Where are the titans, the Greek gods of Jazz? Most are are long gone, although their legacy remains eternal.

Of the precious few who remain in our midst, one man stands atop jazzdom's Mount Olympus, an uncompromising creator able to unleash thunderbolts of musical expression with such power and majesty that an evening in the company of his peerless improvisations is an oasis of the spirit.

The man's name is Sonny Rollins and last Saturday, he played an outdoor concert that was unlike any New York performance in memory. For two and a quarter hours, with several astonishing twenty minute solos, Mr. Rollins played the tenor saxophone as if it were his last performance, dipping into his encyclopedic reservoir emerging with chorus after chorus of musical heroism. Although the members of his ensemble took a few solos, it was Sonny's world and we were certainly glad to be a part of it.

But as we left, filled with optimism and reminded just how exciting a jazz performance could be, we couldn't think back to the last time that had happened.

As the 20th century plays out its final 500 days, there is a wealth of good, competent jazz being played, both on recording and in performance. But there is also a sameness, a sense of it's all been done before, that pervades much of the music as well.

What's missing are those rugged individualists, the players whose musical signature is recognizable in a note or two. Today, these sorts of players are as scarce an honest man in the government.

But it's not the record labels or the musicians who are at fault here, it is our culture. Compare the recordings of the 60s with those done in the 90s. How many will survive the millennium cut? Sadly, this flattened, ironed-out, conformist approach to creativity is present in all the arts.

Our planet is fast becoming one giant mall, with the same stores, the same cheesy junk food everywhere. We're all getting connected, but is the price of this heightened technology a loss of individuality? What will happen when everyone is fed the same information, repeatedly? Will life become a recurring episode of "The Twilight Zone?"

Sixty years ago, when a tenor saxophonist played, you could tell if he was from Kansas City, Texas or Philly. Of course that was before mass media and consumerism had totally ran amok. Between the giant corporations that control what we eat, breathe and perceive, and the limbo into which politics and overpopulation are shoving us, we've become nothing more than lonely city dwellers and sanctimonious suburbanites whose human faces are lost in the shuffle of world problems and the barren spirituality of consumerism.

Our modern world is witnessing the decline and death of individuality. Individual man is being made a faceless part of society, be it democracy, socialism, or fascism. (Although at variance in mood and practice, all modern political systems make for the same goal posts--how to run most conveniently for the crowd.)

In this country, Americans frighten themselves into regimentation. We don't have to be clubbed into line like they do in a police state. We submit willingly. We have no policeman telling me or you what to do, but instinctively we do the thing that's least harmful to our cowardice.

One of my heroes was Ben Hecht, a writer who sacrificed his career for the truth. Hecht wrote about the battle going on between society and the individual.

He felt society is going to be successful in its attempt to repress the individual and take away his decency.

Hasn't it already? Ever drive on a freeway in LA or try and make your way as an artist through the jazz business?

Hecht felt that society is going to take away man's ability to speak the truth out of his own feelings and his responses to life. In this fight, Hecht wrote, the victory is going to the wrong side. Society is going to win. The human being will end up without a truth of his own to speak. He'll end up as a mouthpiece for the herd and only say those things he's told to say.

Ultimately, Hecht saw the disappearance of poets, writers, musicians, all people with individualistic expression. They will all disappear and there will be no human being left with the capacity, or the will, to speak the truth.

Once in a while, I think of Ben Hecht and remind myself that I must be awfully careful not to be captured by the herd. Sonny Rollins wasn't. It is possible to be an individual, but it's getting harder and harder. Not everyone wants to pay a lifetime of dues.

Maybe that's why there are so many sheep and so few shepherds.