More sleaze, please

[peter rh]

not my suggestion but the article title in today's Daily Telegraph
by Peter Culshaw :
"Peter Culshaw on the problem with jazz today


When Miles Davis saw Wynton Marsalis coming into the room, he used to mutter: "It's the police." That, and: "I'm not sharing a stage with that motherfucker." Miles thought that Marsalis's narrow definition of jazz - nothing electronic or hyphenated, such as jazz-rock - was holding the music back.

Miles might well approve of the eclectic programming of the London Jazz Festival, which opens tomorrow. Certainly, not many of the artists I'm most looking forward to seeing would be called jazz by most people - the improvising, contemporary classical pianist Frederic Rzewski, the funky Malian diva Oumou Sangare, or the electronic Brazilian "sampa nova" music of Cibelle.

The most enjoyable festival of the year for me was the Umbria Jazz Festival, set in the gorgeous Italian hill town of Perugia, where the headline acts were not conventional jazz performers but Van Morrison, James Brown and the Brazilian superstar Caetano Veloso.

And quite rightly. Sadly, my experience of too many jazz concerts is of a bunch of self-indulgent nerds playing egocentric and predictable solos.

Even more accessible and highly rated artists such as Courtney Pine are more impressive for their technique than the emotional impact of their music. At what point does playing so many notes so fast just get to be showing off?

But the real problem seems to me the disappearance of spontaneity and fun from the world of jazz. Marsalis's attempt to turn jazz into America's classical music often produces work that is respectable and bourgeois to the point of dullness. Yet take a look at the greats of jazz history, from Fats Waller to Billie Holliday and Miles himself, and you will nearly always find a sleazy undercurrent of sex and drugs.

It was instructive to me to see the fabulous jazz trumpet-player Arturo Sandoval in the 1980s in a rough club in Havana. He was sweating profusely to stay in the groove for his audience, who were all dancing, many of them swigging cheap rum from cardboard cartons. The Havana audience can always tell if a musician is faking it or not - and Sandoval more than passed muster.

Several years later, I saw him at Ronnie Scott's in London, where I was roundly told off for talking during his set. Sandoval's technique had not deserted him, and his impressive runs were greeted by rapturous applause. But he was, frankly, going through the motions. He wouldn't have lasted five minutes in Havana.

A more thoughtful ambience does work for more cerebral performers like the excellent Brad Mehldau or Jan Garbarek (or the innovative and rigorous EST at next week's festival). But I can't help feeling if jazz got some of its old sleaze back, jazz festivals wouldn't have to programme large amounts of other, sexier music to bring in the punters."

[Tenorman]

Yeah, but you know what happens - as soon as someone looks like they are having some fun, the cry will go up "it ain't jazz"

Where are all the smokey dives with the resident Femme Fatale (got to be a Rita Hayworth lookalike) and the small unit playing drop-dead jazz?

Probably all on celluloid and in the public's imagination.

Sleaze gets a good press, providing its not real or it is long in the past

[Blue Lake]

This dude needs to drop by the Velvet Lounge in Chicago, not for the sleeze, but for the music.

[Blue Lake]

And for what it's worth, go to Wynton's web site and check out the video lounge: there's a video clip of his septet playing Jungle Blues, I think it is, and the crowd is a CROWD...it looks like a soccer crowd, stadium sized and rowdy.

[Tenorman]

Originally posted by Blue Lake
This dude needs to drop by the Velvet Lounge in Chicago, not for the sleeze, but for the music.

My London Underground tube pass does not go that far:D

[Leeway]

QUOTE: The most enjoyable festival of the year for me was the Umbria Jazz Festival, set in the gorgeous Italian hill town of Perugia, where the headline acts were not conventional jazz performers but Van Morrison, James Brown and the Brazilian superstar Caetano Veloso

Van Morrison! :eek:
Give me a break. I guess the author's idea of a jazz concert is where no jazz is actually played. You know, the stuff with those long boring solos.

[peter rh]

Anyone know who Peter Culshaw is ? or what other jobs done?

[Lazaro Vega]

Tenorman, it's a great hang should you ever get outta that tube :smokin:

[Tenorman]

Well, I have been organising my own bit of "sleaze" (She will kill me if she reads this). I organise live music at my local pub, and on the 25th November it is our very own Femme Fatale - Sandra Lawrence. Think Jessica Rabbit in the night club scene or Rita Hayworth in Gilda.
Photos on

http://www.vocaholic.co.uk

CD on
http://www.silvascreen.co.uk/master.cfm?SilvaCode=SSD1150&id=3872

[Saundra Hummer]

Hi Tenorman!

I don't know what it was, but I never saw the seamy side of jazz.

Of course where I went, it only had the bar, not a dance floor, which really changes the dynamics of a place.

What I did see, were musicians who loved their chosen craft, who played, for the most part for their own joy, not because it was just a means to make a living, and that they had signed a contractf for so many days. This is just my impression however.

