Can Jazz Be Saved?

[AllenLowe]

"Lots of players just don't like people, period"

well, as one pretty famous jazz guy said to me about another pretty famous jazz guy:

"He's so crazy there's a good chance he might kill everybody in the room." *****

Now that would bring in a crowd -

well, maybe not...................................

*****no names, please; I hate lawsuits

Edited August 12, 2009 by AllenLowe

[fasstrack]

Look, I understand the reaction of the bebopers who were sick and tired of being thought of as "entertainers" rather than "artists", but isn't it time to get over that? I mean, I see people here complaining that they can't find gigs anymore...well, just maybe that's because people aren't looking for Art, they're looking for entertainment. If you really find it beneath yourself to play for an audience, fine, but quit bitching about the fact that there's no audience.

This whole idea that music must be intently studied and that no feeling by the audience is allowed sounds like the biggest load of crap on the planet. The thought of a musician actually connecting with their audience to the point that they start dancing, and then being offended by that reaction just boggles my mind.

Yeah! Finally someone cuts through the BS. Thanks. Lot of complaining babies out there.

More than there are good players, bet on that......

[Jim Alfredson]

Although it's not necessarily always the case, I take the position that if I'm not connecting with the audience (or at least a percentage of the audience... some people you're never going to reach no matter what) then I'm doing something wrong.

I sincerely believe if you play with authority and a sense of joy, the audience (or again, at least a percentage) will connect no matter what kind of music you're playing.

Then again, sometimes the only solution is to play Mustang Sally.

[ghost of miles]

Jazz just has a very bad cold.

"Lots of players just don't like people, period"

well, as one pretty famous jazz guy said to me about another pretty famous jazz guy:

"He's so crazy there's a good chance he might kill everybody in the room." *****

Now that would bring in a crowd -

well, maybe not...................................

*****no names, please; I hate lawsuits

Talk about slaying an audience!

[fasstrack]

Then again, sometimes the only solution is to play Mustang Sally.

That's pretty funny. One time I saw Danilio Perez play in a park in the Bronx. he was playing his originals with a good band---and reaching no one, they were bored and fidgety. He basically said 'f$%k it', called up a congero to the stge, and played Oyo Como Va. He got the crowd back. I guess he realized there's a time and place for everything.

[ghost of miles]

Then again, sometimes the only solution is to play Mustang Sally.

That's pretty funny. One time I saw Danilio Perez play in a park in the Bronx. he was playing his originals with a good band---and reaching no one, they were bored and fidgety. He basically said 'f$%k it', called up a congero to the stge, and played Oyo Como Va. He got the crowd back. I guess he realized there's a time and place for everything.

Had a somewhat similar experience with a high-profile musician's concert a few years back (somebody I like quite a lot)...he played most of the concert with this stoic, quasi-bad-ass/would-be-Miles attitude, wearing shades, not addressing the audience, etc. Near the end he could definitely tell he'd lost a great deal of the crowd, and he opened up a bit (as did the music, which had been heavy on the cerebral side of things, and not in a particularly engaging way).

[AllenLowe]

I had the same problem a few years back - nobody was paying attention so I doused myself in gasoline and lit a match -

didn't, however, really have the desired effect -

though now I can play like Django -

[fasstrack]

Then again, sometimes the only solution is to play Mustang Sally.

That's pretty funny. One time I saw Danilio Perez play in a park in the Bronx. he was playing his originals with a good band---and reaching no one, they were bored and fidgety. He basically said 'f$%k it', called up a congero to the stge, and played Oyo Como Va. He got the crowd back. I guess he realized there's a time and place for everything.

Had a somewhat similar experience with a high-profile musician's concert a few years back (somebody I like quite a lot)...he played most of the concert with this stoic, quasi-bad-ass/would-be-Miles attitude, wearing shades, not addressing the audience, etc. Near the end he could definitely tell he'd lost a great deal of the crowd, and he opened up a bit (as did the music, which had been heavy on the cerebral side of things, and not in a particularly engaging way).

All this talk has really made me think about the idea of self-absorbed originality---which may be good, but only to the originator, vs. uses of music or innovation in the greater social picture (I statred another thread on it also just before). I read the article on Herbie Hancock that Lazaro put up. He's a really good case study for this topic, I think, b/c he has the capability to play long and really keep up his creative energy and his concepts----rhythmic, harmonic, especially, can get really involved to the point where he could lose people, yet he's among the most popular of jazz players, and has been so way before he went 'fusion'. I think maybe (and I can never know, not being inside anyone else's head) he thought about these things discussed and tried to address it. Or maybe he evolved that way. Or maybe he likes money. Or all of the above. But I think his thoughts on the subject are worth reading or hearing as the words of a creative artist that has thought about this stuff.

