What gives you the most joy about improvised music?
My greatest joy in improvised music and music in general is FREEDOM. When I make music, the freedom is absolute. Like a bird, I am free. Unbound.
I admire the FREEDOM of every musician/human being. To be clear: Only a free person can make free music. It’s that simple. In NYC I have only met a handful of musicians who I would say are free people. Freedom is rare and precious.
I don’t favor the dead. Life and music are for the living. My favorite musicians are those who are alive today. Any living person is superior to any dead person. The worst living musician is superior to the greatest dead musician (because he is DEAD).
Only academics worship the dead.
Jazz musicians have a morbid fascination and habit of digging up corpses and rubbing themselves against them in the hope of gaining some kind of “magic”… as always, a selfish concept.
I don’t belong to them.
If you could resurrect any musician to perform with, who would it be?
Again, I would never want to resurrect anyone. Please let the dead rest.
It is a damning indictment of the jazz establishment/industry/academy (and they are all one and the same now, inseparable. There is no jazz outside the academy) that so much emphasis is placed on the dead. Dead people and dead music. Even their chosen “jazz stars” are expected to bow to the dead. These kids appear on the cover of Downbeat and five minutes later are making “tribute” recordings for dead people. That’s because the industry/academy that made them “stars” actually has no faith in them.
I want to be an example of how a truly free artist/human being can exist in this world. I was raised to be a selfless, generous person (mandatory qualities for freedom).
Unfortunately, I have discovered that within the jazz tradition it is not possible to be a kind, generous, selfless person, let alone a free person. So I stand alone and outside of any tradition (hence “gaucimusic”).
I hope to blaze a trail through the “forest” so that others can have an example of how to exist as a free, creative human being in this world.
I don’t care about pop music at all. If you look at “popular” people in general, they’re mostly frauds. Who was the most popular kid in your high school? Probably an idiot. Donald Trump is INCREDIBLY popular. So is Hitler. I put jazz “stardom” in the same category as “pop” musicians. But they’re even more ridiculous because their inflated “stardom” depends on a small pool of 12-year-old pessimistic readers and attendees of family events in the summer. Who cares. Or as Miles put it, “SO WHAT?”
I still have a hot temper. I could do without that.
I am proud of everything that has been released on gaucimusic recordings (over 60 releases in the last three years). The label is a great statement of artistic freedom. I release the music when and how it demands it. Nobody has the power to stop me. Total freedom. I don’t ask anyone for permission and I don’t need anyone’s permission.
Generally, I never listen to my recordings after they’re released. Recordings are for people who aren’t lucky enough to hear the music live.
I listened to a lot of records as a kid in the suburbs. Now I live in New York, and great musicians are growing up between the cracks in the sidewalk.
Plus, I’m too busy making TODAY’S music to listen to my old stuff.
Hmmm… not entirely sure. But I have listened to A LOT of Coltrane in the past.
I’m really not one of those “my apartment is full of jazz recordings” types…
I am not a “jazz expert” and I don’t want to be one. I would never do a “blind test”. That’s child’s play.
I just create stuff…that’s not really popular in jazz these days. I’m an artist, not a record collector.
I listen to my peers here in NYC! All music is local. It really is…
Van Gogh. Not because of his art (which is of course great, albeit distorted. I mean, does anyone really believe he wanted to print his works on coffee mugs?).
I admire Van Gogh because he exposed the lie at the heart of all artistic traditions.
He was rejected because he was a) very religious, b) very poor and c) very “weird”. NOT because he was “mentally ill”. The art industry pushed him into it. All they wanted back then were curly French moustaches and rich guys who painted water lilies and fucked their 15 year old models. Someone like Van Gogh, a truly free/spiritual person, could never be accepted into the established art scene then or now. He would embarrass all the other artists/middlemen (financiers)…
We all know this is the truth about Van Gogh.
And as a RELIGIBLE (yes, that’s right) musician myself, I understand exactly how lame people can be. If there is anything “weird” about an artist (that can’t be somehow dismissed as “hip” or “eccentric”), then the establishment wants nothing to do with that person. I know first hand the “weird looks” you get. The art scene is only open to THEIR APPROVED eccentricities.
If your “weirdness” doesn’t fall into this category… well, you’re out of luck.
Unless you are Gauci and are responsible for YOUR OWN happiness.
