I never thought I’d later be writing about them in regards to Kickstarter, but I watched in dismay as the vocalist/bassist, Nataly Dawn, launched her own Kickstarter fundraising campaign last year to raise money for her first solo album. She was asking for $20,000, but has since received pledges at five times that amount for the staggering sum of $104,788! I say “staggering” because Pomplamoose’s original videos and songs, which I was very impressed by, were homemade (the videos showed their studio in what appeared to be the spare bedrooms in their home) and self-produced, and yet, they resulted in a product that was a commercial and artistic success for this unlikely duo.

I thought it was unseemly for a singer who is part of a very successful group to go begging for money on Kickstarter, but hey–that’s just me. Here’s her video:

And here’s her pitch:

I know that I risk jinxing myself in saying that I have very high hopes for this album, but it’s the truth! Over the last year, I have written songs that I’m proud of and that I believe represent a cohesive body of work. They’ve taken a lot out of me (in a good way), and I’m looking forward to sharing them with you.

It helps that I have so much faith in the musicians I’ll be working with. Between the drummer, the bassist, the guitarist and the engineer, I couldn’t tell you who was the most talented. They are the ones who will turn my bare bone songs into full-fledged works. They are the magic makers. I would tell you who they are, but you would probably get too excited and forget to give me money.

Everything is ready to go: the songs, the musicians, the studio. All I need is a little help from you! Every dollar will go towards the album: paying the musicians and the people who will be filming the recording process, reserving the studio and hotel rooms, renting gear etc. And if by some miracle there’s anything left over, I will buy myself a brand new Jaguar…or the money will go towards promoting the album. I haven’t decided yet.

I thought the cutesy tone was a bit strained (“…you would probably get too excited and forget to give me money”). I also thought that the injection of the high-brow language (“…I believe they represent a cohesive body of work”) was odd and certainly presumptuous if not arrogant, given that it is her own assessment, and premature, given that it is her first solo album. When I hear the term “body of work,” I think of artists who have amassed decades of consistently excellent music, not someone’s embryonic first recording. What I found most strange was that there was no mention of her husband, Jack Conte, as being involved. Was he not going to be involved in his wife’s “first solo album”? That would be difficult to believe, but maybe she really is striking out on her own.

Then, on December 11, she posts this:

YES! The day has FINALLY come! The studio time is booked, the team is assembled, and best of all, I get to use all of the Kickstarter money before the government can get their hands on it!

Ha-HA!

But wait! It get’s better! My very favorite person, JACK CONTE is going to be producing the album! (I’m going to just stop using exclamation points now. Please assume that every sentence is followed by a trail of exclamation points.)

So here’s how it’s gonna go down: I’ve written fifteen songs and we plan to record all of them in ten days at an incredible studio in Sonoma. We’ll be working with a very talented and accomplished engineer, by the name of Oz Fritz. He’s worked on numerous amazing records, including Tom Wait’s Bone Machine AND Lauren O’Connell’s upcoming album. The drummer is also one of Wait’s go-to-guys. His name is Stephen Hodges, and he’s got grooves that make the Grand Canyon look flat. Was that a lame thing to say? I feel like it was…

ANYhoo…The extraordinarily talented Ryan Lerman will be on electric guitar…

But wait! It get’s better! We now find out that “her very favorite person” (spoiler alert–her husband, Jack) is producing the album. What a surprise. ANYhoo, let’s be generous with the expense estimates (keep in mind that she estimated the cost for this to be $20,000):

Four Musicians@ $1,500 per week for two weeks………….$12,000

Engineer…………………………………………………………$15,000

Studio…………………………………………………………..$15,000

CD Production (all digital)……………………………………..$0

Video Shoot……………………………………………………..$15,000

Which leaves her with a total of $47,788 to buy the Jaguar (who would  have guessed she’s such a blatant materialist, lusting after a British luxury sports car?). Or, instead of the Jag, she could pay Jack to produce the album, which means a good chunk of Kickstarter money gets “Kickedback” to the Dawn/Conte household. Nice.

There’s really nothing wrong with this (if you don’t mind begging). It’s legal and it happens all the time in business and in politics when family members get “hired” for (in many cases) “no show/low show” jobs. It does illustrate the lack of accountability with the Kickstarter model, which is already showing itself to be problematic (for example, here, and here). As for Nataly and Jack, well, they should make hay while the sun shines. The adoring but fickle public will likely soon tire (as I have) of the spastic, quick-cut, split-screen videos, the ironic ’50s doo-wop references, and the coy, doe-eyed, vacant stares.

Taken by itself, this closing is somewhat shocking. New York City can’t support a specialty shop for percussionists ranging from progressive rock icon Bill Bruford and the late jazz great Louie Bellson to members of the New York Philharmonic? At $14,000 a month rent, I guess you need to sell a lot of djembes and tom toms to net that kind of rent, and much more to pay the salaries for the owner and employees to live modestly in Manhattan or the surrounding boroughs. Or maybe it’s just easier to log on to DiscountDjembes.com and wait for the UPS truck to pull up with your djembe.

Well, the percussionists are not alone. In the summer of 2011, The Woodwind and Brasswind stores in South Bend, Indiana closed up their brick and mortar shops and are only selling online (which follows filing for bankruptcy in 2006). Most professional wind players in the United States have all been customers at one time of these iconic music stores. (When I was younger and living in the Detroit area, horn players traveled to South Bend to visit the stores in a virtual pilgrimage of sorts, coming home with blessed talismans–i.e. trombone mouthpieces or saxophone reeds–that were carefully chosen from an enormous inventory and were thus destined to lead to marked technical gains, or so the theory went…) If misery loves company, then all we need is an unhappy bassist and pianist, and we’ve got ourselves a big band full of hurt.

This may not be a harbinger of doom and gloom for the music business. This could all be part of the much needed restructuring of the business model for a niche market towards online sales, which should make these businesses profitable and therefore solvent. It could also be a function of the impossibility of running a niche market business in a high rent, high tax, high cost of living environment like New York City. I’m sure the truth is that it is some combination of the above.

These store closings also support a thesis that the latter half of the 20C represented an “arts bubble” that is now bursting, and bursting quickly in these hard economic times. I discussed this in a previous post (Detroit Symphony Orchestra: Strike Up the Band). Here’s an excerpt from that post:

“…a book that I think everyone in the arts should read entitled “Art Lessons: Learning from the Rise and Fall of Public Arts Funding” by the late Alice Goldfarb-Marquis.

