JSngry

Winnie Mandela Vinnie Testaverde Henny Youngman

Why?

Please allow me to reiterate that this song is messing with my head, still...

Jim A. can disagree, but "say what you mean, mean what you say" should cover it, with this perhaps tricky footnote -- try to bear in mind who one is talking to. That is, the problem on this thread arose IMO because the odd specific circumstance of a newbie getting yelled at, with profanity right off the bat, could well leave the newbie with the impression that that is the tone of this whole place; and that we don't want to do, right? In effect, the first poster forgot that in this circumstance he might be regarded as speaking for all of us. Likewise (or not likewise exactly, but close enough for jazz), one pretty much knows who here can be provoked and in what ways and on what grounds. That doesn't mean don't ever provoke, because sometimes what people say arguably earns/deserves that, but it does mean at the least that disingenuousness about having said something that provokes someone ought to be out. And Lord knows we've seen lots of that, none of it IMO doing anything for anyone but eat up time and space and make it clear that some very smart people can act un-smart. Of course, one can at times provoke someone without intending to do so, but once the horns clash and the saliva starts dribbling, who can then claim not to get what's happened/happening? And why then not back off, unless one feels genuinely that what you said/meant was misunderstood and needs to be clarified? How many arguments that reach the level of butting-heads-in-the-arena ever go anywhere else? Or am I being a pompous twit about all this? Go ahead -- provoke me. Fuck Forget it man, that's too many rules. :g

Wellllll....yeah, but.....not necessarily.... when I was younger and actually felt that jazz was alive, I took that type shit very personally. Now that I feel that about 98% of it is repertoire theater of one kind or another (and that's just me, and that's not to say that repertoire theater is not something I can find very entertaining and positively provoking), I'm less inclined to feel the froth. But I can still remember how it felt to be surrounded by a Big Bad Corporate Music Machine that wanted to take the music I had given my life to, my soul to, my very essence to, and turn it into a preteen whore in smeared clown makeup and Dickensian corduroyed knickers - with conspicuous holes in the knees. It didn't feel particularly good, I tell you.

Especially since this board has a looooooong history of being inundated by Street Team Spam for innumerable such acts.

Now on the serious side, let me say this - I've read the poster's other columns/articles, and find nothing in it for me, musically. Her tastes and mine do not appear to overlap to any significant degree. But hell, i wish her well any way, and stand by the feedback I offered earlier, if for no other reason than as somebody who is not at all moved (at least not positively) by Boney James or Dave Koz, I feel that I am being lumped into a "generic" category for reasons that are wholly inaccurate and every bit as plagued by stereotypes and misconceptions as the fans of their music no doubt feel are foisted upon them/ As music fans, there is neither need nor imperative for either of us to justify our tastes. But as two people who choose to post on a public forum, I see no reason not to step up and offer our own perspectives instead of having them assumed by somebody else. And i do that with no hostility towards anything except mistruth, nor for anybody save those who refuse to hear those who will not listen to a claim of same. So far, I see absolutely no reason to think that thejackchick3 is such a person. So, can we just talk as people instead of as "types". That type of thinking is so 20th Century, for real. No apologies given, but none expected either!

I'm not messing with your posts, I'm asking for directions! And if you had any idea how hard it was for me, a penile-American, to ask for directions, you'd appreciate just how difficult this is for me!

Ignunt Motherfucker Nasty Son of a Bitch The Idiot Bastard Son

Could we have some guidelines for expressing dislike then, please? I'm afraid I tend to go with the old "say what you mean, mean what you say" approach, and I'd hate to hurt anybody's feelings by doing so, especially a woman's.

I gotta say that if a guy's first post was hawking a column praising Dave Koz & Boney James that the reaction would have been equally, uh, "intense". Probably more so.

Yeah, I got a $4.98 debit today....so here comes the Stitt. $4.98 for the quartet session w/Bud (really all I want to have on CD), hey, I'll take it.

