[GearMe]

Bye Bye Blackbird.

Always love your music posts, @GearMe I did listen to all of your cuts above. It was cool, loved it, but. . . bye bye blackbird.

From the cuts you posted, I really truly like them all, but this Zac Brown guy needs to calm the hell down. I really wasn't too fond of the Crosby, Stills and Nash version. The guitar got in the way for me, it was technically really mediocre, and they were running the guitar through some kind of garbage flanger or something, which cut against the song feeling, and I didn't see the points to the high notes in the singing. Of course Casandra Wilson is great, but I don't think she got the most out of the song. I thought it was on the weaker side of her performances. I have one Sheffield Labs direct to disk LP, the Dave Grusin one, and as far as the one you posted, I felt the same way about the Dave Grusin one--yeah, it was well recorded, and, as you say, it was well recorded, and the less said after that the better. As far as the Al Dimeola, yes, he's among the greats, but that fell a little flat for me and his take on it wasn't anything special to me.

So my favorite was. . . the mindless synth noodling! This will show a huge blind spot in my musical tastes, but I know nothing about Rick Wakeman, but will google him right after this. To me he got the best emotion out of the song, transformed it harmonically, I believe he ended in a minor key, didn't try to do too much with it but still took us to a lot of new places, and just a really nice feeling. Wasn't showing off what he could do with his instrument, was focused on the song. Nice intro, that was a nice touch, starts out pretty, takes you to a dark place, and then into the joy of the tune. Really nice motion in the bass lines. Nice use of space and silence here and there. Very musical grace notes and tremelo. Extraordinary use of rubato. So that was my favorite by far. And for the phrase blackbird fly at the end he takes that to a creatively different place, I picture the blackbird jumping out of the nest and falling and flying up a little and falling and flying up a little and falling and then getting his bearings and flying off serenely into the night's darkness in the end. But maybe that's just me. To me he really did the most with the song in terms of taste and originality and emotion and in a short amount of time too. To me it really is great. I just googled him real quick and I see he was a member of @bigshot's nemesis Yes so I am in trouble now!

Anyway, bye bye blackbird. I found this cut in an LP in the cut out bin (corner of cardboard cut off) in a department store and fell in love with it right away. Two buck or 99 cents, I forget. The LP jacket was a really tacky flimsy gold color and the vinyl was really thin. I got some really good Charlie Parker in the cut out bins as well. Anyway, at the time I thought it was a throw-away song and track that I happened to fall in love with right away. It was the first time I had heard the song. But decades hence here is the track with much better mastering on Youtube:



And Dextor Gordon would always say you should know the words to the song you are playing (and I think by extension listening to) so this helps:



It can also help to follow along with the written music:



And in my mind if he played it and you haven't heard a Red Garland rendition of a song you haven't heard the song (just by listening he's obviously on the Miles Davis cut above too):



And for a much more modern take, with modern influences in the singing and extended scat singing:



And the one I think may appeal the most to the younger or more modern listeners or those not steeped in jazz, this has more modern influences and is a little more out there:

HA! yeah the Wakeman part of the post was purposeful. And...Yes (pun intended), I suspect yur in a heap-a truble

You're right about that version by CSN...think the studio version is better; will have to find it and give it a listen

That's Zac Brown...you either love 'em or hate em'

Bye Bye Blackbird...hilarious, I seriously thought about including this version of Davis/Coltrane's Bye Bye Blackbird at the end of my post as a jumping point for the discussion (also because it popped up in my Blackbird searches repeatedly)



and I like it a tad better! Decided against it, though, to keep the focus squarely on that brilliant, McCartney (Lennon?) musical standard.

Have always loved red Garland's version of Bye Bye Blackbird!

A couple other 'interesting' versions of BBB...

Sonny Stitt's version swings



Toots Thielman's is definitely a different take...



Bobby Enriquez's rather tame on this song....compared to some of his other songs.





To keep the Synth Noodle train on the tracks...here's some ELP
Wait for it.....Noodle Time!!! (3:05)

 

[bigshot]

That Gangster of Love performance is incredible! Is that whole concert available on DVD? I'd buy that in a heartbeat. His stage presence is so old school... the jokes and long storytelling intros. That was common in both R&B and country music back in the 50s. They could play incredibly well AND do comedy. I saw Little Jimmy Dickens once and he did a whole bit very similar to this where he put on a trench coat and acted like a gangster. I have a feeling that there were bits that performers did back then that only old folks remember now.

I saw Dickens do this song very much like in this clip. It's not the sort of thing that appeals to modern cynical audiences, but when he did this live, the genuineness of his delivery had the whole audience transfixed.

 

[Steve999]

@GearMe , I like your Miles Davis version of Bye Bye Blackbird better as well.

I see we're moving on to the down and out, the broken, the pained, the troubled souls. . .

@bigshot, your post brought back a strong memory and speaking of storytelling. . .

I really do love this.




Edit: Wait! I forgot the synth noodling!

 

[bigshot]

Haha! When I was in college, one of my professors had a video synthesizer with a patch bay like that. It messed up video real good.