In the book, she details how a surge in public funding for the arts occurred in the middle of the last century, which created an artificial demand for artists and arts organizations of various types (dance, music, theatre, etc.). Thus, in current parlance, an “arts bubble” was created which relied almost solely on donors, both public and private. She also identifies how those benefactors began to move away from arts funding in favor of other charitable donations (hospitals, education, etc.) that provided them with the visibility and cachet that the arts no longer provided.

Brian Wise, writing online for New York City’s classical music station WQXR, wrote in an article entitled “Classical Music in 2010: Joyful Noise, Troubled Silence” positing that the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is perhaps a harbinger for orchestras around the country. Goldfarb-Marquis’ book, however, was published 15 years earlier in 1995, at a time when funding was already waning. It seems that the situation is now exacerbated and accelerated due to the recent recession. The difference from previous recessions is that, if Goldfarb-Marquis was correct, the arts won’t recover as they have previously because the large public donors will not return in force.

Gene Morrow, Executive Director of the Gotham Early Music Scene, commented on Wise’s article as follows:

“Large-scale symphony orchestras populated by well-paid musicians in stable careers and heard/supported by musically literate patrons may be, like many other sectors of the American economy, a 20th-century aberration from the norm. Historically and in most other genres, neither musicians nor audiences had it so good.”

An “aberration from the norm” is another way of saying that the last 75 years have truly been a bubble, which supports Goldfarb-Marquis’ analysis and thesis. Additionally, the historical aspect of this reading is correct–very few musicians prior to the 20th Century ever generated an income stream capable of supporting a family, much less the kingly sum of $130,000 (approximate average yearly salary and benefits of a Detroit Symphony Orchestra member). Those that were able to generate a meagre income, did so through the patronage of the church or the aristocracy.”

Still, if these stores can’t turn a profit, it’s hard not to see that as a reflection of diminished customer purchasing power which in turn implies diminished customer income. I’ve written about related issues in previous posts (Jazz in Crisis Part I and Part II, and Prey For Play), so I won’t go over this in detail. Suffice to say that the entire music industry needs to come to grips with the technological changes that have occurred since the advent of the internet in the 1990s. Some businesses are doing that, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, academia is not following suit. Universities are still training people for careers in orchestras and operas, or to be post-bop jazz players, which is fine, except that the opportunities for income generating careers in those areas are on a steep hairpin diminuendo. To make matters worse, the oversupply of jazz and classical labor is driving down whatever salaries remain.

Many musicians today are doing exactly that–I personally know of a dozen or more who have pursued other careers to make a living. Most are still involved with music, some are quite successful from an artistic standpoint, and, to a person, all of them are happier having left the traditional, pre-fab career tracks that they were on. In this sense, musician and audience behavior is similar: they are both creating their own, unique musical worlds, all in response to the increased freedom and accessibility of our digital, online age.

Back in the 1980s, I worked in various R&B, jazz, and pop bands with a great bassist and guitarist, Gordie Johnson (Big Sugar, Grady). Gordie reveled in being an iconoclast, and one of his provocative sayings back then was “Brass is dead; buy a synthesizer.” Well, it hasn’t quite come to that yet, and I’m sure it never will. The Brasswind and the Woodwind aren’t dead, they’re online. Drummers World is gone, but in its place are dozens of specialty websites that cater to even more exotic and narrow niches.

Thus, while the arts bubble bursts, and the tech revolution continues unabated, the music industry restructures itself; from record companies to retailers, new and profitable models are appearing. Pop music groups (and a few classical artists, mostly in the New Music genre, but some orchestras and opera companies as well) are also adapting. The traditional training grounds (colleges and universities), however, have yet to make any major changes to their curricula in response to these enormous changes in the music industry. How will these insulated and famously sclerotic entities respond to the inevitable decreasing enrollment in the coming decades? That’s hard to predict, but respond they will; the Piper, after all, must be paid.

I’ve played hundreds, if not thousands, of weddings, holiday get-togethers, corporate parties and other similar events. And I’ve done these types of “gigs” all over North America–Toronto, London, Windsor, New York, Baltimore, Detroit, Lansing, Grand Rapids, Toledo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Denver, Boulder, Vail, Aspen, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Calgary, Edmonton, and probably another dozen or so places that I can’t remember. The majority of attendees at these types of gatherings are between (rough guess) 25 and 60 years old, and those numbers haven’t changed over the years. The music has changed of course, but there are some constants in this niche “live cover band” market, which is quite different from the “DJ” market where almost anything and everything is available.

One of those constants that has mystified me for many years is Motown music (whose roster includes Diana Ross and the Supremes, The Temptations, Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops, Stevie Wonder). These groups are the source of the majority of Motown music played by cover bands. I understand the popular appeal of Motown tunes. The melodies are simple and sometimes memorable, the harmonies are equally simple and predictable (banal might be another way of saying it), the rhythms and grooves are cute and occasionally a little saucy, and the lyrics are ripped from the pages of every lovelorn teenager’s diary. The blood red flush of romanticism is as sloppy as it is audacious, and as transparent as the hormone-addled adolescence that it celebrates. So what? That’s pretty much the bread and butter of pop music in any era and people certainly love it, but it’s also not what confuses me.

It’s the musical appeal of Motown that I’ve never understood. The tunes are vapid love/breakup songs, with formulaic harmonies and without (for the most part) an individual voice or style. This should come as no surprise because most of them were written by writers assembled for the purpose of conjuring the next “big hit,” so how could these tunes sound like they were written by a unique group creating and recording its own music, like The Beatles or Jimi Hendrix did? (Can one even imagine Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd recording tunes written by a stable of song writers?) When you have song writers composing for a variety of different artists, and an anonymous rhythm section playing most of it, it’s not hard to predict that the resultant music will be stultifyingly homogenous, which most of it certainly is.

Imagine the tune My Girl by The Temptations. Does anyone doubt this could just as easily have been recorded by The Four Tops with similar effect? Or by The Drifters?  Or how about Dancing in the Streets by Martha and the Vandellas?  Could this not have worked just as well if recorded by Diana Ross and the Supremes?  Of course it could. Now imagine Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds being written by team of song writers, and then, instead of The Beatles recording the tune, it is recorded and released by The Rolling Stones. Of course, this is absurd, but I think it illustrates the differences between real groups writing their own music, and a record company that finds marketable, interchangeable conduits to further its mission, rather than nurturing unique musical entities and allowing them to grow. (There are, of course, some exceptions to this, of which Stevie Wonder is most notable. His early music is definitely Motown, but it still has a unique flavor and shows that he is actively involved in the song writing. The music from this “Little Stevie” era is, admittedly, nice, but Stevie Wonder really hits his stride in the 1970s when his music gets really unique and unmistakably “Stevie Wonder.”) To be clear here, I have nothing against a company developing its market in this way, I’m simply drawing attention to the fact that Motown was not some organic, altruistic arts organization helping groups to develop themselves–it was a business with a marketing mission that it successfully and vigorously pursued. There are, of course, some decent tunes from this era. And heaven knows, I would certainly rather listen to I Wish It Would Rain than some [American] Idol worshipper or the latest auto-tune poseur catastrophe. I understand Motown’s appeal, and as pop music for that era, it’s quite good, but if a Motown tune comes on the radio, the time it takes me to switch stations can be measured in microseconds.

