Re: Hollywood Records Press Release

Matthew Robert Chicoine (scooby@umich.edu)
Mon, 18 Sep 1995 18:54:30 -0400 (EDT)


Yeah, I'm with Michael. These clowns look like their out to blow up
something that they only have a very skewed perspective of. "Hmmm, acid
jazz? What better than the Acid Jazz label!" . . .right. I don't really
want to be too harsh on the "namesake" label, but besides Emperer's New
Clothes, and maybe Humble Souls, there material has gotten pretty tired,
seriously stuck in the old. In the day, they put out some decent stuff,
but at the time all that was really going on was "retro" sounding acts.
It's pretty depressing that the original cats who reinvigorated a lot of
interest in the lost arts of 60s-70s jazz/funk/soul have not been able to
see beyond the retro-trendiness of these sounds.
To whoever takes offense, apologies,
I still love the jazz-funk, but I personally think its pitiful that the
label that boasts the name "acid jazz" has done little in recent years to
represent the spectrum of sounds that the original resurgence has produced.
I saw Eddie Pillar himself spin 2 summers ago in London, after a Roy
Ayers show, and I was definitely not impressed. He seemed to revel in
playing the most obscure, rarest, and bizarrest tracks he could dig up,
with little regard to how they sounded or fit together. And
beat-matching, nuh-uh, not once. In fact, after about a half an hour the
people had split up and booked because he was so bad. It seems Eddie has
carried this quirky, kitsch mentality onto his label as well. If I've
pissed anybody off with dogging this label (I'm sure I have), no
disrespect, just respond. Peace out to the global jazz futurists.
Bubblicious