The old one is about as tired as the power grid that serves the Superdome.

Somewhere in the middle of Sunday night’s 34-minute third quarter power-outage delay, as reporters on the sidelines scrambled to get anything resembling credible information, it occurred to me that this unusual drama was more engaging as “entertainment” than the super-polished, beautifully staged Beyonce performance just concluded. Not that there was anything specifically wrong with the halftime show – this morning’s reviews praise the singer as “electrifying” (haha) and on her “A game” (groan).  In the context of a normal Super Bowl, it was flawlessly rendered, with precise camera angles and lighting cues nailed down to the nanosecond.

But what followed wasn’t normal, and as soon as the TV commentators had to go “off script” and yammer to fill time, there opened up a moment to ponder, in a “is this all there is?” way, the megawatt extravaganza we’d just witnessed. A cast of thousands doing yet another update on the line dancing routines we’ve loved since Michael Jackson and Madonna. A star looking invincible in designer threads and heels while executing proto-robotic choreography. A perfunctory reunion of Destiny’s Child, Beyonce’s old act. Solid, once-engaging hit songs reduced to puree inside a whirlwind medley. Somehow, despite her beauty and starpower and abundant energy, Beyonce seemed trapped inside an utterly canned, inevitably contrived mode of performance. When, in conclusion, she said “Thank you for this moment,” it was less about whatever had just transpired musically – because, let’s be real, the needle on the Excitement Meter barely moved – and more about further validation, a crowning ego moment, another exclusive stamp in the passport of a megastar.

And that’s boring. The images of half a stadium in darkness held more suspense, sparked more curiosity – was it an accident or the work of hackers? A philosopher might argue that Americans, hotwired for movies with lots of explosions and music with blazing nonstop hooks, get the mass spectacles they deserve: This kind of relentless show might actually be the only remaining way to enchant numb, overly entertained audiences. Still, when the power failed you couldn’t help but wonder how far the spontaneity-free empty spectacle thing, with staging considerations clearly outweighing musical ones, can go.

There was no mystery, nothing even particularly human, about the halftime show. And what followed was all too human, riddled with an unsettling sense of “what happens now?” You know things are out of whack when the lights going off in half of a stadium turns out to be more compelling than a gazillion lights blazing to perfection, in dazzling computer-coordinated sequence, exactly the way they did in rehearsal.

Taken together, the works offer a chance to zoom in on the evolution of one of the last remaining jazz mavericks, a masterful composer and improviser whose impact is impossible to precisely gauge. Without Shorter, who turns 80 later this year, the notion of composition in jazz would be very different. As would the notion of the compositional mood dictating what happens when the solos begin. Check out the version of “Footprints” from Live in Europe 1969: It’s got the upheaval we associate with that tumultuous year, it’s got Miles playing with more rat-a-tat fury than he ever did, and still, somehow, the melancholic brood of this durable tune prevails.

Jazz musicians leave status updates every time a performance is documented, of course, but few have done so for so long, and at Shorter’s level of inspiration. From very early solo recordings through his stint with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers through the Davis ‘60s quintet (the one with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams), through such solo landmarks as Juju and Speak No Evil through his work with Weather Report and subsequent solo endeavors, Shorter blazed a trail of profound and often disruptive originality. His discography describes rapid – and, as Without A Net demonstrates, still in progress – evolution.   Each band and each period seems to bring forth something different from Shorter: His solos on tunes from the 1960s are studies in scampering, impulsive-sounding runs (notice the torrents of blurry superfast lines on “Directions” from Live in Europe 1969). His ballads for Weather Report endure as brooding, stately elegies. His new tunes on Without A Net  have an insistent, keenly alert pay-attention quality – their beseeching melodies offer quirky, wonderfully ragged respite from everyday bebop proficiency.

