A Letter from Bob Moses to the Boston Phoenix (2001)

[ED_W]

About a year or two ago Bob played a concert at New England Conservatory. Respected drum instructor Dick DiCenso was there and could not find the "1" in anything Bob played because it wasn't there. The music was completely free and after the concert Bob told DiCenso that He does not play time anymore. I have to wonder if Drum Wisdom is a reflection of Bob's thinking about playing anymore.

[YamahaPlayer]

Matus I forgot you aren't in America!! Totally agree, very different scenes in other countries. My comments were only pertaining to America. And you are very right, I've seen some HORRIBLE "tribute" acts in places like Japan... just... horrible..

could not find the "1" in anything Bob played because it wasn't there. The music was completely free and after the concert Bob told DiCenso that He does not play time anymore. I have to wonder if Drum Wisdom is a reflection of Bob's thinking about playing anymore.

That's an interesting and I think, impossible, concept. I'd have to email one of my old theory instructors though, an interesting idea.

Time ALWAYS exists, that's why I think that's an impossible to execute concept. What we call 'bars', and hence the '1' or first beat of a given bar- is simply chopping the music up in more easily digestible formats.

While ANYTHING could be written in C and 4/4, it would become insane to read. However TIME does not cease to exist be it you are playing 140/4 or 25/8.

Or in other words there has to be a SOME pulse to the music, the only way to not have any time structure is to not be playing.

I think the guy is just full of shit though. Statements like you don't play time, are impossible statements. Pseudo snob intellectual crap. There has to be SOME rhythmic structure to the music. Even in Africa and India where the rhythmic structures are incredibly complex, they are just that - complex structures.


Note values are derived by divisions of themselves based on the tempo of the music and even randomness has structure to it. You can hear the rhythm in rain fall, which is about as random as rhythm gets.




I suppose maybe he was REALLY drunk and just playing randomness...

[Drumolator]

Some musicians who are very acomplished, fully developed on his or her respective instrument are not gifted composers. Does that mean they should stop playing because it is not their own music?

[DSOP]

Some musicians who are very acomplished, fully developed on his or her respective instrument are not gifted composers. Does that mean they should stop playing because it is not their own music?

I think you may have misunderstood the main thrust of the letter. I think Bob was angry because people were using the names and music of great musicians in order to somehow elevate their own worth or perceived value by the association. He also goes on to berate those who would play the exact solos/licks etc. of famous pioneering musicians such as Jaco Pastorius rather than finding their own voice and "grow, move forward and create anew, not to look back and rehash what's already been."

[DSOP]

From a Pat Metheny interview in 2004:

PM: When I really got interested in the guitar, I had a big, big hero, and that was Wes Montgomery. Wes remains my number one hero, to the point where when I first started playing in the first year or two, I played only with my thumb. I played in octaves every chance I possibly could. Basically, I did everything I could do to emulate and sound like Wes. In fact, part of the reason I started to get gigs at age 13, 14, 15 around Kansas City, was that it was viewed as kind of far out that this little kid could do this Wes Montgomery imitation. It was like, "Wow! He sounds like Wes Montgomery!," according to the average casual Kansas City jazz fan.

JI: With the thumb and all!

PM: It was quite, whatever....that was where I was coming from. Fortunately for me, very shortly after I started playing gigs around Kansas City, a couple of older musicians didn't dig it that I was sounding like Wes Montgomery. They kind of overtly didn't dig it and came up to me and said, "What are you doing that for? Why are you playing all that Wes Montgomery stuff? You ought to try to get your own thing happening." So I thought, "Yeah, you're right!" (laughs) Then I went, and have gone, and still am, to a point where I realized I love Wes Montgomery so much, that the thought of imitating him became incredibly disrespectful when I really thought about it.

Then, it was like, "Well, I'm never going to do that again," and even now, every now and then I'll play a note or two in octaves, and I'm like, "Oh, man." I just can't do that, you know? It's just not right to do that.

