tempted.

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/jazz-undiscovered-country

...do you mean by jazz? It is like saying all food tastes horrible. Do you mean you don't like "Kind of blue"? Which isn't at all the ultimate jazz album - it is known more as the jazz album that people who don't like jazz like. So by deduction if you don't like it you DO like jazz!

Kind of Blue is lovely, but very far removed from most other Jazz. Try Miles Davis smokin' on the track Blues by Five - what a rhythm section! What a drum solo!
Can't stand Fusion though. Fuck.

The thing that puzzles me is that when people say "I don't like jazz", they always pick the same particular subset of the genre to illustrate the point, with the emphasis on noodling and freeform. What about Frank Sinatra? Billie Holiday? Nina Simone? Louie Armstrong? Terry Callier?

It's a bit like saying "rock is crap" and using a list of death metal bands as evidence.

Agreed - the sweet tunes of Django, the effervescent clowning virtuosity of Fats Waller, the earthy pomp of Satchmo, the funk-ay strut of Aert Blakey.

I don't like 20 mins solos or free noise, but I love Jazz.

...Oasis are crap and citing all of their records. Oh no. That works. Oasis are silage.

When played by somebody who knows what they're doing, a trumpet can be as expressive as the human voice and then some. Where Miles Davis is concerned that trumpet is his voice. Keep that in mind and listen again.

jazz is 'a load of pointless noodling' yet you list 4 jazz albums you like, so presumably you see value in those examples and others that are similar?

Anyway if it's just a case of not liking long, improvised, instrumental pieces then one could equally find the same kind of thing in rock to vent about. A lot of people don't like that kind of free form thing but they don't reject a whole form of music that it is part of as a consequence. I personally like that stuff - it usually takes a bit of work before you get it but it is often worth it. Music just is - it doesn't have to say something that you can define in words.

PS Are you being one of those small, forest dwelling chaps we should ignore?

I love Kind of Blue and also earlier and later Miles, Carlie Parker, Coltrane, Django, Joe Pass, Oscar Peterson, Crusaders, Billie Holiday, Ella etc etc and more recent obscure stuff, screaming free form through to jazz rock or solo/trio/big band. It is all fabulous.

The thing is, there are so many mutant forms of jazz you're asking an impossible question, but in the main jazz IS written down other than solo / improvisational sections (yes, I know, there are purely improvised tunes but we're talking in the main) and invariably conforms to a certain harmonic vocabulary (or consciously breaks it) - it isn't just pouring out a bunch of notes. It's true it can be quite academic if you're that way inclined - like on Kind of Blue, Miles and Coltrane and Bill Evans are improvising modally, and Cannonball Adderly plays much more in a be bop style - and this is interesting if you like a bit of an academic dimension sometimes, but equally you can just enjoy the music. Like understanding some of the motivations and approaches and intentions of any artist can add to your appreciation. But you don't need to know this - you can just react as it comes.

This might be a good time to point out that this R4 documentary wherein Jelly Roll Morton's reminisences, as related to Alan Lomax, is available on Listen Again until Saturday evening.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/archivehour

There is also a multi disc set available (4 discs I think) of the complete recordings.

but i think people are on the whole a bit put off by the incendiary "Jazz is Crap" remark. Music is Music. There is only 2 kinds - that which you get and that which you don't. Other than Oasis, crap doesn't come into it.

Yes, the Jelly Roll thing was amazing. (Rubs chin, strokes beard, lights pipe)

To quote Frank Zappa

I'd come into contact with Charlie Parker records and things like that, but they didn't hold my interest. I couldn't follow it. Same kind of argument that you'd get from people today, just "Huh, what are they doing? They just noodling around", you know. I mean, now I understand why they're noodling and where they're noodling, and I can tell the difference between good noodling and bad noodling, but without certain musical clues it just all sounded like noodles to me.

I do love this quote but I don't really agree with the sentiment. It helps to understand the 'why' and 'where' but I think I have a gut reaction to bad noodling.

I could change 'jazz' to 'prog' and then find plenty to agree with the original post.

