More than 30 years ago.  A *wailing* trumpet player and the greatest drummer of all-time.  Yet all the little suckers idolize...Travis Barker? 

 

^This is why I maintain that Metal sucks "once they took the Lawrence Welk out." What I mean is that all the good Metal bands grew up watching the Lawrence Welk Show which taught them good melodies and interesting drumming. Once Nu-Metal hit all that stuff was gone. So everybody from Black Sabbath through Testament had it then poof it was gone. The later bands listened to Black Sabbath but they only picked up on the fact that Sabbath tuned down to C# from 1972-1978 and they played whole notes sometimes. They totally missed everything else.

Yeah I know these young guys who are into metal almost to the exclusion of all else but it is the flat death metal.  Somehow Cannibal Corpse and the early death metal bands became the most influential vein.  All of the early blues-oriented metal has been forgotten except for the occasional Black Sabbath cover band with a median age of 51. 

 

I went to see The Afghan Whigs on Thursday night.  The sound man jacked Public Enemy after the opening act.  Man, it sounded outstanding.  Rap has suffered an artistic collapse and dead-end similar to most rock & roll.  There hasn't been almost any innovation in either in 20 years. 

 

 

More than 30 years ago.  A *wailing* trumpet player and the greatest drummer of all-time.  Yet all the little suckers idolize...Travis Barker? 

 

 

Semi-related, but I just learned that P&G has an in-house big band made up of mostly older employees who just meet up and do it for fun. If Ohio, and Cincinnati in particular, has one strength, it's that its schools often do a pretty decent job of getting kids involved with jazz bands and orchestras at an early age, and I think that sticks with a lot of people into adulthood.

 

Also, Hawaiian War Chant is a great song. I'm a sucker for kitschy exotica, and this is a great spin on it.

^Yeah, my high school had a "jazz" band, which pretty much just played big band songs because that was its instrumentation, not small combo jazz.  The problem is that basically nobody has heard much live big band music since about 1960 so it's impossible to expect the kids to sound very good since they can't possibly really understand the feel. 

 

The average "best player at his high school" isn't even 1% as good as these guys.  If you go on a long binge where you only listen to jazz and big band for about 2 months straight and then you switch the dial to oldies 1960s pop, you'll experience the face melt that I'm sure all of the old players felt when they felt their music being taken away from them by the dolts dominating the charts with crap like "My Baby Does the Hanky-Panky. 

 

 

^Yeah, my high school had a "jazz" band, which pretty much just played big band songs because that was its instrumentation, not small combo jazz.  The problem is that basically nobody has heard much live big band music since about 1960 so it's impossible to expect the kids to sound very good since they can't possibly really understand the feel. 

 

The average "best player at his high school" isn't even 1% as good as these guys.  If you go on a long binge where you only listen to jazz and big band for about 2 months straight and then you switch the dial to oldies 1960s pop, you'll experience the face melt that I'm sure all of the old players felt when they felt their music being taken away from them by the dolts dominating the charts with crap like "My Baby Does the Hanky-Panky. 

 

 

I agree, but every so often even high school kids can rise to the occasion. I ran across this performance recently from Berklee High School, which I believe is connected to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, so it's not your average HS band. The singer basically does the exact arrangement of a medley done by Ella Fitzgerald from the Newport Jazz Fest from the 70's. The sound isn't great but I found it refreshing to know that not all kids are interested in the same depressing, mind-numbing, talentless crap that the music industry is peddling :laugh:--

 

^Yeah, my high school had a "jazz" band, which pretty much just played big band songs because that was its instrumentation, not small combo jazz.  The problem is that basically nobody has heard much live big band music since about 1960 so it's impossible to expect the kids to sound very good since they can't possibly really understand the feel. 

 

The average "best player at his high school" isn't even 1% as good as these guys.  If you go on a long binge where you only listen to jazz and big band for about 2 months straight and then you switch the dial to oldies 1960s pop, you'll experience the face melt that I'm sure all of the old players felt when they felt their music being taken away from them by the dolts dominating the charts with crap like "My Baby Does the Hanky-Panky. 

