Saturday, January 13, 2007

one night in october...smooth ride, baby

There are some things you just don't say unless you mean them.

Tonight I used a term that, right up there with "I love you," is just such a one.

"Yeah."

It's been said that there's no greater compliment than for someone to sit back after experiencing your work, nod, and go, "Yeah." My jazz director was of the opinion that this response was the only one he would ever really solicit, and I think he was right to feel that way. What more could you really need to say at a point like that, for which this term was quite possibly designed?

So, tonight, I sat in my padded auditorium chair and listened to a collage of my university jazz groups, and just to test it out, at one point I breathed a quiet, "Yeah" out into the forum of public opinion that always exists at a good jazz concert.

It just felt wrong. It was an all right song, but not a particularly excellent one. I shut up and listened, amused that I was placing equal importance on this term as most people do the single most uniting phrase in any global language (actually, really a split decision in the civilized world between "I love you" and "touchdown"), but decided to keep my ear out for something that might be more worthy.

I listened to some interesting scatting jobs (they were decent, but you have to learn somewhere, and I've never really heard a really good scatter under the age of about 40), some fair-to-middlin' "crowd tunes," and a couple of pretty-good-but-not-particularly-incredible solos. All pretty good music overall, but was it really "yeah" caliber? In the end, it was a Woody Herman tune that sounded to all heaven like a Kenton chart that ripped it out of me.

The sax soloist who played that chart just crooned the thing. There's a standard that a regular Joe soloist would play; staying in the key, some decent variation but not anything super spectacular....and then there was this guy's solo. Sassy and radio-sexy, his tone danced around under the radar in a hot whisper half the time, and the rest just barely broke into the full sound range. To quote Wynton Marsalis (in reference to his "Midnight Blues"): "When you hear those footsteps at night, and it's not your mama."

I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes.

**

Jazz
by me

Cool colors overlap and swirl,
Bright orange crashes against neon yellow with a lick of blue flame,
together,
Feels good.
He starts to add his own silvery whisper of charged fuscia
A part of himself,
and the white-hot electricity slides into his once-cold veins.
He thinks it's there,
complete,
perfection,
until the actinic green combustion slips
Gently between the sound
and lightning flashes a deep red,
surprising even himself,
as it channels forth from his own heart.

6 comments:

Thirdmango said...

"Yeah" during Jazz is a crazy thing. I love the Yeah. It doesn't come out often but when it does it means you're really feeling it, that there's a connection between you and the person on stage that you two feel together and you just can't help but saying "Yeah". It's the ultimate groove.

Olympus said...

You have no idea how awesome it was to read that comment:)

Listen on, friend. What's your favorite stuff?

Thirdmango said...

I am a music fiend. Music is by far my favorite venue of thought and so I have so much and still need so much. I don't know if I'll ever catch up. But at least for Jazz, my favorites are "Medeski, Martin and Wood", John Scofield, The Bad Plus, Cannonball Adderly, Gerry Mulligan and Maynard Ferguson.

Jazz concerts are almost my favorite kind of concert. The kind where the better time you're having, the better the band plays. Where the audience is almost an extension of the band. Those are the best concerts.

Brooklyn said...

OH man, you're so right.

Have you heard about the Crescent Jazz Festival here on campus in a couple weeks? The whole thing is a tribute to Maynard Ferguson. You should go.

Jazz-wise, I'm a fan of Charlie Mingus, Miles Davis, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, Stacey Kent, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie, to name a few. Although I do also enjoy Maynard Ferguson and a lot of Chuck Mangione (along with lots of other things). Except funk. I almost never like funk.

Thirdmango said...

I had not heard about the Festival, send me the info on it, I'd love to go.

On that note, I sent you an email to your stillsbyolympus gmail account. I figure since like most people in blogdom you don't actually use that one since it's not your main one you haven't seen it. Likewise I don't use my thirdmango one all that often. Just thought I'd send you a heads up on that. Name is Jon btw.

Brooklyn said...

Search for it on byunews.byu.edu - they always have press releases for stuff like that which have pretty complete information.

Friday and Saturday of it are sold out, by the way, but Wednesday and Thursday are free.