It was amazing to me how many times several, of what we consider to be jazz legends today, would drop in to the club, just to hear another musician who they admired, or who they hadn't had the chance to see before, play, and then would sit in on several tunes. This happened over, and over, and what fun to see. The sleaze factor never seemed to be at play where & when I saw this all go on. I guess it had it's time, but I just never saw it. Not that a little sleaze can't be fun, and funny! It can be, but just never saw it in the jazz scene, but I guess I should say, other than the drugs, and with most of them, it wasn't overt, so as to be noticble, with a few it was, but even if the majority of them were on them, you probably wouldn't have known it.

I never did see any jazz groupies like the Rock & Roll bands have, not that jazz didn't have that type of follower, but not where we were, never saw a jazz musician leave with anyone, nor did I ever see anyone approach one of them with a proposition, or a phone number. I wasn't naieve to this either, if it had gone on, I would have noticed it, people watcher that I am.

Dizzy didn't need the sleaze factor to want to put out his very best, and I don't think many of them did. We had a few bars we used to go to that had the sleeze factor going on, but not with the jazz clubs. Only one did I know of that was a little sleezy, and it wasn't a hot spot to go to, and I never knew of anyone who was really good to play there.

I just think that venues have gotten too large for the musician to have a feeling of the crowd, they walk onstage from behind a curtain, they don't mingle with the patrons like like they do in small night clubs or did in small night clubs. I think that at times large venues can be phenominal, but to only play those can be detrimental to my way of thinking, lose the feel for your audience, tend to forget them on a personal level.

Just my opinion, but a fellow sent me a tape of some of my favorite musicians, a television show from the 60's, and while they played great, the emotion that they sent out in their music was lacking, not there just for a t.v. camera, a lot was lost without the audience feeding their emotions. Maybe this is just how I saw it, but it really does seem this way to me.

I think now I know what it is I am trying to say, and in less words than the above thoughts. It is intimacy we are missing, sleaze if need be!

[Tenorman]

Well last Tuesday was the gig I was organising and the wonderful Miss Sandra Lawrence was her fabulous self. Black sheath dress, black evening gloves and radio mic. Leaning up against a pillar, singing a sexy little number, and pushing long red hair back.

There were a few eyes popping and jaws on the floor. She was having fun, of course. She doesn't have to do that, but the venue and the theme for the night dictated the stage persona, and boy can she do it - she has a one woman show on the history of the Femme Fatale. She can do straightforward Jazz, but guess what - it doesn't sell - too many other female vocalists out there and not enough people able to discriminate between a good one and an exceptional one. That stage personna gets her remembered

[Saundra Hummer]

Originally posted by Tenorman
Well last Tuesday was the gig I was organising and the wonderful Miss Sandra Lawrence was her fabulous self. Black sheath dress, black evening gloves and radio mic. Leaning up against a pillar, singing a sexy little number, and pushing long red hair back.

There were a few eyes popping and jaws on the floor. She was having fun, of course. She doesn't have to do that, but the venue and the theme for the night dictated the stage persona, and boy can she do it - she has a one woman show on the history of the Femme Fatale. She can do straightforward Jazz, but guess what - it doesn't sell - too many other female vocalists out there and not enough people able to discriminate between a good one and an exceptional one. That stage personna gets her remembered

Would have loved to been there, and knock back a Grayhound in a bucket or two! Sounds like you all had a great time. Would have paid to have seen that.

Told you about the strip scene jazz club in Santa Monica didn't I? Nothing left to the imagination there. Crazy place, called the salt & pepper club, as the clientele was a pretty even mix of blacks, and whites. Owned by an old sea captain, who wore a sea captains hat, and played the violin from behind the mahoganny bar during the paid entertainments breaks. I think that the place was the "Zanzibar" A wild and funny scene. I thought the entertainer was just a girl singer, and a pretty good one, until I turned back around and the girls sequin dress was gone, she was just standing there in pasties and a g string, really was a surprise to me. I usually don't shock, but that shocked me. Just wasn't expecting it.

The people we were with who knew about it all were cracking up, as they were waiting to see our reactions. Then the stripper, whose name I certainly remember, came and sat at our table. Doll was her stage name and she had on faux pearl earrings the size of baseballs, they really were; a foam I would imagine as they were super light, not destroyig her lobes like they would have, had they been made of anything else. Pretty, cute acting black girl, she laughed at my surprise, and we had fun talking to her.

More to this story but may just be funny to me, so bye for now.

[Tenorman]

Sandra is more of the Rita Hayworth/Gilda type (without the infamous below lens strip of that film) or more up to date Jessica Rabbit, in the nightclub scene, which incidently got the UK's Channel Four 8th place sexiest scene from a movie

[Saundra Hummer]

Originally posted by Tenorman
Sandra is more of the Rita Hayworth/Gilda type (without the infamous below lens strip of that film) or more up to date Jessica Rabbit, in the nightclub scene, which incidently got the UK's Channel Four 8th place sexiest scene from a movie

Dunno!!!

I just know that I remember seeing Gilda at the theatre when I was a little tiny girl, and how beautiful even I knew she was, and how that became the standard for perfection as far as being sexy was until the "Outlaw" with Jane Russell, then along came Marilyn.

Jessica Rabbit, hey, she definatly has it!

[Tenorman]

Saundra,
If you check out the two sites from one of my earlier posts, you will see what I mean. Especially the CD front cover - it is the classic Rita Hayworth Gilda movie poster shot with the smoke rising from the cigarette