Happy Birthday Bill Dixon

Mourning is over. Time to put on some big boy trousers and meet the world.

Lights are back on at The Dixon Society. Enjoy.

Since the 16th of June, I haven't been listening to much music. That's not entirely true. I've been listening to a fair bit of Peter Tosh during my commute as that CD is stuck in the player. Aside from that, not much music. Not much of this music, anyway.

While there was a conscious decision to cease and desist with the writing until today, I wasn't motivated to do much writing anyway. Do words mean anything? If blogging isn't the essence of saying things to make yourself feel better (which is a bad idea), then what is it?

Before responding to Dixon's passing, I wanted to wait and see what I missed most about Bill Dixon. Now that I've waited, it is clear that what I miss most about Bill Dixon was his zero tolerance for time wasting morons and the nonsense they generate. Actually, zero tolerance might not be the best descriptor, as in many instances there was an active and hostile aggression towards said time wasting morons and their nonsense. Less than zero tolerance.

There was a bit of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman to Dixon, in as much as he wasn't going to let just any clown denigrate the sanctity of his beloved music. Dixon believed in what he did. It meant something to him. This Music, which he in part created, was his life.

This was a refreshing change from the ultra positivist free to be you and me ethos at Bennington College where in exchange for the highest tuition in the known universe, every turd on the living room carpet, no matter how meagre, was given a "that's great." With Dixon, as with Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, you fucked up, you heard about it. The pay off was that "tonality" and its minions were no longer this big bad thing to which one needed to fear or conform. Jammin on a C7b9 chord at the restaurant? Good on ya. Dixon instilled a confidence and "sound-view" that made insipid melodies, heads, bridges, licks, beats and the rest of the low-hanging musical twaddle that continues to pock this music an option.

I'll also miss Dixon's vast breath of experience with both this music as an aesthetic and the troubled relationship between this music and the mechanisms exploitation as applied to it. Dixon was, of course, "there" decades before there was a this music, and Dixon was (to a greater or lesser extent) involved in the business of music for at least half of his 84 years. No matter how thick the smoke, no matter how many mirrors, Dixon saw through it all.

Let's not forget that Dixon was also black for his entire life--since 1925. This fact is something he kept front and center as long as I knew him. Losing any black person who lived in the United States since 1925, who was of sound mind and eloquent of speech is a huge loss. Dixon was 20 in 1945 and deeply concerned with "Jazz" when "Jazz" was being created as a new and vibrant Art. Perhaps this is why Dixon had such a low opinion of the recreated and lavishly awarded simulacrum of today--he could tell from experience that most of it was, at best, a way to sell the back catalogue of dead people--many of whom Dixon knew personally.

The perspective of those who have seen the con from the beginning--this is the perspective "we" should weigh heavily as "we" prepare to (continue to?) step down from our place of world economic primacy, cultural centrality and social relevancy. Unless, of course "we" are of that caste and class that steps down from nothing. I imagine that those who steer the good ship Culture, those for whom "what ever appears is good, all that is good will appear" will continue to enjoy the view from the captains deck right until the very last moment, long after the crew have drowned and the engines have stopped.

Dixon-as-Punk-Rocker will be missed as well. If "punk ain't no religious cult" and if "punk means thinking for yourself", then Dixon was the Lord God King Punk Rocker of all time. The original, the first, the last. A Punk Rocker who read the New York Review of books for decades. Dixon was Crass before there was a Crass. Witness L'Opera and Odyssey--two D.I.Y. masterpieces. Witness the Jazz Composers Guild, The October Revolution, The Black Music Division...all actions meant to drive a wooden spike in the heart of bland bourgeoise retardica.

While others fought each other for a good place on the exploitation line to insure they'd get first dibs on the yoke du jour, Dixon worked hard to dismantle that paradigm. For this (while he was alive) he was maligned and resented. The parent culture still can't manage to put Dixon on the cover of any magazine.

I miss Dixon's unabashed hate of all things "pop."

I miss Dixon's honesty.

I miss Dixon's sense of humor.

I miss Bill Dixon.


copyright © 2010 Stanley Jason Zappa

Virtual Disaster!

The title of this post does not in fact refer to the current state of my job search, applicable as it may be...

The recent fire at Universal Studios, which apparently started on the New York Street backlot and went on to destroy a video archive and the King Kong ride, brought back memories of my first-ever visit to Los Angeles.

It was 1997 or '98 and I was working for a company in New York that fabricated part of the interior of the Marvel Mania Restaurant at the Universal theme park. Specifically, I worked on shaped-MDF wall panels tricked out to look like a spaceship interior.

The panels were built in New York and trucked to L.A. and a small installation crew was sent out. The installation was plagued with difficulties. Certain anchoring walls hadn't been built, site measurements were significantly off, and whose brilliant idea was it to install the neon before putting it on a truck? The usual stuff.

I was part of the second or third wave of relief installers dispatched.

My first day in Los Angeles went kind of like this:

Find my way into the Universal Theme Park and locate Marvel Mania.

Make my way through the under-lit maze as the laser-light show was being tested and footage from Pink Floyd's "Momentary Lapse of Reason" tour blared out of myriad T.V. monitors.

Find my crew in the midst of a tantrum that involved a detail-sander and a sawhorse going airborn.

At lunchtime, step out of the dark work site (where early-Black Sabbath videos had replaced latter Floyd. "Lookit 'im," the crew chief shouted into my ear, "Ozzy had like no charisma then.") and into the blinding midday sunlight.

Pass a line outside the "Earthquake" ride. Because after all, who would want to visit Los Angeles without experiencing the thrill of being trapped underground in an earthquake?

Pass another line next to the billboard-sized photograph of the Hollywood sign. Because why find the real thing twenty minutes away when you can take your picture in front of its...picture?

Pass a railing looking out over the New York Street backlot, which was blazing on fire.

Watch it burn until the fire trucks show up, then continue to the employee commissary, where a guy dressed as Beetlejuice was breaking up with a plain-faced red-haired girl at the next table. She was bawling into her hamburger and he kept saying, "I'm not saying I don't think you're cool...I'm not saying I don't want to hang out with you..."

Return to the job site passing the New York Street backlot, already under reconstruction.

Now, I don't think I can say anything about Los Angeles simulacra that Nathanael West hasn't said better seventy years ago.

And I don't want to sound like an East Coast snob, certainly not when New York City seems to be slipping ever closer to becoming a municipality in which a theme-park island of affluence is maintained by surrounding tower blocks full of poor people (which worked out great for Paris and London, no?).

And to tell you the truth I'm kind of looking forward to the "Crane Collapse!" ride at Coney Island.


copyright, © 2008 Andy Biscontini