Jazz

// The Consummate Verb Of 21st Century D-Bags

By Jake Dubs .
07.12.09 // Jazz

So we’re getting it on, and all of the sudden, without warning, she starts jazzing me. I’m like, ‘Really?’

Did you see that play? That cornerback just jazzed so hard.

I’d like to take that chack out back and jazz her till she can’t stand.

Just got a citation from campus security for jazzing in public. I hate the University fuzz.

You know who I always sort of jazzed? Linda Ellerbee. Whatever happened to her?

This guy was looking at my girl weird, so I jazzed him in his face.

I was so effing jazzed, I started making Bloody Marys with Heinz Ketchup.

So I’m totally jazzing this girl, and she’s all, ‘Stop it.’

We were at the amusement park this weekend, and Brian jazzed at some old lady.

Why don’t you do the world a favor and jazz yourself.

I don’t think MJ was all that bad. Even though dude did jazz on little boys.

Did you hear about Paul? When he was in Tijuana, the cops caught him jazzing. Dude’s in a Mexican jail.

You would be so jazzed to hear about what I did last night, brah.

She couldn’t find a bathroom, so she just jazzed in the bushes.

You’ll never guess who jazzed at the party last night—Kim. It was a classic move.

He was like, ‘That’s so jazz, dude.’ And I was like, ‘word.’

Sorry, I just jazzed in my pants.

View Comments / Jul 12.09 / Jazz / by Jake Dubs

// The biography of a street musician.

By Ben Cheney .
07.11.09 // Jazz

My life is spent in the underground tunnels of New York City, moving from station to station, inspiring people with the beauty of jazz.

I remember hearing it for the first time.  I was seven years old and my dad brought home a John Coltrane album with his whiskey and some celery.  He handed me the celery and the bottle and walked over to the record player.  I watched intently as he pulled the 12” out of the sleeve and placed it on the player.  He dropped the needle and grabbed the bottle back, taking a swig of the fire water as the sounds of jazz filled the air.

I stopped dead in my tracks, still holding the celery.  It was like time stood still, but the music never stopped, swirling around like a crazy cat in a dark basement.  It was Jazz.

Thus began my obsession.  I snatched up Coltrane and Armstrong and Calloway records left and right.  I borrowed a guitar from my friend’s father after he lost his arm in a saw mill accident.  And I met a couple musicians at The Noisy Oyster who let me play with them, learning my scales and finding inspiration in every pretty little thing that looked my way.

I played the club scene for a while, but found that it was no longer my kind of crowd.  There was nothing new about it.  Everyone who came to listen already loved jazz.  They tapped their feet to the beat, cracked a few smiles when they heard a progression they really liked, and then went home no different than they were before.

There was no discovery.  No amazement.  I wanted to introduce people to jazz, just like my whiskey swigging, celery giving father introduced it to me.

So I took to the streets, drawing inspiration from the streetwalkers and ladies of the night.  No longer playing for a wad of cash handed to me by a skeezy promoter at the end of each set in a smokey bar filled with polite patrons who tap their feet.  Now I play jazz to stop people dead in their tracks and introduce them to the crazy cat that lives in the dark basement.

View Comments / Jul 11.09 / Jazz / by Ben Cheney

// This is not Jazz

By Jordan Childs .
07.10.09 // Jazz

Jazz is boundless. It is unpredictable. It is improvisional. Too much today is not.

Living inside the lines.

Predictable and Static.

Keep things comfortable.

Live without making a sound

None of this is jazz

View Comments / Jul 10.09 / Jazz / by Jordan Childs

// Can you use it in a funky fresh sentence?

By Tristan Smith .
07.09.09 // Jazz

According to Wikipedia, Jazz is one of the most studied word etymologies in the English language.  No one’s sure where the damn sucker came from.  A potent mix of African rhythms, Anglo-Franco brass and the fear and promise of millions of unexplored acres, Jazz does not have a true language of origin.  Sorry home schooled mustache-dude at the Scripps International Spelling Bee.  In the spirit of mystery, here are some other words with unsure etymologies. A warning: if you look these up, the magic of the article will be ruined, much like a string figure pattern or all magicians (girls want them, guys want to be them). (Mainly girls want them.  Guys think magicians are mad silly cat.)

Orange: Dutch? Elvish? Certainly not from anywhere with a sense of rhythm or rhyme.

Jeans: a girl’s name?  If yes, then a paraplegic frontierswoman that used her upper body to sew sturdy trousers for men of the streams and mines.

TrapperKeeper: a monster young children were once sacrificed to in Mayan culture.  Don’t let the unicorns and dolphin-rainbows fool you.  Or do, and believe the alternate origin story involving a man from Mexico and a woman from Canada.

