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Originally Posted by tru blu  Geez, I guess I missed the fireworks. I tend not to get worked up when folks who admittedly don't know much about jazz say odd things about it. Can't remember if it was Louis Armstrong or Sidney Bechet who said, "You gotta be in the sun to feel the sun," but that's kinda how I come at it. Jazz ropes in people all the time who were indifferent to it at first—lots of them.
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Yes, you did miss the fireworks. But I'll give you a recap that is probably going to ruffle a few feathers. I really don't care anymore. It takes all kinds and people come to music from all walks of life. I get that. I also get that there are people who don't much care for jazz. Nothing new there just like there are people who don't much care for other genres of music. It is also no shock to me that jazz is not particularly popular on Head-Fi, as the endless stream of Pink Floyd, Radiohead, etc. etc. threads and polls illustrate. I am fine with that too. If people want to talk about Pink Floyd then they should be allowed to do so in peace without thread crappers disrupting the topic. I vaguely recall there being a rule on this forum about that. Not that it really means much since thread crapping is practically an institution on this board.
But my real issue is that as a contributing member here at Head-Fi I take exception to the fact that it is the non jazz fan that is deciding for everyone else what kind of jazz discussions we can have on this forum. They do this by constantly invading jazz topics with their endless prattle about how unpopluar jazz is or how they can't really get into the music. If they really wanted to talk about jazz in general and explore the reasons why the music doesn't reach them then their interests would be better served by starting their own thread. Instead, they prefer to crap on threads that are largely intended to appeal to serious listeners. And when they are kindly asked to start a new thread and it is politely explained to them why, as I did earlier, people just blow you off and continue to derail what was once a promising topic. So, with very few exceptions most jazz threads end up being about jazz for beginners and people who really don't like jazz. I absolutely think that these folks need a venue to discuss their curiosity about and blossoming interest in jazz. Ironically, it is these same people who are undermining any meaningful discussion about the music because they invariably make every jazz thread about
themselves and
their casual or passing interest in jazz. They cannot seem to find some basic civility within them to allow those who care deeply about this music to engage in some stimulating discussion. I don't require deep and meaningful conversation all the time, but when I can't find any at all then that is a signal to me that the kind of discussion that I want is not really welcome on this forum. Borrowing a line from the movie
Blind Date, real jazz fans more often than not only get bullsh*t menu French here.
Frankly, if the people who are constantly sending jazz topics off into the weeds spent more time reading these threads and less time posting in them, they might actually learn something about the music from the people who have a passion for it. Who knows, they might even get to the point where they can make some relevant and interesting contributions, ask good, intelligent questions, or even share their own insights about new music they are into. But perhaps that is simply too much to hope for.
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| Anyway, I'm currently getting waayyyy into the new solo piano disc by French-Algerian pianist Martial Solal, Live at the Village Vanguard: I Can't Give You Anything But Love. The guy's amazing…no one deconstructs a melody while keeping you in the loop quite the way Solal does...'cept maybe Sonny Rollins. If you've ever seen the French film Breathless, the one directed by Jean-Luc Godard, you've heard Solal before; he did the score. |
That's awesome. I have several new Tim Berne CDs that I mentioned earlier but deleted that post after it became obvious to me where this thread was headed. A couple of weeks ago I thought about starting my own topic about Tim Berne's music but could not persuade myself that the couple of hours it would take to write it up was a worthwhile use of my time.
--Jerome