King of the Road is one of the greatest beat poems I've ever heard.

 

[Steve999]

I am going to stretch out with some of my favorite out there music. . . almost too far out there. . almost. I am intentionally am trying to keep it a little bit accessible. I am trying to stretch you out, @castleofargh , like a Gumby doll made of Silly Putty. You might not be absolutely sure what the melody is or what the chord changes are. Because sometimes there are none.

I'm hoping to post some stuff even @GearMe may not have heard!

I have always enjoyed John Coltrane's "First Meditations" LP a great deal more than the much more famous "Meditations" recording. Have some compassion.



For those of you who have not been to Times Square (the electric bass groove should keep you locked in anyway).



Or if you want to wander out a little further, you can take a trip on the moonship journey with the man from Saturn. Lots of synth noodling for @bigshot !



And if you doubt the man from Saturn, remember, this is the same dude who's gonna unmask the Batman!!



For something more down to earth, we have an excursion on a wobbly trail.

 

[castleofargh]

I can only say with confidence that I don't enjoy any of that. but my personal taste doesn't define what is good music or not, only what I enjoy or not.

at large I agree with you. this for example:

To me you take what you know and you figure out why you like it or you don't. You don't apply criteria and then select what you like or don't like based on that.

it really works for me, and the following too. what you know about an instrument, how to play it, some context about when the piece was made... I'm really not contesting that we can learn all that and have a deeper analysis and appreciation of the work. my trouble from the start has been when reading posts that seemed to point toward what is good and what isn't, instead of what they like/dislike and why.
it's just the art version of why I don't like someone saying "that device has high fidelity" when all he knows about the device is the subjective impression he got while listening to it. objective reality is not defined by subjective impressions. personal opinions don't define good music for the rest of the world.
that's really all I was trying to say. I asked for criteria because if we at least had a few, we could then apply judgment in that specific context and show which song does it well or not at all. I thought maybe you guys had such criteria you all agreed on and I just wasn't informed about it. as I never really cared much about anything outside of how art makes me feel personally, it wouldn't have been that strange.
and I'm not trying to steer the boat toward my criteria. we could define good music by how much an album sold, this would be really unfair as advertising has the most influence, but so long as everybody reading was clearly told about the judging criteria used, it's all good for me.
or we could go and decide that this topic is a topic where good music is music bigshot appreciates. I have no issue with that so long as it's not mistaken for a universal statement on good music in general.

does that explain my position and insecurity about the all topic better(moderation whining aside)?

 

[bigshot]

I can only say with confidence that I don't enjoy any of that.

That is fine, but if you don't tell us why it's just an anecdotal subjective impression that means nothing to anyone but you. In sound science we challenge subjective impressions by putting them to tests and challenging our hypothesis. In discussion of aesthetics, opinions are also sharpened on the whetstone of challenge. If you told us *why* you didn't enjoy that, either you could point out to us an egregious flaw that we didn't notice, or we could point out to you some valuable aspect of the music you were missing. Either way, we'd be learning something. But no one learns anything from just expressing subjective impressions.

All over the internet there are forums for music discussion where there's absolutely no discussion of music at all. People express generalized fan appreciation (It's great! Really great!) or they talk about where they bought the album and how much they paid for it and how long it took for it to be shipped, and whether it was damaged in shipping... everything *except* the qualities of the music itself. That is exactly the same as someone saying their new Black Magic Zombie Voodoo interconnect is "great! just great!" and that they bought it from a well known high end audio dealer for a great deal of money, and the veil has been lifted.... but never mentioning anything about the cable itself or its functionality.

Living a rational life involves more than just science. Rational thinking and logic can be applied to aesthetic subjects as well. But you can't have rational discussion without challenge and debate. That debate should be civil and respectful of the people doing the talking, but the subject being discussed has to be able to be put to the test. We don't pull punches when someone comes in here saying that their $500 interconnect sounds much better to them subjectively than a Monoprice wire. That surprises a lot of newbies to this forum. The rest of Head-Fi explicitly forbids challenge and testing as a requirement. The rule is that you have to let people have their subjective impression, even if it's wrong and they just haven't stopped to think about it. You are supposed to just nod and smile and pet them on the head. When I created this thread, my intention was to create somewhere that music could be discussed with the same sort of rational discourse that we discuss science. I think there's a place for that. My idea was to create a thread where people can state a theory about a certain kind of music, define why they think it fits that theory and provide examples from youtube to back it up. Then everyone can respond to that with challenges and counter examples to refine the theory and perhaps learn something about the music beyond just "like" and "don't care for". If changing the thread title to make it a little clearer would help, I'd be happy to do that.

 

[Steve999]

@castleofargh ,I think what you're getting at is really a set of complex subject matter. I honestly would not expect most people to like the music I posted above. That is based on my experience. But I do like it, and I'm like, so that's the way things are, I don't quite relate to it, but that's the way most people would react, and it's not irrational. And if someone tells me hey, that's bad music, I'm confident enough to untangle my way through their opinion earnestly, on my own, with my own tools. It's a nice place to be. Except I do not see how you can not like "Unmask the Batman." That I don't get. But I won't dwell on it.

