Yikes! Make Admin and I think that I can skip my posting day! I'm sure that IronSerif will cut me a break, though...I was working on a review of the new Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth II for GameApex all day and my computer was giving me fits.

Anyway...

Welcome to another Monday edition of Rob's Daily Disturbance!

This week, I'd like to talk about something that hit me on the way home from work this evening. No, not road kill but intellectually. Remember that scene in the movie, "Dumb and Dumber", where Jim Carey is sitting in the roadside cafe and says, "Wait a minute........yeah.......I just had an idea"? That was me on the way home from work this morning.

I was listening to the local smooth jazz radio station when a Michael McDonald song came on. Hold on, I thought. This isn't jazz...it isn't even anywhere close to being jazz! This is more like elevator music for prozac addicts!

That started a thought process that is still churning out a plethora of literary diatribe that holds no applicability to the crux of this dialogue.



Seriously, it seems that somehow the mainstream music industry has somehow lost sight of what jazz is really about. It isn't about some 50-year-old white guy that's shared the spotlight with some notable acts. I'm not taking away from his accomplishments, but come on...a jazz artist?

Jazz is one of the two musical art forms that America can really call its own. Born in the predominantly black communities across the southeast, jazz was a way for them to transform their depression, anger, and sorrow into the form of a musical release. Jazz was a reminder to them that although their lot in life was low on the socio-economic ladder, life could always get worse. Jazz was a way to celebrate their life and what they did have to be thankful for. There was such a nobility born out of this form of music that filled the soul.

Jazz slowly crept across the southern regions of our great land until it settled in the Big Easy...New Orleans. Here, jazz refined itself with a tweak here and a turn of the key there. Visitors from all over the world came to New Orleans and was strangely attracted to the "ragtime-style" music eminating from the side streets and alleyways. It was a "ragtime-style" melody like none other.

Unbelievable musicians bordering on immortality were created out of this new sound. Artists such as Papa Jack Laine, Buddy Bolden, and Kid Ory. Later on, artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Elle Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk (otherwise referred to as T. Monk), Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Charlie Mingus...the list goes on and on.

The incredible sound of jazz can literally move the soul beyond the emotional bounds of this plane of existance and take you on a trip like no other. It speaks to you without words, it feels what you are feeling, and it comes alive both inside you and in the world around you.

So.....now I'm wondering just how is Micheal McDonald getting played on a jazz station at 4:00 a.m. in the morning. Is it that the music industry is at a loss on how to classify the souless music from such artists as Michael McDonald and others like him? Is there a need to create a new title for this genre of music?

It's something to think about folks. To get a better appreciation of the world of jazz, there's a few albums you should probably check out. One is T. Monk with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall, Dizzy Gillespie "A Night in Tunisia", and finally....one that will change your life...Miles Davis entitled "Birth of the Cool".

Until next week, stay safe out there.

Rob

Birth of the Cool is an ABSOLUTE MUST OWN!!! If you have no other Jazz in your library, get this one.

Decent recent jazz musicians are the Marsalises (Branford and Winton) if you can't handle great music your grandpappy listened to.

I love the part in 40 Year old Virgin when they rip on Mike McDonald. He's as much as Jazz musician as DJ Jazzy Jeff is.

YES!!! Birth of the Cool does indeed "rock" (can jazz rock too?) and you really can't go wrong with anything by Coltrane, especially when you add Thelonious Monk to the picture. To this day, Giant Steps is still one of my (old school) jazz favorites.
I know not all folks can stomach the older Big Band jazz, but Benny Goodman and his orchestra were smoking too, as well as Glen Miller's orchestra.
However, as much as I like the older jazz, I still love the fusion most of all. With artists like Miles Davis (he pretty much started fusion), Chick Corea, Herbie Han**** (he wrote more than just Rock It), John McLaughlin, Stanley Clark, Weather Report, and even Blood Sweat & Tears.....how can you go wrong?