If this week’s lesson is clickbait, it’s not very good clickbait.
Years ago, when a certain “jazz movie” came out, I vowed never to mention it by name, save in private conversation.
It’s not that I disliked The Movie, even though it’s hard to watch with suspended-disbelief as a “real” musician…
…but more that everybody was talking about it, and plenty of YouTubers were getting well-deserved view-count bumps by talking about it.
So I never wanted to make “just another W@#*&^$# lesson”.
I’d always secretly harbored a dream, however, of showing a new/casual jazz fan the gap between what The Movie depicts as “modern jazz”, and the music I’ve spent my life studying.
Because - c’mon.
Bright young 17-year-olds in 2001 would not decide to throw away money, status, and probably the opportunity for a big house with a 2-car garage just for rehashed Buddy Rich Band palaver.
It’s not like I was in a “jazz bubble” in high school, either. I also liked Led Zeppelin, and all the best music of the time, including (I was a grunge kid) Nirvana and Soundgarden. Not to mention some of the best hip hop of the era, from Tribe and Pharcyde to Illmatic and Jay.
Was I going to forgo playing that stuff to play a niche music with a much smaller audience to play…stuff like they play in The Movie?
Hell no.
This “jazz music” would have to be life-changingly awesome for so many of us to decide to study it.
So I wanted to make a video introducing a new fan to the jazz music I knew…
…but I also knew it had to work on two levels.
Because longtime followers of the channel weren’t going to sit through a dull video intended only for “outsiders”.
Soooo - hopefully I’ve split the atom.
See if you agree;)