The way I am describing to you is how I got into jazz. I listened to the music on the radio or bought an LP and I said, man I like those drums, I like those horns, and I love it when they break into that kind of beat, what is that, why is that bass moving around like that. What is that Johnny Guitar Watson up to, how do you sound like that. I had my step-father's guitar in the house and imitated what I heard, commercials, music, whatever. And then I found jazz and it was more and better. And it probably didn't hurt that I minored in music in college and played guitar in the jazz band really badly and took classical guitar lessons in college and was exposed to education of fist-class classical musicians during college and watched my kids learn some instruments other than keyboards and strings (where I generally get what everybody is doing). As part of the rhythm section in my college jazz band, in that role, you have a lot of control of the feel of the music, and sometimes I would try to get a Funkadelic or early Kool & the Gang or Isley Brothers or Rufus & Chaka Khan thing going on, and they'd say, Steve, that doesn't work, it doesn't match what the pianist is doing, and I'd be like, why not go this way, an they'd be like, that's not what we're doing, and I'd say okay. But those were my influences so that's where I wanted to go sometimes. I got the feeling a lot of kids learned jazz by having someone say to them, son, this is what jazz is, here, do this. And I have heard some classical musicians try to play jazz and some jazz musicians try to play classical and sometimes I just want to put my head in my hands and say stop, please, just stop. But how do you explain to these guys what they are doing wrong? They are really good musicians! And I did read an interview with a jazz guitarist where he said he sat down and tried to play some of the better rock guitar and expected to just pick it up and was floored that the best in that genre is at a pretty high skill level and not easy to pick up as a jazz musician. For a rock musician a lot more is already in his lexicon, so to speak, for picking up other rock music almost reflexively.

So here is an unexpected place where I bought an LP and heard a song as a kid and I said man, what is that, I want to do that, and it helped me see what I was getting into was some of the jazz language (for those who want to cheat go to about 4:42):



Totally blew me away. So you have here some pretty tight jazz swing and the Wes Montgomery style of playing in octaves (solos with notes an octave apart on the guitar) and some sweet jazz chords and good jazz bass execution. So I listened out for that type of thing, and there he was, Wes Montgomery!





And indeed West Montgomery was a blue-collar work who practiced guitar in the very early hours of the morning and died of a heart attack in 1968 probably from cigarettes and just plain pushing himself too much. So I would guess the BTO allusion to Wes Mongtomery's style and the lyrics were probably not a coincidence at all.

Fun fact for @bigshot : Both Johnny Guitar Watson and Wes Montgomery used their thumb and fingers rather than a flatpick! Wes Montgomery said he used his thumb so he wouldn't bother the neighbors in the early hours. It's so cool to see these guys on Youtube! I am too young to have gotten to see Wes Montgomery live.

I can only say with confidence that I don't enjoy any of that. but my personal taste doesn't define what is good music or not, only what I enjoy or not.

at large I agree with you. this for example:
it really works for me, and the following too. what you know about an instrument, how to play it, some context about when the piece was made... I'm really not contesting that we can learn all that and have a deeper analysis and appreciation of the work. my trouble from the start has been when reading posts that seemed to point toward what is good and what isn't, instead of what they like/dislike and why.
it's just the art version of why I don't like someone saying "that device has high fidelity" when all he knows about the device is the subjective impression he got while listening to it. objective reality is not defined by subjective impressions. personal opinions don't define good music for the rest of the world.
that's really all I was trying to say. I asked for criteria because if we at least had a few, we could then apply judgment in that specific context and show which song does it well or not at all. I thought maybe you guys had such criteria you all agreed on and I just wasn't informed about it. as I never really cared much about anything outside of how art makes me feel personally, it wouldn't have been that strange.
and I'm not trying to steer the boat toward my criteria. we could define good music by how much an album sold, this would be really unfair as advertising has the most influence, but so long as everybody reading was clearly told about the judging criteria used, it's all good for me.
or we could go and decide that this topic is a topic where good music is music bigshot appreciates. I have no issue with that so long as it's not mistaken for a universal statement on good music in general.

does that explain my position and insecurity about the all topic better(moderation whining aside)?

 

[bigshot]

Steve99, I find it strange that you put Coltrane and Sun Ra in the same post, because I find them to be polar opposites. Coltrane is structurally complex- so complex listening to his music sometimes seems like working out a math problem. It hurts after a while and I have to take a rest. Sun Ra is structureless and meandering, but at its best it can be goofy and fun. It probably goes counter to the strengths of each one of them, but I tend to like the Coltrane where I can follow the morphing easier, and I tend to like the Sun Ra that has a little more rhythmic structure and not so much randomness.

I work in entertainment, so my brain is wired to think in terms of concise and appealing expressions more than rambling and free form ones. These two musicians' work falls into the category of stuff I respect and can see the value in, but I have trouble going there for long stretches because it wears me out and my brain shuts down. Does that make sense? I know more about Coltrane than Sun Ra. I love the best of his 50s albums, but the stuff towards the end and the later Alice Coltrane stuff leaves me flat. Do you have a suggestion for a Sun Ra album that is fun and imaginative but still a bit structured?

