Jazz and Popular Culture References
Continuing in the tradition of my Analogies to Jazz in the News post, here are a number of interesting references to jazz music within the context of popular culture and writings regarding such issues.
From an article called "What's Your (Musical) Sign?" comes only one of the six listed signs referring to jazz:
GOURMETOnly the best. Your modern is the Shins or Wilco. Your rock is the Stones and Beatles. Your jazz is Charlie Parker or Miles Davis. Your classical is Beethoven's Seventh. You are a walking audiophile leaking your impeccable taste into a world that doesn't deserve you. Downside: You strike pedestrians with your Lexus.
From a dating article at 7Days making suggestions for the romatically challenged:
Slink your way into a jazz club. The smoky air practically oozes intimacy.
American Chronicle lets us in on the secrets of real estate agents when they sell their own homes:
Soft jazz or classical music is playing on the stereo when buyers come through.
On the flip side of the housing situation, here is a funny reference to jazz in an article about moving out of an apartment if you are having problems:
Offer a specific suggestion for a solution to problems, such as "Please ask the neighbor above me to stop playing their jazz music loudly after midnight" or "Someone keeps taking my parking space on Friday nights."
Apparently, John Lennon was said to have once derided jazz as “beer drinking music.”
In a recent article about a Minneapolis comic convention, Bill Paine (who we know nothing about thanks to the article) says this:
“The two American contributions of merit to culture, I think, are jazz music and comic books.”
Do domestic animals get little respect? From an article on the topic in The Gazette from Montreal:
A couple of generations ago, black culture also helped alter the connotations of "cat." In the jazz world, a cat refers to a person (usually a man) who loves the music or who plays it brilliantly. When you look at the T-shirts, posters, bags and other merchandise produced by the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, you often find a cat's image.
And finally, the difference between a jazz musician and a blues musician, courtesy of Ray Kamalay:
The blues musician plays three chords in front of 1,000 people; the jazz musician plays 1,000 chords in front of three people.
I missed one -- too many items saved in my clippings! On describing the voice of Macy Gray:
Macy Gray's singing and speaking voice sounds as if Olive Oyl started smoking, shooting whiskey and hanging out in jazz clubs.