I like jazz, but I hate talking to jazz fans about jazz.

"Honeybunchesofgoats" (honeybunche0fgoats)
07/04/2017 at 02:53 • Filed to: None

Every morning when I pull into my garage, I make sure there’s jazz on the radio. Sometimes I don’t even want to listen to jazz, but I pick something appropriate before turning the corner. Yama, Friday the 13th, Shine on Harvest Moon. I swipe through the gate.

I pause, because the guard wants to hear what I’m playing. Sometimes he knows it, sometimes he doesn’t, and I say “that’s Hawk” or “that’s Blakey.” It can only be a pause, because there’s always a car behind me and I can only hold up traffic for so long.

At one of my jobs, there was a guy named Charles. Charles hated all of my coworkers, I think he hated me too, for a while. We would both get into the office before 7:00, I think for the same reason, because we hated our coworkers and cherished that time.

I would usually be blasting jazz out of my office. Sometimes I would hear Charles tapping along. Sometimes he would stop by “do you like Tatum?” “It’s sort of a shame that people only know Getz for Bossa Nova.”

In a jazz bar once while traveling, I made friends with clarinetist in the house band. His biggest influence was Benny Goodman. He brought me to smoke in the kitchen with the band. We talked about Goodman, and Stardust. He said they never played it, because it was difficult and the audience never reacted to it. On my last night there, the band played it.

I have a friend who is really into music. You talk about Griffin’s sax on In Walked Bud being the greatest sax recording of all time and he’ll counter with the atonality of Coltrane. Somehow it drains the recordings of their power.

DISCUSSION (7)

Wobbles the Mind > Honeybunchesofgoats
07/04/2017 at 07:51

That was a really good read and a great piece of music this morning. I needed that, thank you!

TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts. > Honeybunchesofgoats
07/04/2017 at 08:36

I’m partial to Brubeck’s Take 5.

I only truly started to appreciate Jazz after taking a course in college (cake class to cover a history requirement) called Jazz History Analysis. Pretty much the course was us listening to various recording and identifying to musicians by the instrument and their playing style. Coltrane, Dizzy, Ellington, Davis, Thelonious Monk ect..

For an hour once a week we’d just sit there listening to a couple of recordings and bullshiting with the Prof.

Roundbadge > TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts.
07/05/2017 at 14:56

I spent a lot of years playing drums because of my dad, and one of his favorite recordings was ‘Take Five’. I still have it at my mom’s house, on vinyl (and my own CD copy, and high-bitrate MP3s in the cars on flash drives).

When I was in high school, I had a drum instructor that told each of her students to bring in a recording of a song or style that they wanted to learn to play. I came in with copies of ‘Blue Rondo a la Turk’ and ‘Take Five’. She immediately asked me where I got the recordings, and said I had a cool dad when I told her.

TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts. > Roundbadge
07/05/2017 at 15:17

Nice.

Mini Guy- Now has a 4Runner > Honeybunchesofgoats
07/19/2017 at 19:55

I’m in a jazz band for my school and I don’t know a thing about jazz so I’m with you sorta

Honeybunchesofgoats > Mini Guy- Now has a 4Runner
07/19/2017 at 20:03

What instrument?

Mini Guy- Now has a 4Runner > Honeybunchesofgoats
07/19/2017 at 20:39

I was gonna say the one that made sound but that would be a stupid move. It was the trombone