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Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation
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Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
No darlings killed
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My view of this book differs from the other reviews. Maybe it's wrong of me towrite a review, because I have finished the book, but not read it all. Still, this proves my point in a way; The book is too long.
The way this book is written, it reminds me of a method I used in school, and had to deliver a paper on a subject. Often, I chose special subjects where references were scarce, so I ended up having very few sources, just a sentence here and a sentence there. But just by writing around it, adding descriptions etc, I could make it look like this was some serious stuff that I had dug up, that I had done a lot of research on the matter, and I could usually present a long (though probably shallow) paper to the teacher.
In a way, this is what Ben Watson has done. He writes in extreme detail about small events. Only the difference is that he doesn't have few sources, like I had in school. He has an extreme amount of information, and nothing is left out. Like other reviews mentions, this includes his own analysis on certain concerts and recordings. This is to me not very interesting, much because Watson tries to write in a very intelligent way, and pushing his own views on the philosophical aspects of free improvisation. This might not be a problem for you. To me, it makes the book way too long.
There are, however, good sides. There are a lot of long excerpts from interviews with Bailey, and these are the most useful and interesting bits, I find. Bailey explains his views much better than Watson can analyze his way to. Unfortunately, there is less and less of this moving towards the end of the book, and more and more descriptions of events (like who played on this and that Company Week, and if Watson thinks it was successfull or not).
I am an improvising musician myself, I love biographies, as well as conceptual thinking about music. This book still was a boring read - way too detailed, unless you're a Bailey-freak. |
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