Shorter has always been a meta-musician, his work a constant reminder that in jazz, a singular conceptual vision can be as important as technical acumen. In 1969, responding to the crisply chopped accompaniment from Chick Corea, Shorter plays at lightning speed – but he’s never slinging stuff he worked out practicing. Instead, he’s reacting to and trying to influence the frequently-shifting direction of the music. If you go right from the 1969 live material to the new work, which is also recorded live, the first thing you may notice has to do with energy: These guys in Shorter’s band (pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Pattitucci, drummer Brian Blade) are playing hard and fierce, with a lust for life that has been missing from just about everything sold as “jazz” in recent years. Exhilarating and alive, studded with rhythms that have great swing fluidity as well as the stomp of funk (sometimes all at once!), these performances expose the emotional bankruptcy of jazz as practiced by fussy scholarly preservationist types. Using wild lunges and pinpoint-precise gestures, Shorter’s group shows just how timid even great musicians are when interpreting his complex, endlessly challenging tunes. If it’s been awhile since you’ve been thrilled by improvised music, consider taking this two-part journey: Start with Davis’ little-heard ’69 quintet to hear the group’s high-speed chase scenes, pushed by Shorter to the brink of frenzy. Then flip over to the saxophonist’s new Without a Net to encounter a current group operating on the interactive frequency that was so prevalent in 1969 – except they’re using current vocabulary, and current notions about consonance and dissonance. Though recorded more than 40 years apart, these two ripping good titles somehow land in the same spot: This is music that puts you on the edge of your seat, and keeps you there.

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/30/170662462/a-1969-bootleg-unearths-miles-davis-lost-quintet

I’m beginning to think that the only meaningful way to change the climate surrounding music is to focus, at least a little, on the listener. The arrogant, over-indulged, everything-all-the-time consumer who has learned, over several generations now, that his taste is king, his playlists are all that matter. The listener who dashes off the minute something is too intense, or weepy or in some way challenging to his/her sensibility. It’s a question of receptivity: Talk with enough recording artists, and a frequent lament has to do with how people “don’t give unfamiliar music much of a chance.” Obviously this is a sweeping generalization; plenty of people do it, every day. But there’s a truth in there – about how narrow the window for charming people has become, and how reluctant listeners are to actually immerse themselves in things that don’t enchant them immediately. It’s a game of seconds and nano-seconds now. No matter that lots of music of significance doesn’t thrive in that framework; one’s ears need to “orient” to it, and often the first encounter is a frustrating one. Who has time to go back and revisit anything?

The choices are now all instant. Which means the reactions can be instant; no need to wait for the end of a bothersome song, as in radio days, to be entertained. We are in control now. No waiting for the serendipitous discovery to beam in from a distant tower in the wilderness. We search with the knowledge that bliss is a click away. Bliss our way, unmediated, no filters. Which, hey, that’s all fine. No judging here. At the same time, I can’t help but wonder if part of what we long for when we talk about some sort of “rebound” for music has to do with the music itself – the respect (or indifference) we accord it, the value we assign it, the time and attention we devote to puzzling out its mysteries.

So before we shrug, say “what a shame” and go on with life, I’d like to make a small appeal for the return of the ride cymbal. Frank says he had a bunch of cool equipment, but the only piece of gear that really matters to him is a flat (ie, no bell in the center) ride cymbal – a design made by K. Zildjian for only a few years in the late 1960s.

Those who’ve been lucky enough to play with Frank over the years know that cymbal – it has a crispness and a perfectly balanced ping to it. It’s magical in a swing setting: Somehow, it transports players back to the hard-bop ‘50s, when titans like Philly Joe Jones laid down the law with nothing more than a firm, nuanced pattern on the ride. The cymbal has been part of lots of really special music – Frank used it on countless gigs with Philadelphia jazz musicians including the tenorman Larry McKenna, guitarist Greg Kettinger and the late pianist Sid Simmons. The other day he shared his theory about why so many musicians appreciated it: “It had a presence – and yet any chord voice could be heard through it.”

I’ve heard that cymbal countless times over the years. Still, it startled me when a few years ago I nervously turned up at Milkboy in Ardmore to sit in at the Monday night jam. Frank was the house drummer. I forget the tune – it was something uptempo. When my turn to solo came, I realized that I had no business trying to improvise at such a blazing clip. I was just barely hanging on. That cymbal was the lifeline.

