Blog to Blog

I just saw where Ethan Iverson - without doubt the most respected jazz blogger around (at least as far as writing about the actual music is concerned), mentioned this blog in a round-up in his always fascinating 'Do The Math' blog. Which is nice since it was reading Ethan's blog that originally inspired me to start writing myself. As I mentioned in a post called 'Musicians on Music' I felt that far too much of the jazz writing online was being done by non-musicians - or maybe it would be fairer to say that far too little was being written by the guys in the trenches, and too little of the musicians' own voices was being heard. A combination of this belief and seeing, via in particular a blog by Ethan on Lennie Tristano, (which was on the old DTM site and will be over on the new one soon apparently), how good it could be when musicians write in depth about what they really know, that inspired me to start writing.

Interestingly - to me anyway! - Ethan, in speaking about the blog says the following:

Actually, I’m pretty sure Ronan and I disagree about nearly everything in jazz from A to Z, and look forward to looking him up in Dublin sometime and arguing all night long over some Jameson.

Actually I'm not so sure we would disagree quite as much as Ethan thinks we would - or at least I can say that I rarely read his writing about the music and violently disagree with what he says. For example I really enjoyed his recent post on the 'Great Jazz Trio' recordings with Hank Jones, Ron Carter and Tony Williams, since these are recordings I know really well and bought on LP back in the 80s when they were originally released and have lived with for a long time. He wrote very well about them and what he said pretty much jibed with my own opinion on those recordings.

But obviously, if I agree with much of what he writes, the same can't be said for his view of the opinions I express in my blog! Since he doesn't write comments on other people's blogs (as far as I know, and it's a stance I can completely understand. It's so easy to get sucked into stuff and suddenly, BAM! - the whole night's gone........) I'm not sure which part(s) of my A-Z of jazz he disagrees with, but I look forward to the all-nighter the next time he's in Dublin, (probably minus the Jameson though - for me anyway..........).