Why Is There Such An Anti-Jazz Vibe Here?

But the question remains, does progressive metal with it's virtuosity and grander scale composition have the potential to develop into an art form that is making s a serious contribution to the development of music.

Absolutely YES metal can and IS developing into a real artform. Bands like Mastodon have a lot more in common with big band than they do with Black Sabbath or Metallica. The metal drummers of today are a totally different breed from what they were even 10 years ago.
 
Mean guitar work for sure. And nobody can bash Johnny Cash!

Johnny Cash was a baaaaaaaad man. Also, if you lump southern rock in with country I'd have to fully retract my comment as I actually have some Skynyrd and Creedence songs on my iPod. Not to mention China Cat Sunflower by The Dead.
 
Regardless of the negative play that the term "fusion" gets from many jazz elites. Jazz was, is and always should be fusion. These guys never sat around saying, "you can't do that, it ain't jazz." Everything was always up for grabs: Afro-cuban rhythms, Indian scales, post-tonal theory, samba, rock, hip-hop, etcetera. That's what made it in the first place, a fusion of western harmony, blues, spirituals, African rhythms, French creole and opera melodies, samba, tin pan alley. it's all in there, a big melting pot, like America.

I could not agree more. Not only in jazz, but any type of music. Look at life - what living thing on this earth ever stops growing, changing or evolving in one way or the other? Even the earth itself changes and evolves constantly.

I'm not necessarily defending fusion jazz, but who elected a commission of self proclaimed "jazz experts" to define to us what is and what isn't jazz, anyway? Who really cares about their opinion anyway, besides an increasingly small group of jazz snobs?
 
You mean Johnny Cash, the Country Rap artist?

Yes, J.C. is the Godfather of Rap!

And to motojt: I categorize Lynyrd and CCR as rock acts. Doug Clifford is one of my favourite drummers. As a (beginning) drummer i try to combine his down-to-earth attitude with the light touch of Modern Jazz Quartet drummer Connie Kay!
 
The older I get, the more I see the artistic wisdom of Frank Zappa. All genres of music should be spoofed, so that we don't take any of them too seriously. The idea becomes more crystal clear by the day................
 
The older I get, the more I see the artistic wisdom of Frank Zappa. All genres of music should be spoofed, so that we don't take any of them too seriously. The idea becomes more crystal clear by the day................

Apostrophe. Jim Gordon on drums. Does it get better?
 
As for you Jay, aren't you sick of trolling this site yet? I knew you were not a real musician when you were posting as Jay Norem. I knew you were a fake. Can you not get a better hobby?

I recall not long ago someone mentioned the bodhran, I think it was Michael. And I responded. Sure enough the next day you got a bodhran too.

Ha ha! Yes that was me and I had no idea that Jay suddenly claimed to be a bodhran player as well! Now that's funny!

Yes, I am getting quite sick of the trolling myself and I shouldn't have kept replying to his posts earlier in this thread. I will make it a point from now on to just ignore his posts. I'm also a member of a jazz forum of which he is a member and it's the same thing there as well. A guy who loves to throw out a piece of red meat and watch the ensuing fight, and just when things are dying down, post something else to reignite the fire.

BTW for anybody that's interested, the correct pronunciation of that instrument is bayr-rawn. The only reason I know that is because my grandfather spoke Irish, and taught me a decent amount of Irish as well, although it has been hard keeping it up since he passed away. I rely on a friend from Kerry who's a fluent Irish speaker to help keep my skills up through conversations. Anyway, just figured I'd add that in just in case anyone here takes a trip to Ireland. ;)


Who the hell is Jay Norem!? Let us in on the secret already!

I guess it doesn't matter, just a point of interest... It's like asking "Who is John Galt", or something!

Yeah, a friend of mine let me borrow Eric Dolphy's "Out To Lunch" and I hated it! Man, I really wanted to like it, being Tony Williams and all, but I just couldn't do it. I've known my share of real jazz snobs and I know they're out there. I took jazz band in high school and college and was left with the flavor that it's a bit of a cult. No biggie, I feel the same way about death metal!

I really like Count Basie with Gus Williams from around '54, though. It was the only thing that could get my newborn to sleep. It really seemed to sooth his mind, and for my part, I didn't mind at all listening to that one album I had day in and day out, night after night for the first 2 years of his life (a nameless album that I put on CD and that I've never seen anywhere... i think it might have been live at the Savoy or something) I still listen to it.

Look up his posts under his real name and see for yourself. It's a little too difficult to describe his behavior. You just have to see it for yourself, although Stan and Wy have described it in a nutshell.

