Jazz, whats good?

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I love different kinds of jazz and listen to it on the radio or the internet. Some types of jazz can be a little bit "screechy" sounding, but other than that I love jazz

Here's some more to consider:

Pharaoh Sanders
Patife / Arrigo Barnabe
Brother Ah (Ex- Sun Ra Arkestra Flautist/French Horn Player)
Nate Wooley

check out this sick mary halvorson tune
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnwrSxCKV98[/youtube]

awesome thread already.

three kinds of jazz i like: the early days--up through the 20s--when jazz was all about the joy of discovery.
a particular favorite is Fats Waller, but all of it is first-rate. i think audiences in those days wouldn't bother listening to something half-hearted or banal. this is dance music that's not trivial (unlike disco or most of its descendants). big band music gave birth to some good melodies, but as art it vulgarized & commercialized what began as something quite feral & new.

then there's bebop, from late 40s through the 50s & after, when a few free spirits were pushing the boundaries & reaching for the stars (we've mentioned Miles Davis, Coltrane, Sun Ra--i'd add Ornette Coleman & James Blood Ulmer ): this music has a totally different feel, & takes some listening to "get"--often as not, it's about the things it doesn't do, as in embroidering a familiar melody without ever quite stating it outright. a particular fav here is Charles Mingus. it's not common for me in music to feel the force of a strong intellect at work thinking, as when i play some of his records. he's like a great literary critic who happens to play the trumpet.

after that jazz turned boring for a very long time. no wonder it lost its audience except for a subculture of snobs. jazz-rock is mostly a series of fascinating failures; still, i'm glad they tried. perhaps Mahavishnu Orchestra has the most enduring monument in "Apocalypse"...

finally, i like some of the eccentric revivalists of today, from Combustible Edison to Pink Martini. you could call them ironic postmodernists, but i think that a good pastiche, or even a remix, is still a valid form of art. sometimes they're as much archivists as original artists. they point you back to greater forebears.

if jazz has any future it has to be from allowing itself to become infused with sources from the greater world, as in the Ethiopian sax soundtrack to Broken Flowers...

This is a different breed of Jazz. You can never go wrong with Miles Davis, or this album.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSQZgAIt0_E[/youtube]

Pandora.com is a great way to explore jazz. Right now I am listening to my Bill Frisell station and discovering lots of great guitarists.

i'm listening to and enjoying a lot of small combo jazz at the moment like brad mehldau, esbjorn svensson and vijay lyer.
right now i'm listening to the metheny, mehldau 'quartet' album for the first time and it's sounding pretty good!

Where's the love for Buddy Rich? The man was quite likely the most brilliant drummer who ever played the instrument. Even Neil Peart considers him a major influence.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCcZYBJ3mNo[/youtube]

brain fart, sorry

I like Metheny, too. But I never understood his approach to using guitar synths. He once said that each synth sound is like it's own instrument and that he feels he has to master that one sound before trying something else. While I do agree that every synth patch is different in some way, like when you program a synth to respond to performance controls in various ways through mod routing, etc., it defeats the purpose to "master" a single sound the way you would any natural instrument, which takes years of study and practice. You end up using the same sound on every chart when one of the great advantages of using synths is the ability to sound like anything you can imagine, giving each chart your own personal, signature musical stamp. I always felt that Metheny's use of the Synclavier was abysmal next to what it was capable of doing.

Metheny had the good sense to at least work with Lyle Mays, who I think is absolutely brilliant as a real artist and, at least it seems to me, really saves Metheny from himself more times than not. And that, I believe is Metheny's true genius--not merely formulating the musical ideas underneath the chart, but possessing the wisdom to pick team members he can work with collaboratively to realize those ideas to their highest effectiveness. Metheny by himself is probably one of the most overrated jazz players out there. But the talent of the PMG collectively borders on god-like.

Now, Brad Mehldau is OK. But just not imaginative enough for my personal taste. Compared with earlier work, I wonder if working with Mehldau isn't holding Metheny back. On the other hand, that might be a good thing! I dunno...

As for guitar players, I definitely do hold Metheny in high regard. But I also always really liked Wes Montgomery. I think of Montgomery as THAT jazz guitarist all future guitarists, including Metheny, tried to copy in some way. I think he really did have that much influence over true jazz guitar that you won't really find that much different way of defining jazz guitar sound and technique outside fusion. And if you'll forgive me this one blasphemy, I enjoy jazz fusion much more than "straight" jazz!

And, being the clarinetist that I am, I LOOOOVE me some Dixieland.

(1991) Gonzalo Rubalcaba - Autumn Leaves

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsKBnkI_6Tk[/youtube]