Part II: The Dance

For a cover band, a wedding or corporate event of this type is a like a four-hour love affair:

1^st set (9:00-10:00) Dating

The band is courting the audience, but the audience is a bit aloof, suspicious even, and needs to be convinced of the worthiness of the group before committing to a long-term relationship for the evening.  Meanwhile, the band is nervously looking around, hoping a few people will start dancing to break the ice. The band’s reputation and “band worthiness” is on the line. You’re only as good as your last gig (or so the saying goes).

2^nd set (10:15-11:00) Going Steady

Likely the most blissful segment of the evening, this is where the band has convinced the audience that they are, indeed, worthy of a serious commitment. Both the band and the audience are on their best behavior. The list of “great dance tunes” just keeps on delivering. And, the band sounds “just like the record.” How do they do that?

3^rd set (11:15-12:00) Living Together

Familiarity, living in close quarters, and alcohol use start to take their toll. The audience is now emboldened to make requests (often ridiculous) that the band can’t possibly be expected to know. The requester usually shows his/her disappointment in a loud manner so that the rest of the band and the crowd on the dance floor hears it. The band gets a little surly as members tire of being treated like servants. Audience is getting sloppy and sweaty as they lumber around the dance floor from one 100-120 beat per minute tune to the next, and band member’s start making fun of them. Did I really move in with you?  What the hell was I thinking? A quiet antagonism hangs in the air.

4^th set (12:15-1:00) Separation

Well, we know the love affair is over at 1AM. All good things must come to an end. So, let’s forget about our 3^rd set squabbling and just end this thing with a bang.

And by “a bang” I mean this (from the audience perspective): Play some of your dumbest tunes. We’re drunk and irrational, so you don’t have to bowl us over with anything flashy. Play a slushy blues to show us your earthy side, a few throwaway mindless two-chord vamp jam session tunes that go on for 16 minutes (we’ll even clap for a drum solo at this point), and then end with some gushing hoary warhorse of a rock ballad from the ‘70s (or ’80s) with infantile lyrics that don’t quite make sense–yup, that’ll be perfect. Then, over the final chorus when you’re slowing down to the last, painful chord, deliver the obligatory “end of the night, We’ll Always Have Paris” tag line that goes something like this:

It’s been great to be here celebrating with you! [Paul Anka was right, breaking up is hard to do, and a few lies go a LONG way in getting you out the door unscathed and with cash in hand…]  Good Night, Volkswagen of America Christmas Party Attendees, drive safely on your Fahrvergnügung home!!

Something odd occurs when cover bands play Motown. The tunes are usually played in a medley with clever segues, or at the very least, in one block of pieces usually during the 2^nd or 3^rd set. But there aren’t other medleys like this from other eras–there’s no “jazz medley” or “rock medley” or “disco medley.” Still, the Motown Medley makes sense. The audience’s overwhelmingly and consistently positive reaction means that Motown is one of the band’s Big Guns–a surefire method of winning over the crowd. If the audience isn’t dancing much by the end of the 1^st set, the Magic Motown Medley will get pulled out in the 2^nd set, but the preferred launch time is in the 3^rd set, during the “living together” stage when it functions like bringing home a box of chocolates and a dozen roses. Regardless of when the Medley is launched, it never fails. The crowds are enraptured from the opening salvo, which is usually the introductory bass line from My Girl, which sends them to the dance floor in a frenzy, vying to be the first one to mouth the lyrics (while pointing at their dance partner/s):

“What can make me feel this way…My Girl/Guy, Talkin’ bout My Girl/Guy, My Girl/Guy My Girl/Guy.” 

The resultant nostalgic orgy of sing along and canned doo-wop refugee hand movements is the band’s self-congratulatory coup de grace. From that moment on, the evening is deemed an unqualified success. The Medley has worked its magic once again, but alas, as quickly as it starts, the trip to Motown is over. Once started, it cannot be stopped and it can certainly not be repeated later in the evening because romantic nostalgia of this type is like a rich dessert full of fat and sugar but utterly lacking in protein. One trip to the Motown buffet is enough; a second round would lead to indigestion and embarrassment (Did I really just move my right arm from above my head to the ground with fingers flapping wildly to signify “rain” while my left arm was held high with hand open to signify “sunshine” because “I got sunshine on a rainy day”?)

The Motown ritual is clearly understood by both audience and band. It’s embarrassing on both sides of the stage, so let’s get it done with as much dignity as we can, but when it’s over, let’s pretend it never happened, ok?  But it’s not an embarrassment on both sides of the stage. Many musicians think that Motown is a sacred era in the history of music, full of really important music. This Motown mythology runs deep, but I’ve never been able to figure out what the attraction is. Of course, I have asked about it, but I learned quickly that there are a few topics that one should never, ever discuss with other musicians (at least until you figure what their opinion is), and this is one of them. “Gentlemen don’t discuss religion or politics in polite company”–let’s add “Motown” to that list because it is a quasi religion for many musicians. Like religion, it’s best not to delve too deeply into the topic unless you’re a member of the church to begin with. (It is ironic that the studio musicians who recorded this music were jazz musicians in the Detroit area. To them, it was a paycheck and not much more. They had little or no respect for the music which they were helping to improve by infusing it with more sophisticated rhythms and instrumental parts.  And yet, a generation or two later, it becomes a venerated shrine?)

The attraction could just be a nostalgic reminder of youthful days, which I understand. There is plenty of music from when I was a teenager that I enjoy hearing occasionally that is lacking in identifiable musical content. There’s no reason to provide any other kind of rationale other than that it is simply fun to hear something from your past that has pleasant (or unpleasant) memories associated with it. It is too easy to fall prey to the egotistical impulse to assume that, since I’m a professional musician, anything that I like must have musical value. I’m a professional after all, so my favorable opinion is itself the evidence that there is something musically valid, interesting, and meaningful to be found.

It’s like a master chef who eats at McDonald’s occasionally, but then tries to make a case for why a Big Mac is a great meal. It doesn’t need to be a great meal, or great music, for people to enjoy it. Is it a “guilty pleasure”? Perhaps, but why should it be a “guilty pleasure” rather than just “a pleasure”? Motown, Mountains, and Molehills–no need to try and make one into the other.