It's funny because even now when I hear somebody else playing like Wes Montgomery, I have to leave. I can't even stay in the room, or if I hear it on the radio, it freaks me out! Yet, at the same time, we live in an era in jazz now, where it's perfectly fine now, to sound like anybody.

In the mid to late '70's and early 80's it seems like it stopped being a priority that you had to find your own thing. It used to be that that was the main thing, and something shifted in there, where, "You sound like Wayne Shorter!" "Yeah, I take a little bit of Wayne. I kind of like Joe Henderson too. It's like, I'm a cross between Wayne and Joe Henderson." It's like the whole idea of just eliminating that as a possibility doesn't come up the way it did for me in that moment. I can remember it very well that summer I was 15. I said, "Okay, I love Wes Montgomery so much, that I am never, ever going play anything that sounds like him ever again.

JI: It was fortuitous that those guys told you that so early on. We all are presented with influences that take us in certain directions. Those influences can be overwhelming and can keep us penned in to certain approaches. I guess initially, though, when we're young and someone suggests something, or offer constructive ideas, we might say "Gee, why is this guy criticizing my playing?

PM: Totally. The other was that when I used to do my Wes Montgomery thing, it would get lots of house and you know, I was a little kid with braces on my teeth. Honestly, I have heard many, many people do great Wes Montgomery impressions over the years, dozens of guys, but mine was right up there. I did a really good Wes Montgomery imitation for the time and where I was at, yet at the same time, I knew too; that this isn't the point of this.

JI: You had so much respect for Wes Montgomery, that you didn't want to do exactly what he was doing because it was already said. Many aspiring musicians though embrace the opposite of that perspective. I think in schools, especially, you see Coltrane clones, Charlie Parker clones and so on. I read that back in the 50's if somebody would say to some established or emerging artist, "Hey, you sound like Sonny Rollins, or you sound like Lester Young." The recipient of that "compliment" would do everything they possibly could to change their style. They wanted to avoid doing the kinds of things that elicited the comment about how similar they might have sounded to another stylist.

PM: Absolutely and I would say in many ways, I was always overly sensitive to that. If somebody said, "You sound like so-and-so," I would always go, "Oh, man, I better stop doing whatever that is!" Somewhere around that period, the idea clarified itself in my mind. Sort of like, "What's the point, here?" The point, to me, is to essentially manifest into sound the things that you found to be true in your own life. That's what the point is. I think about the thing that all of my favorite musicians have in common. They all represent a very particular kind of individuality that is unique to who they are. Now we're going to connect this to the question that you initially asked. Once that point became clear to me, I started asking questions of myself and of music, like, "What is it that I really love about all of this?"

When I think about Four and More and when I think about STRAVINSKY, and I think about the Beatles, and I think about Sonny Rollins and Dolly Parton and all the stuff that I love. There's something that connects all that stuff. What is that? What's the glue between all these things? And now, you're waiting for the answer! The answer is one that to me, only exists in the syntax of sound. That sound is what I've been in serious pursuit of from that time until now. Within the world of jazz, there's an enormous political component which has only increased in the last 15-20 years. That political component has never been nearly as interesting to me as the sound. I would say that there's a lot of jazz where "jazz" is the destination. Then there's a lot of jazz where music is the destination and jazz is the vehicle that takes you to that. That is the music that I've always been attracted to, but not much of that has come from the guitar. Most of it has come from saxophone players, piano players, etc. Some of it has come from the guitar, but one thing that I've been really excited about is that I feel like, in the last 27 years, I've been a component in a group of guys who are often grouped together-John Scofield, Bill Frisell-where we've all worked really hard to bring our instrument into that zone of offering to our fellow musicians a sound that really hadn't been explored much in this sound world, prior to the 70's or so. It has become a viable force the development of modern music. I think in my case and in terms of my interests, and when I think about John and Bill I know it's the same, it's that thing of really trying to develop an individual voice on the instrument that transcends the instrument. When I think about Wes Montgomery, who was my original model for that, he certainly did it too. I would add to that, Jim Hall, who found a way for his instrument to co-exist with Sonny Rollins and that kind of virtuosic and completely exploratory linear blend. I would also add to that, Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian, who I think transcended the instrument in very, very essential and important ways, the same way that we find with the best of the horn players.