I have a theory about Modern Jazz. It's kind of complicated and requires a lot of examples, but I'll just state it here in a nutshell and I'll go deeper if you're interested...

In the early days of jazz, it was something new evolving out of the blues. It was about pleasing an audience with fun music and blindingly skillful performance by small groups led by a dynamic personality... think Armstrong and Muskrat Ramble. As it evolved into big band, it got more elaborate with full band arrangements, but the goal was still to create fun music with spaces for soloists to blow their brains out. As jazz became more respected, it attracted serious study, and at first the critics of jazz were a serious lot. They didn't care for Dizzy's mugging and they didn't want the "hi de ho" of the "fig music". The musicians wanted the respect of the critics, so they catered to this. No more vibrato or swinging. That's lilly gilding and pandering to the audience. Just straightforward notes arranged in tight rhythm- preferably in unconventional time signatures and what the figs called "Chinese chords". This gave the critics something to grab onto and analyze, but it left a lot of the audience for jazz cold.

There was a backlash to this in the jump blues genre- performers like Louis Jordan who went straight for the roots of what jazz started out to be. He doubled down on the fun aspect with goofy costumes and comedy patter songs, and he had incredibly great sax solos and singable lyrics. Once you hear "Five Guys Named Moe" you want to try singing it yourself. Audiences tended to gravitate away from jazz because it wasn't swinging any more. They gravitated towards more "lowbrow" genres like jump blues... and jazz and blues influenced western swing and pop vocals like Sinatra. When the screaming saxophones and blues bass lines of jump blues hit the electric guitar of western swing and got a lead singer with the dynamic personality of the pop vocal genre, it fused into rock n' roll and you ended up with Fats Domino, Bill Haley and Elvis. Rock n Roll embodied everything that made jazz successful... it entertained the audience, it had personality, and it gave openings for showoff solos- just on the electric guitar now, not on brass instruments.

Rock n Roll hit like a steamroller and it blew modern jazz out of the water. Jazz slid from being the music of America and the whole world to being a niche genre. As it descended into free jazz, it was headed into oblivion. So it did what it had to do... it co-opted rock n roll with fusion. But fusion tried to preserve the bopper aesthetic of complexity and the structurelessness of free jazz and just incorporate electric instruments. That is the noodling that I think is totally wrong headed. It didn't work for fusion either, because the world moved on beyond fusion by incorporating the best aspects of jazz and rock and roll... fun for the audience, blinding skill and personality... and rolled it into soul music. They even kept the name the jump blues guys used for their music... R&B. Meanwhile certain factions within rock didn't have any interest in the blues or being structured and entertaining. They grabbed onto the worst aspects of modern jazz and fusion and free jazz and incorporated it into rock music. That's what spawned Emerson Lake and Palmer and evolved into the excesses of LP side long drum solos, guitar and piano playing that sounded more like finger exercises, and completely structureless compositions that morphed from one scrap of an idea to another with no overall point. Voialla! Art rock. That's what you get when you remove the blues, disregard entertainment value or charisma, and focus on ornamentation over structure. Thankfully hard rock and heavy metal and even punk refused to jettison the blues, but those genres don't seem to aspire to move on to anything new. They just blend with each other to different degrees and stay in place.

The blues is the basis of all of the great American music of the 20th century. And the progression from jazz and country to jump blues and rock n roll and ultimately soul is a natural progression preserving the basic core of what makes American music unique. The music that turned its back on the blues... modern jazz, free jazz, fusion, art rock, electronica, etc... are the cut de sacs that didn't lead to anything else. They're all still there, but they haven't evolved much.

What do you think of that, Steve99? Sorry if it's too much to bite off all at once!

Both Johnny Guitar Watson and Wes Montgomery used their thumb and fingers rather than a flatpick!

I've never taken to a pick myself. But I'm lousy. I just play cowboy chords. I have a friend who plays classical guitar with just his fingers (he doesn't grow out his nails). I think that touch is really nice.

 

[Steve999]

Well, just to start with the easy part, standard-issue early Coltrane is Giant Steps, My Favorite Things, SoulTrane, and Blue Train, but to me those are so much in the vernacular for current orthodoxy in jazz that there's not much of anything new for anyone in this day and age. Lots of astounding playing, yes, but for me it is what has now become fossilized jazz orthodoxy.

Actually, as I think of it a really nice in-between might be the two-LP set (I don't know how many CDs) Afro-Blue Impressions. That might be just about perfect. Wynton Kelly is completely astounding on that album too. It is just out on the edge enough that the academics and critics cannot fossilize it or replicate it.

