My Music Hell

10:01 / 03.03.05

Someone in the office thinks Diana Krall is good listening.

jeed

10:14 / 03.03.05

Hell. I empathise fully, someone in mine has decided Norah Jones on feckin loop for the last three weeks is the way to go for motivational purposes.

I've spent the last two weeks and six days thinking about tearing my arm off and beating myself to death with the wet end.

Blutack, in ears.

dancing with red shoes

10:22 / 03.03.05

Well, my boyfriend gave me the Joss Stone CD for Christmas.

I dumped him on the 10th of January.

So I should say "my ex-boyfriend".

sleazenation

10:24 / 03.03.05

ipods drown out other people's crappy taste in music. - or better still, listen to the radio via the interwebnet....

Spaniel

10:26 / 03.03.05

I, along with a a bazillion other managers, recently attended a corportate branding event.

After M People's Proud finished blaring out of the speaker system we were asked, "Well? What have you done today to make YOU feel proud?"

RRRRAAAARRRRRGGYYYKKKVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

10:39 / 03.03.05

There's nothing wrong with Diana Krall's music.
Of course, there's nothing particularly right with it, either...

I mean, she's got an okay voice, she's a decent pianist, and she doesn't over-sing. The problem is that she's a one-trick pony: her one and only strategy in interpreting a song is to Play It Really Slowly.

My advice? Ignore her vocals and listen to the guitar. Her guitarist, Russell Malone, is a very smart musican—great taste, amazing chops, and bursting with ideas.

Of course, if you're simply in the throes of a knee-jerk reaction against jazz & standards in principle, well, I can't help you there: your loss.

10:57 / 03.03.05

I like jazz but I'd heard Fly me to the Moon about a gazillion times before I started working here and I'd heard better versions of it.

11:01 / 03.03.05

And frankly when you were brought up on Sun-Ra, Cecil Taylor and the more obscure Miles Davis records three consecutive tracks (never mind the whole album) by Diana Krall make you want to chew a table leg.

dancing with red shoes

11:25 / 03.03.05

Lonely War: Nina does not like Diane Krall. No amount of lecturing and "your loss"-ing will fix that. And one does not need a "knee-jerk" reaction to jazz for that to happen (although it sounds like Nina does like jazz- just other jazz- which may make Ms Krall even more unlikeable to her). Personally I can't stand jazz, and you could tell me to the cows come home all the very good reasons why I should, but music hits on a very visceral and emotional level and that's all there is to it. I have a bee in my bonnet at the minute anyway about people who think they can tell others why or how the should like music that they JUST DON'T LIKE... this has played right into it I'm afraid. Hence I guess I'm having a knee-jerk reaction to a posting about jazz, if not to jazz itself.

11:49 / 03.03.05

Mm.

Well.

Have you listened to much jazz, then?

Spatula Clarke

11:54 / 03.03.05

Aha! I see it now! At first, I thought that Jack saying how Diana Krall was inoffensively bland meant that he was more or less in agreement with Nina, but now that you've pointed it out I see my error.

Stealth persuasion! While he appeared to be posting something that was generally sympathising with Nina's dislike of Krall, he was actually trying to force her into buying everything she's ever put out! Genius! Thank crap you're here to see through his sneaky wiles, red shoes.

11:55 / 03.03.05

I only ask because you seem, well, disproportionately defensive about what was, after all, a fairly innocuous comment, and one which Nina took in the spirit intended. You, on the other hand, sound as if you've got something to prove.

For what it's worth, I used to think I didn't like jazz, too. (Either. Whatever. You know what I mean.) Then I heard some that, y'know, didn't suck. Surprised the hell out of me.

I just think it's unnecessarily limiting—and closed-minded, and reactionary—to completely write off a vast and multifarious genre. Which isn't what Nina's doing, thank God, but which does appear to be what you're doing.

12:00 / 03.03.05

(Thanks, Spatula.)

(I really do think Russell Malone is a great guitarist, though. But then, I do look for the silver lining in every cloud. Every dull, grey, monotonous cloud.)

12:01 / 03.03.05

Well, actually Jack was taking the opportunity to suggest that reasons to dislike la Krall come in two forms:

1) The right way, in which you like jazz, and focus instead on the smooth jazz stylings of her guitarist. Highlighting the contribution of a musician on an album rather than the headline artist is the musical equivalent of liking Denis Bergkamp.

