Tag Archives: music

Jazz snobs

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Jazz snobs irritate me. You know the kind of guy who claims it’s not jazz unless it is some kind of standard or follows some kind of bebop form. For a music that is all about improvisation, it sure seems to attract a lot of people who like pigeonhole things. For me, improvisation is the heart of jazz. On one extreme, I like Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck. In the middle ground, I’ll listen to a little Danilo Perez or Eliane Elias. Out on the other edge I love the music of Bob James. It should be obvious by now that piano is my favourite instrument when it comes to all kinds of jazz. But one thing all these piano players have in common is that they surrounded themselves with some great bands.

A guy who used to play with Bob James in the early eighties is Mark Colby, the tenor saxophonist. He’s been making some great straight-ahead jazz on Hallway Records. His latest is a tribute to the sax great Stan Getz. It’s one of the finest albums I’ve heard in the last two years. Here’s a guy who has made some great modern jazz but has also done the contemporary stuff too. Where there’s real talent there’s no room for jazz snobs and their pigeon holes. Just room for great music.

Electronic

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I’ve been a longtime lover of electronic music. It began in the late seventies and early eighties with Kraftwerk, John Foxx and Gary Numan. I was in a band called “Sonic Dude” for a while who cut one single on an indie label. We came up in Sheffield at the same time as the Human League, Heaven 17 and Pulp. There had to be one band who didn’t make it. We were it. Our career peaked with a sellout show at the Leadmill in Sheffield. It all went downhill from there.

Anyway, back to the broader electronic scene. In the mid-80s, Foxx disappeared, Numan went off the boil and Kraftwerk began to recycle their old material. I got into jazz in a big way and began to prefer Thelonious Monk on piano to what anyone was doing on synthesiser.

Numan recaptured my interest with his “Sacrifice” album. I didn’t care much for what he’s done since then but it was enough to get me checking out that scene again. John Foxx reappeared and has made the best albums of his career. “The Pleasures of Electricity” is the pick of the bunch but all 3 “Cathedral Oceans” sets and “Tiny Colour Movies are interesting and exciting in a minimalist sort of way whilst “Crash and Burn” and “From Trash” are more unrestrained and more mainstream.

Even more exciting have been the smaller new bands that have appeared in the UK. One favourite is Ladytron who have achieved a modicum of success and exposure. More obscure and hidden are “Swarf” who are simply quite wonderful. They have one of the finest female vocalists on the planet and some of the most inventive electronic melodies you are ever going to hear. Amazingly, they have remained an underground phenomenon who need greater exposure.

They have one album on Cryonica – “Art, Science, Exploitation”. Do yourself a favour and buy it.

You can also find them on a number of compilations and I-Tunes. There were rumours of a new single but nothing seems to have happened. Listen to them, get them the exposure they deserve.

Posters on walls that come to life

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So I was talking about the fact that I do some writing…… One interesting side effect of this is that I’ve got to know most of the artists who were posters on my wall when I was a kid. Very strange. I’ve been interviewing Bernie Leadon who was in the Eagles and the Flying Burrito Brothers. I’ve been doing interviews with him now for 12 years which go out in a booklet I produce occasionally called Natural Progressions which would be of particular interest to fans of those bands.
One of the interesting side effects of this is that I hope I had a little role to play in encouraging him back into to the studio and on to the road to promote an album called Mirror which he made 3 or 4 years ago. The sales of that album weren’t all they could have been and Bernie’s not doing much musically again but it was nice while it lasted.

Bob Dylan – The Curse of Celebrity and the Cross of Christ

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(This was the original title. When it was published elsewhere, my editor chose to retitle the piece “Bob Dylan: The Spiritual Journey of a 20th Century Icon” which was not what I wanted AND rather seemed to miss my point)

When Leon Patillo was converted in the late seventies, the Christian music industry and its press was full of the news of the conversion of “Santana’s lead singer”. Those who are familiar with the music of Santana will know that the band revolves around and is named for its guitarist and has used a mammoth amount of vocalists over the last 30 years. But the facts don’t always get in the way of Christian reporting and a good story when it sees one.

Patillo may now only merit a footnote in the history of Contemporary Christian music but his launch into the Christian marketplace and its subculture was indicative of something that was going to happen time and time again in the late 70s and early 80s. The church had come to believe that celebrity converts in some ways added to the validity of the gospel. Perhaps if it waved the flag hard enough and high enough and showed that someone famous believed then those who didn’t would be persuaded by celebrity testimony.

Perhaps it was symptomatic of the times. It was the opening of an era in church life which was heavily influenced by the Vineyard fellowship, John Wimber and his teachings. The argument went something like this – if people see marvellous works of God then they would be persuaded of the validity of the gospel and accept Christ. Leaving aside troubling comments of Christ that suggested it was an adulterous generation that looked for a sign and that people would not be persuaded even if someone was raised from the dead, whatever the weaknesses of the theology and the theory of the church, the Vineyard movement would make a lasting impression on the church for the next two decades, until the passing of Wimber, its most persuasive advocate.

Which brings us to Bob Dylan. Not only was Dylan the height of the cult of the celebrity convert, his conversion occurred whilst he was under the auspices of the Vineyard movement. After his conversion, Dylan immediately began to record exclusively gospel songs and began to perform in concert in a way that was out of keeping with the first twenty years of his career. Someone who previously had needed to be encouraged to say “Thank You” between songs and who evaded questions presented by the press, now began to preach sermons about Armageddon and give interviews about his new found faith. Sometimes he was booed and heckled whilst on stage whilst others talked about it all being “a phase”. In 1982, he reverted to type refusing to talk about much of anything once more. He left Vineyard, began to study Scripture, occasionally with the Jewish Lubavitch sect, and declined to host a gospel music awards show. The church that had a use for Dylan’s celebrity now had no use for him. His 1983 album “Infidels” was searched by the Christian press for the expected disowning of the Christian faith and when none came the religious press paid less and less attention to each subsequent Dylan album. The Dylan Christian era was over, it seemed.

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