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Introducing Jazz to Squares?

danny la rouge said:
Funny you should say that, but having suddenly got Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil, (see thread I started last week or the week before) which I previously thought was just not a bad hard bop album, I tried the first Weather Report album, and found it isn't as bad as I remembered them being. In fact I really rather liked the first track especially. (Milky Way).
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mmm, just tried Black Weather. Not as bad as I'd feared, but not as good as I'd hoped. Only one track lasted all the way through (Three Clowns), several others were quite good, but then...Jaco fucking Pastorius :mad:
 
i'd go with taking them to a decent jazz club with a fairly trad band on - preferably somewhere with food & good cocktails.

most of the albums i'd suggest have already been suggested: how about one of abdullah ibrahim's albums? personally i favour 'african sun', but most of them i've heard are excellent, and would be tuneful enough to be something of a gateway drug...

django bates might be worth a go too - rather more experimental i guess, but he always does decent covers (somewhere over the rainbow, life on mars) which might work for a layperson?
 
teuchter said:
I reckon the best way to introduce someone to it is to take them to a decent (but not too avant-garde) live band. Get them to understand how the musicians relate to, and take over the leadership of the performance from one another.
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Great. A mutual musical wank off.


Trad, Django Reinhart, Billie Holiday, louis armstrong etc are one thing. But contemporay Jazz seems to be mostly about music students driveling out student groove . Daddio.
 
Ok, going to tip my toe in this thread . . .

I'm a square - never into jazz, never 'got it'.
Ok, I like some of that old stuff but the 'Jazz Club/Nice/It's About The Notes He's Not Playing' stuff has always left me majorly cold.

I've sat toking with some mates who were getting really into some weird-sounding stuff and I'm sure they were really into it and not just trying to do some 'cool' pose but I was just bored shitless.

I like punk, folk, rock, a lot of pop, some fairly obscure indie-ish stuff, actually lots of fairly obscure stuff, but where would I start with the jazz thing as a way in?
 
8ball said:
Ok, going to tip my toe in this thread . . .

I'm a square - never into jazz, never 'got it'.
Ok, I like some of that old stuff but the 'Jazz Club/Nice/It's About The Notes He's Not Playing' stuff has always left me majorly cold.

I've sat toking with some mates who were getting really into some weird-sounding stuff and I'm sure they were really into it and not just trying to do some 'cool' pose but I was just bored shitless.

I like punk, folk, rock, a lot of pop, some fairly obscure indie-ish stuff, actually lots of fairly obscure stuff, but where would I start with the jazz thing as a way in?
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Yey!

OK, because you've said you like folk, and because I shamefully missed Django Reinhardt from my OP, try starting with him. Put "Nuages" into Spotify.

What you need to know is that he was a hard-living gypsy, who died young, and only had two fingers he could use to fret his guitar following a caravan fire.

If you don't like Django, get back to me and I'll suggest something else.
 
Kaka Tim said:
Great. A mutual musical wank off.


Trad, Django Reinhart, Billie Holiday, louis armstrong etc are one thing. But contemporay Jazz seems to be mostly about music students driveling out student groove . Daddio.
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Rubbish. You can find any kind of stuff you want played live. If you want trad you can find trad.

If you want to see something contemporary that isn't "student drivel" - try Gilad Atzmon, just for example.
 
danny la rouge said:
Yey!

OK, because you've said you like folk, and because I shamefully missed Django Reinhardt from my OP, try starting with him. Put "Nuages" into Spotify.

What you need to know is that he was a hard-living gypsy, who died young, and only had two fingers he could use to fret his guitar following a caravan fire.

If you don't like Django, get back to me and I'll suggest something else.
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I'd agree that Django is a good starting point.
 
I suggest these for starters. There's nothing here too esoteric, but these guys are as good as anyone spanning the 30's to the 60's period - and beyond - and there's a couple of seminal Miles albums. The Sun Ra complilation is superb and is almost a history of jazz in itself, covering a multitude of styles from hard bop, to swing, to cosmic spacejazz. :cool:

Charlie Parker - The Essential (compilation)
Miles - Birth of the Cool
Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
Sun Ra - Easy Listening for Intergalactic Travel (compilation)
Bill Evans - Everybody Digs Bill Evans
Miles - Kind of Blue
 
teuchter said:
I'd agree that Django is a good starting point.
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I remember in the mid 80s visiting friends in Glasgow, who shared a flat. We went out on the lash, then went back to their place in Maryhill for a few smokes. (When I used to do that sort of thing). There was one SLF fan from Belfast, and three metallers from East Kilbride. (All guitarists, which was sort of how I knew them). An argument broke out between the flatmates about what music to put on. Expecting to be rebuffed, I pulled the C90 out of my Walkperson. It had Django on one side, and Brubeck's Time Out on the other side. I suppose because it was neither punk nor metal, they went with it. Well, we all got stoned, and they played the tape over and over again.