Yeah, I haven't read this thread, so I don't know whose quote that is, but it is so terrbily wrong in so many ways that I hope if it's somebody here in this thread that they don't take it personal when I say that infact it's pretty much bullshit. I'll gladly and freindly go into detail later today when I'm not at work, but it's nothing personal to call bullshit where it exists, and that quote right there is bullshit. For one thing, "electronic and commercial sounds such as the electric guitar and the soprano sax" is a big "WTF are you talking about?" point... but htere are others. Not taken personally...just a composite of what a number of people I have been interviewing have said. But, that's why I reached out on the board....to get a broader perspective and not the myopic view...bullshit, perhaps....but that's what the discussion is about. That's really WTF I am trying to open up. Please go into detail later. I would love it! Ok, I'm home, here's the deal, phrase by phrase. Keep in mind that this is just a reaction to those two sentences, not anything else you've written here or there (which I've yet to read). Ok... Many in the jazz community have a visceral dislike for “smooth jazz.” Yeah, pretty much true. Perhaps even understated. They believe that the early 1970’s mixing of the genres of rhythm and blues and jazz with the introduction of electronic and commercial sounds such as the electric guitar and the soprano sax led to the watering down of “real” jazz. Here's where it goes off track. First of all, who are "they" - the jazz community or those who have a visceral dislike for "smooth jazz"? It doesn't matter, really because it's just not a true, valid connection. Plenty, plenty of people who had no real problems with early "fusion" or the soul-jazz of the late 60s/early 70s can't stomach smooth jazz. Second of all, the implication is that "smooth jazz" is an outgrowth of fusion or jazz-rock or whatever you want to call it - and it's not. Smooth jazz's immediate predecessor was the "quiet storm" music of the late-70s. It was "jazzy", but in no way was it jazz, nor did it claim to be until some radio executives figured out that an instrumental pop version of a, say, Anita Baker tune might sell so many copies marketed as pop, but 10x # of copies if you called it "smooth jazz", something that set it apart from regular instrumental pop/R&B/Quiet Storm, etc. The history of the coinage of the "smooth jazz" term is fairly well documented if you care to look for it. Third, as one of the many people I know who dug both early "fusion" or the soul-jazz of the late 60s/early 70s, as well as a great deal of "Quiet Storm" music and who can't stomach the vast majority of smooth jazz, I can tell you that my revulsion towards the latter is entirely a matter of the spirit & the execution of the music, nothing more. As a musician who's been around the industry a little bit, I know that the whole smooth market has unwritten rules about tempo, grooves, harmony, instrumentation, stage presence, everything, and these rules are every bit as narrow as are those for commercial C&W, which is to say that if any content at all seeps out from the product (and occasionally it does), it's an act of subversion in the face of the marketplace! So you see, talking about "the early 1970’s mixing of the genres of rhythm and blues and jazz with the introduction of electronic and commercial sounds..." as if that is where smpooth jazz comes from is not grounded in any reality whatsoever. Now, if you talk to some really old or some really young ideologues who think that Jazz is The Pure Voice Of The One True God or some such, then yeah, there ain't no room for even the slightest deviation. But those people are just as blind to historical reality as those who know absolutely nothing. Hell, we'd be on more solid ground talking about the separation of R&B and jazz than we would be the mixing of it, so firmly intertwined at the root have they been for so long, and not just because so many great R&B records were made/played by players with solid jazz backgrounds... And the whole "commercial" thing, geeezz, what a red herring that is...back in the day, Gene Ammons used to get dissed for being "commercial" or for being "too R&B" and he's far from the only one... there always been a portion of the jazz audience who wants their music to never really be shared outside of their own little special group of insiders...but that has nothing to do with smooth jazz unless you but he notion that smooth jazz is jazz, which it's not, not 99% of the time. It's instrumental pop. So for a jazz fan to bemoan the popularity of instrumental pop claiming to be jazz is like a meat lover bitching about veggie burgers being popular by them claiming to be burgers...there's a certain visceral satisfaction, but very little, uh, common sense. What is true is that there were two types of "fusion" in the 70s - one which brought more rock into the mix, and one which brought more R&B into the mix. Occasionally, as with Miles, you had music that did both (and then some), but Return To Forever & Grover Washington both can be said to have mixed "the genres of rhythm and blues and jazz with the introduction of electronic and commercial sounds" but those two musics are so fundamentally different in so many fundamental ways as to even imply that they can be lumped together is just not right. But - The R&B-influenced jazz came from the soul-jazz of just a few years before, and it definitely had an impact on the Quiet Storm music shortly after. But it did not become Smooth Jazz. If you're looking for one missing link, try George Howard (all but forgotten today?) who at the time sounded as "jazz-like" as Helen Reddy, but who today sounds like a veritable refuge from Mintons relative to most of the smooth pack. So, sorry, Soul Jazz to R&B Jazz to Quiet Storm to Smooth Jazz best summarizes the movement of the audience than it does the actual music. so as long as the discussion is about the music, and not the audience...check out Kenny G(orelick) with Jeff Lorber, and then listen to him once he went to smooth - there is a discernible decrease in "jazz influence" (such as it is), which, is, I think, exactly the point...Funny how Dave Sanborn (who really is a great player) kinda slipped off the smooth radar once all his imitators came along - doing a greatly simplified and codified imitation of a truly original voice with no small "jazz influence"). The less "jazz influence" the imitators showed, the higher the profile they got! Fourth, "the introduction of electronic and commercial sounds such as the electric guitar and the soprano sax led to the watering down of “real” jazz...please! Electric guitar, firmly entrenched in so called "pure jazz" for decades. Soprano sax, quite common in New Orleans music (see Sidney Bechet, a.o.), less so during Swing & Bebop (although see Johnny Hodges & Charlie Barnett), but Steve Lacy, John Coltrane, & Wayne Shorter brought it back big time in the 60s, and in nothing even remotely resembling a "commercial" style (although Trane's "My Favorite Things" was a true jazz hit, it is in no way even a preternatural predecessor to smooth jazz). So, the notion that "jazz fans" don't dig smooth jazz because it contains elements of R&B and instruments like electric guitar & soprano sax is just not...grounded in reality. Yes, you can find plenty of jazz that does contain elements of R&B and instruments like electric guitar & soprano sax that "jazz fans" do like - and that "jazz purists" will detest (as they will damn near anything that steps outside thier highly codified notions of what is and isn't "real" jazz). But that is an entirely different issue than why "smooth jazz" is so nearly-universally detested by "real jazz" fans. Now hell, maybe none of this matters. Maybe you're writing for an audience that doesn't know Hank Mobley from Hank Kimball. Maybe they's got their copies of The Ten Essential Jazz CDs Of All Time and that's it as far as their interest in the lineage and legacy of the music goes. Ok, fair enough. From what I've skimmed, your aim appears to be to get people interested in the now more than the then, and again, fair enough. But you can do that and still speak truths instead of half-formed generalizations that take one form Column A, one from Column B, mix in some water and BAM, out comes some Conventional Wisdom that is actually neither! Like I said, nothing personal, I sincerely wish you well, and welcome, and all that, for real (not feeling particularly warm and fuzzy right now, but honestly, I do mean that). But still - bullshit is bullshit, and I call it because I care enough about all of it (including somebody who certainly appears to be trying to do something good) to not just let it slide. There's enough of that as it is, no mas, por favor!