Here's a live video cut from the period of the recording:




Sun Ra is tougher. He was difficult in many ways. Anyway, this is my favorite Sun Ra by far. If you can sit for solo piano I think this is a nice clue as to the serious part of his mind. No too surprisingly, it seems to be an unusual mind. I don't know how the heck anyone got him to be serious for 38 minutes but there it is. It's hard to pick off the CD... I originally digitized my LP and finally got a CD from Japan on Amazon. I don't know how this doesn't make it into the category of jazz masterpieces but that's just me. You might not like it and certainly @castleofargh would be listening to any of this at his own peril.

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-Solo-Piano-Volume-1/release/2102144

https://www.amazon.com/Solo-Piano-1...iano&dpID=21FMCMMT1XL&preST=_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

You can pick off all of the tracks on YouTube. Here is one:

Steve99, I find it strange that you put Coltrane and Sun Ra in the same post, because I find them to be polar opposites. Coltrane is structurally complex- so complex listening to his music sometimes seems like working out a math problem. It hurts after a while and I have to take a rest. Sun Ra is structureless and meandering, but at its best it can be goofy and fun. It probably goes counter to the strengths of each one of them, but I tend to like the Coltrane where I can follow the morphing easier, and I tend to like the Sun Ra that has a little more rhythmic structure and not so much randomness.

I work in entertainment, so my brain is wired to think in terms of concise and appealing expressions more than rambling and free form ones. These two musicians' work falls into the category of stuff I respect and can see the value in, but I have trouble going there for long stretches because it wears me out and my brain shuts down. Does that make sense? I know more about Coltrane than Sun Ra. I love the best of his 50s albums, but the stuff towards the end and the later Alice Coltrane stuff leaves me flat. Do you have a suggestion for a Sun Ra album that is fun and imaginative but still a bit structured?

I have a theory about Modern Jazz. It's kind of complicated and requires a lot of examples, but I'll just state it here in a nutshell and I'll go deeper if you're interested...

In the early days of jazz, it was something new evolving out of the blues. It was about pleasing an audience with fun music and blindingly skillful performance by small groups led by a dynamic personality... think Armstrong and Muskrat Ramble. As it evolved into big band, it got more elaborate with full band arrangements, but the goal was still to create fun music with spaces for soloists to blow their brains out. As jazz became more respected, it attracted serious study, and at first the critics of jazz were a serious lot. They didn't care for Dizzy's mugging and they didn't want the "hi de ho" of the "fig music". The musicians wanted the respect of the critics, so they catered to this. No more vibrato or swinging. That's lilly gilding and pandering to the audience. Just straightforward notes arranged in tight rhythm- preferably in unconventional time signatures and what the figs called "Chinese chords". This gave the critics something to grab onto and analyze, but it left a lot of the audience for jazz cold.

There was a backlash to this in the jump blues genre- performers like Louis Jordan who went straight for the roots of what jazz started out to be. He doubled down on the fun aspect with goofy costumes and comedy patter songs, and he had incredibly great sax solos and singable lyrics. Once you hear "Five Guys Named Moe" you want to try singing it yourself. Audiences tended to gravitate away from jazz because it wasn't swinging any more. They gravitated towards more "lowbrow" genres like jump blues... and jazz and blues influenced western swing and pop vocals like Sinatra. When the screaming saxophones and blues bass lines of jump blues hit the electric guitar of western swing and got a lead singer with the dynamic personality of the pop vocal genre, it fused into rock n' roll and you ended up with Fats Domino, Bill Haley and Elvis. Rock n Roll embodied everything that made jazz successful... it entertained the audience, it had personality, and it gave openings for showoff solos- just on the electric guitar now, not on brass instruments.

Rock n Roll hit like a steamroller and it blew modern jazz out of the water. Jazz slid from being the music of America and the whole world to being a niche genre. As it descended into free jazz, it was headed into oblivion. So it did what it had to do... it co-opted rock n roll with fusion. But fusion tried to preserve the bopper aesthetic of complexity and the structurelessness of free jazz and just incorporate electric instruments. That is the noodling that I think is totally wrong headed. It didn't work for fusion either, because the world moved on beyond fusion by incorporating the best aspects of jazz and rock and roll... fun for the audience, blinding skill and personality... and rolled it into soul music. They even kept the name the jump blues guys used for their music... R&B. Meanwhile certain factions within rock didn't have any interest in the blues or being structured and entertaining. They grabbed onto the worst aspects of modern jazz and fusion and free jazz and incorporated it into rock music. That's what spawned Emerson Lake and Palmer and evolved into the excesses of LP side long drum solos, guitar and piano playing that sounded more like finger exercises, and completely structureless compositions that morphed from one scrap of an idea to another with no overall point. Voialla! Art rock. That's what you get when you remove the blues, disregard entertainment value or charisma, and focus on ornamentation over structure. Thankfully hard rock and heavy metal and even punk refused to jettison the blues, but those genres don't seem to aspire to move on to anything new. They just blend with each other to different degrees and stay in place.

The blues is the basis of all of the great American music of the 20th century. And the progression from jazz and country to jump blues and rock n roll and ultimately soul is a natural progression preserving the basic core of what makes American music unique. The music that turned its back on the blues... modern jazz, free jazz, fusion, art rock, electronica, etc... are the cut de sacs that didn't lead to anything else. They're all still there, but they haven't evolved much.

