14,389. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,280

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.