Horses for courses I guess.

that Steve Miller, this very issue, reveals how he has only lately realised how much depth and subtlety John Lee Hooker achieves noodling on one chord.
So if complexity is not a pre-requisite for or a precluder of good music, and neither is simplicity, we are left to conclude that music anywhere in between can come up with the goods if well done.
Which means that genre classifications are pretty redundant.
So you may as well say, "Music is crap. Discuss". Which will almost certainly get you a royal roasting round these parts.

Yes. Let's get the music out of the pigeonholes and stop calling stuff 'crap'.

It's good if it moves you, entertains you and/or changes your life. We all have our own set of idiosyncratic criteria for this effect and cannot be told we are wrong because of the very nature of that subjectivity.
Is someone going to use the expression 'a priori' soon?

Can we now raise the quality of the debate above how you disapprove of the title?

....that the majority of everything is not very good?

...I've always gravitated more towards early-mid 70s jazz rock/fusion (before it went off into Kenny G muzak territory), maybe it's because of the rock element which I can relate to a bit more. Still, on that old thread posted above about jazz I realised there were a lot of jazz albums I was able to enjoy quite easily. I don't go a bundle on be-bop or free-jazz though.

I do like that Don Ellis album a lot; it is great fun. I also like Herbie Mann's album 'Memphis Underground' where he covered a few soul/R & B standards.

...can be pretty dull to me. But that's a problem with all sorts of music. As a guitar player myself I can't stand to listen to a guitar solo that's longer than 20 seconds and more than 3 or 4 notes. Play a guitar solo for twenty minutes and I'm gone long before the last note has been twanged.

And drum solos...urg.

Some of the great jazz albums sound like noodling. They sound like one riff over and over again. But there's more to it than that. There's a lot of changes in rhythm, tempo. Some subtle some not so. Different instruments bring in different flavours. Again subtle and less so.

It can be exciting if it moves. But even if you like jazz, some performances can be dull as dishwater. I've been to gigs where the solos go on for twenty minutes a piece, trumpet sax, piano, bass, drums. Hey let the little guy with his percussion and his triangle have a go. And each solo is just a show off piece, followed by the audience applauding each bit as if it was magic. Lifting it to nothing but a vehicle for the musician. The best jazz for me is about the tune/song and how it's interpreted. Artist/Song might not sound like much of a distinction but you can hear it.

...or are the majority of LOUDspeaker's comments not very good?

We are all here to keep the ball in the air.

No idea on the majority - I like jazz in small doses but my wife can't stand the improvisational stuff so I haven't really experimented enough. (unlike the jazz musicians?)

However if a track by Miles Davis or Louis Armstrong comes up on my mp3 player, it always brings a smile. Similarly hearing Miles on Oh Patti or Chet Baker on Shipbuilding makes me think I should experiment a little more.

There’s a simple rule that I think all music fans, particularly ones who mouth off on websites, should stick to. It’s what I call the Ice Hockey Principle. I have no interest whatsoever in ice hockey. I barely know the rules. I wouldn’t cross the road to see it being played. Yet thousands, probably millions, of people love it ; some have worked hard to master the skills required to play it; others are learned connoisseurs of the game; most just like watching it, supporting a team and letting off a bit of steam. For me to dismiss their sport as “crap” because I don’t happen to be interested in it or attracted to it would be breathtakingly arrogant, ignorant and rude.
There’s lots of music - stuff that’s cherished by people on this board - that to me is Ice Hockey. My attitude is: have fun at the rink, but I’ll be elsewhere. And certainly not wasting time and energy chucking rotten tomatoes from the cheap seats.

That remark came cleanly off the bat. A six!

Let's share our enthusiasms, puzzle and help each other, but if it isn't your cup of tea, don't drink it, 'cause when you spit it out in disgust, we all get sprayed!
Also, I quote:

"Yet thousands, probably millions, of people love it ; some have worked hard to master the skills required to play it"

this seems to hint at supporting my theory that some music is worth working at and aquiring. You don't just have to get a stiffy first listen. It can move you over time.

I think LOUDspeaker's post is actually a cry for help. He clearly wants to like jazz, he just doesn't know where to begin.