What do you think of that, Steve99? Sorry if it's too much to bite off all at once!



I've never taken to a pick myself. But I'm lousy. I just play cowboy chords. I have a friend who plays classical guitar with just his fingers (he doesn't grow out his nails). I think that touch is really nice.

 

[castleofargh]

Except I do not see how you can not like "Unmask the Batman." That I don't get. But I won't dwell on it.

your honor, I demand that this case be dismissed. the accusation tempered with the evidence after I had replied and added that video!

I don't get most jazz stuff. the moment I feel like they're somehow jazz shredding(that's what it feels to me), I'm out. I have some affinity with a few bands, but only because they're really not that jazzy, and those who are, I usually like only their work in other genres. the side of jazz where one guy goes "catch me if you can", and the rest tries to keep up and pretend like it was all rehearsed, I will usually not listen to that. I can't really argue that I need euphony and stable melody, because there is just too many songs I like that really don't conform to such basic rules. I also can't argue that I don't like feeling attacked by the music, because yet again, I have too many songs doing just that in my library. I can only end up saying that I like or don't like stuff and that liking or not liking seems to be the consequence as much as the cause somehow. I can't think of clear factor or combination of factors. oh yeah I got one, I'm in general not a fan of wind instruments, I find them painful. I guess that's a pretty strong hit against jazz right there. I had never really thought about that.
of course even with jazz I have a few exception to confirm the rule. mostly because of family propaganda playing random guys like Chick Corea or Al Jarreau while having breakfast. those are KGB methods to turn an agent. making me have a great time while playing those musics, and playing them over and over until I'm brainwashed into a sleeper agent. I can't forgive such vicious education so obsessed with making me enjoy stuff.

That is fine, but if you don't tell us why it's just an anecdotal subjective impression that means nothing to anyone but you. In sound science we challenge subjective impressions by putting them to tests and challenging our hypothesis. In discussion of aesthetics, opinions are also sharpened on the whetstone of challenge. If you told us *why* you didn't enjoy that, either you could point out to us an egregious flaw that we didn't notice, or we could point out to you some valuable aspect of the music you were missing. Either way, we'd be learning something. But no one learns anything from just expressing subjective impressions.

All over the internet there are forums for music discussion where there's absolutely no discussion of music at all. People express generalized fan appreciation (It's great! Really great!) or they talk about where they bought the album and how much they paid for it and how long it took for it to be shipped, and whether it was damaged in shipping... everything *except* the qualities of the music itself. That is exactly the same as someone saying their new Black Magic Zombie Voodoo interconnect is "great! just great!" and that they bought it from a well known high end audio dealer for a great deal of money, and the veil has been lifted.... but never mentioning anything about the cable itself or its functionality.

Living a rational life involves more than just science. Rational thinking and logic can be applied to aesthetic subjects as well. But you can't have rational discussion without challenge and debate. That debate should be civil and respectful of the people doing the talking, but the subject being discussed has to be able to be put to the test. We don't pull punches when someone comes in here saying that their $500 interconnect sounds much better to them subjectively than a Monoprice wire. That surprises a lot of newbies to this forum. The rest of Head-Fi explicitly forbids challenge and testing as a requirement. The rule is that you have to let people have their subjective impression, even if it's wrong and they just haven't stopped to think about it. You are supposed to just nod and smile and pet them on the head. When I created this thread, my intention was to create somewhere that music could be discussed with the same sort of rational discourse that we discuss science. I think there's a place for that. My idea was to create a thread where people can state a theory about a certain kind of music, define why they think it fits that theory and provide examples from youtube to back it up. Then everyone can respond to that with challenges and counter examples to refine the theory and perhaps learn something about the music beyond just "like" and "don't care for". If changing the thread title to make it a little clearer would help, I'd be happy to do that.

I agree and that's why I don't really share my preferences or try to argue them rationally(not just here, in general). because I don't have such a thing as a rational argumentation. I like what I like and most of the time I don't have a clue why. I press play, close my eyes(else I have the attention span of a puppy), and I'm gone. no thinking, no analyzing, sometimes I move like a demented person and air guitar like I'm in the band. all I can tell in the end is that I enjoyed it(or didn't, but no air guitar if I didn't^_^).
but about rational and this section, yes and because I agree I tried to ask for criteria, otherwise how can it not be entirely subjective? I'm not saying you must tie yourself up with 2 ultra specific notions like BPM and how far the melody is from a polka. and then have to stick to those 2 parameters for all songs. that clearly would be silly and unhelpful. but if you guys happen to have reasons why you like or admire a song, reasons beyond my lazy "/me likes", you should provide them clearly so people can consider those variables while listening to the song and think about (yes maybe even me). all so that we don't get the feeling that it is indeed just another of those topics where 2 or 3 people force their preferences onto others and nobody else dares to post because they like another genre for other reasons.