This is David Lynch beyond David Lynch... This thing is tripping me out...

Are you a realtor by any chance?

Nevertheless, if we want to debate ideas, fine, just know that for me "bullshit" is an emoptionally-neutral word, so please don't get fried over it.

Yeah, I haven't read this thread, so I don't know whose quote that is, but it is so terrbily wrong in so many ways that I hope if it's somebody here in this thread that they don't take it personal when I say that infact it's pretty much bullshit. I'll gladly and freindly go into detail later today when I'm not at work, but it's nothing personal to call bullshit where it exists, and that quote right there is bullshit. For one thing, "electronic and commercial sounds such as the electric guitar and the soprano sax" is a big "WTF are you talking about?" point... but htere are others.

Did somebody say Freda Payne?

This is David Lynch beyond David Lynch...

Now that's weak... But Amandla's strong! And as an aside...how is there a "late" "comeback" "era"? Seems to me that a comeback is there for a quick minute or two and then over...

But I like my bouncing hammers!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnWOd-mAINU Not my favorite, but god was it prevalent...

Damn right... We've always been Electrolux peoples ourselves, but Brenda's mom bought a Kirby here awhile back & then decided that she was too old to use it, so we got it now...it's good, but heavier than hell, and twice as noisy...but it does great work. The thing about those "expensive" Kirby & Electrolux vacs is that they do last damn near forever (Brenda had the Electrolux when I met her in 1981 & it still performs like a champ), so if you can afford the upfront investment, you're set for life, pretty much.

Gordon Jenkins Miss Jenkins Benita Butrell