Jazzletter PO Box 240, Ojai CA 93024~O24O
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T Gene Leer Ad Ljbitum Jazzletter PO Box 240, Ojai CA 93024~O24O November 2002 Vol Z1No. 17 T-mobile cellphones. Dumber and Dumber “Ringtones? TLC? Don’t worry ifyou didn’t follow that: the giant minds of media don’t care about you anyway, It should be obvious to all but the most resolute optimists that assuming you fall outside the 18-to-35 age demographic that jazz is in trouble. Never mind that the universities are tuming these companies believe to be the nirvana ofAmerican culture out more young players than ever before. The best of them are . ‘This is the reason that so much of American culture capable, ofien flamboyant, technicians, and little more. Only seems so dmnb, and getting dumber. Certainly in the old days a few young players have anything to say, and they are movies or music were sold into the mass market, too. Casa- treasures. But the question facing all ofthem, good, bad, and blanca was mass market, and so was Smokey Robinson and so-so, is: Where are they going to make a living? the Miracles. But those discreet markets aren’t big or broad Forty years ago, Chicago, San Francisco, New York and enough now to support the massive quarter-over-quarter the smaller cities in between had so many jazz clubs that you revenue needs of a ‘cross-market’ media giant. So they’ve couldn’t count them. Major names in jazz could count on created a world of hypermass. It’s a- formula all right: regular bookings of a week or two in each city on the circuit. Hypermass=dumber squared. By' definition, you target the And that is not to mention all the “local” musicians across the lowest common denominator —— then think lower. Thus we get continent who could find steady work. Now jazz musicians M, the ‘reality’ TV show Joe Millionaire now on Fox, which scrape to get one- or tvvo-night bookings anywhere. makes the original'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on ABC The culture ofthe United States has descended to a nadir look _likeMasterpiece Theater. The hit Analyze This degrades I once would have thought impossible. Each time I thought into the bomb“ Analyze Iliat.” , J popular music could not sink any lower, I tumed out to be With the death ofBenny Carter, jazz has lost ahnost all its erring on the side of optimism. Rock removed harmony from connections to the 1920s. Even the later generations are popular music. And radio removed the popular music ofthe almost all gone, including Gerry Mulligan and Miles Davis past from the consciousness of the public. Rap finally and Art Farmer and Bill Evans. Writings about jazz inthe removed even melody from music. A future are going to be by younger writers who got what they Record producer Jimmy Jam said as much in an interview. know out of books and old magazine articles, which can be He said, “Songs used to have something to do with chords and highly inaccurate, going back to the bogus John Hammond melodies and those things. -Now it’s beats.” story in Down Beat that said Bessy Smith died because she In the Wall Street Journal on January 18, 2003, Daniel couldn’t get into a white hospital. She was dead on arrival at Hemiinger, deputy editor ofthe paper’s editorial page, noted a black hospital. But the myth that Harmnond set in motion is ~ that Jean-Marie Messier built a former French water utility still part ofthe folklore ofjazz. - called Vrvendi into a “media” conglomerate of awesome Americans spend $13 billion a year on CDs, but j only proportions, making films, records, and television shows, and about 3 percent of that goes to jazz.‘ And what the industry operating theme parks. Henninger wrote: calls “jazz” includes the likes of Kenny G. “The l% ofthe population that follows such things knows The late Stanley Turrentine told me ofhaving a kid asking that Mr. Messier’s career evaporated when the candle of him to autograph “your new CD,” which, when Stanley‘ Vivendi’s share price burned down. But that doesn’t mean looked at it, turned out to be a reissue of an album he’d made anyone in the media business thinks he was wrong. All these more than twenty years earlier. Since the advent of stereo guys think the entertainment potential of cellphones is vast. around 1959, recorded sound has not improved all that much, Just recently th,e'Bertelsman/Arista hip-hop group TLC ‘tied’ and most people don’t have equipment (or ears) that will its new album to an offer of screen savers and ringtones for detect the difference anyway. And reissue albums are cheap T to produce: you just master a CD, use the same art work and George W. Bush administration stalled reform ofthe electric liner notes, and put it out there. That costs about $3,000, industry to create a shortage