The next morning as I was leaving for the train, they demanded to keep the tape. Next time I saw them, they were all telling me they played the tape all the time, and asking "Where can we find more stuff like this?"

I'm not claiming this will always happen. It's probably the only instant conversion anecdote I can tell. But I like to think the music had more to do with it than the drugs.
 
discokermit said:
i'm listening to grant green a lot at the moment. you could do worse.
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I love 'Idle Moments'. But I find his other stuff a bit middle of the road. I think it's probably cos 'Idle Moments' has Blue Note's slightly more avant garde wing playing on it.
 
danny la rouge said:
Yey!

OK, because you've said you like folk, and because I shamefully missed Django Reinhardt from my OP, try starting with him. Put "Nuages" into Spotify.

What you need to know is that he was a hard-living gypsy, who died young, and only had two fingers he could use to fret his guitar following a caravan fire.

If you don't like Django, get back to me and I'll suggest something else.
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Cool, I will give it a go once I find a window in my hectic international jetsetting schedule . . . :cool:
 
Modern Jazz Quartet could be a good option too -

modernjazzquartet_django.jpg
 
Nobody's yet suggested Clifford Brown, so I will; especially his stuff with vocalists like Dinah Washington or Sarah Vaughn. It's easily accessible, non-threatening and deceptively complex.
 
Getting people who dont like jazz into it is a tall tall order. Ive tried to work out what keeps people out. I think two much soloing, not enough 'themes' (melodies in general), not enough concrete rhythm, and a general lack of appreciation of chord changes. If you can find tracks that avoid al of the above too much, they are the place to start - the simpler (and more beautiful) the track the better (such as Coltrane's much covered and loved standard ) <<<4 Hero version

Here are a few other ways in:

1 is via seventies jazz/funk releases - if you can dig funk, then there are some less scary jazz funk stuff that can work (Blackbyrds for example)

2 another way is via things like Miles Davis/Gill Evans Porgy & Bess - jazz classical I would call it

3 Kind of Blue seems to work for a lot of people. Or you can tells people that Coltrane's Love Supreme is on the NME top 50 most important records of all time, and watch guitar heads buy and pretend to like it!

4. I think modern jazz by 'electronic' acts are also a good warm up - whats that french house thing called again...St... got it - St Germaine. Know at least one person for whom that opened the door.

...on the whole I think gently does it...

I made a mix for a friend with this in mind - and failed (cos he still didnt get it), if your interested it's here (pt.1):
http://mikusmusik.blogspot.com/search/label/JAZZ
 
Jazz is the one genre of music I think I should like but I have yet to find anything that actually moves me. I've listened to some of the recommendations on here and i'm still in the same position as I was before.

It's funny because I really like Jazz influenced metal like Dillinger Escape Plan, Meshuggah and these guys - http://www.myspace.com/bilbaosyndrome
 
JE:5 said:
Jazz is the one genre of music I think I should like but I have yet to find anything that actually moves me. I've listened to some of the recommendations on here and i'm still in the same position as I was before.
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Space is the Place by Sun Ra?
 
ska invita said:
4. I think modern jazz by 'electronic' acts are also a good warm up - whats that french house thing called again...St... got it - St Germaine. Know at least one person for whom that opened the door.

...on the whole I think gently does it...
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god he's shit. but I can see how it would work.

I think there's a perception that Jazz is all impenetrable shit that you need to really understand and that makes it seem frighteneing to people who feel they don't know what they need to. But it's not is it?
you could start by exploring that idea - almost anyone who likes a wide range of music will like some Jazz somewhere along the way - they just won't count it. A bit like people who say they don't like Country but still love Johnny Cash.

Vocal stuff is often a good way in, and older stuff when there's still recognisable song structures in it. Lots of people have suggested Django and I think that's perfect because it's so infectious and, in an odd way, familiar.
 
Jazz covers a massive amount of different styles of music - it's been around for about 100 years. A lot of people on this thread have fallen into the the trap of seeing jazz as the pretty narrow 50s/60s/70s style of Davis, Coltrane, etc. I've tried with that stuff, but I just can't get into it. Too fiddly, not enough tunes.

What about all those pre-1950s styles? Glenn Miller? Cab Calloway? Louis Prima? Louis Jordan, as mentioned in the OP? Surely Benny Goodman's version of Sing Sing Sing is a good starting point? I love all that stuff.
 
Spandex said:
What about all those pre-1950s styles? Glenn Miller? Cab Calloway? Louis Prima? Louis Jordan, as mentioned in the OP? Surely Benny Goodman's version of Sing Sing Sing is a good starting point? I love all that stuff.
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Yup. Bix, Louis, Earl Hines, Sidney Bechet, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, Woody Herman (esp the First Herd), all great stuff. The best stuff to hear after a long leafy walk on an Autumn Sunday, whilst drinking cocoa by the fire, and reading the Sunday paper, or an untaxing novel. :cool:
 
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