hey hodge, i live ten blocks from yoshi’s. lucky, lucky me.
My general impression of jazz is “music produced by astonishingly competent musicians showing off their technical prowess in improvisional mode, doing amazing things with rhythm and key shifts and unusual chords and transpositions, etc, but emotionally cold and detached”.
There are a few scattered jazz musicians who can actually move me as well as impress me (Pat Metheny has done so), but their most moving stuff is pallid in comparison with the most vivid of rock and classical, and can’t keep up with the blues either.
Jazz compares favorably with Top 40 type pop, where it beats it all to hell technically and does at least as well emotionally.
From a purely technical standpoint, only classical can hold a candle, and the modality is different – jazz musicians improvise this incredibly complicated stuff, whereas classical is composed and the performers produce every note for every duration designated by the composer, focusing their interpretive skills on such variable things as change of rhythm or change of dynamics.
The only way you’ll ever gain an appreciation for jazz is to listen to a whole lot of it. Unfortunately, a lot of people who are trying to wade into the world of jazz will pick up some Miles Davis or something along those lines, which really is jumping into the deep end of the pool. First learn walk, then learn fly.
A good inroad into the world of jazz for a lot of people has been rock-type bands that improvise extensively; they are often described as “jam bands”. Just follow the smell of pachouli, or ask your favorite stoner to hook you up. Take Phish, for instance, the recent kings of the genre; much of the time, they’re a traditional rock band, other times they’re performing intricately orchestrated pieces, and sometimes–a lot of the time, really–they just stretch out. Sometimes it’s just one person soloing over a steady “groove” by the band, just like the ten second guitar solo in the middle of most Top 40 tracks. After a while, though, you find that all the band members are dancing around their parts, rather than sticking to “what’s on the page”. It’s a somewhat simplified version of the jazz idea.
Dr. J
I agree with most of that statement, but a lot of jazz is anything but emotionally cold and detached. Go pick up Charles Mingus blues & roots, there is a lot of emotion there, as in most of Mingus’ music. He was an artist and a social commentator that took his work very seriously. I have an idea he would strongly disagree with the idea that jazz has no emotion.
If you want to hear emotion also take a look at Louis Armstrong, Diana Krall, Duke Ellington, Kurt Elling (I see him at the Green Mill on wednesdays :)), Ella Fitzgerald, Maria Schneider, and of course Billie Holiday. All of these people have something to say on many different levels, and emotionally they have a lot to offer. Sadly many jazz artists are tortured souls, some fight long battles with drugs and alcohol (and many have lost), and to say that what they do and essentially what they are as musicians is emotionally detached is impossible.
The jazz musician is consumed by the music, it permeates through their playing and their life. All the great players have a story to tell, just look around for it.
That is ultra-cool. If the caliber of music on Live At Yoshi’s is typical there then I envy you. My hometown, Niagara Falls, may be a tourist mecca but it’s cultural wasteland. Unless you like Led Zepplin or Kiss cover bands, that is.
I agree whole-heartedly. Mingus is God. I’d recommend Mingus Ah Um, however. It’s surprising how much of that album has permeated pop culture and I’d bet many people have heard some of its music without knowing who it is. Just yesterday I heard a snippet of Better Git It In Your Soul on a TV commercial. The same goes for Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue which someone mentined above.
I definitely would go with the Kind of Blue recommendations above. Also, if you want to get a sampler disc, try to find “Best of Blue Note” volumes 1 & 2. You should also dig up some Herbie Hancock, maybe a best of collection. Something with “Watermelon Man” or “Cantaloupe Island” on it. Those are both fairly familiar tunes, (the latter being used in US3’s “Cantaloop.” If you don’t recognize it by name, you’ll recognize the horn melody.) I find the funk and modal-era jazz tends to be a good introduction for most people.
Jazz isn’t as scary as it seems. It takes a little introduction, but a lot of jazz is accessible to the average listener. Some of the “freer” varieties of jazz may well never become palatable to everyone, but your standards, Basie, Cole, Coltrane, Armstrong, Grapelli, Ellington, etc, I don’t find them terribly challenging to listen to. Hell, if you wrap your ears around Sonic Youth, Radiohead, or Led Zeppelin for that matter, you should be able to handle these artists.
AHunter- if it sounds emotionally detached, well, then it’s not good jazz. At least not to me. But you get that type of musician in all sorts of genres. Take Satriani or Malmsteen. Or technically profecient classical musican hacks who can play with blistering speed and accuracy through Rachmaninoff but lack the soul to pull off a quiet, slow Chopin prelude? (Or do something as unthinkable as doubling up a melody line in octaves at the finish of a Bach piece to add a little pyrotechnic flourish.) You get those types everywhere.
ricecake:
I actually had Krall in mind when I wrote that jazz is emotionally cold and detached.
Sorry, but it is really rare for jazz to make me cry or get my heart really pounding. Relaxed amused smiles at the proficiency, yes. But I’ve never heard anything in jazz that can hold a candle emotionally to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade or Pink Floy’d The Wall.
And blues are different. Obviously there is overlap, but the blues are not by definition jazz and I don’t tend to think of the blues as jazz.
