Lagniappe Mobile Blog

As alluded to in this issue’s Artifice, Mobile’s jazz scene is vexing and slim.

In 2001, I decided to start a local jazz society. At the time, I found it strange that Pensacola, a town noticeably smaller than Mobile, had an active organization that staged an annual multi-day festival while over here you had to search hard to find the music.

My reasoning then was that if jazz sales comprised four percent of the annual national music sales, then that might translate to a couple hundred folks in Mobile who would support jazz. If a couple hundred fans made it a point to get out, to actively get involved, they could affect change.

In my steps toward coalescing the idea, I received warnings aplenty. The leadership of the Jazz Society of Pensacola told me history showed it would be nearly impossible to get such a thing going in Mobile. Members of the Mobile Jazz/Blues Circle, a support group that formed in the 1990s and fell apart after five years, echoed those sentiments. Even one prominent arts observer told me my four percent figure was outlandishly optimistic and described Mobile as a place too “hardscrabble” for jazz to take root.

My experience and research during the last seven years has told me that person was pretty accurate.

All towns have music forms to which they naturally gravitate. In Mobile, that’s traditionally been pop, country, blues and R&B. In contemporary times, hip-hop has been added to that mix as it has ascended in popular stature.

Older aficionados tell me the local antipathy toward jazz is partially rooted in racial division and in social anti-intellectualism. Yet, I don’t think that’s a complete answer.

Folks hereabouts seem to like stuff to which they can either scream/sing the lyrics while in the throes of inebriation or tunes they use as live background music and ignore. Really good jazz is neither of those things. It dares and challenges you. It is everything but comfortable and blasé.

As a result, a lot of folks are turned off by it. And I think that’s likely not just endemic to Mobile, that’s everywhere. Otherwise, Kenny G wouldn’t outsell Wayne Shorter.

I heard an excerpt from an Amy Winehouse interview where she compared the difference between London’s hip-hop and jazz clubs. She said that the hip-hop joints were more of a social scene whereas the jazz clubs were a “more personal thing,” that she would see people sitting and listening to the music above most all else.

And we all know how incredibly socially-oriented Mobilians are. They like their alcohol and they love their hobnobbing. See and be seen.

Another thing working against the health of Mobile’s jazz scene is a matter of the town’s modest size. Even in markets much larger, jazz musicians have a hard time making a living. Gigs are scarce and pay is slim. That is magnified in Mobile. Musicians possessing the chops to make better money invariably leave for more fertile ground.

Thing is, no genre exposes virtuosity or the lack of it like jazz does. You have to really know your stuff to take the incredible risks involved in playing it because it will blatantly lay all your shortcomings in plain view. I know classically trained artists who have been immersed in music all their lives that shy away from the challenges of jazz. Mediocre talent can meet a minimal level of tolerance, but it certainly doesn’t grab your attention.

As a result, a good deal of the live music heard around here is passable, but not much beyond that. Not to say that there aren’t some jewels hidden in Mobile’s scene, but they’re uncommon.

On top of all of this, you have the influence of something I feel has done a grave disservice to potential fans in the region: smooth jazz.

I will admit to a personal bias in this area but among the various sub-genres of jazz, I will listen to a great deal of it. Traditional jazz, be-bop, hard bop, post-bop, cool, free, modal, fusion, I have all of it in my library.

But smooth jazz? Well, let’s just say the stuff I have that could pass for smooth jazz is more correctly categorized as “instrumental R&B,” which is what most of it actually is.

Smooth jazz, in my opinion, is music that attempts to cash in on the cachet of something more esoteric without making the sacrifices it demands. It’s Kenny G using circular breathing to stretch a note out over a million measures without challenging himself to the inventiveness required to keep a dynamic moving along. It’s someone grooving along to a voiceless version of a Bill Withers hit with little exploration involved.

So many Mobilians have only been exposed to this, they frankly don’t know better. I’ve personally seen people who swear they don’t like what they think is jazz flip out when you play some hard-driving Art Blakey or John Coltrane for them. If you feed someone McDonald’s burgers all their days and then plop a filet mignon down in front of them, what else would you expect?

I’ve heard the allegations that I’m a “music snob” and I will admit it in some regards. I’m not going to call something that which it is not. I love Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder as much as the next guy—I think the albums “What’s Going On” and “Songs In the Key of Life” are absolute masterpieces—but while some of it may be jazz-influenced, it’s not jazz. There’s a difference.

And I listen to plenty of stuff that would never be confused with “fine arts” fare. Thievery Corporation, Suba, Ray Charles, White Stripes, Nouvelle Vague, The Clash, Chet Atkins, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Portishead, Elmore James, The Raveonettes, Regina Spektor, Hank Williams, Curtis Mayfield, Asleep At the Wheel, Neil Young and The Velvet Underground all reside on my iPod. I’ll listen to anything I feel is honest and creative and expressive.

But don’t tell me it’s something it’s not. Appreciate it for what it is.

Will Mobile ever change? Will it ever develop a greater yen for jazz? It’s doubtful. If it didn’t exist in the ‘40s and ‘50s, it’s unlikely to sprout now.

