Jazz

Nice!

Shut up. I bloody hate jazz. Well, not hate. I’d struggle to actually hate anything, although I have to confess that the smell of stinky tofu has pushed me to the brink on more than one occasion. It’s rank. Trust me.

Jazz, though. Don’t get it. In the car, I listen to the local English radio station while on the school run. They sometimes use some jazz just to fill a hole, or so it seems. Each morning, the schedule moves from a really interesting programme from the BBC World Service to the news on the hour, and there’s a few minutes to fill while the newsreader cranks up his mic and dons his dinner jacket and dickie bow. This morning it was some godawful jazz piece. Sorry. Not acceptable.

The thing is, jazz musicians are clearly pretty competent, but what’s the point? It sounds to me like a load of perfectly good notes strung together – not quite à la Eric Morecambe and André Preview [sic] – in no particular order (in the sense that there is no discernible tune). When did you last stroll down a country lane whistling a jazz tune, eh? Yeah, me neither. It would be rather like me just writing a load of stuff, using perfectly acceptable words and phrases, demonstrating an expert knowledge and understanding of the English language, but producing something utterly meaningless.

Oh, hang on.

Yes. Jazz. Jazz musicians. They’re bloody great, aren’t they?

I did once stay for a few nights in a hostel on the edge of Central Park in NYC. It was (and still is, according to the results of a Goooogle search I just completed) rather pretentiously/appropriately called Jazz on the Park. I have no memory of the accommodation, but I did go and sit and listen to a performance in the lobby(?) one evening. Luckily, I didn’t have a gun to hand.

Seriously, though, I guess there must be good and bad jazz. Mustn’t there? I recall reading a line from Picasso who spoke about people not understanding (his) art, when he went on to explain that even though he had no understanding of English, that did not mean English was worthless or meaningless. Something like that. I suppose, that’s how I feel, so I accept that I am simply unschooled in the finer points.

Nevertheless, if someone comes along and spouts some nonsense about the space between the notes, I’m gonna go all stinky tofu. You have been warned.

In the end, it makes no difference. I can turn off the radio and slip a Radiohead CD into the slot. Yesterday, I woke up sucking on a lemon.