[YamahaPlayer]

"and even now, every now and then I'll play a note or two in octaves and I'm like, "Oh, man." I just can't do that, you know? It's just not right to do that. "

Like Wes invented playing octave interval runs.... *shakes head*


While I don't think one should overtly and intentionally copy other peoples material and pass it off as original - if in the course of your playing, you happen to play the same lick inadvertently, so be it.
Whatever happen to great minds think alike? and all that?

So I can never play a swiss triplet with the middle note diddled is effectively what he's saying - "It's not right."

Or you can't play any pentatonic licks because your ripping off Jimi Hendrix...

You start to extrapolate this line of reasoning and it gets really absurd, REALLY fast.

[Yussuf]

"and even now, every now and then I'll play a note or two in octaves and I'm like, "Oh, man." I just can't do that, you know? It's just not right to do that. "

Like Wes invented playing octave interval runs.... *shakes head*


While I don't think one should overtly and intentionally copy other peoples material and pass it off as original - if in the course of your playing, you happen to play the same lick inadvertently, so be it.
Whatever happen to great minds think alike? and all that?

So I can never play a swiss triplet with the middle note diddled is effectively what he's saying - "It's not right."

Or you can't play any pentatonic licks because your ripping off Jimi Hendrix...

You start to extrapolate this line of reasoning and it gets really absurd, REALLY fast.

There's so much more to Jimi Hendrix's sound than playing pentatonic licks.

However, that octave style playing was a big part of Wes Montgomerys sound, evident on many recordings. I'm quite sure Wes didn't invent octave style playing, but he made that stuff his OWN. A personal statement. Today hearing a guitar player in a hardbop setting playing that stuff(with clean tone and all) would quite possibly have the reaction like, "he's playing that Wes Montgomery stuff". Original? No. Does it matter in the end? Depends how a person thinks about music and life in general.
Metheny decided to abandon that kind of playing out of respect and love of Wes's music. Pretty respectable decision in my opinion.

Now if someone just played those guitar octaves in a death metal setting, THAT would be interesting..

[YamahaPlayer]

For sure, I was just making an example of basically - where do you draw the line?

Now here's a thing to twist your noodle. If someone never heard Wes's playing and someone who was listening never heard Wes's playing, and the player from his own mind played a "Wes" lick... where does that scenario land?

[DSOP]

If someone never heard Wes's playing and someone who was listening never heard Wes's playing, and the player from his own mind played a "Wes" lick... where does that scenario land?

Hahahahahaha!

[Drumolator]

Some musicians who are very acomplished, fully developed on his or her respective instrument are not gifted composers. Does that mean they should stop playing because it is not their own music?

I think you may have misunderstood the main thrust of the letter. I think Bob was angry because people were using the names and music of great musicians in order to somehow elevate their own worth or perceived value by the association. He also goes on to berate those who would play the exact solos/licks etc. of famous pioneering musicians such as Jaco Pastorius rather than finding their own voice and "grow, move forward and create anew, not to look back and rehash what's already been."

Oh I understand. I cannot agree with most of what he said. He has the right to say what he wants. But every musician has the right to play whatever he/she wants to play. I saw Kenny G back in 2008. Pat Metheny, one of my favorite artists, is wrong about that. At the concert the tribute to Sachmo was quite sincere, and I dare say a bit moving. Some people are wound up too tight. Some people think I am.

So, should I throw away my CD from Ellis Marsalis An Open Letter to Thelonious? Or his he deemed worthy to create such a CD?

Keep drumming everyone.