that freedom. And then the music is finished. It's a matter 
of life and death. The only criterion is - 'Is this stuff alive or 
dead?'". 

I really like that quote--it sounds like a good read!

Charlie