I remember a WKCR FM retrospective on his electric stuff and the interviewed him. These very subjects came up and he replied to a question that he started wondering after a while, and some definite progress creatively, if his music was 'performing any service' other than for himself. He decided that it wasn't up til then.

[ghost of miles]

I had the same problem a few years back - nobody was paying attention so I doused myself in gasoline and lit a match -

Now you're getting into G.G. Allin territory!

I knew a guy who was way into Allin--who, among other things, had threatened to commit suicide on-stage and take as many members of the audience as possible with him. When he told me he wanted to attend Allin's suicide performance, I jokingly said, "Aren't you afraid he'll take you out too?" He said, "I would be proud to die at G.G. Allin's suicide performance." Ah, early twentysomething hipster poserness!

[Noj]

I remember hearing stuff about GG Allin throwing his own feces on the audience and what not. If I wanted to experience that, I'd just hang out at the chimpanzee area of the LA Zoo!

[papsrus]

I remember hearing stuff about GG Allin throwing his own feces on the audience and what not. If I wanted to experience that, I'd just hang out at the chimpanzee area of the LA Zoo!

I'll bet there was some mighty fast dancing going on at that concert!

[ghost of miles]

Imagine getting paid to defecate on stage.

Although you could say that has transpired, metaphorically speaking, from time to time.

[Larry Kart]

Imagine getting paid to defecate on stage.

Although you could say that has transpired, metaphorically speaking, from time to time.

Actually, barring copious use of laxatives, defecating on stage is very difficult to do. The presence of other people tends to tighten the sphincter. I speak from personal experience, of course.

[Dave James]

Time to get back on task.

Up over and out.

[Hot Ptah]

Time to get back on task.

Up over and out.

Yes, GG Allin is hardly the model that jazz needs to take note of, to become more appealing to the younger listener.

However, his presence in the music industry at all, does provide a reference to something I have thought worked against jazz. As pop and rock music increasingly left the blues-based forms of a lot of late 1960s and 1970s pop and rock, and as punk, new wave and other forms not based in the blues became more popular, I think it became more difficult for the masses of young people to find a point of reference in jazz. It has only become worse as the years have gone on.

Another way to say what I am thinking about here--it was not all that far from the extended guitar solos by Duane Allman on the Allman Brothers Band's Live at Fillmore East album, to some bluesier instrumental jazz. A curious young listener could make that stretch and get into jazz.

But when the young person's listening is exclusively short punk songs, or rap, or speed metal, or grunge, or Spears/Cyrus/etc. style pop---there just isn't that much in common with jazz, to leap from.

[ghost of miles]

Time to get back on task.

Up over and out.

Aw, c'mon--after 11 pages, can't we have a little fun?

Some responses to Teachout:

Doug Ramsey

Howard Mandel

A Blog Supreme

[fasstrack]

This will not advance this discussion light years----but just as a reality check, and comic relief I give you: 'The Enza Rea Test'

Enza Rea was the mother of a musician friend of mine. She was a very perceptive person, plainspoken and folksy. She loved music and wrote song lyrics and used to send them to Tony Bennett. (His manager used to send a Christmas card every year, though after a while he admitted he wasn't sure who she was ). But she hated jazz, she said. Why? "It sounds all 'jumble jumble'" was her answer, without fail. We used to sort of laugh, and my friend, her son, used to try to explain and convince her.

But I understood her objections, and it is a good reality check when as smart a person as she could make such an observation. I don't know if she speaks for the majority, b/c the sad fact is that we get almost no media exposure, b/c the money people smell no money in jazz, seemingly. So, for years, when I either played something or heard something and wondered after how people might perceive it I would say to myself 'would this pass the enza rea test'?' Barry Harris used to say 'they don't even give people a chance to hate us'. My brother, who I'm visiting now, puts down my playing, saying 'you never play anything anyone understands' (not true at all, I'm pretty understandle, actually), and calling what i play ragtime.

Maybe these things are atypical or just plain funny, but maybe they are also revealing of certain things we don't want to face. I wonder.........

[Hot Ptah]

I think that this comment, posted after the Howard Mandel article, has some validity:

"Many of the more popular types of music tend to be less static in terms of their year-by-year development than jazz in general and part of the attraction is that people enjoy the process of keeping up with new developments, new songs, and new artists. Obviously, a lot of that interest in new developments is tied in with celebrity intrigue, and obviously, we-who-like-jazz know that there are always new developments in jazz and new artists to seek out, but many of the highest-profile artists in jazz tend not to emphasize new developments and continually mine the same book of standards for their material. That book of standards stopped accepting new submissions around 1959 or so."