Last night Frank and I played at Milkboy. We had a blast as usual, and afterward we spent a minute mourning the cymbal. It was like missing an old friend. I have no idea who stole the kit, or why. If I ever encountered that person, I’d just say this: When you took what didn’t belong to you, you didn’t just hurt one musician. You swiped a little bit of joy and delight from an entire community of hardworking people. Please give it back.

strange winged light visitor

Please spread the word about this cool outpouring of free love, and please enjoy “Powerful Tonic” from Into the Ojala. Because love, given freely, is the most powerful tonic of all….

The public at large likely never heard of him.

Fischer was another example of a vanishing breed in music – a “significant unknown” whose coloristic brass, flourishes of wild strings and unusual harmonies made countless records better. (For proof, listen to the scenic psychedlia of “I Wonder U” from Prince’s Parade.) Fischer was also a pianist with an original “sound” and approach – his lines were delicate and graceful, his chordal accompaniments richly shaded and delivered in terse bursts. As a pianist, Fischer was another branch on the tree of Bill Evans; the great Herbie Hancock describes Fischer as a “major influence on my harmonic concept.”

Crucially, Fischer was also an omnivore: In the course of his long career, he delved deeply into jazz, Brazilian music, Latin jazz and other styles, while also writing his own classical works and arranging sweeping orchestral accompaniments for countless pop recordings (everyone from Paul McCartney to Celine Dion hired him). He’d studied classical composition and wasn’t afraid to draw on that vocabulary at any time, in any setting. A quote on his website articulates his philosophy: “I relate to everything. I’m not just jazz, Latin, or classical. I really am a fusion of all of those, not today’s fusion, but my fusion.”

That quote got me thinking. In this age of hyper-specialization, when aspiring musicians are trained to gain proficiency at one bankable skillset, who will become the next Clare Fischer? Is it possible to be curious and conversant the way he was? To enter a room and engage with whatever music is happening and lift it up, just on ears and wits and broad experience? Is there even a place for that kind of renaissance man anywhere in current musicmaking?

A Few Highlights from Fischer

Cal Tjader Plays The Contemporary Music Of Mexico and Brazil (1962), piano and arrangements.

Dizzy Gillespie: A Portrait of Duke Ellington (recorded 1960). piano, arrangements.

Joao Gilberto: Joao (1991), arrangements.

Prince: Parade (1986), arrangements.

Clare Fischer: Salsa Picante (1978), piano, arrangements.

On the hunt for a factoid in Ruy Castro’s excellent history Bossa Nova (published 2000) yesterday, I traveled past some beloved titles:

Agee on Film Vol. 1, a collection of the wonderfully rangey criticism of James Agee, first published in 1958.

Signposts in a Strange Land, the essays of novelist Walker Percy, published in 1991.

How to Read a Book, an updated version of the classic guide to intelligent reading by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren, published in 1972.

American Singers, a collection of portraits by New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett, published in 1988.

How Fiction Works, James Woods’ enormously entertaining examination of the elements and strategies used by novelists, published in 2008.

Looking at the covers, I began to wonder: Would this book get signed up right now? Does it have a prayer in the Kindle store? It’s not difficult to imagine the conference room discussions at the top publishing houses were these under consideration today: “Face it, nobody reads essays anymore.” “Brazilian music, that’s something your parents liked.” “The writing’s great, but does anyone really care about those movies today?” “What need does this book answer?” And on and on.

Which is why even a relatively current work – Woods’ 2008 volume – can seem to hail from a whole ‘nuther era, a higher-faluting time when an editor somewhere thought it prudent to share one sharp reader’s observations. Of course there’s a ton of spirited and highly inventive narrative non-fiction on the shelves, but the abovementioned titles are concerned with something other than “story” – they’re essays and meditations and histories that offer a different kind of reading experience. Which means these ambitious and praiseworthy undertakings are bound for the dusty back room at the library. They just don’t sync up with our Snooki moment.

I’m wondering if they’re relics. And if so, is this troubling? Should it be? What implication does this have for writers, creators, thinkers? One disheartening answer can be found in another now-classic on the shelf: Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, published in 1985.