I am a great fan of most types of jazz but tend to prefer the more modern sort but there two aspects of modern jazz I cannot stand . These are :-
(1) Instruments ,especially trumpets and saxophones , that play much higher than their normal range . That is like fingernails down a blackboard .
( 2 ) Long drum solos . They tend to send me to sleep. .
What is your pet hate ?
Honestly, I dislike longer drum solos as well. Anything more than 20 seconds is an exercise. Except maybe Joe Morello’s solo on Take Five, but he’s the exception.
I’m not much of a fan of soloing trumpets in general. And, the only good sax is a low-sounding sax (regardless of actual size), IMHO.
In general, I dislike straight-ahead rhythms in a jazz context—such as Watermelon Man as opposed to a jazz waltz (I’m thinking of YOur Gold Teeth II).
This probably isn’t the kind of thing you’re looking for, but I hate people saying things like, “Thanks for coming out here and keeping this great music alive!” to an audience of yuppies that don’t give a shit but love to sit in front of the gazebo on their blankets and lawn chairs and make sure that other people see what enthusiastic supporters of the respectable arts they are.
FUCK YOU PEOPLE. Jazz used to be one of the most subversive and vital forms of music, and you’ve gone and castrated it. Thanks a pantload.
Hm, what do I hate in the music… High notes and long drum solos themselves don’t bother me, as long as the player’s got the ideas to back them up. I think the thing that puts me off from a lot of jazz is just when there’s nothing new being done, or if a group consistently has the same sort of texture in everything they play, and it’s not really something that you could tell apart from any other group with a similarly indistinct sound. And, while there are obviously exceptions to this one, I generally find tunes in major keys pretty boring. And that sissy sterile Kenny G sound that everybody has on the soprano nowadays… I KNOW THERE ARE DIFFERENT SOUNDS YOU CAN GET FROM THOSE THINGS, I’VE HEARD IT DONE BEFORE. Take a modern-style soprano sax playing over a bland major key tune with a bunch of electronic doodads in the rhythm section, and you’ve got the soundtrack for the elevator ride down to my personal hell.
Oh yeah. And I hate that I’m not actually good enough at it to really feel justified in criticizing things that I don’t like about it.
If you will permit “dislike” instead of “hate” I can freely admit to disliking (as in won’t buy it or leave it on the radio any longer than it takes to turn it off) several things.
“Free Jazz” – where not one bit of identifiable “music” remains. I’m all for people expressing themselves. I’m even all for people “breaking the rules.” But noise is noise and I had rather listen to noise than “Free Jazz.”
Here’s another vote against Kenny G and his brand of “jazz.” I’m not as violently opposed to “smooth jazz” as I might be, since that’s more to the extreme of “non-jazz” that I do like: mood music, easy listening, elevator music, space age pop, call it something. But the idea that melody plays a part in music is more appealing to me than the notion of limitless self-expression. Until it gets vapid and syrupy. That’s when I turn it off and go retch somewhere.
BET Jazz. Here we have a cable channel that could be a real boost to jazz. As it is, it’s a hodge podge of commercials, bad sound, non-descript “talent” and an all round waste of time. Waste!
Music stores that won’t stock anything beyond the sure fire sellers. Whatever “jazz” they stock is just the Miles, Brubeck, Ellington, Basie, Armstrong, etc., things that Ken Burns plugged on his PBS series. Nothing of the newer artists and bands.
I live in an area that has a fine jazz radio station that plays jazz 24 hours a day (with hourly 5-minute breaks for news) and good “mainstream” jazz to boot. Were it not for that source I’d be pretty much left to my own collection of things. It’s been months if not years since I bought a new CD. That’s mostly due to having located a source I don’t have to pay for, but also because the jazz outlets have pretty well dried up.
Drum solos can be bad, but Bass solos always take the energy level down two orders of magnitude. They always sound thick, plodding and out of tune.
[hijack]
If you play and you know what you like, you’re justified enough, IMHO. Playing good jazz, as I see it, isn’t really based upon a mastery of all scales, fingerings, rudiments, chords, etc. It helps, no doubt, but it’s not dependent on such.
[/hijack]
Mainly what I hate is the comment “Dixieland/trad/bop/cool/free/fusion/modal/smooth insert your peeve here ISN’T REAL JAZZ!”
Uh, yes it is. It may not be your cup o’ tea, but jazz is a big comfy canvas and there’s room for all of it, 'k? And for the record, I hate smooth jazz. Because although it’s jazz, it’s jazz for wankers.
My pet peeves have to do with the way reissues are compiled and marketed:
Those Starbucks-style compilations (I think Verve is the principal culprit): jazz for driving, jazz for lovers, jazz for paring your nails by. As though jazz couldn’t stand on its own, as though the purpose of music were to be soundtrack. As though American musical history had never happened at all.
