All that jazz
I have just been rudely awoken from my slumbers.
I was sitting here with my eyes closed, enjoying the scent of freshly cut grass from the garden and just thinking about nothing. I then made the mistake of switching on Lyric FM.
I like Lyric FM. It is a classical station that isn’t as snobbishly highbrow as Radio 3 and tends to play what I would call middlebrow classical.
As I said, I switched it on and kept the volume low to accompany my idle thoughts, but was very rudely awoken.
Some fucker seems to have taken over the station and is playing Jazz! Instead of some gentle Mozart, Brahms or Beethoven, what I get is fucking Art Tatum.
There is a style of jazz that I cannot tolerate. It makes my ears bleed. It’s the type of jazz where four or five blokes come on and they each play a different, totally airless tune all at the same time. It seems to be obligatory that there is a piano, a saxophone and a trumpet, and the only talent required is that they be able to play as many notes as possible without any regard for what the others are playing.
I have a theory that everyone in fact hates jazz. They are just afraid to admit it. It’s a case of the king’s new clothes where no one dare be the first to admit that jazz is tuneless shite.
I kept the volume on very low in the hopes that the presenter would see the light and play something decent, but no – all we got was Art Tatum after Art Tatum.
I have given up on the radio.
I would like to go back to my doze.
But my ears are still hurting.
I’m not mad about that kind of Jazz either. I call it right wing jazz, the left being more from a swing perspective, if ya know what I mean. What I cannot tolerate is Rap or Crap as I call it. They sometimes take ordinary commercial pop and turn it into a God aweful noise with a vocal narrative running through it that sounds like it came from the fucking jungle.
Give me classical any day.
Could not agree more. All jazz is shite. People just pretend to like it. Kind of like these absolute cunts with no money who vote for the rich man’s party. The only thing I hate more than the poor is poor people who vote for the rich. Panders to their egos. You know they think if they vote for the republicans or the tories it makes them one. No it doesn’t you dumb sap. It just makes you a stupid dumb asshole you dumbfuck
Wow Grandad. You took the words right out of my mouth. I have EXACTLY the same opinion as you of Jazz. A bunch of blokes playing random tunes at the same time. Beats me what jazz fans are hearing, but I’m sure as heck not hearing it!
LyricFM has shows hosted my Marty Whelan and Gay Byrne, and you’re complaining about the music!? The mind boggles!
You’ve just started WW3 with jazz lovers everywhere, Lyric FM staff are jumping out of the windows, you’ve cut the grass, turned on and tuned in a radio. If that’s what you call “doing fuck all” I’d hate to see you on a busy day. I could have spread that lot over a week – easily.
Apart from that you fucked up my baiting tt game.
Slab – Rap has fuck all to do with music. I don’t honestly know what it has to do with. It’s essentially just poorly rhymed shit droned out to a beat. Ghastly!
TT – Heh! We’re singin’ the same tunes again!
Denise – There was a jazz loving family near here once. When their parents died they held a week long jazz party [with live ‘musicians’] in the back garden. The longest and worst week of my life……..
Gammagoblin – It’s very easy to avoid presenters. I can’t be too rough on them though – the head of Lyric at the time asked me if I wanted to join them as a presenter.
Patrick – My life isn’t that hectic – I cut the grass yesterday. Which reminds me.. I really must bring that ladder in that I brought out last May to prune a tree. Fuckit. It can wait ’til tomorrow. I’ll do the pruning another time. How did I fuck up the baiting game? He replied, didn’t he?
Another one here, always thought of Jazz as aural diahorrea!
WASN’T ME !
Nothing like the old “progressive” jazz to tear your mind apart. Actually there’s more forms and types of jazz than the “everybody-plays-whatever-is roaming-around-their-brain-and all-at-once” type that most folks equate with the word jazz.
Personally, I like the old 20’s and 30’s style jazz. “Someone to watch over me” from the musical “Oh, Kay” is a fine example of that wonderful old style. Then there’s the thick, smoky style of that era as well. Of course, I don’t mind listening to a few tracks by the Rippingtons (not progressive) now and then either.
I admire LyricFM for its appeal to middlebrows and highbrows across class lines. Any time I drive a car in Ireland I am careful, however, to switch off the radio after ten minutes in case music lulls me to sleep. Like all public service broadcasters LyricFM transmits some programmes catering to minority tastes, such as jazz. In the good old days when Radio Eireann had a monopoly of our airwaves classical music itself was a minority interest and the station programme controllers ensured that this taste was well catered for with live broadcasts of concerts from Dublin, and a folksy weekly serving of operatic and other bel canto singing on long-playing records presented by Clonmel-based presenter Tommy O’Brien. It was called Your Choice and Mine, and was intended by the country-accented O’Brien to bring the best of arias, duets and choruses to ears of the plain people of Ireland.
I think jazz gets an airing about once a week on Lyric, so you could always ramble out to the nearest village pub when it’s on, gandpa. You might find the clink of bottles and glasses more melodious.
I dislike that kind of jazz music also. Though there is alot of jazz types that are musical and fun to listen to. Swing comes to mind. Swing jazz is one type I like alot.
I agree that there are different types of jazz, and I can tolerate the “swing style” reasonably well though it wouldn’t be my choice for an afternoon’s listening. I can’t for example see myself having a fortnight’s holiday in New Orleans.
