JAZZ is metal.
Well, of course it isnt, really. They dont sound alike on their outer layers. And their audiences dont overlap. From the evidence of hundreds of jazz shows Ive seen all over the country this past decade, a whole lot of Americans over 60 feel a tremendous fondness for jazz and help it survive. Most of those same people, Id guess, would feel a virulent loathing for metal, if they ever were forced to encounter it.
Currently, making it in jazz means playing a circuit of sit-down supper clubs and comfortable midsize theaters booked by nonprofit arts presenters, and, in summer, at European festivals. If you make it in metal, you play a circuit of decent-to-horrible stand-up clubs. (And, in summer, at European festivals.) The aesthetic ideals couldnt be more different: jazz is about subtlety and, one wants to say, beauty; metal is about intimidation, alienation and assault.
But then again, over the last decade jazz and metal have become harder to reduce and easier to like, in a sum-total kind of way. And in the process theyve generated more and more points of comparison.
Well, of course it isnt, really. They dont sound alike on their outer layers. And their audiences dont overlap. From the evidence of hundreds of jazz shows Ive seen all over the country this past decade, a whole lot of Americans over 60 feel a tremendous fondness for jazz and help it survive. Most of those same people, Id guess, would feel a virulent loathing for metal, if they ever were forced to encounter it.
Currently, making it in jazz means playing a circuit of sit-down supper clubs and comfortable midsize theaters booked by nonprofit arts presenters, and, in summer, at European festivals. If you make it in metal, you play a circuit of decent-to-horrible stand-up clubs. (And, in summer, at European festivals.) The aesthetic ideals couldnt be more different: jazz is about subtlety and, one wants to say, beauty; metal is about intimidation, alienation and assault.
But then again, over the last decade jazz and metal have become harder to reduce and easier to like, in a sum-total kind of way. And in the process theyve generated more and more points of comparison.