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 Ben Ratliff: JAZZ is metal.

 FraKathustra: OK, got it, jazz is metal, or metal-ish maybe. Now I’m intrigued. This will be cool. Ratliff will now provide his arguments and evidence in support of this wild assertion.

 BR: Well, of course it isn’t, really.

 F: Come on Ben, that’s not fair. First, you said it was, then you said it wasn’t, but then you qualified that and hedged by adding “really” at the end. Which is it?

BR: It is both. Or neither. And both.  (Sorry, that’s not Ben Ratliff, that’s Yoda, or one of those people who wrote one of those Zen books about X and the art of Something or Other.)

First, there’s the subheading “Where Pat Metheny and Nachtmystium Overlap” which is telling in and of itself. Pat Metheny (quite sure this is the name on his birth certificate) is a well known jazz artist. Nachtmystium is a metal band, not very well known, whose vocalist/guitarist is Azentrius–aka Blake Judd (not sure if this is his real name, but I doubt it) and whose bassist is Jon Necromancer (quite sure this is not his real name).

And then there’s the mashed up German/pseudo Latin name Nachtmystium. Nacht (German for “night”) and mystium (fake Latin for “something mystical, ancient, Roman, and therefore scary”) so this translates as “Nighttime Mystical Scary German Latin Stuff That You Do Not, I repeat DO NOT want to mess with.” And let’s not even try to decipher “Azentrius” which was Jake Blood’s original fake name. (Jake Blood or Blake Judd? We report, you decide. I’m guessing Blake Judd is his clever pseudonym to hide his Twilight inspired vampire roots, or perhaps he’s the long lost dyslexic bastard son/brother of the Judds).

According to Ratliff, there are some strong similarities between jazz and metal. The genres have become “harder to reduce and easier to like, in a sum-total kind of way.” (Both “harder” and “easier” in the same sentence is irresistible–I’m sold on this!)  But that’s not all because “…in the process they’ve generated more and more points of comparison.”  So, in addition to everything else, there are “more and more points of comparison.”  See? It’s self-evident, for those with eyes to see.

Let’s look at what Ratliff identifies as similarities:

 1. Jazz and Metal are “brainy and cabalistic, with a hint of a smile.”

“Brainy” I understand, but cabalistic? Are there occult secrets hiding in the jazz vault somewhere? (I think that Miles Runs the Voodoo Down was just a clever turn of phrase.) And what is this “a hint of a smile” supposed to mean? There’s more than a “hint” of a smile that we get from Duke Ellington, but there’s no smiles from Miles and no chuckles from Coltrane.  This is nothing but trendy rhetoric (Madonna’s fascination with Kabbalah mysticism resulted in some pop culture notoriety several years ago) in place of real evidence and analysis. Still, I can see calling Metal bands “cabalistic” since most go to great lengths to create the mystery and B movie horror film theatrics that are often so much a part of their aesthetic. (See commentary above regarding Blake Judd, Jake Blood, Mr. Necromancer, and the laughable group name itself.) Cabalistic fits metal, but it does not fit with jazz at all.

 2. Both “increasingly depend on educated virtuosos.”

Jazz musicians have always been virtuosos on their instruments, and jazz musicians in the past could hardly be called “uneducated.” Perhaps Ratliff means a formal education, which is certainly true for jazz musicians prior to the 1980s, but even then, many did go to college. For example, Bill Evans had a bachelor’s degree in piano performance from Southeastern Louisiana State University, and Miles Davis attended Julliard. Others studied in an informal but nonetheless rigorous manner. (Is there any doubt that Charlie Parker’s study of Stravinsky or Coltrane’s study of Slonimsky and traditional music theory was anything other than robust, deep, and meaningful?)

Coltrane and Evans came up in an era during which a musician could not study jazz in college. By the time of Evans’ death in 1980, in the US at least, university music programs offering some level of jazz instruction were proliferating quickly, and by the 1990′s there were many that offered advanced graduate degrees in jazz performance, composition, and history. The question then, of whether jazz musicians were formally educated or not rests partially on access and opportunity as much as it does on whether the music “depended” on it. A deep practical knowledge of music theory (formally trained or not) and virtuoso (or near virtuoso) technical skills have been a requirement in jazz almost from its beginnings a century ago. To suggest that jazz is only now “increasingly [dependent] on educated virtuosos” is absurd.

3. Both can “develop curious harmonic worlds, warp the tempos, brush against folkloric or conservatory music, play many notes very speedily and engage sturdy American grooves or a more studied system of fitting odd-number beats into even-number meters.”

 The same could be said of various strains of contemporary classical, minimalism, electronica, house, and probably a few more.

In “sum-total,” what Ratliff lists as evidence is not persuasive. These are all surface level characteristics that don’t clearly  define jazz. The aesthetic in jazz is more than music theory, fast riffs, smooth arpeggios, and odd meters or metric modulations–those things are the means (and yes, there are some similarities with metal), but not the end. When I hear people talking about metal, the technical prowess, the means, is often the focus: “Did you hear that double bass drum? How is that humanly possible at that tempo? Check out the guitar comping here–it’s insanely fast!” Do jazz musicians talk about technique like this?  Sure we do, but it’s not the focus. When we talk about Keith Jarrett’s piano wizardry, we marvel at the technique in service to the expression that Jarrett regularly achieves; conversely, when we talk about Miles Davis’ lack of virtuoso trumpet skills, we nonetheless marvel at the unsurpassed depth of expression present in his music and his playing.

The underlying impulse in jazz beckons the listener with a style that retains at least a remnant of its social, utilitarian function (dance). What that amounts to is a style that is grounded in folk traditions, and yet is also rich in expression, subtlety, and intellectual content. The folk elements are important; jazz invites the audience to come in and listen and participate. Metal, on the other hand (as Ratliff curiously also admits), assaults and threatens the listener, aspects that are indeed defining characteristics of metal. Jazz doesn’t do that. At its core, jazz is a sophisticated, refined, and measured style. It is an advanced form of artistic self-expression that operates under a strict set of self-imposed aesthetic guidelines that eschew self-aggrandizement, crudeness of expression, and vulgarity, as elements that would besmirch the nobility of the genre’s heritage and traditions. Metal, on the other hand, revels in many of these things. Metal is violent and aggressive and no amount of music theory or mixed meters will dress that up or mask it and make it “like jazz.”

