The music on Larry's new disc is pretty innovative and introspective, in my opinion. The solo pieces show a totally beautiful gift for a melodic line with legs...something that can be sweet AND have a twist that gives you an 'ahhhhh' moment. It seems like Larry is trying to really work on concise pieces that get to the heart of the story he's trying to tell. I wonder if this is the 'Short' part of "Long Story Short".

It will be interesting to follow Larry's progress with this disc, since he is trying to figure out how to get it out to the rest of us. The lable that has released some of his previous work doesn't really know what to do with it, and that's somewhat understandable since it's a mix of formats and even genres (solo, trio, found sound collages). I guess that really shows the existing labels for what they currently are, marketing and distribution services. Not really artist development services. And Larry's new stuff is definitely a development or evolution from where he's been...but isn't that why we have artists? Not to mass market the same thing over and over, but to explore and express themselves in new ways?

So there is the whole production and distribution thing to deal with. How do you get a CD pressed and in stores and in front of people to buy? I don't know much at all about what it takes to do this, but I would imagine that this part of it isn't that hard...just a financial investment from the artist themselves. Larry's got the CD, it's just getting it out there.

Then there is the whole marketing of the CD. How do people know it's out there and how to they get to sample it? I know that when I go to an artists site and I get 30 second MP3's of songs, for the most part, I don't even bother. Especially with Jazz (and with this kind of material), you need to be able to hear it. While he's trying to get the physical (or digital) distribution of this stuff worked out, I'd recommend he find a way to have the entire album (or at least some representive number of tunes) MP3 streamed from his site. Then folks can really get a taste of the stuff he's working on. I'm working on setting up a streaming server myself for my interviews, especially now that MP3.com is shutting down the first of December (wow...a deadline to get stuff off of there and somewhere else...and I'm not the only one), and I would volunteer to host the stream of it. I'm also thinking that others, like BlogCritics would be interested in streaming this kind of thing...and maybe the writers there could be tasked with writing about the music. It's an idea.

And someone, somehow, needs to find a way to get independent artists into the digital music distribution scene, and I mean into the big systems, like Apple's iTunes. I have no idea where this is in Apple's plans, but this is the direction of the future.

One thing I think Larry might be able to do is to tell the story of this evolution a bit in words. That's what I was trying to do in the interview. Tell folks, in a non-musical way (words), why this direction at this time. Why are the tunes organized the way they are, especially since the different formats are mixed together? Is there a story that can captivate people like the music is captivating. Jazz fans are thinking music lovers and like this kind of stuff. They want to get into the mind of the artist. Maybe the artist doesn't want this, but I'm really just saying what I and, I think, other music lovers like.

Somehow, this music needs to get to the people. We'll do what we can at The New Jazz Thing!
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