I Want To Talk About You

I posted the link somewhere on this page on Facebook to a version of Coltrane playing "I Want To Talk About You". (I have had trouble posting this link so I am just printing it directly.) https://youtu.be/ADPm-3JMbwo I guess I will have to find it again to illustrate my catalyst of this idea I am writing which came from looking at that video . It was taken in Stockholm in 1962 . I don't remember if I saw it before or not . I did get a Cd from my public library recently that featured two separate performances by Trane and it well might have been one of them . The link I posted from Youtube had recording marks on it and gave it the illusion that it was filmed at the original site and concert . I don't really know right now about the history of the video but after watching the entire cut , I did have this question spinning around my head of "What happened to America , to music , and to us to send us to the current point we are in history ." Coltrane played that night so relaxed and not like he would play the same song several years later after he was affected by Albert Ayler , his own continued experiments , and the way the music world was turning till he passed . He played the melody with small embellishments and then showed his variations on the theme . His variations could have been played yesterday by one of our friends who had the benefit of hearing and being influenced by Coltrane . His solo was that timeless though the recording was before Kennedy was assassinated . There was another recording a year later that was just days before that terrible event ,one at The Newport Festival and later on Oct. 8th ,1993 live at Birdland .Indeed the tune developed it's own soul and identity over the last years of John's life . The sixty two version with the illusion of a bootleg from Youtube had a relaxed quality about it and I didn't want to hear McCoy play a solo and he didn't , Trane carried the entire vehicle and didn't extend the ending with a cadenza but simply said what he had to say in that simpler time before assignations , betrayals , and the changing of the American identity to a darker character . As I wrote a comment in Facebook , it just slipped off my fingers as I typed but I knew I would have to go back and re-think the enormity of the question ,"What happened to us ?" Jazz had taken a turn with Ornette and classical music began to accept the fringe elements like "Music Concrete" and electronic composers like Stockhausen were opening ears up to other possibilities by 1959 . Trane was finishing up his tour with Miles , sobered from heroin by 1958 and by 1961 or 62' his quartet was taken the form that makes their music together seem timeless . Perhaps the Youtube version I posted was of the young quartet . By the mid-sixties ,Nam was raging , Kennedy was dead , Johnson was losing support , King was achieving recognition , and an entire generation was involved in revolution against the status quo which featured the continued separation of the races and the subjugation of women . When Johnson abdicated his political position and didn't run for office in 1968 , the democrats tried to run the party line down the throats of a nation that wasn't buying it . The separation , the corruption ,and the misuse of power resulted in the breakdown of the democratic Party and a major loss to Nixon in one of the closest elections ever in this country . This split across the country was more than just the anti-war movement because the anti-war movement already had mostly Democrats . Johnson was demoralized , the Democrats were defeated and Nixon claimed the rewards and settled down to running another corrupt Republican administration . By 1972 , McGovern didn't really have a chance but Nixon still employed "Dirty Tricks" to put the icing on the cake which was hidden behind the curtain of "Executive Privilege". In the flurry of those years , Coltrane's death in 1967 became just another name in a long list of tragic endings that went on and on till the Kent State Massacre which proved that the government wasn't afraid to lower it's guns against it's own constituents . Is it any wonder that the seventies brought nothing but coke and disco , money and the lack of aesthetic value . Elvis shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone , just another name in a flow of names like Hendrix and Joplin that had already succumb to self indulgence on the public music trail . The finish of the Teddy Kennedy run for presidency was an ugly murderous deal with undertones of sex and alcohol and the last hope of bringing back that "Camelot" went down the toilet .Perhaps the only great joy of the seventies was "Saturday Night Live" which promised a laugh at the entirety of it though it was a participant in the entirety . If music , art, painting , plays , and even current television shows are a reflection of our times , then perhaps there are no real surprises except we don't really see actual art anymore . Art became what sells instead of art being in demand because it is art .What is art ? Well , art isn't Motown groups being taught to dance like the other groups ;it isn't bands learning cover records or synthetic groups produced by large companies to capitalize on the current moment . It isn't a dance