Jazz was created in an era where everyone wore suits and ties when they went out. Hats, suits, polite handshakes, “yes sir, no sir, no thank you Ma’am” etc. That level of civility, dignity, courtesy and respect permeates jazz (and classical music for that matter) making the contrast between jazz and metal and the cultures that produced them extremely visible. This is one of the reasons I think that both jazz and classical music are unable to garner sustainable audiences–we are no longer civil or respectful enough to live intimately with these genres, and to listen to them is a reminder of our own shortcomings, hence, we avoid them.

And how could it be otherwise? We live in an era that glorifies the mundane (Facebook, X-Factor), and whose preferred method of communication increasingly consists (especially for the younger generation) of truncated text and tweet messages. When concrete language is dumbed down in this manner, is it any wonder that the even more abstracted languages of advanced music genres like jazz and classical (who both rely on a complex and self-referential system of musical rhetoric) will seem increasingly out of place?

To close, here’s the picture of Metheny and Blake Judd (or whatever his name is) from the Ratliff article:

Credit: Rafa Rivas/Agence France-Presse-Getty Images; Rahav Segev NYT

Metheny is seated, legs crossed, head lowered, eyes closed, lips pursed, with a pained expression that indicates humility and reverence for the musical truth that is emanating from from his instrument. Jake Blood is standing in an aggressive posture, tattoos and nonfunctional leather in full display, weight lifter’s physique on parade, screaming into the microphone with a facial expression that suggests he is about to either projectile vomit or breathe fire on the audience, both of which would be quite unpleasant.

In Ratliff suggests there are similarities here; I suggest that this picture alone tells the real story. Jazz is not metal and metal is not jazz.

“Invariably, the term Golden Age is bestowed retroactively, when the period in question has ended and is compared with what followed in the specific field discussed.”

From Wisegeek.com

“A Golden Age is often followed by a decline, where new cultural products are derivative and less inspired and where politics begin to veer off from their initial course. Thus a Golden Age if it could be graphed, would be the high point, the top of the bell on a bell curve, or the apex…”

“…like gold, genuineness, abstracted as the proportion of fine metal, becomes a fetish.”                                                                                                            Theodor Adorno

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Most styles of music (and other arts) have a “Golden Age,” which is something I have often wondered about. Why does it occur when it does? Why does it occur at all? Here’s a diagram of the general style periods in classical, jazz, and rock music:

This is not comprehensive by any means, but I think it gives a reasonable overview of the style periods in each genre.

Now, here’s the same diagram, but with ovals added. The ovals identify the style periods that enjoy the most performances, recordings, practitioners, and consequently, the largest audience or “fan” base. These are the time periods that make up the “Golden Age” for each genre.

Each genre appears to hit its populist zenith at somewhere just past the midway point in its development (if it weren’t such a cliché, I’d say the Golden Age coincides with the Golden Mean). Are there any commonalities that might explain why the Golden Age occurs when it does in each case? It seems that the music before the Golden Age is either too simple (Rockabilly, Dixieland) or too complex (Baroque counterpoint). Afterwards, it is either too complex (12-Tone, Hard Bop) or it is just repeating itself (New Punk, Grunge) with nothing really “new” to add to the genre other than minor affectations.

The Golden Age, then, seems to occur in a homophonic environment (where melody is primary), but when there is also some level of harmonic and/or rhythmic complexity, but also before the genre has exhausted itself.

I’m not willing to go as far as Arnold Schönberg, who purportedly said “If it’s for all, it’s not art; and if it’s art, it’s not for all.” Perhaps Adorno was closer to the truth after all.

There was something I immediately liked about the band. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it seemed like this group had some harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic sophistication that belied their exposure to (and expertise in) jazz, prog rock, fusion, or possibly even classical music.

Another thing I liked was that they had a great sense of humor and didn’t take themselves too seriously. For example, listen to the muted background singer in their biggest hit, Everybody Have Fun Tonight, at about 3’22″ sing “Can you tell me what a Wang Chung is?”

Click here to listen to the excerpt* from Everybody Have Fun Tonight.

It’s still funny to hear this subversive and self-effacing line, cleverly hidden in one of the most famous hits of the ’80s (during the Gospel Choir interlude no less!).

As I moved through their catalogue I couldn’t help but notice a few interesting musical features. On their first album, Huang Chung (1982), I was surprised** by the chord progression in the innocuously titled Dancing:

Click here to listen to the excerpt from Dancing.

There is mode mixture, with a major tonic chord in first inversion appearing via a provocative tritone movement in the bass, but most surprising is the chromatic movement thereafter as it moves to i6 and then to V7/V. Secondary dominant chords are certainly found in pop music occasionally, but this amount of chromaticism and the tritone bass movement are generally not found. In any case, the progression stands out in this genre (helped also by the elided cadence and the destabilizing measure of 2/4).

Now, fast forward to their fifth album, Warmer Side of Cool (1989) which ends with an anthemic environmentalist plea entitled Big World (featuring powerhouse jazz and studio players Vinnie Colaiuta on drums and Bill Reichenbach Jr. on trombone). Near the end, the chorus repeats a few times, but then it is varied by introducing the following chord progression:

Click here to listen to the excerpt from Big World.

Notice the similarity in the chord progression at the end of Big World and in Dancing. The Big World coda has more mode mixture and chromaticism, but what makes it sound like the same progression as in Dancing is the stepwise bass moving from iio6 to V7/V, ending with the striking i6-V7/V as in the previous example.

Now listen to the Big World excerpt again, and you’ll notice someone (it doesn’t sound like Jack Hues, could be Nick Feldman perhaps?) singing the word “dancing” at the end of the phrase between V7/V and V7sus:

It is exactly the same rhythm in the exact same place using the exact same pitches (transposed) as in Dancing. (In Dancing, this is F→D, or flat 3 moving to tonic, while in Big World it is E-flat→C, which is also flat 3 moving to tonic). In addition to this, as mentioned before, the chord progression is almost identical between the two tunes, as is the tempo (66 beats per minute for Dancing and 60 beats per minute for Big World)! Clearly, this is a reference to Dancing from their first album. Again, another clever, self-effacing and self-referential gesture–an “inside joke” if you will–linking their first and last albums of that era.

Here’s another example, this time of a melodic device that is very strange (unheard of?) in pop music. The album Points on the Curve (1984) features a tune entitled Devoted Friends that sounds like it will be pure ’80s kitsch. (Think high synth strings, Top Gun soundtrack, etc.) But then, the voice enters, with a melody that is positively jarring in this context:

Click here to listen to the excerpt from Devoted Friends.

