Rants: The State of Jazz

Here's a rant about anything and everything.

First of all, this McDonalds ad:



"Now we don't have to listen to jazz anymore!"

Not only is that insulting, but it shows just what kind of a state jazz is in the public mind. I once heard bassist Moppa Elliot talking about what he calls the "Starbucks Effect", which is that when people hear Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, those cats, the first thing that comes to mind is "Oh, that's great background music!" I'd love starbucks to sell A Love Supreme, and people thinking "Hey he's great!" will buy it and say, " WHAT IS THIS???!!!!"

Kenny Werner talked about it in his book Effortless Mastery (which is an amazing book). He said that at the beach, birds may be squeaking all out of key, and dogs barking out of time along side, and the waves behind this all, and people would say, "Hey! That's beautiful!". Yet when people do the same thing with instruments they call it garbage, because their brain is telling them, "This is supposed to be music!"

And in the midst of all this, good 'ol Alan Kurtz over at jazz.com is talking about whether jazz is more popular then democracy! (read the post here, http://jazz.com/jazz-blog/2008/9/24/is-jazz-more-popular-than-democracy , then comment away!)

Of course, Kurtz bases his results on Amazon.com "communities". I didn't even know such a thing existed. Tomorrow I begin my study on "Is jazz more popular than hip-hop with today's teens?" which will be based on the possible mail-in opinions of McDonalds Mailing List receivers.

My point exactly.

Just a little note, coming up on September 30th at 6:00 AM exactly, our first issue of Everything jazz will be up!

Also, I will get to make a compilation with ARR-ELL records for sale on AmieStreet.com so I'll post and review when it's up!

Stay tuned for randomness!