that would force a deluded which is about what an entire record date used to cost. A American people to permit for oil in Alaska, to benefit record date today for a small group can cost $20,000 to his cronies and fiiends in the oil business. He thus contributed $30,000. The Miles Davis classic Kind ofBlue still sells a massively to the great blackout of 2003. fewthousand copies a week. John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme A partial examination of what has befallen us was de- has sold more than 500,000 copies on CD. But that’s rare. scribed in a speech to the 2003 graduating class ofthe fihn A newjazz CD by a well-known artist can sell about 3,000 school at the University of Southern California by Frank copies, and 10,000 marks it as a big hit. Diana Krall has sold Pierson, president of the Motion Picture Academy. Pierson more than a million copies per album, but that is pop music. has directed many movies and written more, including Cat Hep Records in Scotland (www.hepjazz.com.) turns out Ballou and Cool Hand Luke. Afier a summary of life in the invaluable reissues. Alastair Robertson, the label’s owner, “old days” and in that very creative period when the studio told me in a recent email: “The business for jazz is really system was breaking down, Pierson said: - facing the end commercially. There are absolutely no replace- “Then, on Wall Street, it began to be noticed that a single merits coming for the older players. And the great names are blockbuster movie would make in a weekend what a substan- gradually recedingtin memory. Even the mini-flurry as a result tial business made in a year. Wamer Brothers was bought by ofthe Ken Burns extravaganzas has now subsided. There are Seven Arts, Seven Arts was bought by Kinney Services, limits to admiring Diana Krall’s legs.” which consisted ofa chain ofmortuaries and liveries, and the whole mess is owned by American Online/Tirne/Wamer But it’s not only jazz that’s in trouble. The whole culture we along with HBO, Wamer Books, Tumer networks and CNN. built up over the last hundred years is in jeopardy. The Viacom owns Paramount, CBS, Showtime Cable, and the movies that are made are mostly crap tumed out for the l8-t0- Blockbuster chain ofvideo stores. Ofthe prime time shows 35 crowd. At first it looked as ifthe movies were becoming that will premiere on the four networks this fall and winter, big-screen comic strips. And then they became comic strips, more than 30 — including CBS news magazines — will be drawing for material not on novels and plays but on actual made by one or another company owned by Viacom. Another comic strips, including Superman, Batman, and more recently 25 or so will be made by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, Daredevil, X-Men, The Hulk, and Spiderman. which owns Fox network. That is ahnost fifiy percent ofthe The radio stations that play good music of any kind, not new shows controlled by two companies, one owned by a man just jazz, are an endangered species, ahnost gone now, with notorious for his rnicro-management, narrow right-vving conglomerate take-over ofthe independent stations approved political philosophy, and his willingness to use his ideological by Colin Powell’s son Michael Powell, who in one of the power. We had been having too much fim to notice — the more flagrant recent manifestations ofpolitical nepotism was barbarians were inside the gates . _ ' named head ofthe Federal Cormnunications Commission. “As the huge debt created by mergers was added to the Radio and television channels are theoretically the property rising costs of making little but blockbusters, the risk of of the American public, and the stations are charged with making a film forced the businessmen to be risk averse, to broadcasting “in the public interest, service, and conve- play to the least critical audience: nience.” How long has it been since they did that? In order to “Teen-age boys with disposable incomes. assure diversity in broadcasting, the FCC regulations once ll “The problem is how to keep this ‘average’ moviegoer, allowed any given company to own only ten AM and ten FM male, 16 to 25, high-school education at best, doesn’t read stations. The Republicans steadily dismantled that restriction, books, gets his news from the ll o’clock news if he bothers and finally, under Michael Powell, all restriction has been at all, never heard of Mussolini . this couch potato, this removed. Clear Channel now owns more than 1200 stations, pimply undereducated slob with the attention span of a which, according to Alan Schultz — co-owner of KRML, the chicken — how do we keep him awake and interested, while all-jazz station in Carmel, California — amounts to about 10 staying awake and interested ourselves .