Ger – A couple of years ago I took a part time job that involved getting stuck on the M50 west of Dublin for a couple hours a day. Lyric just about kept me sane during those drives. In the end, I decided that even Lyric didn’t make the traffic jams worthwhile so I quit the job.
FUCKING WAS YOU, YOU NOB GOBBLER.
Heh! As a pro Blues musician, I have a dog in this fight. My starting points are that the spiritual value to be found in music with improvised content is immense, but heart and head have to balance and there’s no art without craft.
I have to agree, there are styles of jazz that have evolved since the ’40s that are better left unheard. These are more about math than music.
IMHO, these jazz forms have been propagated by music colleges because of their increasingly intellectual rather than emotional properties, adding to the “academic” credentials of their courses – which, of course churn out cannon fodder for film & tv, which must influence the norms of the cultural soundtrack.
In common with academic jazz, but lacking its sensibilities and craft, rap seems to be music for people who don’t like music. These days, everyone seems to need a soundtrack for their social activities, and to demonstrate their individuality too through “their” music. Either form ticks a number of culturally appropriate boxes and can be seen to be “cool” with peer-groups.
@Stan Mann – Well said, sir.
For the few of us here who do like jazz, this video helps us understand what jazz sounds like to the haters http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsEfAiZ2y18 🙂
Stan – Welcome! You say that heart and head have to balance, but surely all true art forms should appeal to the heart and not the head? I have always treated art as something I like intuitively and not some form of intellectual exercise. I like a painting because I think it looks nice, and not because there is some mathematical subliminal framework. I enjoy music if it lifts my spirit and not because of the relative ratios of semiquavers to the crotchet. Quite often my heart likes something that my head says I shouldn’t like, such as some abstract splash of paint on a canvas. Occasionally my head says I should like something but the heart rejects it. It’s a complicated subject. But Kirk M agrees with you!
Gammagoblin – Damn you man! You have made my ears bleed again.
Grandad – In relating to what Stan said, I absolutely have to approach this from a musical standpoint only. I grew up with music. I’ve been surrounded by it all my life and I was broken into the art of sound engineering by one of the best. Not the most well known but one of the best nonetheless. The sound board (and related equipment) was my instrument and it’s a whole different perspective from the other side of that board. In all my years as a sound engineer I can tell you, when heart(s) and head(s) are in balance it’s a smooth experience indeed. If not, well…
Kirk, I know whereof you speak – I’ve done a few albums now and I know the value of a real soundman. I’m based in a predominantly jazz town now and the heart/head dichotomy is on show all the time.
Grandad, head is there in the producer and consumer of any art, otherwise all you have is a series of inchoate screams, daubs or scribbles, depending on the medium. Although there seems to be a market for that, the fact of organisation, as well as its kind and degree are what makes art art.
What about literature ? Surely your appreciation of a novel is more than an emotional response – twists of plot, turns of phrase, character development, quality of thought and expression, etc,etc, require the use of the intellectual facility. Parallels to these exist in music too – maybe a practioner notices more, but non-playing “buffs” get this side of it too.
In common with literature and unlike the visual arts, the peculiarity of music is that you don’t see the whole work at once – you have to follow its progress through time. I should say that I gave G.goblin’s link all of 30 seconds. While noting that I’ve heard these guys do work ranging from acceptable to superb, this was neither, and looked like continuing in the same vein. I have to wonder what they think they were saying to their audience. To me this is pure wank, but technically, I’m not a patch on any of them.
In visual arts, I agree with you – I like Miro because he makes me laugh. End of story. But he was a superb technician too, who chose to produce these seemingly artless doodles. Then again, there’s Escher, who, if anything, is all about mathematical extrapolation and yet could be profound and fun.
It is not necessary to employ the head in the appreciation of music – from foot-tapping and head nodding, through dance, to the experience of catharsis or the “oceanic” feeling – these are not intellectual processes, but they are supplemented, enhanced and deepened by the head factor. J.S.Bach can give you all of those symptoms of appreciation, but he was a consummate mathematician too.
In Jazz, the few guys in every generation who can touch their hearers in that way seem to have been swamped by the academic wannabees – stuff that originated from the hearts of a few gifted players has been subsumed into the entertainment industry.
@Stan Mann: Ummm… you do realise that video was a joke, right? 🙂 It was overdubbed by someone just mashing the keys on a keyboard. Here is the original http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgJXjMXe4SQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=11s Which will probably sound the same to people like Grandad anyway, hence the point I was making 🙂
Can’t invite you to Ballydehob Jazz Fest 2012 then GD? 🙂
TBH it’s starting to grow on me, well some of it anyway – we had this lady playin’ in the community hall earlier this year – she was pretty good (Apparently she’d been tippling all the way over on the Swansea Cork ferry, as well as a few beers from Ringaskiddy outwards – great stamina!)
http://youtu.be/DBCOpNcQyuY
@Mick: I wanted to go see Liane Carroll when she played at the Cork Jazz Festival here a few years ago, but she was performing at the same time as Chick Corea so I missed her. As well as she plays Caravan, no-one will ever play it as well as Petrucciani http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06_uCl_Bovs
I guess I won’t be seeing any of you guys at the jazz festival in Cork.
And thus was born the Head Rambles Jazz Club. I never thought I would see the day. *shame*