"I'll play it and tell you what it is later."

Recently I've dived into a very large collection of jazz between the 1950s and 1960s.  It's amazing to think that some of the most square sounding music could have such a chalky history of drug abuse.  For example, I would have never guessed that this guy had such an intense herion addiction:




I think part of the allure of this music (and I go from everywhere, Mingus, Coltrane, Getz, Davis, Monk, anybody) during this time, you start to figure out more what the music is about. I mean that in two ways:

- The first is the idea that any great jazz composer couldn't be able to demonstrate their ability to create in any other way.  Hearing how singers sing and then how jazz artists actually speak (honestly, Miles Davis' voice sounds worse than Tom Waits'), it makes you realize that this is their medium.  While people focus so much on how one sings and how the arrangement needs vocals, the fact that its stripped away is so refined.

-  The second is the story behind the music.  Bill Evans, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker all had serious drug addictions.  In fact, a lot of them didn't live very long.  Listening to Bill Evans without knowing how much the man struggled makes the music feel empty and listless, but understanding it puts so much raw emotion into a keyboard.  Miles Davis was an incredibly angry man and knowing that makes you realize how aggressive and intense his message is.

Few other times (since the 1940s) have really been able to convey that intensity.  That's why I would rather listen to Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack he wrote for the film A Charlie Brown Christmas in July than have to tolerate the choppy compositions that are ham-fisted together.  Contemporary jazz is so shameful because the art isn't really appreciated.  The tempo is dropped and mood was lightened in the last three decades.

After meeting a former jazz musician and having him tell me personal stories about famous musicians during the time I really got where the vanguard was coming from.  It makes people you had no idea existed become fascinating because of their music.  You go back and you imagine Charles Mingus being so large and violent like he was thought to be, and you hear Mingus Ah Um and you really understand where his chaotic sound and bass come from, having instruments abruptly chime in and out.

People easily remember a band because of a familiar voice, but I think it's just as easy to do the same with solid jazz sound.  They all sound distinct as a cohesive body AND with the associated instrument of the composer.

I guess my point to this is that I feel people too easily shun some of the most intense music one could listen to.  Many people have been moved by lyrical songs (i.e. when I drove for the first time at 16 by myself listening Jimi Hendrix's track "Are You Experienced?")  but it's just as easily capable listening to "Waltz for Debby" or "Better Get Hit In Yo' Soul".   Jazz is better at intensifying and soothing the psyche than any other genre.

Part I: A Response To Something I Wrote A Long Time Ago or "Country Music: The Sequel"

The aesthetics of the city, even after residing here for the better part of three years, is still jarring to me.  We didn't have homeless people occupying vacant space, we had cattle.  It's still difficult identifying myself here as I wasn't raised like this.  I grew up with a "Dukes of Hazzard" mentality, and perhaps it's considered an outdated outlook on friendship.

I grew up with a brotherly camaraderie.  Four specific friends that were of the "thick and thin" disposition.  With this time my peak were two specific summers; June-September 2007 and June-August 2008.  During which time I came to a point with why I'm rambling right now: Country Music.

I should preface that I began scribbling this at a diner knowing I promised myself to get the juices flowing. I am now drinking probably the biggest fucking iced tea I think I've ever been served:

The man next to me is discussing some sort of drug rehabilitation and divulging insane stories to the woman he's eating dinner with, and for some reason I keep hearing the sound of duct tape being pulled off of the roll.

...so naturally my mind escapes to the idea and history of country music.

Now I preface this story like that because my "modern" experience with country music came out of those two summers.  Before that I kind of resented it.  Mostly because after the 90s it became more beach/hypermasculine.  Now while it's debatable that this genre has ALWAYS been hypermasculine, it lost whatever subtlety it had intact.

I grew up in rural Washington (and it was RURAL in 1993).  My family moved there in 1993 after being born in Bakersfield, California.  Let me explain to you something about Bakersfield.  In the 1930s during the heart of the Dust Bowl's destruction of mid-western farmland, Bakersfield became a final destination for much of the migrant population looking for anything that was better off.  In this time Bakersfield began to develop its own music scene based on a, I guess one could say, "unrefined" version of country .  Let me put it to you this way: in the early part of last decade when garage-rock took over with a dirtier rhythm influence, this was country's version of that.  Bakersfield/Merle Haggard were The White Stripes of Nashville Country.

Now I was BORN there.  It gathered my attention so much so that I'd later come to realize 21 years later that in my Junior year of college, I'd write a qualitative analysis of "Okie from Muskogee" because of that.

So there's that subtle influence... but this is deeper.  My mother loved Reba Mcentire and early Shania Twain.  My father was somewhat partial to Clint Black.  At the age of 6 my two favorite songs of all time were Brooks and Dunn's "Boot Scootin' Boogie" and Alan Jackson's "Chattahoochee".  I heard every popular country single between 1994 and 1998 without missing beat.  Now at this time it seemed really good.  It had this duality in both a neo-traditionalism  (Randy Travis "King of the Road") and sheer enormous popularity (Garth Brooks' entire career).  It had a fucking pulse.  Lyrics were somewhat structured and evocative.  I realize it now that starting my life hearing that was a great introduction.  Believe it or not Shania Twain at the early point of her career (before she crossed over) was almost par.

...so let's skip ahead using major stepping stones in my influences: Disco, Frank Sinatra, Chumbuwumba, Boyz II Men, pop radio, Green Day, The White Stripes, most of the 2000s, now.  Now in that second to last step I lost my roots.  After Johnny Cash passed away in 2003, I grew to love him slowly, but as far as much else, I thought it was useless and hated the music.  I think it was a combination of me being out of the game for ten years and experiencing the shit-show that was the country music scene at this time.  The emergence of Brad Paisley, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Trace Atkins, and the devolution of Toby Keith all caused the downfall.  By the time Taylor Swift showed up it was all over anyways.  The early mark of it was started with the beach orientation... and then Jimmy Buffet showed up.



TO BE CONTINUED

Part II;  further examination into the duality of hypermasculinity and the beach, extreme patriotism, and the triumph of brotherhood and nostalgia.