• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Double Bass The New Standard

#104
#107
mtto said:
The Bad Plus has been mentioned a bit in this thread. They have an essay on their website on their philosophy regarding repertoire. Invalid Link Removed Just the Facts (2007) It is a little over halfway down the page. An interesting read.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have never read anything more disingenuous in my life.
"Liking" something and making a decision to present something to the public as your art are two very different things. Agruing for a place for humor or levity in jazz would be one thing, but trying to pretend it wasn't cute joke is just B.S.
I agree 100% with the critics, as far as myself and many others are concerned they took the low road and cashed the check. I just hope it was worth it for them!
 
#108
damonsmith said:
Yeah, I have never read anything more disingenuous in my life.
"Liking" something and making a decision to present something to the public as your art are two very different things. Agruing for a place for humor or levity in jazz would be one thing, but trying to pretend it wasn't cute joke is just B.S.
I agree 100% with the critics, as far as myself and many others are concerned they took the low road and cashed the check. I just hope it was worth it for them!
Click to expand...

I have to agree. The Bad Plus' treatment of many of the pop tunes feel like a sort of musical satire, which is fine, but I don't really hear it as a serious treatment of the source material. I can't tell you how many time I ran in to people that said stuff like, "man, did you hear that group that did jazz version of Nirvana" later to find out that person own NO other jazz records. Even at their concerts, of which I've been to several, there was always a chuckle that came from the audience when they would kick into Iron Man or the like.

I really like The Bad Plus. I think they are all great players and their originals are really strong but I agree with Damon that the purpose of the pop tunes is to boost record sales. There is nothing wrong with that but I don't see it as some great musical statement.
 
#110
Same for me. I've even gotten a hold of Ethan Iversons recordings of other tunes including the usual standards. He's certainly has chops but the "out" playing he does gets old when it just sounds like interesting noise and less like he's trying to tell a story - shallow content. TBP is just more of the same - good chops, little heart as Eric says. Prob also worth pointing out that Iverson seems to be very brainy, and his music comes across that way.

Problem with the "new standard" is that the melodic content tends to be pretty low and most of the effort was put into the lyrics. Remove the lyrics and the song becomes a sort of caricature of the original. Fun? Sure. As serious music? meh. And then not too long ago they added a singer (TBP+1) and it wasn't very good result, IMO. I know I'm not the only one there.
 
#111
I have to confess that my experience with The Bad Plus is limited to a few tunes (such as "Heart of Glass") that people played for me because they thought I would love them, you know, since I "like jazz."

I never explored further, because I just wasn't into it.

Unfair, I know - it seems like they might be doing some other stuff, but... yuck.

So for this listener, adding pop tunes cost them record sales.

That said, I still think that good music is good music, no matter when it was written or who wrote it.

ETA: To be more clear, IMO carefully choosing pop tunes to play as jazz and spending some time on an arrangement can lead to really satisfying results. I've never personally done it, I don't tend to like bands that are known for doing it, but I've been pleasantly surprised by hearing it done well. So, I leave the dogma out the door (at least on this topic! :) ).
 
#112
I think the reason there are fewer "new" pop songs (or even jazz songs) becoming standards is artists don't want to do something that someone else has done.

Brad Mehldau has recorded interesting versions of some Radiohead tunes, but other jazz artists are less likely to take their own shot at those tunes because its been done- Mehldau has claimed them, whereas a tune like "Softly, As In a Morning Sunrise" was taken from a popular musical and everyone put their spin on it. That's how something becomes a "standard", and that isn't happening now.

Another reason fewer tunes are becoming standards is the rising emphasis of publishing as a stream of income for artists. If you record "Softly...", you pay a portion of your record sales to Hammerstein's estate. If you write your own little melody and use Hammerstein's changes, you get the publishing money.

And, finally, I would say that the songs that are popular today don't translate as well to jazz as show tunes did. The melodies are simpler, the changes are much simpler (if there are any), and its much more difficult to "cover" these songs without sounding tongue in cheek. People bag on The Bad Plus, but I think they do an excellent job choosing modern pop tunes that have interesting melodies and re-interpreting them in interesting ways that open up the songs for exploration. Sometimes they miss ("Smells Like Teen Spirit"), sometimes they knock it out of the park ("Life On Mars"). I do think they at least make an earnest effort to treat the material honestly, and I certainly don't have any reason to doubt their word on this.
 
#115
damonsmith said:
I just don't think any reasonable argument can be made for any modern pop song being a more compelling vehicle for improvising than a Monk or Herbie Nichols tune not mention the "lesser" standard jazz material.
That is really the bottom line here.
Click to expand...

being a lover of Monk and Herbie Nichols (woohoo! MORE Herbie Nichols please-thanks for bringing him to the forum!) I don't agree at all with your bottom line.

"Softly as in a Morning Sunrise" can be a sappy crap tune in some people's hands but certainly is a powerhouse in the hands of say Sonny Rollins, Live at the Village Vanguard. It's not the song, it's what the musician does with it. Some musicians do, and some really don't need interesting chords or melodies to play (and certainly improvise) great music, whether through taking a free jazz approach or through pre-arranged reharmonizing.

(edit...). I'll admit that the great pop song improvisations aren't there yet in the millions on record, but they are coming; i have heard here in the clubs in NYC fantastic improvised versions of Allright Now, White Room, People are Strange or 3rd Stone from the Sun, for example. A later tune with a lot of possibilities that a lot of people have tried their hand on is Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun". It will happen..(end edit...)

And yes, to me jazz is certainly about improvising-what other options are there...?
 
#116
theretheyare said:
being a lover of Monk and Herbie Nichols (woohoo! MORE Herbie Nichols please-thanks for bringing him to the forum!) I don't agree at all with your bottom line.

"Softly as in a Morning Sunrise" can be a sappy crap tune in some people's hands but certainly is a powerhouse in the hands of say Sonny Rollins, Live at the Village Vanguard. It's not the song, it's what the musician does with it. Some musicians do, and some really don't need interesting chords or melodies to play (and certainly improvise) great music, whether through taking a free jazz approach or through pre-arranged reharmonizing.

And yes, to me jazz is certainly about improvising-what other options are there...?
Click to expand...

Great arranging, for one. I'm listening to the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis record Consummation as I write this and while the solos are great the real joy of the record is in the arrangements.

There's also the argument that less chart opens the door for more improvisation in a group sense. I read an interview once (I think it was Charlie Haden on Invalid Link Removed, if I'm not mistaken) where someone made the mistake of asking Ornette what the chords were for a chart he had given them, so Ornette snatched the chart out of his hand and penciled in a different chord symbol over every note, the idea being that the melody should be enough (Haden is great at playing bass off the melody, almost ignoring the chord symbols. Keith Jarrett touches on this in the EPK for Jasmine.)

And really, if the best jazz tunes were written half a century ago, maybe jazz really is dead. Because if you accept that no one can write a better chart than Monk or Nichols, you can probably also accept that no one can play that chart like Miles or Trane.
 
#117
beggar98 said:
And really, if the best jazz tunes were written half a century ago, maybe jazz really is dead. Because if you accept that no one can write a better chart than Monk or Nichols, you can probably also accept that no one can play that chart like Miles or Trane.
Click to expand...

Part of my argument is that there are TONS of great jazz tunes from every era - even now, we are NOT hurting for music to play - we can even (obviously) improvise freely. The great compositions now are not written by Nirvana and Radiohead but by David Holland, Anthony Braxton, Kenny Wheeler, etc., etc.
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back