Blommit: from the French for “stew” and the Esperanto for “sheepish abomination.”

View Comments / Jul 09.09 / Jazz / by Tristan Smith

// Jazz – 4:36 (Live recording)

By Charles Hodges .
07.08.09 // Jazz

Jazz. The nature of musical improvisation. Jazz. Don’t give me any of it.  Jazz. Shit falling into place.  Jazz.  There are no mistakes.  Jazz.  Coltrane knew something. Jazz.  Always saying yes.  Jazz. A basketball team in Utah. Jazz. Thelonious dancing, crazy.  Jazz.  Definition of no definition.  Jazz.  Bologna sandwich.  Jazz.  Extra mustard.  Jazz.  Makes me nauseous when played with a flute in fluttering cacophony.  Jazz.  Kenny G, retire.  Jazz.  A day’s pay.  Jazz.  The night is young.  Jazz.  People are their personal nemesis.  Jazz.  I don’t believe you.  Jazz. A nickname.  Jazz.  Nod your head, wear your glasses, that’s cliché, that’s cliché. Jazz. Stockton to Malone.  Jazz.  Dizzy to Bird.  Jazz.  The structure of the night, told again, told again – understood.  Silence as sound.  Beauty without reason.  A beat, lost – a rhythm, a found.  Jazz.  Do whatever you want, as long as you can do everything- there it is, now it’s there.  There is here.  Makes no sense.  Doesn’t matter. Jazz.  Nothing erased, everything finished, completed, without shame.

View Comments / Jul 08.09 / Jazz / by Charles Hodges

// My Life Is Jazz

By Joey Camire .
07.07.09 // Jazz

Every once in a while in life you are struck with a moment of clarity.  A pulsating second where everything makes sense.  A tiny fragment that swells from the lucidity it brings.  In an instant your life has meaning.  It’s like all those thoughts that never quite made sense snap into place.  As if every thought you ever had were a Tetris piece.  The ones that don’t click, add up and create a jumbled mess that you can’t fit together. And in an instant one thought falls into place and creates a cascade that clears up that jumbled mess of wrong moves.  Your head is clear, you see everything for what it is, you move on to the next level.  I don’t think I would go as far as to call it transcendence, but at least true comprehension.  I just had one of those moments.

My life.  The way I see the world.  The way I interact with my environment. Is Jazz.

Free flow. Improv. Unplanned. Impulsive. Full of mistakes that ultimately lead in a new direction.

I’ve been both blessed and cursed with ADHD.  A simple mutation in my brain that leads to a dramatic perception shift in the world outside my brain.

Many times in my life it’s been an added burden to the already complex interactions that  foster and nurture social and romantic relationships.  For the obvious reasons; a flighty, at times disconnected train of thought, unpredictable physical contact and a generally uninhibited nature.  For all of these reasons, close relationships have been fewer because of the added patience it requires of others, but thankfully they’ve been much richer for that reason as well.

That’s all interesting, but the positive aspects of my ADHD are where the moment of clarity came from.

I live every second of my life in that exact moment in time it happens.  In the now.  I don’t really plan for anything beyond setting my alarm at night for the next morning.  This might seem haphazard and callously careless to some or might cause others to panic from the lack of forethought but I absolutely love every second of it.  Every moment of my life is exciting because I never really see it coming.  I mean, I know that each moment will happen like the one before it, I possess logic, but I don’t think about it until it happens.  There is a brand new excitement in every second.  It’s like I’m a good kid, and never peek at my presents before Christmas morning and every moment brings me a shiny new Red Ryder BB Gun.

That’s jazz.  My life is jazz.  It is improv.  I act in each moment based on what is happening then.  I use all the information my senses feed me and I make instant decisions creating combinations of sounds and behaviors that are all brand new. That’s jazz. That’s behavioral improv.  And I love it.  I can be totally elated in a single moment and be totally devastated the next.  I can laugh with my whole body only to turn around and cry with my whole heart.

Even this random blurp of thoughts typed out on my computer is just free flowing thought. And for your enjoyment, and my sanity, I hope it’s coherent.  But if it’s not, it’s still jazz.  My life is jazz and I love it.  Even if I don’t like jazz music.

View Comments / Jul 07.09 / Jazz / by Joey Camire

// Spirit Fingers

By Alex Aloise .
07.06.09 // Jazz

I am by no means a musician.
Truthfully, I don’t really like Jazz that much.
But there is one part of the genre that I love.
And it’s something that, literally, anybody can do…

View Comments / Jul 06.09 / Jazz / by Alex Aloise