that talks about their music as if they created their music . It isn't the "Standard Contract" or ASCAP or BMI or the loss of the copyright or the publishing on original work to people who are little more than identity thieves. We have elevated the "Crook" and raised our glasses to the connivers , the covetous , the flim flam men who have finally come to live in Washington DC ,growing tired of the naked artist who had such a poor fight , anyway . It is hard to continue to write about the downers of modern history to illustrate a question of "What happened?" Dwelling upon this idea might let my guard down , as if I could do anything about what has happened in the past or what is happening right now . This illusion of democracy should be seen as an illusion . The flag waving should stop for a while so we can find out what is wrong here .In the sixties and seventies there was a bad deal where you gave a guy twenty dollars and he told you to wait in the hallway till he got back with the pot . The would be dealer never comes back and it doesn't take you long to realise that he won't be back but that doesn't change the way you feel or the fact that the money is gone . Last September the Bush administration hurried a deal brought forth by an unelected official, Paulson , which ended up costing 750 billion dollars in the waning moments of that administration . This year the Obama administration brought about and continued the same deal . Same deal , different faces , same hallway , the same foolish feeling , the same irate stupid way you feel when you lose money the same way you lost it once before . The government has lost it's checks and balances . ....But it is hard to continue to focus backward . The Trane piece is still vibrant and valid . It shows a simpler time , a more relaxed time . It is a reflection of our time . What happened to out time ? I can't find it all or I can't focus , or I refuse to dwell upon this negative presentation any longer . The current news on television and in blogs involves the resurgence of the "Taliban" with the same kind of abuses of women in the name of Allah as they brought forth in 1996 before the invasion of Afghanistan . The news will bring forth pictures of protesters , many against the war , some against abortion called "Right to Life" or against the right of a woman to control her own body . These two images are not much different than 1962 except we didn't care about what was happening in Afghanistan in 1962 . The current word "Creationism" is yet another word that brings up the arguments decided in the "Scopes" trial well over a hundred years ago . While we continue to look backward philosophically as human beings , the music has been altered and the mood is changed . It won't come back . The relaxed quality of Trane in 1962 was gone before he died in 1967 . Our music shows us the corruption of the "Sacred Cow" capitalism has affected us all . The sophistication of popular music in it's mixes and the production line of singers coming off the press shows us exactly how much the big wheels that are producing , promoting , and profiting from this vehicle have improved since they were taking the publishing rights as producers in the nineteen fifties . It is amazing that such beautiful , sophisticated women who sing in tune and speak clearly represent what is now called "Country Music" which used to be rock and roll . The twang still exist in the men who wear cowboy hats inside the buildings of the city as if insecure that people won't recognise them without their name tag . The rock and roll groups are head bangers wearing make up , cartoons of characters once in comic books much as the "Rappers" are comic book villains , cursing and sneering ,pretending to be a threat to the society they are exploiting . People who continue to play the music of the soul groups of the sixties can't bring back the mood and can't turn the world around with nostalgia , the world can't go backward . Trane once played and some people knew he was valuable and wanted more but the world changed and so did Trane reflect that change as it changed . Looking at a picture , a video of the illusion , an illusion of a video shot ,catching un-posed reality , a concert from over forty years ago in another country , another world , makes me long for simpler times . The advancements over these forty years are magnificent and those complicated turns in events also can't be put back in the bottle . What happened to us ? Tomorrow came . What else is there but today and tomorrow ? Yesterday can't be changed anymore than the video of Trane .It is a painting of time , a few brush strokes with selected colors ,stuck in itself . Enjoy it like an aged wine . I was happy to find the video of Coltrane and hear his painting , from another genii , another bottle that can't be forgotten or re-stopped , the richness of the computer and the interaction and sharing of the Internet . This link to the video which can't be embedded is from Nov 19, 1962 , he just lays it out here . What happened after then ? Gee, I mean from Kennedy on to the current 750 billion dollar plus - drug deal gone wrong . Maybe Trane saw the bad train coming and got off the boat but was screaming about it before he left . Boy , the hits keep on coming.