I didn't care for Dolphy's album "Out To Lunch" myself, although I think he was a great musician and think it was such a shame that he died so young. However, I do really enjoy the stuff he did with Oliver Nelson. "Screamin' The Blues" and "Blues And The Abstract Truth" are great albums. Check them out and see what you think.

I love Basie as well. Hardest swinging big band of all-time. My favorites of the 1950s period are the ones with Sonny Payne. Take a listen to "Atomic Swing". Certainly lives up to it's title.

I've met snobs in all forms of music. Jazz does not sit alone in this category. In fact, it has PLENTY of company. If it's one thing that I can say from my experiences, it's that no matter what kind of music you're talking about, the snobs make up a very small minority of the overall population of those musicians.

Even though I am a jazz musician, it does bother me that people accept this snobbery stereotype and apply it to all jazz musicians, and therefore assume that I think of myself as being a superior musician just because I play jazz. I don't like it when people apply these preconceived notions to me before they even know me. I don't think anybody would wish to be treated that way. I listen to so many different styles of music, and I love listening to somebody that can really play their a** off, no matter what style it is we're talking about. For example:

Rodrigo y Gabriela: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lvMQCmUVv8

Lawson Rollins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ9PRzIyzFA

John Joe Kelly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ChbigufBC8

Stochelo Rosenberg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jy-XPgLpgc

I just love watching and listening to great musicians. I don't care who they are, where they're from, or what genre or instrument they play. I just love watching a musician that can really tear it up!
 
Okay, alright, yes I'm Jay, Jay Norem.

Last year my wife gave me a bodhran as a gift because she knows that I've always wanted one. I didn't ask her to do that, she did it on her own.

I have no idea how to play it. I can't get anywhere with it. I'm not even lousy at it. I just can't play the thing.

I was indeed banned from this forum for being disruptive. And I was being disruptive and I said some things that were stupid. Really stupid. But I didn't see that at the time.

So I went for months without being able to even see what was going on here,

One day I found that I could actually get into the Drummerworld site, I don't know why, and I could read the discussions taking place so I decided to register under an alias, "Con Struct." I decided to call myself Conrad.

See, I've always liked talking about drumming and all things related. Drums excite me. I know about drums and drumming and this is the best place to come to for discussing drums and drumming and what makes us tick as drummers, thank you Bernard.

I am actually a drummer. I'm fifty-six years old now and I started playing professionally when I was eighteen. I'm basically retired now, but I'll still play if people ask me to.

So there it is. I am Jay Norem. I'm a drummer with a lot of experience and, yes, a big mouth.

I need to say that I respect this site, I think it's an excellent example of what can be expressed on the internet and I hope that I am allowed to stay here.
 
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""I don't see this kind of wonders in others," Williams said of today's young drummers. "I get guys coming up to me - they just got a drum set; they"ve been playing maybe four years - and they want their own style. They want to be expressive. I say, "Well, then, if you want to be expressive you've got to find out what the instrument will do. And to do that, you've got to go back and find out and get an idea of what's already been done."
"That's what the instrument's all about." Williams stated flat-out. "It's the instrument that's more important. The quality and the magic of the instrument are more important than you are.""


Tony Williams

The drums can play anything. The person can't but the drums don't care. I think what Tony was getting at is that if all you play and listen to is "one" music, you're missing out on the magic that Tony got from playing it all.
 
I don't know if I'm alone in this or not. and I don't want to get caught up in forum politics but I find the Jay-bashing offputting, especially since it's coming from people I respect.

By the harshness of the comments you'd think he ate puppies and kittens or something rather than seemingly hoping for a punk-style renaissance in jazz. Personally, I doubt that will happen on a grand scale because, if punk didn't sell hugely then it would have sank back into the underground.

I prefer forum conversations where people play the "ball" rather than the wo/man.
 
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I hate to say it; but when the music is not conducive to the maintenance of proper ear health, it is a bit questionable. Just put me in that fogey's club. But as you age, you do learn a thing or two.

Thrash metal and Death metal certainly have their place. They do provide new textures and just as even those who dislike rap would probably not chide Grand Master Flash, Africa Mambaataa or Curtis Blow. When artists just start regurgitating that stuff, it's very uninteresting. The same could be said for any genre. I would have less criticism of an artist though whose put in years of study and perfected his craft though he is not original, than one who hasn't done any of the work and is just after a quick buck. and regardless of how open minded you are to rap, you would have to admit that there has been a lot of that in rap music, as a matter of fact, after it's initial thrust with bands like NWA and PE, that's what it became with a few here and taht that railed against the status quo.