In a flourish worthy of Slonimsky’s Thesaurus, the melody actually begins with an octatonic scale over top of the tonic chord, eventually landing on the leading tone, forming some kind of bizarre hybrid of octatonic/minor scale that would have kept Coltrane up for two weeks practicing it in all its permutations. (My good friend and brilliant theorist, John Schuster-Craig, also informs me that this melodic fragment is 2/3 of Olivier Messiaen’s Mode III!) This had to be Hues and Feldman on a late night binge daring each other to see if they could get the octatonic scale into a standard pop ballad released by Geffen Records! The chorus doesn’t disappoint either (surprising modulation), so it’s not a surprise that this particular tune didn’t get much radio play.

During their heyday, they also did a commendable job writing and performing the soundtrack to William Friedkin’s crime thriller from 1985 entitled: To Live and Die in L.A.  

The title track is brilliant. A standard pop groove in the verse, with a gorgeous interlude that is pensive, introspective, and very surprising. It captures the mood of LA; a bottomless pit of ennui and self-absorption that mirrors the tragic tale told in the film. In other words, it’s very Wang Chung.

They’re still active in the studio with a great new EP release entitled Abducted by the ’80s (title track features poetry over minimalist electronica) and they’re still touring. And of course Hues has his jazz project, which, while not groundbreaking, is a serious offering in the genre, and even more interesting considering the background and history of the group. So, I guess my hunches about this group so many years ago were fairly good; in fact, I’m quite sure that I may now actually know what a Wang Chung is…

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* NOTE: All recordings are owned by their respective copyright holders (Arista or Geffen Records) and are used simply as examples in a “fair use” context.

** The other thing I was surprised by was the poor saxophone playing (amateur is being kind) on this first record. This issue was, fortunately, remedied on the following recordings!

By the late ‘80s, the clubs, the weddings, and casual gigs were more and more dominated by DJs, so the work was drying up. At that time, stories were being told of “clubs in LA” where bands were actually paying the clubs for the opportunity to play there. I don’t think it ever went that far in the Windsor/Detroit area, but it seemed to me that the live music scene that had prospered and thrived in the previous decade was on the decline. So, bands were now paying to play and DJs were playing recordings at weddings. The world seemed upside down to many of us. I didn’t think it could get much worse, but I was wrong.

JazzEd Magazine (May 2011), reports that, at a recent concert, the Boston-based Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra actually offered to pay one dollar to the first 50 people who showed up! We used to complain often about jazz groups ruining the market by undercutting the bands that were already established. In this scenario, to undercut, you’d actually have to overpay.

Let’s hope that no other ensembles engage them in a wage competition–if any of the attendees, I mean employees/subcontractors, make more than $600 per year attending concerts, they’ll have to issue them a 1099 form and the IRS will have to create a new job category for “concert attendance.” (Would shots of Jägermeister then become an allowable “business expense”?)

So much pull, in fact, that they’ve got David Lynch producing videos for their YouTube/VEVO site, which is sponsored by American Express. The new album is very strong–solid pop music writing that sounds modern, yet also sounds like Duran, and doesn’t pander to current styles in the way that many tracks on their albums have since the early ’90s. Here’s the catchy title track:

I bought the album from iTunes, and then found the YouTube/VEVO site with the Lynch videos. I stumbled on the video where Lynch is fielding Twitter questions for the band. Lynch appears as a sharply dressed refugee from Eraserhead who relocated to an alternate dimension and found gainful employment as a chatroom host for a race of aliens from Alpha Centauri.  Nice work if you can get it.

I watched the interview, and really enjoyed the bizarre, quirky, Lynch-inspired oddities (Lynch’s digitally altered speech is worth it all by itself!). Here are the first three questions:

1. From jtschauffeur: “Using one word only what is your definition of music?”

2. From dspeleos: “If you could relive one moment from your career what would it be?”

3. From AmyPeikoff: “One thing that I have always loved about your music is its benevolence. How have you managed to preserve that all these years?”

This isn’t a legitimate “interview” of any kind–the band is obviously prepared for the questions, and Lynch’s speaking is not extemporaneous, but who cares? It’s clever and funny, taking a stab at the whole ridiculous notion that a pop band interview can produce anything even remotely insightful or interesting. Interviews of this kind rely upon an assumption that the interviewer and the interviewee are engaged in a serious dialogue in search of artistic truth as part of a legitimate process of “journalistic inquiry.” In truth, most pop music interviews are a complete farce, as is evidenced by virtually every interview ever conducted in this genre. Stupid questions, followed by ironic, or often childish, double entendre answers, occasionally laced with literary references to solidify the band’s intellectual roots and reinforce the fantasy intellectual pedigree; these are all standard fare in this comical dance. This “interview” is simply brilliant as parody (maybe the best since Spinal Tap), with Lynch’s backwards, garbled speech acting as a perfect metaphor for the aesthetic incoherence that resides in the bottomless pit of pop music journalism.

Now, to the questions and the answers:

There’s nothing very remarkable about the first two questions. They’re both the typical blather one might expect from adoring fans. The first questioner’s screen name (jtschauffer) is perhaps telling. “JT” is probably “John Taylor” and JT’s “chauffer” is probably a reference to The Chauffer, their early soft porn video (one of the first ever) that was banned along with Girls on Film. It’s the third question that caught my attention.

AmyPeikoff asks Roger Taylor: “One thing that I have always loved about your music is its benevolence. How have you managed to preserve that all these years?”

Roger Taylor: “Hello Amy Peikoff. Ah, we’ve been able to retain the benevolence in our music because I think we give everything of ourselves to our records and to our live performance.”

First, the response doesn’t make any sense, and no one else comments. Second, the use of the term “benevolence” comes out of left field. Is a random fan asking about “benevolence” as a consistent quality of Duran Duran’s music over the years? Unlikely, but…the only person I’ve ever heard “benevolence” as a descriptive aesthetic term is Ayn Rand, who used it to describe art that had a “benevolent sense of life” according to her very idiosyncratic and subjective evaluations. (Beethoven, for example, was, according to Rand, not an artist with a “benevolent sense of life;” instead, she preferred silly dance music from the 1920s and ’30s.) Then, I started wondering about the online questioner, “Amy Peikoff.” The last name is not very common, but it is the same as Ayn Rand’s “intellectual heir,” Leonard Peikoff who has a daughter named “Kira” after the heroine in Rand’s early novel We The Living. A little odd, but perhaps just a coincidence, right?

