mammoth rant

Submitted by jacob on Mon, 02/01/2010 - 12:12

Great show last night at Douglass Street Music Collective: Mike Pride's From Bacteria to Boys, the Nate Wooley Quintet, even though you're only 9. It was very jazzy - "jazzy" - whatever. I mean, composed pieces that swing occasionally and involve chords that are in some way interpreted by soloists. Speaking broadly, I can't stand "modern" jazz, I really like most things recorded before 1975, I only play jazz with close friends, etc. It's not a matter of being true to some kind of tradition or doing one thing or another specifically, although I do think modal and quartal harmonies are boring, it's a matter of the music being about something besides a contest of strength. The jazz that I love - Art Farmer, Kenny Dorham, Andrew Hill, Monk - is about subtlety, rhythm, feeling...not about tempo, virtousity, etc.

A lot of stuff coming out of Chicago - I'm talking Keefe Jackson's Fast Citizens, Josh Berman's Old Idea, the Marc Riordan Trio - captures that spirit, I think, which is really exciting. It's also interesting that it's coming out of there, out of a city known best for its often aggressive style of open improvising. It's one of many, many things that really excites me about Chicago, and that, conversely, alarms me about New York. I hear a lot of really awful jazz - actually just really awful music of any kind - coming out of New York. This may be because there is such an oversaturation of musicians and music that some or even most of it is bound to be terrible, it may be because everybody is so frazzled and poor that they can't concentrate on making good music and when they can they don't have the money to rehearse it, or it may be because I am a snob and/or an asshole. More often than not, though, I feel like it's because people here feel like they have to prove something, show something off: I know this tune in this many keys, I can play this complicated line this fast, check out how loud, piercing, shocking, aggressive, emotive I can be, and so on, because somebody told them that that's what jazz is about. But really, who cares about that shit?

Anyway. Mike Pride, Nate Wooley. Not all jazz coming out of New York sucks.