tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5834841486803278831.post5489367010991972029..comments2023-11-05T04:11:49.605-05:00Comments on The Jazz Monster: In Defense of CriticismThe Jazz Monsterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10942407894710438945noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5834841486803278831.post-57013072361323937282008-09-28T18:54:00.000-04:002008-09-28T18:54:00.000-04:00Jazz criticism is a strange one. I'm a jazz musici...Jazz criticism is a strange one. I'm a jazz musician based in London, and by now I know a lot of the UK jazz journalists. They're a pretty mixed bunch; some supportive, some dismissive, some modernist, some traditional, and it becomes part of the job dealing with having to have your art passed through their filters. I'm kind of surprised at Ambrose's comment, as I rather enjoy this blog and see it as being opinionated and informed. Callum's review reflected exactly what he heard, and was expressed in such a way as to show that he knew what he was listening to and had an appreciation of Ambrose's work.<BR/><BR/>Things get a lot worse than that. Recently my band opened up for Wayne Shorter in London and I got two utterly different reviews; one great, one absolute drubbing. I accept them both; you have to. Things were helped, actually, by the fact that the chap who hated me also hated Wayne because he didn't play Witch Hunt (like he was expecting him to - as if he had no idea what his new band does) and because he played 'totally free' (despite the visual clue of Pattituci and Perez reading music on the gig). Idiotic, uninformed stuff like this can sometimes soften the blow...<BR/><BR/>Anyway, what I suppose I'm doing here is writing in defense of Callum, as I think his blog is particularly good. It's well-informed, passionate, amusing stuff, the like of which, sadly, is hard to find in my country, and, I imagine, in a lot of jazz criticism everywhere. <BR/><BR/>Often, as well, it's good to have somebody point something out to you like that. If your music's coming across in a certain way, or shares an aesthetic with something that you'd rather think it didn't, then it can be a help to know this when it comes to making the next step. It's shit to be told that something's not quite hit the spot in the way that you'd hoped, but I think that in the long term it's all valuable stuff.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com