This seems to be how most albums were recorded:

1. The band turns up to the studio.

-Good. Perhaps Pete Doherty and his ilk could take note

2. The band leader plays a chord sequence to them.

-excellent - always a good start

3. They record a ten minute live improvisation around that chord.

-efficiency is next to godliness

4. The band leader plays another chord sequence.

- again, chord sequernces, kind of de rigeur in music

5. They record a five minute live improvisation around that chord.

- in five minutes? They must be very good musicians and concentrating!

6. Repeat for the rest of the day until they have 20 minutes for side one.

-so not wasting time then, so well practiced, prepared and in the zone?

7. Reconvene a month later and record the second side in one day.

- with fresh ideas and 6-nights a week gigging under their belt. Splendid.

What in the world is wrong with any of this.

Could the stones (a YEAR to make Exile on Main St due to drugs, girlfriends etc) or Guns n Roses (Still no sign of that album) take a leaf out of these connumate professional's exemplary books

PLUS they always wore a suit. Always wore a shit hot smokin suit!

Jazz rules

Moanin' by Art Blakey ... Kind of Blue ... The Sidewinder, Lee Morgan. That kind of monochrome sepia snapshot, all cufflinks and coffee. Just fricking sweet, man.

And the names of Jazz tracks. SO creative.

WE NEED AN ARTICLE IN THE NEXT ISSUE ABOUT HOW FRICKIN SWEET JAZZ IS!

Blue Note Covers?

Downbeat magazine from the attic?

I go on a course for a day or two and explosions ensue. Jazz is great, as I discovered from the last time we did it. I fully expect some of the dissidents to be singing it's praises as an art form next time we cover this, in, say, October. The problem is that it doesn't all sound the same, that being the initial response to hearing a little, in the same way some say all rock music sounds the same, as a first exposure of guitar bass and drums would lead one to suspect little variety could that way come. Likewise trumpet, tenor, piano, bass and drums. From Miles and 'Trane I am now freebasing Eric Dolphy, Gerry Mulligan, Roland Kirk, McCoy Tyner etc etc.
Jump in, the waters lovely!

Well I guess you get people who listen to music for all kinds of diffrent reasons. The technical knowledge types usually play an instrument and can be seen staring at Clappo's fingerings on big screens at concerts. I think its all about the "feel" a piece of music gives you. My recommended jazz "starter" would be Cannonball Adderley's version of "Autumn Leaves" great song, gorgeous melody, total feel and norrabad trumpeter to help along Cannonball's sax playing. It's all about ideas and opinions in the end though innit?

try Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, or his breathtaking solo on the out-take of Flamenco Sketches.

"These jazz artists must have farted out four or five albums a year. And they must be of debatable quality. "

which seem to conceal (or not conceal) quite unpleasant disrespect and aggression. Lets not forget that jazzmen until the fifties were predominatntly black and until the sixties lived in a segragated apparthied america. In the south african americans were imprisoned and hung, in the north they blost their liscences for the slightest offence.

To speak of such artists as having "farted out" their work kind of sickens me. Maybe that's why there has been such nettled feelings on this strand?

There's a great documentary on Beeb Listen Again at the mo with lengthy interviews with Jelly Roll Morton - they can hardly play any of the vocal ones as the lyrics are so filthy!

Do you want this web site to be one big circle-jerk? Does the world need another article titled "The Beatles. They're The Best"? Followed by fifteen replies of people agreeing while the dissenters sit on their hands and let it go without comment.

I would happily read someone tear apart my favourite band*. I don't need someone to tell me what I already know and agree with. I want someone I can argue with over their strongly held opinions. We need people to say something shocking, unusual, off the beaten track and challenging. We need someone brave enough to stand up and post the words "Jazz Is Crap. Discuss" anonymously on an obscure web site.

On the issue of, do I like jazz? I'm trying to, but I'm struggling. I know I should like it, and I've found four albums I can enjoy or appreciate, but I've hit a wall. I just find everything else to be boring. And I was shocked at how cynically put together that "Miles Ahead" album was. It was like an epiphany that made me realise that a lot of jazz (critically acclaimed, highly regarded jazz) probably just isn't all its cracked up to be. And that is an opinion, not a statement of fact that I expect everyone to agree with.

This is the documentary I watched http://www.amazon.co.uk/Miles-Davis-Story/dp/B000079DFJ/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UT....

* Pink Floyd, so tell why I'm a fool for liking them. Go on, you know you want to.