2) The wrong way, where you are manifesting a knee-jerk dislike of jazz. Note - and this is being developed now - that there is no possibility of having an educated or considered dislike of jazz. Only knee-jerk.

I want there to be a magazine that is to the Wire what Later is to Maxim.

grant

12:07 / 03.03.05

Nina: do you have a way of burning CDs and making them look professional? Label-wise, I mean?

Because it might be fun to slip some, like, original Edith Piaf & Coco Taylor & stuff together on a mix (with Tom Waits & Bette Midler's duet, the name of which I can't think of now) and slip it into co-worker's stack labeled as some sort of Krall collected B-sides or something.

12:11 / 03.03.05

Well, now, hang on a minute. There's a world of difference between a blanket "I don't like jazz"—which I think can justifiably be called a knee-jerk reaction—and "I have never heard any jazz that I liked/that didn't leave me cold/that really spoke to me," which seems to me a more honest assessment.

The latter statement implies that the journey is still in progress, and that the mind and the ears are still open, while the former implies that all's already said and done, I've heard enough, don't need to hear any more, so spare me your lectures, my mind's made up.

Fair?

Jub

12:16 / 03.03.05

... but that's true of most things isn't it? I mean, if I say I don't like cheese - I'm not necessarily reuling out the possibility that one day I might like one type of cheese, but just that I don't now.

12:20 / 03.03.05

...don't ... like ... cheese?

Fucker.

You are dead to me now. Dead!

12:27 / 03.03.05

It's fair, certainly, but it's not an option you gave, Jack. Your original contention was that either one liked jazz but not Krall, or one was reacting from a knee-jerk dislike of jazz. Your attack on red shoes likewise took as its starting point that red shoes was ignorant of jazz, and was thus being "defensive", not to mention "reactionary". Not exactly designed to spark off an inquiring spirit into the hot hep sound.

12:48 / 03.03.05

To be fair, Red Shoes attacked me first, on the grounds that I was being preachy—which, was, I thought, kind of presumptuous, and...

...fuck it. You know what? It's a shitstorm in a shotglass, and it's not worth any more of my time. I'm done.

12:51 / 03.03.05

(Except to say that "if" does not imply a strict either/or construction.)

13:00 / 03.03.05

As you will.

Personally, I love jazz. Katie Meluah's new album has bvarely been off my iPod. Also, Jamie Cullum and Amy Winehouse have been doing some very exciting things. There's a young turk called Michael Buble who does some great standards, also.

Spaniel

13:16 / 03.03.05

Why isn't this in Music?

13:34 / 03.03.05

Well, it's just noise, innit?

Sax

15:00 / 03.03.05

Whether we like the music or not, we can surely all agree that the form has given us that wonderful object, the jazz mag.

I've got this month's Knave on my picture iPod.

subcultureofone

15:05 / 03.03.05

there is an ice cream truck that has visited my neighborhood just about every afternoon for the past few years. the only songs it ever plays are 'turkey in the straw', 'home on the range' and 'music box dancer'. i no longer care that these sounds mean ice cream is nearby. i want to rip out its speakers. also, there is no way the driver can still be sane. should he really be around all those kids!?! please, please, get some new ice cream music! like 'sugar, sugar' or 'the canydman' or dare i hope for tom waits' 'ice cream man'... until then i'll be forced to shove drumstix in my ears.

Jub

15:21 / 03.03.05

Jazz?

Nice...

Eloi Tsabaoth

15:26 / 03.03.05

ipods drown out other people's crappy taste in music

Even better, record your favourite conversations and play them over the top of people's inane directionless gambits. Then hold up a cardboard cutout of Roger Moore to block out their ugly, wrinkly faces.

15:46 / 03.03.05

I didn't put it in music because I was scared that everyone would hate it and slowly it would sink to the bottom while I cried myself to sleep at night thinking about how the music forum was completely apathetic to my hatred of Diana Krall.

And leave Jack Fear alone, he was clearly stating that if you couldn't look on the positive side of the music than you were likely having a knee jerk reaction to jazz. If he got anything wrong it was the possibility of liking the guitar through the perversion of some okay songs.

15:55 / 03.03.05

That would be the closest thing to crazy I have ever been.

15:57 / 03.03.05

My ears are bleeding.

Haus of Mystery

16:13 / 03.03.05

I like oranges more than lemons.