Yes, I definitely agree with this one. “Jambands” have opened up my musical tastes GREATLY and I went from being a fan of mostly classic rock, new rock and some hip hop, to having a great appreciation for jazz, reggae, bluegrass, funk, and many other styles, including just improvisation itself.
A group that’s kind of more of a step away from rock jam band and more of a “jazz jam band” if there is such a thing, is the band Soulive. I recommend them a lot.
You’re probably thinking of her last couple of albums which have been nothing but syrupy schmaltz, calculated to cross her over to a larger mainstream audience. Check out her earlier stuff like All For You or Love Scenes where the trio format really allows her to smoulder.
Also, I defy anyone who has seriously listened to Billie Holiday to call her detached. Try Strange Fruit or God Bless The Child on for size. But, again, individual response is subjective and I guess it’s not for everyone. Bizzare as that may seem to me 
hodge, last six months ive seen:
cedar walton and jackie maclean, with david williams and kenny washington
gary burton!, russell malone, mulgrew miller!, john pattitucci, and lewis nash
charles lloyd! with geri allen, larry grenadier, and billy hart
mccoy tyner with george mraz!, al foster!, and kenny garrett!!
geri allen with robert hurst and billy hart
and i get to walk there, and have dinner in chinatown before the show. i repeat. lucky, lucky me. living in the bay area has its advantages.
For some very good but accessible mainstream jazz with afro-latin influences, check out Diane Reeves.
I saw her live last year, and it was probably the best concert I’ve ever been to. Completely enthralling, and her band is world class - George Duke usually plays with her, and Reginald Veal was on the bass.
Paul Yeah
Just out of curiosity, what’s wrong with Joshua Redman? I like other older Jazz music too, but I really dig Redman. Gregory Hutchinson is a sweet drummer…maybe thats why I like them, but my bro plays sax and he loves Redman as well.
I just thought I would mention Charlie Parker since nobody else has. Definitely a tortured soul but the true meaning of the word genius. Check out all the stuff he did with Diz. Nobody ever played a sax like Charlie “Bird” Parker. Clint Eastwood made an outstanding movie about his life called “Bird” that I would highly recommend. The best thing about the movie is that when you hear a sax playing, it actually is Parker playing. As Eastwood says “Nobody can play Bird but Bird”.
Other artists you might want to check out: Oscar Peterson, Wes Montgomery, Ella Fitzgerald.
and wordman,
The compliment was well deserved (as others have attested to). I play piano and drums in many styles, not just Jazz. But my heart is in Bop. Long live Bird! 
Bird wrote the book on jazz saxophone, but he had a bad habit with the needle. I heard somewhere that he actually pawned his horn to get a fix, and that he had to play gigs with plastic saxophones in order to support his habit. A whole generation of sax players got into heroine because it was thought that the drug would bring the playing that Parker brought to the table.
Yeah, his personal life was definitely a mess. The movie doesn’t pull any punches in that respect either. The plastic sax thing sounds a bit far-fetched although he did have to borrow horns on many occasions because he had pawned his own. The fact that many sax players tried to emulate his personal demons is pretty sad, (Stan Getz comes to mind). But for an example of pure musical genius, I can think of no comparison, except maybe Art Tatum.
He was playing a plastic alto at the famous Massey Hall gig in Toronto, often hyped as the “greatest jazz concert in the world.” The lineup was Parker, Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, Bud Powell on piano, Charles Mingus on bass, and Max Roach on drums.
Not only saxophonists emulated Bird…almost everyone on every instrument tried to replicate the sound he was making! And the enormous number of heroin-addicted jazz artists from the late '40s through the '60s can unfortunately be traced back to the “You want to SOUND like Bird, you got to be HIGH like Bird” argument.
horhay: Sorry, man, didn’t mean to do a drive-by attack on a musician you like. Joshua Redman is a Corporate Product. He’s been carefully groomed and dressed in shiny suits, and for the most part sold to and put in front of yuppie audiences who couldn’t tell Dave Douglas from the Salvation Army trumpet guy on the corner. Redman does a high note squeal and these dorks roar and pump their fists in the air, like he accomplished something valuable. Joshua Redman has probably made more cash performing five years of negligible jazzlike music than his old man (Dewey Redman) made in his lifetime.
Oh. Just to put that in perspective, Dewey Redman is also a tenor saxophonist. One of the great avant-garde players of the 1960s, he was. Probably heartsick over what a sleazy sellout his kid became.
And don’t get me started on Branford Marsalis.
Ike,
Thanks for the info on the plastic sax. Never heard that one before. Is that a recorded concert? If so, how apparent was it that the horn was plastic. I would assume very much so although I wouldn’t mind hearing Bird improvise on ANY instrument.
(sorry for the hijack everyone)
Redman is a great player, although his albums are more tame than they could be.
One of the best Jazz concert’s I have ever seen was with Josh Redman, Christian McBride, and Brian Blade. It was 5 years ago when I saw them, and I remember it as if it were yesterday. Christian McBride’s talent speaks for itself, and Blade is one of those drummer’s than can keep 4 different beats at once. All you can say is wow when you see these guys play together.
Redman really let it hang out at that concert, sadly I don’t really hear all that much like he did at the concert on his albums. Maybe he’s in a bad contract with his label, who knows…