Jass Iss Guds Fer Yoo

Currently Hearing: Portico Quartet, Knee-Deep in the North Sea


So I figured that there above would be a nice little thing to do. Cliche, perhaps, but a cliche never incinerated a small village. Trogdor cannot say the same.

But this particular listening moment for me brings to mind a subject to which I am well acquainted, and that is jazz music. Ninety percent of you are no longer reading, and one hundred percent of you were never reading in the first place, and 1.3337 percent of you should pick that slice of sausage and jelly pizza off the floor.

My point is that, chances are, you find the music either intolerable, impenetrable, or haven't given it a chance to spin through your soul. My fundamental problem with your (yes, your) characterization of "jazz" is this: jazz, as an all-encompassing genre, is a grand misnomer. There is no such thing as "jazz" music other than to suggest that black people playing saxophones, trumpets, percussion and a double bass in some sort of greasy, devil-summoning cacophony or some silver-haired, large-snouted white guy blowing pompous, silky drivel out of a clarinet to the beat of a drum machine is all jazz can be. It's like pointing to a Stromboli and saying, "This is the only Italian food that exists." While Stromboli is characteristic of Italian food (you dunk it in some kind of red sauce, and it averages 900 k-cal x sq inch, it creates a grease that I like to use as a pore-cleanser), it sure as hell doesn't define it.

Instead, I tend to side with what one truly regal musical mind, Duke Ellington said: "There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind." Ellington shunned those who attempted to stick a monosyllabic word onto his music. In fact, he probably had this face on while doing it.

He shuuuuns you.

Ok, that's about the meanest picture I could find of the Duke. He's wearing a smile as wide as an overfed hippopotamus in the rest of them. Why? Because he's playing jazz, man. Why would you NOT smile?

So, if you ever decide to end your obnoxiously unreasonable ban on "jazz" music entering your life, please let me know. I will be delighted to show you something under the umbrella that you will wonder how you lived without hearing.