Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Tour tales no. 4: "Jazz-Pop Jerkoff"



Yep, it's another one of these goddamned things. Audio is from the same show as "The Bee Dance": so that would be Cory Wright, Lee Elderton, Evan Francis, Ward Baxter, Mary-Sue Tobin, Mieke Bruggeman (reeds); Dan Rosenboom, Steph Richards, Ian Carroll, Nelson Bell (brass); Dan Schnelle, Oliver Newell (rhythm section); Jill Knapp, Tany Ling (vox), and me (compositions and scowling).

Also like "The Bee Dance," this is a revised (and much improved) version of a tune that we premiered in March.

What is a "jazz-pop jerkoff"? Beats me. I suppose it's a metaphor for the inevitable intersection of the "art music" and "music industry" worlds. None of us is immune to this intersection, really -- even of the most "serious" (i.e., thoughtful, committed, talented) musicians still have to deal with the whole publicity / marketing / business side of things. That's such a common observation these days (not so much when I was growing up) that it hardly bears repeating. But that doesn't make the situation any less absurd. And we all know how I love absurdity.

Stock footage (as usual) c/o the amazing Internet Archive. This time I found some cool snippets from 1. a burlesque short, 2. an "educational" film called "Junior Prom," and 3. a brief documentary about the famous Victor record plant in Camden, New Jersey. (Where my Dad grew up, incidentally.)

There's a word that I wanted to leave you with... hmm... what was it again?

Oh, yeah: "enjoy"! (No, those aren't random quotation marks.)

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