However, if there is an influx of non-Mobilians due to start coming in, especially Europeans, that might change somewhat. Oddly enough, folks from “over the pond” seem to dig jazz far more than citizens of the nation that spawned it. And if there’s any French and German influence bound for town, that would be a welcome one.

I discovered Metallica during my middle school years when “And Justice for All…” came out. Their sounds came to me courtesy of a dubbed cassette, and yes, I bought the real deal shortly afterwards in order to have a better recording. They were my introduction to speed metal, and I began a torrid affair with the genre. Their sound was a perfect soundtrack to the angry teenage years and led me into other underground genres such as punk. As with the other Metallica fans at the time, I was extremely excited when their black album came out. I ran down to Saraland’s first and only movie/music/book store (for real, they had one in Saraland and a quite impressive one at that) and picked up my first taste in the form of a cassette single of “Enter Sandman” (”Stone Cold Crazy” on the B-side). Excitement grew as I heard the first hiss of the track beginning, and what came next was one of the biggest disappointments of my life. Metallica had sold-out and sold-out hard with a new less than intense mainstream metal that was actually radio friendly. In my mind and the minds of others, Metallica wasn’t supposed to be friendly in any way.

When they pulled through Mobile later, the situation became worse. One of the snottiest cheerleaders at my high school school prissed through the halls, “Like, omigod! I’ve got like front row tickets to Metallica! I’m gonna dress up like such a metalhead and headbang!” On the night of the concert, we caught her on the jumbotron front and center singing “Seek and Destroy” with frontman James Hetfield only because he prompted her with the words. This was quite a slap in the face for me and my companions, and we hung up our Pushead shirts for good. It took many of their fans a little while to come to the realization that Metallica had followed in the footsteps of bands such as Aerosmith and decided to go soft, but a good chunk of them entered a state of permanent denial that their beloved band hadn’t gone soft. I have nothing against this breed of Metallica fan, and about 99% would agree with me. Metallica had betrayed all that anger that they I had previously relished.

Fast forward a couple of years to the days when Lollapalooza was a festival that actually toured. It was a new age Woodstock engulfed in art, politics, and alternative bands back when alternative ruled the radio. I was fortunate enough to make it for Lollapalooza 94 when the Beastie Boys and Smashing Pumpkins headlined with bands like L7 and The Breeders providing support. 95 kept with tradition with Sonic Youth, Beck, and The Jesus Lizard on the line-up. However, Lollapalooza 96 marked the beginning of the end of the festival. Palooza had built a reputation of featuring the most premiere alternative, eclectic, underground acts on the scene. I won’t go into all the line-ups, but they could be considered a who’s who of the bands that made the 90s wonderful. When 96 came along, there were still a few big names like Rage Against the Machine, The Ramones, and The Violent Femmes, but it was a definite “One of these things is not like the other” situation with Metallica as the muy grande , be-all end-all headliner. After 97, Lollapalooza went into a six-year hiatus, and it hasn’t really been the same since.

Next, there was the whole Napster thing. Sure, music piracy is highly illegal, but why did Metallica have to get so involved and die hard about this? This was a band that established this rebellious outlaw image for themselves, and here they were suing (which is such a shitty move) a bunch of rebellious outlaws. My mind always goes back to the South Park that covered this. I still picture drummer Lars Ulrich weeping bitterly because he will have to wait a few more weeks for his gold-plated shark tank bar because someone downloaded their music. Were they really hurting that bad financially at a time when they hadn’t even put out anything? Hell, the spark for this legal fire was over a song found on the Mission: Impossible II Soundtrack, and we know what fine cinema this was. Were they trying to recuperate finances lost on that piece of work? Either way, they should have said their piece and let Dr. Dre take care of spearheading the whole Napster lawsuit. It is the rap industry that is suffering so much from music piracy that their sales have dropped completely, and many of the labels are having to go back to the drawing board.

Now, it’s Bonnaroo 2008, and Metallica is once again the be-all, end-all, muy grande headliner of an iconic music festivals. Bonnaroo received some criticism last year for steering away from the jam scene that had built this festival, but the rock acts like the White Stripes, Wolfmother, and even TOOL were eclectic on a certain level. Putting Metallica on the bill is really saying something to the Roo Crew. I can already make an extremely educated guess and predict that the Roo Society will be different. With the exception of one, I have gone to Bonnaroo with the same rag tag team of rock and roll gypsies. Last year, our running joke was that 2007 was the year that the shit would hit the fan. By that, we were meaning another Altamont or Woodstock 99. We expected the whole festival to plunge into a apocalyptic/Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome at any second, and we had already taken a group vote to trade off one of our own (Abner, our Roo Sherpa) as a sex slave for any weapons we could get for him. We then began a debate as to what band’s fans could make this event happen. It was a unanimous decision: Metallica. So, is Superfly Entertainment trying to wrap up Roo, or are they wanting to change the social thermostat to an unsafe level? I’m really anxious to see what’s going to happen with this, and I’m also curious to see if my theory that Metallica is a music industry coffin nail. And yes, I am planning on making another trek to Roo and blogging the phenomenon. I picture myself being some kind of broke-ass Dan Rather wading through the violent masses. Actually when I think about it, it will probably be more like Wayne Gale from “Natural Born Killers.”