I asked a few people about Duran and Rand, and a friend sent me a link to blog (belonging to none other than Amy Peikoff) that references Simon LeBon’s various connections to Rand. Then I noticed the lyrics in the new album’s title track:

It’s all up to you now 
Find yourself in the moment 
Go directly to the voodoo 
Now the channel is open 
Lose your head 
Lose control 
You come on delicate and fine 
Like a diamond in the mine 

When you move into the light 
You’re the greatest thing alive 

And you sway in the moon 
The way you did when you were younger 
When we told everybody 
All you need is now 

Stay with the music let it 
Play a little longer longer 
You don’t need anybody 
All you need is now 

Everybody’s gunning 
For the VIP section 
But your better up and running 
In another direction 
With your bones in the flow 
Cold shadow on the vine 
But your lashes let it shine 

Every moment that arrives 
You’re the greatest thing alive 

And you sway in the moon 
The way you did when you were younger 
And we told everybody 
All you need is now 

Stay with the music let it 
Play a little longer 
We don’t need anybody 
All you need is now 

All you need all you need is now 
All you need all you need is now 
All you need all you need is now 

The meaning is not exactly clear (as in many pop tunes), but it appears to advocate a zen-inspired philosophy about “living in the moment” as part of a nostalgic remembrance of youthful days? I just don’t remember Duran Duran advocating anything like this in their heyday, so the bit about “when we told everybody, all you need is now” seems a little odd, but still, this is probably more intelligible than most pop tunes (and the writing is much better).

It’s the title of the tune that suddenly stood out to me as I was pondering the other connections. Here it is again, with highlights added:

All You Need Is Now. . . AYN IN

Another coincidence?

For composers of New Music, these marketing tools are advantageous. We can sell our scores digitally using services like Lulu or Lightning Source (both of which I have used for years) and we can sell our music on a plethora of sites using a service like Tunecore. There are so many marketing opportunities, in fact, that it would be difficult to list them all. Funding, however, is a different story.

One of the main funding sources for composers is the “commission,” where someone pays for the composer to write a piece for them. This is a long-standing tradition in classical music which has relied greatly on the support of wealthy patrons (private, public, religious) for many centuries, and it continues to this day. Whether this patronage comes from wealthy admirers (Stravinsky’s Concerto in E-Flat–”Dumbarton Oaks“), the aristocracy (Beethoven’s three Razumovsky String Quartets, op. 59), the state (hard to believe, but Shostakovich’s Native Leningrad Suite, op. 63, was commissioned by the Soviet Secret Police), and the church (in earlier times, most composers–J.S. Bach and Palestrina for example–wrote sacred music for their respective churches, and were supported by them in kind).

All of these examples of patronage are marked by the patron’s admiration of the composer’s creative work. The patron’s expectation is that the artist will create a work of art that will be of similarly high quality, one that might even earn the patron a footnote in history, without which these well-to-do aristocrats, bureaucrats, clergy, or captains of industry would likely be entirely forgotten. In this sense, patronage has a certain dignity; it is a concrete acknowledgment of artistic genius that provides the artist with financial support or employment, along with whatever degree of prestige or social status that comes with being recognized by the ruling class.

In contemporary society, the patrons no longer include royalty or the church to any significant degree. Composers are commissioned by arts organizations, public and private grants of various types, performers, university ensembles, and, of course, wealthy individuals who want to promote music and the arts. These options all retain the dignity and prestige of the patronage contract. Unfortunately, maintaining dignity is not a priority in the mosh pit of contemporary New Music funding. Here’s an email I received recently from a composer of New Music (name removed to protect the guilty):

Subject: Newsletter vol.1 no. 6

It’s July, it’s hot, but love is in the air…

The Love Songs Project
I’ve written about this project before, but now it’s moving into high
gear. The songs are being composed, preparations are being made to
begin recording, and donations are beginning to come in. If you haven’t
made a donation yet, please consider sending one. It doesn’t need to be
much, even $5 will help.

Why I’m raising money this way

There are many ways for an artist to find funding for their work.
Grant-writing is often the first choice…   Some people have asked why.
Grants are very difficult to win. They are often complicated to apply
for and can require the applicant to alter their project just to fit
the grant’s specifications. Not only that, everyone wants them, so
competition is fierce…

On the other hand, private donations are more personal. The donor
becomes involved and gains a stake in the project. By donating they let
me know that they believe in me and my work. Raising funding [sic] through a
grass-roots approach also builds an audience at the same time, an
audience of invested and interested listeners. For me, it’s more
important to have an audience than to plaster sponsorship logos from
granting organizations on my work…

Sure, I love you too, but as marketing or fundraising, this is not very persuasive. It is clumsy and awkward, an odd mixture of self-centeredness and pleading. It might work to raise funds from family, friends, and acquaintances, but there can be no misinterpreting this type of support–this is charity, pure and simple. This “business  model” does not have much, if any, potential to persuade a broad audience base to part with its hard-earned money.

Let’s call the former “Fan Financing v1.0″ (of which I’m sure there are many other versions to be found). The genre has recently gone corporate, with a new online service called Kickstarter. The site is off to a prodigious start, with features in the New York Times, CNN, WIRED, NPR, and the Bay Citizen announcing the birth of this “new way to fund and follow creativity.”

Kickstarter is an online service that accepts “pledges” to fund a specific art project that is featured on their site. An artist opens an account, and then posts information regarding the project along with the amount of funding that is being sought through the donations. The project’s “backers” make a pledge, but, unlike NPR pledges, the charge is made to your credit card through Amazon.com when the project deadline is reached. Backers may receive “rewards” of various types based on the amount donated. Costs? Kickstarter takes 5% and Amazon takes 3-5% as their fee for the service, leaving the artist with 90% of the donations. Projects include all manner of creative endeavor–from recordings, photography, commissions, and every other type of creative project you can think of, and some that you can’t (there’s actually one from someone who wants people to help pay for his masters degree dance recital!).

Most of the obvious questions are dealt with on their FAQ page. Here are a few:

Q: Are pledges tax-deductible?

A: Only if the artist is a registered 501C3, which most are not.

Q: How do I know if a project creator is who they say they are?

A: Kickstarter doesn’t get involved in vetting the projects. Backer beware: use your “internet street smarts.”

Kickstarter uses Amazon’s payment machinery to accept donations and forwards the funds (minus the 8-10% fees) to the artist or organization. It’s a slick service that appears to be quite successful so far, supporting a staff of 18 young hipsters working in New York City.  It absolves itself (as it should) of any tax¹ or legal liability. Kickstarter simply provides a site to advertise, collect, and transfer funds to the artist if the project reaches its full funding goal.

Kickstarter takes the novel “fan-funding” concept and gives it credibility and stability by providing a sharp, professional, and low-cost means for artists to not only to promote themselves and their products, but to acquire the funds to create the products in the first place. And, they’ve given it a corporate feel, while at the same time creating a website that maintains a quirky, grass-roots, and generally “artsy” demeanor. That’s not an easy task, but Kickstarter has succeeded marvelously in combining commerce and what appears to be genuine arts advocacy.