 

 

I agree, but every so often even high school kids can rise to the occasion. I ran across this performance recently from Berklee High School, which I believe is connected to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, so it's not your average HS band. The singer basically does the exact arrangement of a medley done by Ella Fitzgerald from the Newport Jazz Fest from the 70's. The sound isn't great but I found it refreshing to know that not all kids are interested in the same depressing, mind-numbing, talentless crap that the music industry is peddling :laugh:--

 

It's not the Jazzfest run by Berklee High School, it's the High School Jazzfest run by Berklee College of Music.  (my brother did a summer program there so I vaguely remember hearing about it).  So as far as jazz goes, it's basically the MIT High School STEM Fair.

Yeah I know these young guys who are into metal almost to the exclusion of all else but it is the flat death metal.  Somehow Cannibal Corpse and the early death metal bands became the most influential vein.  All of the early blues-oriented metal has been forgotten except for the occasional Black Sabbath cover band with a median age of 51. 

 

I went to see The Afghan Whigs on Thursday night.  The sound man jacked Public Enemy after the opening act.  Man, it sounded outstanding.  Rap has suffered an artistic collapse and dead-end similar to most rock & roll.  There hasn't been almost any innovation in either in 20 years. 

 

Rap outdid rock, which keeps managing to revive and come back, albeit on a smaller scale and occasionally you get a band that sounds great like Avenged Sevenfold.  But as rap goes.  but most of what gets played on our jukebox is horrible.

 

To a degree that may be the generica promoted by the industry in an effort to stay relevant.  As I've said elsewhere, music is doing fine but the people trying to make money off it without adding value aren't.

 

The sheer accessibility of older music online may not be helping.  Any song you've ever heard of you can probably find somewhere within 15 minutes.

^Yeah, my high school had a "jazz" band, which pretty much just played big band songs because that was its instrumentation, not small combo jazz.  The problem is that basically nobody has heard much live big band music since about 1960 so it's impossible to expect the kids to sound very good since they can't possibly really understand the feel. 

 

The average "best player at his high school" isn't even 1% as good as these guys.  If you go on a long binge where you only listen to jazz and big band for about 2 months straight and then you switch the dial to oldies 1960s pop, you'll experience the face melt that I'm sure all of the old players felt when they felt their music being taken away from them by the dolts dominating the charts with crap like "My Baby Does the Hanky-Panky. 

 

 

I agree, but every so often even high school kids can rise to the occasion. I ran across this performance recently from Berklee High School, which I believe is connected to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, so it's not your average HS band. The singer basically does the exact arrangement of a medley done by Ella Fitzgerald from the Newport Jazz Fest from the 70's. The sound isn't great but I found it refreshing to know that not all kids are interested in the same depressing, mind-numbing, talentless crap that the music industry is peddling :laugh:--

 

It's not the Jazzfest run by Berklee High School, it's the High School Jazzfest run by Berklee College of Music.  (my brother did a summer program there so I vaguely remember hearing about it).  So as far as jazz goes, it's basically the MIT High School STEM Fair.

ha! I suspect half of those musicians are really college students  :|. Here's the Ella Fitzgerald original, a little faster pace

 

ha! I suspect half of those musicians are really college students  :|.

 

Maybe, but they do have extensive after school and summer programs for high school aged kids.

 

 

The sheer accessibility of older music online may not be helping.  Any song you've ever heard of you can probably find somewhere within 15 minutes.[/color]

 

The dilemma with recorded music is that there are now millions and millions of recorded songs and you couldn't possibly listen to even a tiny fraction of them.  New music is inevitably a time distraction from listening to old stuff that won't be topped. 

 

Streaming and random shuffles are bad news because you need a curator to help you from wasting too much time listening to the not-good stuff.  With people not recording to physical media anymore, most of the mediocre stuff being recorded now will be completely lost.  At least with old records, tapes, and CD's, they could spend 50 years in the basement and a grandkid will get curious and want to listen to them.