Sunday, July 01, 2007

my little downbeat readers poll

Hey kids! It’s that time of year to try and think of obscure stuff to clog up the pipes at DownBeat Central. I list my weirder and more odd-ball [ed. can things be more/less odd-ball?] choices. Now ‘weird’ and ‘odd-ball’ in this situation means that these will never get past the first stage (not that that’s exactly difficult in regards to DownBeat Central).

1. Hall of Fame: Pauline Oliveros
2. Jazz Artist: Mina Agossi
3. Jazz Album: Anthony Braxton & Fred Frith, Duo (Victoriaville) 2005 [pdf] (Victo)

5. Jazz Group: Green Room [pdf]

17. Electric Keyboard/Synthesizer: Bob Ostertag

21. Percussion: Thomas Strønen

23. Miscellaneous Instrument: Laetitia Sonami (everyday and not-so-everyday technologies)

25. Female Vocalist: Petra Haden

I’m sure you kids can do much better that I did, but remember, you have to follow the letter of the law (to hell with the spirit, eh).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm probably being really stupid, but do you have a link to the "proper poll" so that I can see the full category list?

Is it a thing where you propose stuff, or do you get a number of choices?

I'll open the bidding with Puma who are most interesting under "jazz group". I have yet to see them live (hopefully to be rectified as soon as I have some more funding for Edenbrew behaviour), but have the debut CD and have spoken and listened to the drummer at length in his alternate guise of Bushman's Revenge who did a very nice support slot for a recent Humcrush concert. Which brings me onto my other proposal which would be Sidsel Endresen for Jazz vocalist - just done a Humcrush gig with her in Moers (and more gigs to come in December), and 'twas a lot of fun. Sounds processed and chopped up but all vocals were entirely live and natural. Very special concert...

Alex Fiennes

the improvising guitarist said...

Alex, unfortunately I can’t figure out an easy way to link to the poll, but goto DownBeat and look for this image (“72nd Reders Poll Vote!”) on the left hand side.
I’ll check out the list of your list of weirdos and odd-balls when I get a chance. Thanks.

S, tig

Peter Breslin said...

ugh...I looked over a Downbeat magazine for the first time in many years the other day at the radio station...it was horrifying....off place my votes, thanks for the tip.

PB

the improvising guitarist said...

PB, the last issue of DownBeat I read was probably published ’bout five years ago or so…
…and I’d never been tempted to cast a vote for their poll, but due to latter-day technological advances (i.e. ‘effortlessness’ of online voting) I was tempted into voting since the probable lack of success of any of my candidates is offset by lack of effort on my part: democracy in action, jazz style!

S, tig