Jazz, Part 3

Whenever I want to take an unencumbered breath, I think about jazz.

One of my friends is very much into the music scene, and maintains his own industrial music web site with a group of friends. I asked him recently if he knew of a web site that provides a comprehensive amount of information about the local jazz scene in the Los Angeles area. He responded with, “You know what it is about jazz? There’s so MUCH of it that it’s difficult to organize and categorize, even define.”

I have spent at least a hundred hours, surfing the Web before going to sleep, trying to find a decent L.A. jazz web site, one that has a schedule of upcoming shows, as well as mentioning what kind of jazz will be played. One doesn’t exist.

I have spent another hundred hours surfing through my favorite jazz musicians’ web sites, hoping to find their show schedules, as well as the musicians that they will be playing with that night. Nine out of ten times, I am unsuccessful.

I have never been to a jazz performance that was sold out.

My favorite jazz is hard bop, music from the fifties and sixties, played by a quartet (sax, bass, drums, piano). The best performance I’ve ever seen was given by four musicians (Dale Fielder, Greg Gordon, O.C. Davis and a bassist whose name I have since forgotten) who, until that night, have never played before as a group. Until that night, I have never heard of any of them before—I just took a chance at going, not expecting anything. Neither the group nor the individual players have an album that can be bought on Amazon.com. Their performance of that night was never recorded. None of them are mentioned in the tabloids.

This is my experience with jazz, and I hope it will never change. I hope to continually stumble onto brilliance, instead of having it spoon-fed to me through corporate channels. I hope the jazz that I like never becomes so popular that I have to wait in line, that I have to dress a certain way, that I have to plan my whole day around one event. I hope the jazz that I like will forever be slightly elusive.

On a different note, the Burning Man, which is an event that describes itself as based on radical self-expression, radical self-reliance, art and participation, is going on right now in the Nevada desert. They have a web site. They have a theme for the event. They have a Mission Statement, First Timer’s Guide, complete schedule and directions, a Resource Guide, art galleries, updated news bulletins and a Global Regional Network directory.

If I’m lucky, on any given night I will stumble upon four jazz musicians playing to a half-empty audience, making shit up as they go along.