On my cab ride home from work at 5 this morning, I heard a horrible bastardization of jazz saxaphonist Paul Desmond's composition Take Five.
It was playing on the 'smooth jazz' radio station, which provides endless hours of shitty elevator/dentists' office music to the NYC Metro area. The problem with most of what's on this radio station is that it's not jazz. It's over-produced crap. There is no improvisation or syncopation. No call-and-response. Virtually every synthesized note is strategically placed.
Can you tell I took a History of Jazz class in college, and that I'm a total snob about the subject?
The cover tune I heard was 90% synthesizer, 10% Kenny G-style saxaphone. The "drum" beats sounded like too-tightly wound bass strings being violently plucked.
Paul Desmond wrote Take Five for the Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1959, for the album Time Out. It was meant to be a drawn out drum solo for drummer Joe Morello "to release himself from the rigidity of the 5/4 pulse" (from the album's liner notes) as Paul's alto sax played off of him, while Dave played the constant piano vamp and Eugene Wright drove his sly bass line down Broadway at 3 AM on a cool, rainy summer night.
Paul has to have spun in his grave a million times by now.
Later today, I'll tell you more about how I got into jazz. Monday, I'll review Lyman's jazz album Funky Supervillain. I already know it's going to be good. I just haven't heard it all yet. Check out his blog & myspace. He's got a few songs up there.
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