 

[Steve999]

@castleofargh, here’s a suggestion. Put up three songs you like in at least a semi-serious way or that really make you feel good (hopefully both). Believe me, my musical taste ranges far and wide, and I think my tastes still have some plasticity, with obviously a couple of blind spots. I will listen to them carefully. I’ll tell you what I like about it musically, with brevity, and not with flowery emotions, as a piece of music. Doesn’t matter what it is. If I can pull some common threads out I’ll do that. If I can take this thread in that direction I will do that and you can see what you think.

If @bigshot has anything negative to say I will post the 5 worst synth noodling songs I can find over the course of searching for a period of 20 minutes. They will be inserted Individually, strategically and abruptly at critical points in the discussion. Retribution will be swift and devastating.

your honor, I demand that this case be dismissed. the accusation tempered with the evidence after I had replied and added that video!

I don't get most jazz stuff. the moment I feel like they're somehow jazz shredding(that's what it feels to me), I'm out. I have some affinity with a few bands, but only because they're really not that jazzy, and those who are, I usually like only their work in other genres. the side of jazz where one guy goes "catch me if you can", and the rest tries to keep up and pretend like it was all rehearsed, I will usually not listen to that. I can't really argue that I need euphony and stable melody, because there is just too many songs I like that really don't conform to such basic rules. I also can't argue that I don't like feeling attacked by the music, because yet again, I have too many songs doing just that in my library. I can only end up saying that I like or don't like stuff and that liking or not liking seems to be the consequence as much as the cause somehow. I can't think of clear factor or combination of factors. oh yeah I got one, I'm in general not a fan of wind instruments, I find them painful. I guess that's a pretty strong hit against jazz right there. I had never really thought about that.
of course even with jazz I have a few exception to confirm the rule. mostly because of family propaganda playing random guys like Chick Corea or Al Jarreau while having breakfast. those are KGB methods to turn an agent. making me have a great time while playing those musics, and playing them over and over until I'm brainwashed into a sleeper agent. I can't forgive such vicious education so obsessed with making me enjoy stuff.


I agree and that's why I don't really share my preferences or try to argue them rationally(not just here, in general). because I don't have such a thing as a rational argumentation. I like what I like and most of the time I don't have a clue why. I press play, close my eyes(else I have the attention span of a puppy), and I'm gone. no thinking, no analyzing, sometimes I move like a demented person and air guitar like I'm in the band. all I can tell in the end is that I enjoyed it(or didn't, but no air guitar if I didn't^_^).
but about rational and this section, yes and because I agree I tried to ask for criteria, otherwise how can it not be entirely subjective? I'm not saying you must tie yourself up with 2 ultra specific notions like BPM and how far the melody is from a polka. and then have to stick to those 2 parameters for all songs. that clearly would be silly and unhelpful. but if you guys happen to have reasons why you like or admire a song, reasons beyond my lazy "/me likes", you should provide them clearly so people can consider those variables while listening to the song and think about (yes maybe even me). all so that we don't get the feeling that it is indeed just another of those topics where 2 or 3 people force their preferences onto others and nobody else dares to post because they like another genre for other reasons.

 

[Steve999]

Changing gears.

The most important part of this song and the true life lesson is the successful criminal defense of our protagonist.



Plus I have always loved the very odd phrasing of Willie Nelson's guitar. I find it endlessly entertaining.


This is the story of my life:



Plus the backup band is out of this world and this guy's voice is unbelievable. If I remember right this guy was actually severely injured defending his girlfriend from an attacker. He seems like an admirable and very talented guy from what little I know.


This song is so sadly prophetic I can't really make fun of it. One thing about country singers is that some of them are singing in character and the outcome is not good.



Again incredible vocals and a great backup band.


And this is a nice song, but this was the peak of Kris Kristofferson's singing voice which was a very, very low peak and it really really went downhill from there to the point where you were like, that's not a professional singer. I had a friend in college and I said I like this LP. And she said I am from the country and that guy is not from the country. She said I don't like it, it's an affect, he's not from the country. So I said you can tell that? And she said yeah, I can tell that. So I looked up his biography, summa cum laude in literature, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, yeah, not country. But he wrote some really good songs and the backup band was good, but honestly, to me, not great. They could play the song. Good for them.



And his voice. This was as good as it got and it only got worse. Don't listen to any other version of this song by him or you will get permanent psychological damage. He couldn't hold a single note, much less sing a song. This is really about the song and the fact that he wrote it.

 

[GearMe]

@castleofargh ,I think what you're getting at is really a set of complex subject matter. I honestly would not expect most people to like the music I posted above. That is based on my experience. But I do like it, and I'm like, so that's the way things are, I don't quite relate to it, but that's the way most people would react, and it's not irrational. And if someone tells me hey, that's bad music, I'm confident enough to untangle my way through their opinion earnestly, on my own, with my own tools. It's a nice place to be. Except I do not see how you can not like "Unmask the Batman." That I don't get. But I won't dwell on it.

