Watermelon Man?
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy?
Machine Gun (Brotz)?
Sign of Four?
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy?
Machine Gun (Brotz)?
Sign of Four?
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a ship, a woman and a continent ....
According to the best estimates of astronomers there are at least one hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. -
"Jazz - What made you leave it?"
I can't stand lingering deaths and then morbid wakes with the body in the room... (AW, JUST JOKING!)
1970s fusion wasn't that bad. Then again...
BN.Comment
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I grew up listening to jazz and by the time I was about 14-15 had already branched out to discover other types of jazz that went beyond the records in my father's collection. Exploring new music has always remained much of the appeal for me whether it is something from the past that I have mever heard before or someone new on the scene. By the time I was in my mid-twenties my taste had grown beyond jazz and I started to check out all other sorts of music that might have had but the most tenuous link. During this time I was into Messaien and investigating a lot of classical music but from a jazz point of view, being an avid fan of the ECM label, my interest started to get pulled towards some unusual directions and, for a while, I snapped up loads of these records and completely ignored the more potent jazz of the 1960's. It took a while for me to get into Coltrane as I had effectively by-passed this music. The same would apply to the likes of Herbie Hancock or Wayne Shorter whilst someone like Sonny Rollins seemed old-fashioned to my tastes.
What is odd now is that I much prefer Hancock, Shorter or Rollins to alot of the jazz that I was listening up until the mid-90's, especially the kind of introspective stuff continually pumped out by ECM. Whenever i listen to this label now, it is always the "definite" jazz acts I like whereas you discover that a record like Wayne Shorter;s "Footprints: live" has more real music within it's 50-odd minutes than the total sum of everything Jan Garbarek has put out in the last 25 years. There is very much a case of "style over substance" in a fair proportion of jazz and I definately try to avoid records where I feel this is the case and the artist is not following a "true jazz agenda" no matter how wide the scope is to be this.
Amongst the things about jazz I dislike I would have to say that the following are pretty high on the list and do put me off:-
1. Critics telling you what kind of jazz you should be listening to. I would rather discover the music myself. This would particularly apply to someone like Stuart Nicholson who is writing with such an obvious agenda that much of his output can be discounted in my opinion.
2. Out of tune pianos. Why is this still a problem? I have records made as recently as last year and the pianos sound even worse than mine! The is not acceptable.
3. Any old recording being flogged off as a "masterpiece" by a neglected player or described as "historic." Much of this music is very pedestrian and the sound quality varies from acceptable to wretched. There are notable exceptions such as the Monk / Trane or "One up, one down2 set but do we really need yet another Tubby issue of something recorded in a pub somewhere in London in the 60's?
4. Vocalists on old records. By and large, vocalists other than contemporary ones suck. I love Billie, Walter Brown, Jimmy Rushing, etc, etc but many big bands feature sub-standard singers or the likes of Frank Sinatra (accepted that he was good but I still don't like his music) and Bing Crosby - just about the only thing I ever agreed with Trevor Cooper about! Even Ella's stuff with Chick Webb is cringe-worthy. Novelty vocals are even worse. I usually skip vocal tracks on CD's of old recordings unless they are definately jazz or blues.
5. Records with unimaginative selections of material. (I.e. "Round midnight", "All the things you are," Skylark," etc) There are hundreds of great songs out there , why must jazz musicians continue to issue CD's so all the old chestnuts on.
6. Alternative takes. Disrespectful to the artists and only music students / musicologists really learn anything.
7. The kind of improvised music records that either sound like a room full of people all talking at full volume all at the same time and where no one is listening to anyone other than themself or where there are no resolutions in the harmony so that the music goes on and on and on and on until it resembles the kind of legal documentation you get in insurance or contract law where there is no punctuation whatsoever so that that is gets very wearying reading as there is so much verbage to get through so that by the time you eventually discover a full stop you have forgetten entirely what the sentence was about to begin with if you even cared assuming that you had any interest in the topic to begin with or had not been driven to such distraction that you feel like you want to strangle the horn players so that they will eventually shut up. You know what I mean?
8. Jokey album covers. No so amusing five years afterward. Ditto ultra-hip clothes as worn by the likes of James Carter or Branford Marsalis which no look about as hip as a Haircut 100 album. Bin!!Comment
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The main reason for leaving Jazz in my 20's was social (or anti-social) reasons. Not a lot to do with the music, although I had turned away from free Jazz in the '60s.