"Most forms of popular music seem to be anchored in a simple, steady, heavy beat -- unlike good jazz drumming that is in constant flow and transformation -- and rely on lyrics to an extent that is not honored by serious instrumental jazz (or contemporary composition, new chamber or "classical" music). Most pop music has a 3 - 4 minute length, whereas much jazz goes on longer, favoring immediate creative development rather than crisp, concise execution. Much pop music is highly amplified and broad of gesture, whereas much (not all) jazz is essentially unamplified and depends upon nuance, inference and abstraction. Furthermore, the values embodied/pursued/expressed by jazz musicians -- musical virtuosity, career endurance, personal modesty and the expectation of being marginalized come to mind -- aren't glamorous or fashionable compared to those of rap/hip-hop, rock-pop and country stars who flash their bling and booties, revel in rebellion or set well-established virtues in danceable narrative forms."

Edited August 14, 2009 by Hot Ptah

[Jazzmoose]

"Many of the more popular types of music tend to be less static in terms of their year-by-year development than jazz in general and part of the attraction is that people enjoy the process of keeping up with new developments, new songs, and new artists. Obviously, a lot of that interest in new developments is tied in with celebrity intrigue, and obviously, we-who-like-jazz know that there are always new developments in jazz and new artists to seek out, but many of the highest-profile artists in jazz tend not to emphasize new developments and continually mine the same book of standards for their material. That book of standards stopped accepting new submissions around 1959 or so."

This brings up a thought in my mind (it's in a strange place; be nice!); how many of the people on this board bemoaning the lack of popularity of jazz are stuck in the Blue Note Era themselves? I mean, if 90% of what you listen to is from the fifties and sixties, what do you care if jazz is 'dead'? You're just exhuming the corpse yourselves.

[Dan Gould]

This brings up a thought in my mind (it's in a strange place; be nice!); how many of the people on this board bemoaning the lack of popularity of jazz are stuck in the Blue Note Era themselves? I mean, if 90% of what you listen to is from the fifties and sixties, what do you care if jazz is 'dead'? You're just exhuming the corpse yourselves.

Well that's me in a nutshell - even though I am not totally stuck in the Blue Note era - and so, yes, jazz is dead to me. I can't imagine any future development that might have any appeal, and I don't mind admitting that I am not in any way actively searching out new artists. The new artists I do discover are themselves stuck somewhere in the Blue Note era.

What can I say? I know what I like, and I like what I like.

[danasgoodstuff]

I wish I was hearing new stuff that was knocking me out, but I ain't....sometomes I hear new stuff that's close enuff for new to think that maybe it's out there, but no more than that, generally.

[Van Basten II]

"."

This brings up a thought in my mind (it's in a strange place; be nice!); how many of the people on this board bemoaning the lack of popularity of jazz are stuck in the Blue Note Era themselves? I mean, if 90% of what you listen to is from the fifties and sixties, what do you care if jazz is 'dead'? You're just exhuming the corpse yourselves.

Bullseye, sometimes i feel like when i was younger listening to elders saying this Gretzky guy was crap and could not wear the Gordie Howe or Maurice Richard's jock strap.

Edited August 15, 2009 by Van Basten II

[paul secor]

173 posts and we still haven't figured out how to save jazz.

[AllenLowe]

actually I did figure it out - go to my earliest posts -

[Guest Bill Barton]

"Many of the more popular types of music tend to be less static in terms of their year-by-year development than jazz in general and part of the attraction is that people enjoy the process of keeping up with new developments, new songs, and new artists. Obviously, a lot of that interest in new developments is tied in with celebrity intrigue, and obviously, we-who-like-jazz know that there are always new developments in jazz and new artists to seek out, but many of the highest-profile artists in jazz tend not to emphasize new developments and continually mine the same book of standards for their material. That book of standards stopped accepting new submissions around 1959 or so."

This brings up a thought in my mind (it's in a strange place; be nice!); how many of the people on this board bemoaning the lack of popularity of jazz are stuck in the Blue Note Era themselves? I mean, if 90% of what you listen to is from the fifties and sixties, what do you care if jazz is 'dead'? You're just exhuming the corpse yourselves.

There are also plenty of people on the board who listen to a wide variety of music, including the "Blue Note era" but also including material that is way older than the 50s-60s and material that is current. Just peruse the listening thread...

All of this online navel-gazing on blogs and discussion boards generated by the article is healthy. I find it interesting that many reactions - admittedly including my own initial "what B.S." response to Teachout's final sentence - are interpreting this as yet another "jazz is dead" obituary. It's the business that is sick (not dead) rather than the music. The music is very much alive. Much of it may be "underground" as it has been all along. If you seek it out, it's there. If you prefer not to seek it out and stick with the tried-and-true, so be it. Nothing wrong with that.

Edited August 15, 2009 by Bill Barton