Reissues that put the alternate take(s) of a tune right after the released take instead of at the end, so I have to listen to the same tune three damn times unless I program my CD player. I understand the archivist’s perspective, but jazz isn’t ready for the cemetery yet; CDs should be produced for listeners, not archives.
I agree with most comments so far, even some that contradict one other.
I love almost my entire (rather extensive) jazz collection; I never listen to jazz radio because K-P-Smell-U, the local jazz station, plays only crap. (Well, actually they play a little bit of non-crap, but few and far between. The unbreakable rule is every. single. tune. must be EITHER (a) a ballad; or (b) a vocal. Every. Single. Tune. Except on All Blues Weekend, which lasts 3 days, or 42.8% of every week. :rolleyes: )
So, relying on my CDs only, nearly all of what I listen to, I love.
Except:
Keith Jarrett’s spastic vocal gymnastics. He ruins every tune he plays, with his ridiculous, self-serving squeals, moans and grunts, and an occasional – I’m not making this up – “woo-hoo” when he plays something he thinks is really great. They need to tape his mouth.
(And yes, I know, scatting is considered necessary by many, but Keith has allowed it to get to the point where it’s the most notable thing about him.)
(And yes, I’d sell my soul to play like him. I just want him to shut up.)
People who substitute speed for melodic content get tiresome rather quickly. Quantity does not equal quality. Embellishment and ornamentation can contribute a lot, but only so long as there is a solid main line beneath it. One trick ponies like Kenny G should be taken out back and shot. (By the way, he plays a straight alto, not soprano Eman Resu.) Artists who are incapable of stylistic changeups are more boring than bad sex.
On this CD he does play soprano (and tenor too, apparently).
I’m curious about who you’re talking about when you say “substitute speed for melodic content.” Are you thinking of players like Charlie Parker or John Coltrane, or are you thinking of someone more like James Carter? Bop players in general? Local players who think playing fast is the epitome of jazz performance?
Good on you, masonite, for calling KPLU by its rightful name. I too am frustrated by the unrelenting lowest-common-denominator ballad/vocal/blues playlist. Have you ever checked out CBC-2 (92.1 FM)? Not always jazz, but when they play it weeknights after 10 it’s pretty good, and at the moment (Sunday 9:30pm) it’s not bad either.
I also agree with you about Jarrett, although for some reason I mind the vocal gymnastics less from other players, such as Paul Bley and countless bassists.
See you at a future Earshot gig?
I agree 100%. Those are my pet peeves in a nutshell – speedy scales are not, I repeat NOT, improvisation. Regurgitating scales as quickly as possible while reaching into the stratosphere for notes out of the range of an instrument is not creativity. Twisting a melody, quoting a melody in a new context, changing the feel of a tune with unexpected chord substitutions – that’s music. The School of Velocity is just so much noisy air.
I definitely agree with this, though it’s in reference to fusion that I hear these commens most often.
Note to Wynton Marsalis: Yes you are a brilliant player and composer, but with regards to your pomposity about what is and isn’t jazz, didn’t Duke and Satchmo do it right the first time around? Can we please move on?
I’ll third the gripe about Keith Jarrett. Especially during some of the “pretty” sections of the Kohn concert, his ejaculations (that’s the best term for it too) are terribly distracting. I think part of the problem is that they don’t always seem to having anything to do with the actual music he’s playing. It’s almost like he has Tourettes, or it’s a shtick he’s doing. Mingus, on the other hand, can often be heard making similar noises, but it always seems to be in the context of what he’s playing.
From an unapologetic free-jazz/free-improv music lover and percussophile, I have several albums of nothing but drum solo music. Gerry Hemingway, Milford Graves, Han Bennink, and the master of drum-solo composition, Max Roach (the first drum solo records were by Baby Dodds).
Anyway, as a free-jazz/improv fan, I am often called to answer for my leanings by other jazz fans, unable to comprehend that anyone can listen to that noise. (Side note: I’m also a free-jazz DJ at a local college station, so I often tell this to jazz fans I meet, who tune in, then…)
However, I must admit that I wasn’t always into it. I started out with swing, New Orleans music, bebop and the rest, then started to listening to Sun Ra, Ornette, some modern players (I’m in Chicago so local fave Ken Vandermark got a lot of play) and gradually acquired the taste of the free-er stuff. And now I’m hooked.
But I often get the complaint “that isn’t jazz” (or even worse, “it isn’t music”); sure it is, it’s on the fringes (though it’s been around since the sixties) but it’s definitively jazz. The same people who think John Coltrane went too far after the Classic Quartet disbanded. But then, it’s music, how can it go too far?
Sure there’s bad free music; I’ve seen plenty of wannabes who have no taste for it: limited ideas and skill, inability to listen to other players. But this goes for mainstream stuff as well.