Now I guess my problem with Jazz is still social reasons. I'm just too old to sit in a night club until the early hours surrounded by people a fraction of my age. Although old-timers can and do enjoy Jazz, and of course there are many famous Jazz musicians in their 80's, it still seems to me that Jazz is for the younger sets.Comment
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Oddball
I 'm afraid that I disagree with you as I think there are several audiences for jazz - it is just as fractured as pop music. Last night's gig by Ben Allison seemed to appeal to a younger, university based audience (who now just seem very young as opposed to irritating which was how I felt about students 20-years ago!) with a sprinkling of other age groups. There is always a 60-s-80's demographic at jazz gigs as most of the people in this eneration grew up listening to jazz as their pop music. Outside of univserity / college, I feel that there is little enthusaism for jazz amongst the "yoof." Inside university, I think there is a big audience as the music obviously appeals to more intelligent minds in a way that 50 Cent doesn't.
My experience is that the oldest demographic will tend to gravitate towards big bands or the kind of jazz from yesteryear performed by the likes of Alan Barnes. However, I thinkt that jazz fans of this generation are also getting more critical of people playing in older styles and I have friends who are in their 60's and 70's who actively follow more contemporary styles of jazz. I think the venue also has an impact. I can go to the Concorde Club in Eastleigh to listen to some music and be the youngest person in the audience as the venue is not marketed for youngsters or students - assuming they could afford the prices. At the jazz festival in Vienne, they have a "Jazz-mix" event each evening and this tends to attract fans and dancers under the age of 30 and I will then be one of the oldest. (Obviously a huge advanatge being English as the French expect you to be eccentric , so I can get away with slipping in here even if I want them to turn the volume down!!) This does tend to put me off a bit but I learn to get over if, even when a girl who was too worse for wear with drink got a little bit out of control on the dance floor and took the notion of "Dirty Dancing" too seriously !! I was staggered by this as I only thought that you could see this kind of thing in Newcastle but clearly the Viennoise can match their Geordie counterparts! Don't see this kind of stuff at many jazz gigs in the UK!!!!!!!!!
What strikes me is that you will get different audiences for Modern jazz / big bands/ "traditional" jazz. I think there is another "parallel universe" of jazz fans who prefer the smoother kind of jazz like George Benson, Seu Jorge , Bill Withers and a host of other artists that you find played on " Jazz FM." This would also very much embrace bands like "Jamiriquoi" and would have included the likes of "Suede" and perhaps even "Simply Red" in the 1990's. I don't think that you can under-estimate the kind of following this music has. This kind of music has a huge fan base which the more "authentic" jazz fan base takes a sniffy objection too. You also find a huge following for singers like Norah Jones who are very much on the fringes of jazz and this music tends to blur into the kind of musical excrement played in coffee shops by the likes of Duffy, Adele or Katie Melua. Almost as unpalatable as the coffee those places serve! Again, I think that some younger people will consider this to be jazz whereas the genuine jazz audience will throw their hands up in horror. There has been a bit of a debates about the singer Adele in the office this week - there are two fans raving about his latest album whereas the "All about jazz" website deviated from it's usual remit to post a damning review that my mates were highly sceptical of when I showed them the comments.Comment
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[QUOTE=Ian Thumwood;29096]7. The kind of improvised music records that either sound like a room full of people all talking at full volume all at the same time and where no one is listening to anyone other than themself or where there are no resolutions in the harmony so that the music goes on and on and on and on until it resembles the kind of legal documentation you get in insurance or contract law where there is no punctuation whatsoever so that that is gets very wearying reading as there is so much verbage to get through so that by the time you eventually discover a full stop you have forgetten entirely what the sentence was about to begin with if you even cared assuming that you had any interest in the topic to begin with or had not been driven to such distraction that you feel like you want to strangle the horn players so that they will eventually shut up. You know what I mean?
QUOTE]
I take it you don't like circular breathing either, Ian!
(P.S. How on this board can one transfer part of a quote from a previous post without buggering up the boxing arrangement?)Comment
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I very nearly quit jazz in the late 60s. My musical tastes - in the jazz sphere as opposed to the classical, where I was quite happy with serial and post-serial avant-garde music - were very conventional, and I feared that jazz, aas I had known and loved her, was either on the point of dissolving into rock music on the one hand, or into the classical avant-garde/experimental fields on the other.
I subsequently got heavily involved in left-wing political activism for a decade, allowing me little time for anything else, least of all music, and only returned in the early 1980s to discover to my eternal crying shame what I had been missing out on - a decade of some of the most exciting and vital music on the home scene.
I've well made up for it since!
What Ian says about the jazz demographic is roughtly right: at age 65 it is nice to find myself the oldest punter at the gig - which is most likely these days to happen at the Vortex.
S-AComment
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George Benson and Bill Withers made Jazz FM listenable at times, it's "jazzy" soul really, as someone joked "I can stand Jazz FM except when they are playing what they call "Jazz". Dislikes - the postrock postjazz thing like Polar Bear and Acoustic ladyland have tended towards lately. Acoustic Ladyland were ok at first in a jazz festival opener kind of way. Post rock doesn't rock and post jazz doesn't swing (or anything else much).Comment
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