Miles Davis Live at the Plugged Nickel

[JSngry]

Somebody define "noodling* in an objective, quantifiable way. Please.

[Steve Reynolds]

I’ve brought many friends to live shows. Mostly very abstract avant-garde music. Most like or even loved it. All have different backgrounds in listening. One is a huge Dead listener (like me). Others are into Tool, popular music or are into straight jazz, modern punk or post punk. None had ever heard any of the music I go see live as most of it is beneath the underground and seemingly incomprehensible. Much more “out” than the great mid 60’s Miles quintet. 

key is that they go in with little pre-conceived ideas about what it or or try to understand it. With an open mind most anyone will find something to like with genius master musicians improvising in a small intimate room. 

Mat Maneri, Hamid Drake, Gerry Hemingway, David Torn, Ches Smith, Nate Wooley, Brandon Lopez, Nels Cline, Randy Peterson, Darius Jones, Mary Halvorson, Tomeka Reid, Michael Foster, Tyshawn Sorey, Chuck Roth, Tom Rainey or Tony Malaby playing in front of an unsuspecting listener?

Almost all can’t believe nobody knows these musicians after the shows. They know it’s “out” but they don’t hear it the way serious straight ahead jazz listeners hear it. A few struggled with the purely improvised stuff but most get into the actual playing. 

My wife liked it. Sometimes the screaming altissimo stuff might get her a bit nervous, but she LOVED the drummers. 

[gvopedz]

58 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

 I worked in the high tech industry for decades with some pretty brilliant people. Over the years, I tried getting a lot of them to listen to Jazz - often by playing it in the lab on a boombox to get it heard - and a lot of them came over and said that they didn't like it because it sounded like noodling. 

Getting coworkers to enjoy jazz may require a bit more strategy.  I once had a coworker who often listened to recordings of classical music performed on a piano.  So I brought in a Bill Evans CD, and she liked the jazz that Bill Evans performed.