You know, I really, truly dig Keith Jarrett’s music. I think he is a masterful pianist. He charges an arm and a leg for his cds, and while I refuse to pay $18 for one cd, I do think he is justified in doing so. He is a genius at his craft.
HOWEVER, sometimes his grunts and groans really get to me. I try not to let it distract me from that ethereal touch of his, but the sounds he makes are oft times similar to that of an old man having an epileptic seizure OR of an even older man having a very painful/pleasurable orgasm. You choose which.
People who open up their cell phones during movies. I’m sitting there, watching the screen and all of a sudden I see this bright, aqua colored light from the corner of my eye. And of course I have to glance over. Annoys the crap out of me. Can people not go two hours without communicating with other people or hoping other people are trying to communicate with them?
I also hate people who walk from the grocery store to their car and have to cross the path of my car as they go. I don’t hate all of them. Just the ones who walk right in front of my car without hesitation. At least consider the fact that I may run you over. Just the fact that you are so bold as to think that I will stop gives me the tiniest urge to maybe give you the slightest tap with the front of my Honda. Perhaps I’d get a little thrill from watching your cans of Green Giant chick peas bounce and roll into the cart corral as you lay stunned in the Publix parking lot.
After reading this excerpt from Clive James’ book, Cultural Amnesia, all I could do was grunt and murmur to myself. Every man has a right to his opinion, but James basically suggests that Beboppers buried the pleasure that came with jazz music, pleasure that musicians such as Duke Ellington and Ben Webster gave on a consistent basis. Bird and Dizzy made the music serious, “artistic”, more technical, and as a result, took all the fun out of it. While James lauds Ben Webster’s playing as poetic he states that with John Coltrane,
There is not a phrase that asks to be remembered except as a lesion to the inner ear, and the only purpose of the repetitions is to prove that what might have been charitably dismissed as an accident was actually meant.
Did jazz really die with bebop? Did Bird and Dizzy and Coltrane kill the music just because you couldn’t dance to it anymore? Come on, Clive. If it weren’t for Bird and Monk and Trane and Miles and Brownie, and so on and so on, jazz would have died long before Miles tried to kill it. If you ask me, jazz was well on its way to mainstream complacency. Swing began to drain it of its flavor, and if Bebop hadn’t of come along, it surely would have blended right into vanilla blandness and disappeared forever. Music has to grow. People have to invent or else the artform stagnates. Swing had its day. A very long one in fact. Bebop came and went, Cool and Hard Bop and Soul Jazz. Then Fusion — what I consider dreck — came and kicked jazz in the family jewels for a while. Now we have smooth jazz. Mmm Mmm good. If vomit were put to music, it would be called smooth jazz. I detest it, but it’s all a part of musical growth, I guess. Eventually, I hope we can get back to the good stuff.
My point is Duke was great, but Duke was always Duke. He never really changed. Louis never really changed. Not for the better anyway. Coltrane was ever-changing and that’s why I love him. Dizzy and Bird were exploring new ideas, trying to push the music forward. What’s wrong with that?
Ever man has a right to an opinion. I just think you are wrong, Mr. James.
Around 3:00 A.M. Saturday night, a wonderful documentary came on PBS. The name of the documentary was “Billy Strayhorn : Lush Life”. What is it you say? 3:00 A.M.? That’s right. Thank God TIVO knows me so well. Otherwise, I never would have known about this wonderful piece. If you haven’t seen it and you are a fan of jazz, especially of Ellington, then please try to find it. You will not be disappointed.
Billy Strayhorn was a genius. There is no reason to mince words here. Plain and simple, the man was born to compose and play music. His gift was his ability to assemble notes and chords into infinite magic. His curse, it seems, was another genius named Duke Ellington.
Sure, Ellington provided the platform that would allow Strayhorn to showcase such incomparable masterpieces as “Lotus Blossom”, “Lush Life”, “Chelsea Bridge”, “Daydream”, “Take The A Train”, ad infinitum. But as time creeps on, one begins to wonder if the day will come when Strayhorn is heralded more as a composer than Ellington. Perhaps not. Ellington’s songbook is so vast and filled with so many remarkable gems. I don’t want to take away from Ellington at all. But this was a world in which an African-American genius was not lauded and begrudgingly recognized. Two geniuses together? Not possible. You add on top of that the fact that Strayhorn was gay and you can see the daunting steepness of the hill he had to climb.
Yes, Strayhorn’s genius was eclipsed by the all-encompassing shadow of the equally brilliant Ellington. But perhaps one day — and the day started with this wonderful documentary — the name Strayhorn will not require another name to be mentioned for people to truly recognize who he is.
If you listen to the station, you are probably aware of the little promos I run every two hours or so. Recently, I added a little clip of Lenny Bruce talking about Paul Desmond. I debated whether or not to use it since Bruce uses the word “ass”, which is pretty innocuous if you know anything about the genius who was Lenny Bruce. Anyway, I hope no one is offended. If so, let me know. Not that it would make me remove the promo since I love Bruce’s statement on Desmond. But if I got enough complaints, I probably would take it off since the listener comes first.