The way I am describing to you is how I got into jazz. I listened to the music on the radio or bought an LP and I said, man I like those drums, I like those horns, and I love it when they break into that kind of beat, what is that, why is that bass moving around like that. What is that Johnny Guitar Watson up to, how do you sound like that. I had my step-father's guitar in the house and imitated what I heard, commercials, music, whatever. And then I found jazz and it was more and better. And it probably didn't hurt that I minored in music in college and played guitar in the jazz band really badly and took classical guitar lessons in college and was exposed to education of fist-class classical musicians during college and watched my kids learn some instruments other than keyboards and strings (where I generally get what everybody is doing). As part of the rhythm section in my college jazz band, in that role, you have a lot of control of the feel of the music, and sometimes I would try to get a Funkadelic or early Kool & the Gang or Isley Brothers or Rufus & Chaka Khan thing going on, and they'd say, Steve, that doesn't work, it doesn't match what the pianist is doing, and I'd be like, why not go this way, an they'd be like, that's not what we're doing, and I'd say okay. But those were my influences so that's where I wanted to go sometimes. I got the feeling a lot of kids learned jazz by having someone say to them, son, this is what jazz is, here, do this. And I have heard some classical musicians try to play jazz and some jazz musicians try to play classical and sometimes I just want to put my head in my hands and say stop, please, just stop. But how do you explain to these guys what they are doing wrong? They are really good musicians! And I did read an interview with a jazz guitarist where he said he sat down and tried to play some of the better rock guitar and expected to just pick it up and was floored that the best in that genre is at a pretty high skill level and not easy to pick up as a jazz musician. For a rock musician a lot more is already in his lexicon, so to speak, for picking up other rock music almost reflexively.

So here is an unexpected place where I bought an LP and heard a song as a kid and I said man, what is that, I want to do that, and it helped me see what I was getting into was some of the jazz language (for those who want to cheat go to about 4:42):



Totally blew me away. So you have here some pretty tight jazz swing and the Wes Montgomery style of playing in octaves (solos with notes an octave apart on the guitar) and some sweet jazz chords and good jazz bass execution. So I listened out for that type of thing, and there he was, Wes Montgomery!





And indeed West Montgomery was a blue-collar work who practiced guitar in the very early hours of the morning and died of a heart attack in 1968 probably from cigarettes and just plain pushing himself too much. So I would guess the BTO allusion to Wes Mongtomery's style and the lyrics were probably not a coincidence at all.

Fun fact for @bigshot : Both Johnny Guitar Watson and Wes Montgomery used their thumb and fingers rather than a flatpick! Wes Montgomery said he used his thumb so he wouldn't bother the neighbors in the early hours. It's so cool to see these guys on Youtube! I am too young to have gotten to see Wes Montgomery live.

I love BTO's Blue Collar...wore that song out when I was a kid. There were several jazz influenced songs like this for me when I was growing up

Like...


Always loved Burton Cummings vocal abilities...



Looking glass...



Not really an ARS fan but played this song a lot as well



Bobby Hebb..



Brian Auger's Oblivion Express...was a cool mix of jazz/rock/funk/etc...



Bonus song...(tying it back to Wes a little)

 

[Steve999]

Can I take this one sliver at a time? Coltrane and Sun Ra to me both were willing to step outside of the straight jackets of their peers, though in very different ways. Sun Ra could play piano really well, but when he had his Arkestra and his synthesizers and he was putting on a live show (I saw him three times, talk about theater and showmanship, this guy was joyful to watch), it was about where his mind and his band went regardless of any preconceptions. Sure they had songs and routines planned (like the old walking through the audience and playing and singing trick, or the completely out of control soloist, or the comical chants), but it was improvisation on the macro scale. Coltrane hit a point, and I think it's a logical end-point in bop that a lot of people hit against. Jazz evolved in 60 or 70 years, going through a lot of the same changes as classical did in what, 400 years. Honestly, like, he took My Favorite Things and turned it to a modal tune (one scale, maybe modulating up a half step now and then I can't remember), and Impressions was the same thing. They were making the chord structures simpler and the soloing was less harmonically constrained, less of a puzzle, and you could play out of emotion without worrying about if you were hitting a right note as much. This is something for which Miles Davis's song So What was probably the main influence. Modal tune, modulates up and down a half step now and then. I think in the Sun Ra Solo Piano, he is trying to introduce some harmony and structure in his soloing and structure in the tunes. If you look at it one way, the harmony is totally ground breaking but it was too much for everyone else. For all of these things I think it is important to listen to a particular tune from beginning to end, because they are built with the intent of a resolution based on the the setting of the rest of the song.

Hope that makes sense and helps and seems factual to you and others. I'm always interested to be corrected or in differing views.

Steve99, I find it strange that you put Coltrane and Sun Ra in the same post, because I find them to be polar opposites. Coltrane is structurally complex- so complex listening to his music sometimes seems like working out a math problem. It hurts after a while and I have to take a rest. Sun Ra is structureless and meandering, but at its best it can be goofy and fun. It probably goes counter to the strengths of each one of them, but I tend to like the Coltrane where I can follow the morphing easier, and I tend to like the Sun Ra that has a little more rhythmic structure and not so much randomness..