This fund-raising model seems, in retrospect, almost obvious in this day and age–artists and fans collaborating in a mutually beneficial scenario to further the creation of new art. What could be a more perfect use of modern communication technology in support of the arts, especially in a time when private and public funding appears to be waning? And it’s community supported, community minded, and it even builds community, it’s anti-corporate while at the same time being corporate (new paradigm alert) and it inverts the hated “power structure,” returning control to the artist who collaborates with fans from the outset. And, the cream on the cake–it’s new, it’s online and we’re all wearing black horn-rimmed glasses and living in the Village!  Pinch me please.

Not so fast. Fan-funding is really nothing new. Every artist in the world who is successful is, by definition, “fan-funded.” Many artists receive initial funding from public or private sources, but if those initial forays don’t result in a real fan base that is willing to pay for extant (rather than imagined new) recordings, the funding disappears.²

It is not quite a Pyramid Scheme. It doesn’t have multiple levels nor does it have the visceral element of greed on the part of investors to fuel the machine and it also provides a legitimate service, so it’s completely legal and above board, but there are similarities.

Kickstarter seems more like a Triangle Scheme–an innocuous, wind-powered, and legal version of its felonious 3D cousin. The small donors must be made up mostly of friends, family, acquaintances, fellow grad students, and perhaps the occasional wealthy donor who will kick in a larger sum. The number of donors is therefore limited to, at best, a few hundred which means that the foundation is weak. The Pyramid Scheme has upwards of a dozen levels; from the artist’s perspective, the Triangle has only two levels (top and bottom) which means that there is no compounding as the funds move upwards.

So, it’s a squat, hollow triangle, but it still provides funding right? Well, it might work a few times, but that group of “fans” is not supporting the project based (in most cases, I’m sure) on the music, they’re supporting it because they have a personal relationship with the artist, or they’re counting on the artist’s reciprocal support of their upcoming fundraising campaign. In either case, these forms of motivation wear thin quickly:

“Honey, I just got another funding invitation from your nephew on Kickstarter. That’s the third one. I thought we ‘kickstarted’ his career with the first two. His career needs more than a kickstart at this point, it needs an ambulance and defibrillator.”

“Send him one more, and then we’re done.”

Family, friends, and fellow grad students are not fans, they’re more aptly named “hostages,” and their goodwill is not bottomless. “Multi-level marketing” schemes like Mona Vie have the same problem and are plagued by the same issue, namely, once the personal relationship capital has been burned up, most “associates” have trouble finding “clients” or new “associates” to inhabit their downstream. Not a problem though–just bring in a new set of “associates” with a completely new set of friends and family, and the system continues to deliver profits to the top levels, fueled by the greed and naïveté of the middle levels. Basically, all of these schemes are sustainable only as long as the goodwill remains, which, for Kickstarter clients, is probably two or three projects at best. After that, if you haven’t built a fan base made up of people who don’t share your DNA or your DMA, your fan-financed career is finished.

If we look more closely, and we include Kickstarter and Amazon in our Triangle, we find that it actually does have a middle level which is occupied, unfortunately, by the artist. Now let’s broaden the view and do a little math: If 20,000 projects are funded annually (a conservative estimate, given that the platform is open to artists from around the world, not just the US) at an average of $5,000 each, then Kickstarter grosses $5 Million, and Amazon grosses $3-5 Million. The artists gross $90 Million, but their net is zero. (Actually, they probably go into the red from the many unseen ancillary expenses that crop up in arts production.) So, the bottom level donates the week’s Starbucks money, the top level rakes in a lot of cash, and the creator hopefully gets most of the project expenses paid. The Triangle, viewed from this broader perspective, is really a Golden Triangle because it reveals that it has significant and ongoing income potential, but again, unfortunately, not for the artist.

As is most often the case, the peripheral support organizations are where the money is made–promoters, agents, record companies, t-shirts/hats and concessions.³ That is true in this case as well where the real winners of fan financing are the fan financing portals (and perhaps some peripheral benefits to the community in which all of these projects are presented). The creator, however, is caught in a pincer between the small number of potential donors (whose contributions will diminish as quickly as the evaporating relationship capital upon which it is based disappears) and the real money makers (the occupants of the top level), Kickstarter and Amazon. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

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¹ There are tax issues for the artist though. These pledges are still income and must be reported, so receipts for expenditures must be fastidiously kept.

² In the lucrative pop music industry, management and patrons lay claim to the profits from the first recording(s) in order to recoup their investment. After that, the artist can begin to amass their own fortune from the spoils, but there are many who emerge from the boozy haze of momentary superstardom (the “one-hit wonders,” among others) soulless and penniless.

³ There is a quote attributed to Hunter S. Thompson that sums it up nicely:

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.

Thompson may have actually said this about the television industry, but it applies equally to every aspect of the entertainment industry, which is likely why it appears in so many iterations. Whether a misquote or not, I’m sure he would approve.

I don’t enjoy delivering bad news about the jazz scene, but I also don’t think there is anything to be gained by pretending that the old business models and venues are either still viable, or that they will become so again sometime in the future. Similarly, I don’t see the issues I’ve described in this and in earlier posts (Jazz in Crisis, Part I and Jazz In Crisis Part II, for example) as being necessarily bad for jazz as a musical genre. The trend is, however, quite clear; the club scene of the ’50s and ’60s is becoming increasingly less viable as an economic model. How could it be otherwise? What is truly remarkable is that the scene survived as long as it did, especially given the enormous technological and cultural changes that have taken place in the last 60 years.

—————

*This is a familiar story to most, if not all, working jazz musicians. It happens often in smaller cities (where 1% of the population doesn’t amount to more than a few thousand people who might show up to hear jazz) but it seems that the larger centers are no longer immune. The story goes like this:

A jazz club opens and does reasonably well with three nights (Thursday-Saturday) a week of jazz (trios, quartets, quintets, mostly instrumental, with the occasional vocalist). One day, the owner is approached by a Blues, R&B, Indie, Salsa, or Rock group that offers to perform “on an off night for the door.” How can the owner not give it a try? Bar receipts skyrocket for the usually comatose Wednesday night, and it doesn’t take long until Wednesday and Thursday nights are “Blues Night” and then Friday night becomes “Torch Songs for the Tortured” or “Big Band Crooners for Friday Night Spooners.” You don’t need to be Paul Harvey to guess “the rest of the story”–within another 12-18 months, there is not much left on the calendar that is recognizable as jazz.