Anyway, might I also add to the votes against Kenny G. and smooth jazz and Keith Jarrett’s impersonations of waterfowl being strangled. And Wynton’s hardline traditionalism, though I am reminded even Satch didn’t like Bird.
And rock or funk backbeats. These thudding beats to me are the antithesis to the spirit of jazz. There are some who can make it work (Tony Williams and Jim Black come to mind) but for the most part it’s a grinding rhythm to my ears. But apparently the idea is reaching a new generation of listeners who cannot appear to understand music unless there’s a snare on the 2 and 4.
I also don’t like when trumpet is played beyonde its normal range, and get the fingernales on blackboard vibe.
My pet peeve though is that I don’t enjoy any Miles Davis, but my annoyance is with myself rather than with Miles Davis who I am sure is just as brilliant as people say. I just can’t get into his music.
I think long solos are excellent when watching Jazz being performed live, but they don’t translate to recorded media. Live it is great to gain some understanding of the individual performer’s personality and style. But without seeing the performer’s expression and movement, they just become dull and time waisting.
I’m not picking on you specifically, Joe K, since others expressed a dislike for drum solos. But you mentioned Joe Morello, who IMHO is the greatest jazz drummer in history. As with most instruments, anyone who doesn’t actually play that instrument or understand the subtleties of it may not appreciate it in solo. This is particularly true of drums and bass.
Joe Morello played a ten-minute solo called “Castillian Drums” in concert at Carnegie Hall in the 60s that still stands today as a quintessential example of what a true genius can accomplish on an instrument. He produced more sound variations from a 5-piece trap than most drummers can produce on much more elaborate setups. I am amazed by his virtuosity every time I listen to that piece.
As for peeves, it just kills me when decent artists decide to prostitute their art. A case in point is David Benoit, who is a solid pianist with some fine moments of jazz. He has apparently decided that the money in so-called ‘smooth jazz’ is more important than being true to the roots of the music. Earl Klugh is another who seems to be giving up. It’s just sad.
I had trouble understanding what the big deal with Miles was, too. Once I did start to get it, I felt pretty stupid for it having taken so long until I heard a university jazz professor that is really big on Miles (I get the impression that he’s his favorite) expressed the same sort of feeling. Try listening to a lot of his different styles and find one that you like as an entrance point – a compilation that really helped me with this and really got it to click for me was a two CD set called “The Essential Miles Davis” released by Columbia. Goes through just about every kind of thing he’s done.
To be honest – get ready to feel superior to me – it even took me a while to get into Charlie Parker. I knew, of course, that he was the principal originator of bop, that he was incredible influential and a genius and whatever else, but I guess I just didn’t fully understand it, because I’d think, “Well, yeah, but I’ve heard all that before from the saxists that played with Mingus, and I like Mingus’ tunes a whole lot better than this rhythm changes stuff over and over…” Uh huh, they play like that because they got it from Bird, you freaking dipmonkey. :smack:
I think that my problem was that it took me a while to really get a good ear for improvisation (still working on it, of course, and I’m sure it doesn’t end), unless the player was really distinctive like Dolphy or Coltrane, so I focused more on composition and texture, which is why somebody like Mingus was so much more accessible to me.
Eman Resu, what you said about Bird applies to me as well. I got into jazz in a big way in the late 50’s and early 60’s. By that time Bird had been dead five or more years. Also by then virtually anybody playing an alto (with very few exceptions – Paul Desmond, Lee Konitz and maybe a few others) had been copying Bird for at least as long as Bird had been dead, and more likely longer. Sonny Stitt, Lou Donaldson, Cannonball Adderly, and the list goes on. Also, the new releases on Blue Note, Columbia, Verve, and the other major jazz labels were where I was looking for new records.
The more I read about the music and its history, the more I realized I should check out Charlie Parker since his influence on every instrument was pervasive. It’s just that there were so few decent quality recordings in those days that except for one Verve (The Essential Charlie Parker, I believe) there just wasn’t all that much available where I was buying records. It was another five years or better before I managed to get some Bird records. By then, I was very familiar with his imitators on better quality recordings. So the admiration of Parker was slow coming to me.
I was in on Miles’s music from Kind Of Blue on. After I was aware of how strong his influence had been, I got some of his older things as well as kept up pretty well with all his new releases until on into the mid-60’s. About the time he was getting into fusion is when I started holding off on new Miles records. Later on, I got some tapes of his last few years work, and really liked it. But there are quite a few of Miles’s records I have only listened to once. They just didn’t do for me what the first ones did.
Mingus was all over the map for me. I really liked some of his things and really didn’t like others. It’s attributed to Mingus (I believe he even had a tune by that name) that if Charlie Parker had been a gunslinger there would be a lot of dead copycats. I guess Mingus’s Black Saint And The Sinner Lady has been one of my favorite Mingus records. Another is Wonderland.