Anybody can play weird, that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple complicated is commonplace. Making the complicated simple – awesomely simple – that’s creativity” Charles Mingus, Mainliner Magazine, July 1977
Yeah ran out when I wrote the headline but got to 10 later. Read while listening to Mingus classic ‘All the Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your Mother’
1 Thinking just because it is jazz it has merit. Wrong
2 Thinking because it is from a certain country it has exceptional merit. Ditto, daddio. Also lame.
3 Because it is avant-garde – and so many critics think this – It is better than if it isn’t. Also wayward.
4 Because the tunes are originals they are necessarily better. Yes, you got it – pants.
When anyone starts out to do something creative – especially if it seems a little unusual – they seek approval, often from those least inclined to give it. But a creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism.
Will Self
5 If it swings – part of the thinking in 3 above, in other words something to be demonised – it’s hokey. Hilarious
Fear not, gentle reader: You aren’t at all delulu or being pretentious to dig 1990s avant classic More News For Lulu
7 If the jazzers are badly dressed, like they are wearing a bag yet again, or look as they woke up in a ditch and shop in Asda, don’t look particularly hip and are aged they are wack. While not great on the hygiene front again questionable and highly delulu.
8 If they are young and straight out of some top music college they are that bit more interesting. Again. Mr Pitiful thinking.
If you’re not a musician, you know just a nothing sod, and not one of us of course, what you are writing is just the worst thing ever. You can’t even spell! You overuse the word lyrical all the time! You take yourself extremely seriously, wear a cravat or culottes (possibly at the same time), and are known to pompously burble! Oh, and you stink, are rude to waiters, make babies cry and talk over the quietest bits in my brilliant ballads all the time. My carefully wrought homage to Buddy Featherstonhaugh, even though you are one of only 2 people and a bot who know how to pronounce his name properly, was utterly ruined BY YOU – YOU CLOT! The reductio ab asurdum – mercifully I do know the difference between fact and fiction, mind – I’m getting at in a way is reliably unearthed and mocked up when jazz expert the fictional Hans Groiner – also a musician, it’s worth pointing out – interviews the very real John Scofield.
9 However accidentally or subliminally achieved, parroting PR guff that is at best a distraction at worst a red herring is not waving but drowning. Again the critic is made to look a total tool if so bamboozled. Not ideal.
Digging a bit of this Al to air keytar to: an ‘ell of a player and not – should you be so confused – Ai.
10 Getting carried away with the myth and mystique of it. Somehow you are time travelling. You and Buddy Bolden are bezzy mates and you sit there thinking: *me I could do that* as you start doing air keytar to come juicy bit of Al Di Meola. Spooning dollops of black forest gateau to her loveliness sat next to you, demolishing a few Steins of Verfaultes Frettchen “rotted ferret” at German night down the 6, absolutely delighted with yourself, yup: life’s good: rising star Shughie McFee who has hot footed it down from Auchtermuchty just heard stops you feeling jaded. Again: slightly askew critical mosh pit thinking and all round decline and fall.
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