RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,280
(a history of joyful gamesmanship)
Back in Colonia, I had a friend,
Frank, who had a brother, about
8 years younger (we were 28
then) in a band - one of those
half-ever-active local bands
that played the endless and
foul successions of local
clubs and venues; Jersey
Shore, Elizabeth, etc. The
usual stage-band circuit.
It was (the band) called
'Flossie.' I never knew any
story behind the name. Sort
of an early hard-rock, heavy
metal nascent sound, along
the then contemporary 'new'
bands of that ilk, and best
exemplified by the first
generation of Van Halen, for
comparison - a mix of the
theatric, the flashy, and the
musical (loud and driving).
It never did much for me,
but it pushed me along into
a certain groove of staying
away. All that they ever did,
I was never interested in at all.
-
That was always a certain
aspect of street culture, or
the colloquial, that I despised.
I made sure it wouldn't matter
either way - even in the seminary
there were guys with guitars
and secular music tastes who
could make the joint rock, as
out of context as it was. My
friend there, Mike Bartholomew,
had this little band that called
itself 'Laissez Faire' - which
means, like, 'Hands Off' in
French, and it's an Adam Smith
reference too - Economics and
Finance theory. They could take,
and did, most any jingle or TV
ad or theme and somehow put
it into a rock n' roll format -
mostly by the simple tactics of
tempo, pounding three-chord
transformation, and volume.
(The thing was, obviously, in the
seminary there wasn't that much
a band like that could sing about -
sex and romance and women and
love pretty much being out of the
picture, unless you knew maybe
how to encode the idea of other
men into it instead. Thus, jingles.
But it was fun. Seven long years
before Jimi Hendrix batted the
National Anthem over the head
at Woodstock, they had done the
same already to theme songs and
ad ditties like Cap'n Crunch, and
Choo Choo Charlie. Years later,
at Princeton, there was a famous
poet, one Paul Muldoon, who
did the same with his cranky
little band, named 'Racket' -
but at least his crafted words
were witty and game-ful.
-
Funny as it went, this same Mike
Bartholomew (a few years older
than me) was my introduction
to Jazz. He had the likes of most
everything from John Coltrane and
Miles Davis, to Coleman Hawkins,
Thelonius Monk, and all the others.
Through him, I cut my own music
teeth on the rudiments of jazz -
its history, thematics, riffs and
tempos. The crazy drum breaks,
and the more sedated versions
of same as well, in cuts like 'Take
Five' by Dave Brubeck. These
are just a few examples. The idea
of all this - to me - was purity.
A musical purity without the
fussiness of classical music,
which was (and is) essentially
an affectation of the wealthy.
In my opinion. I was a poor
boy, down from some gutter
town in North Jersey, in a
Southern-accented deep
South-Jersey Pines area
seminary, and though we had
a few rich kids, Governor's
sons and important people's
offspring, none of that ever
came my way. All the affected
ways of men and money, family
and riches, meant nothing to me,
and that included classical music.
Later, yes, I did obtain a nice
taste for it, learning its superstars
and legacy names and musics,
(in order to do that, and proving
my case, were the effete snobs
from whom one had to listen and
learn from to do so. That still
goes on; listen to the creeps on
the air on WQXR, in NYC. I'd
sometimes like to punch Jeff
Spurgeon in the head for his
fakery), but still to me the core
essence of crazy-life and being
was to be found in Jazz, as I
learned it. Jazz had always had
a dark undercurrent of race. In
1962, the climate of the nation
was such that 'Negroes' in all
other aspects other than their
'music' were problematical. It
used to be called 'Race Music.'
Not speedway stuff, but slaves,
negroes, spirituals, and 'blues'
(which, again, was merely the
crying plaint of slaves and
slavery, a blight to which
America never owned up or
admitted too, just like the
slaughter and decimation of
the Native Americans whose
lands were stolen and their
millions of Bison killed to
force them into starvation,
moving on, and death). So,
salad days or seminary days
both looked the same to me:
A private, long-years', gathering
place for personal space and
learning of and from which
I took every advantage possible
for me to take, and it still wasn't
enough. The fuzziness of imposed
religion kept getting in the way.
-
Jazz then became for me a rear
doorway - out. Opening on
way. Secretive and stealthy. I
needed nothing else. A Jazz lead,
of course, then and now, will
take you nowhere else except
right through the cross-currents
of the real and the most dire
parts of older American culture:
The Beats, Abstract-Expressionst
art, counter-cultural undercurrents,
Existentialism, poetry, and lots
more. It's all unavoidable.
-
And then, one day, after all
that, Jazz itself was found to have
reached its own dead-end. I noticed
it first about 1974, I suppose - by
then any jazz heard was run down,
static, uneventful, making excuses
for itself, trending mainstream,
and hardly Jazz at all. It just
seemed to have lost impetus,
to have gone on without direction
or meaning, fused itself with too
many other things, and had younger
musicians coming up who were
more culture-set performers that
anything else. It became more a
history of joyful gamesmanship
rather then the punch in the gut
and face it had always meant to
be. I think the passing of old Jazz
is best exemplified by (take a listen)
a Coleman Hawkins piece titled
'Under a Blanket of Blue' on the
album 'The Hawk Relaxes.' It
spits and starts and stops, but can
never find its life or the energy
needed to go or to get anywhere.
Of course, any of that is taste, and
that taste is my own opinion. A
piece of music that gets lost in
itself (and I'm not sure Under a
Blanket of Blue is the most apt
example, but I couldn't find one
at the moment) ends up bereft,
going nowhere. To upend this
entire apple cart, and take it to
the extreme - anything by Charlie
Parker seems to me to be lost,
nervous, childish and so much
headed towards nowheresville that
it's long gone. Yet, all that stuff
is revered as much today as ever
it was before.