I am happy to say that in the genre of thrash and progressive metal, NY has been a leader with bands Like Anthrax, Virgin Steele and Dream Theater. The genre of progressive metal has really gone under the radar in the states, even here in NY. I enjoy what I have heard from several of the European metal bands esp. the viking metal bands and the folk metal bands. It's an interesting phenomenon.

Well said, Ken. The fact that a style doesn't please us does not in any way reflect on its cultural significance or worth.


But the question remains, does progressive metal with it's virtuosity and grander scale composition have the potential to develop into an art form that is making s a serious contribution to the development of music. I think that rock has a problem because of it's myopicy. Regardless of the negative play that the term "fusion" gets from many jazz elites. Jazz was, is and always should be fusion. These guys never sat around saying, "you can't do that, it ain't jazz." Everything was always up for grabs: Afro-cuban rhythms, Indian scales, post-tonal theory, samba, rock, hip-hop, etcetera. That's what made it in the first place, a fusion of western harmony, blues, spirituals, African rhythms, French creole and opera melodies, samba, tin pan alley. it's all in there, a big melting pot, like America.

What I've seen so far is that elements of modern metal are being absorbed into other genres, as has happened with rap. The moment I started thinking this was when someone talked about Don Caballero, a band I'd not heard of before. I checked out the YouTubes and 1) thought they were fabulous and refreshingly original and 2) their drummer incorporated some rather metalesque double-kick drum passages into the music to good effect.

Through RATM rap found its way into metal and there's a fuzzy line between nu jazz and hip hop. Inevitably new styles will be synthesised. One thing that new metal and heavy techno will do is open the doors for more noise to be incorporated into music. Despite the work of Cage, Stockhausen, free jazzers et al, mainstream music has remained strongly resistant to noise - insisting on pretty conventional tonalities and rhythms. So it seems possible to me that these styles have the potential to open the scene up in interesting ways.

Does that seem a reasonable guess?
 
I know exactly what you mean. But there's nothing really to "get." It's all there, just like with rock music or funk music or blues. It's just guys playing.

(my edit)...But the real stuff is so powerful, so visceral, that I have to challenge any musician to not get it.

It's all just music. I don't like country music, I don't like techno or hip-hop or smooth jazz or gross loud metal music (although some of those drummers are amazing) but I "get it." I get it because it's just music, and I'm a musician. It's been my job for close to forty years to get it.

I don't know where the idea that jazz is some sort of mysterious thing that only a few can understand came from. Jazz speaks to people just as much as any other kind of music does. It's just that these days very few people are listening.

Let me start by saying that I don't want to alienate my new friends Steamer and Wy, and that I didn't know who the "troll" was until they clued me in last night.

That said, this post by Jay resonated with me. There are others by him on the very thread that resonated with me. Perhaps that's why I was having trouble identifying the troll.

con struct, Jay, whatever you want to go by, I'm glad you came clean and I hope you're not booted off this thread, or give cause for another booting. I've not noticed the antagonistic posts so much as the ones like this, which didn't seem to me as being out of bounds. I thought it was honest and insightful.
 
This is a reprint of what someone posted here a short while ago thats deserves another go:

A slippery bar of soap, this jazz business...

Interviewer: Can you explain jazz?

Yogi: I can't, but I will. Ninety per cent of all jazz is half
improvisation. The other half is the part people play while others are
playing something they never played with anyone who played that part.
So if you play the wrong part, its right. If you play the right part, it
might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play it too right, it's
wrong.

Interviewer: I don't understand.

Yogi: Anyone who understands jazz knows that you can't understand it.
It's too complicated. That's what's so simple about it.

Interviewer: Do you understand it?

Yogi: No. That's why I can explain it. If I understood it, I wouldn't
know anything about it.

Interviewer: Are there any great jazz players alive today?

Yogi: No. All the great jazz players alive today are dead. Except for the
ones that are still alive. But so many of them are dead, that the ones
that are still alive are dying to be like the ones that are dead.

Interviewer: What is syncopation?

Yogi: That's when the note that you should hear now happens either
before or after you hear it. In jazz, you don't hear notes when they happen
because that would be some other type of music. Other types of music can be jazz, but only if they're the same as something different from those other
kinds.

Interviewer: Now I really don't understand.

Yogi: I haven't taught you enough for you to not understand jazz that well.

...
 
This is a reprint of what someone posted here a short while ago thats deserves another go:

A slippery bar of soap, this jazz business...

Interviewer: Can you explain jazz?
...
Quite superb Abe, great find. Now I fully understand Jazz and nearly half of 90% of Steamers posts! I'm off to be a jazz drummer. I've already ordered my 2 x 26" kick drums, 1 up, 2 down kit. 14" x 9" snare, triggers and at least 10 china cymbals.
 

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