Todd Rund­gren should be induct­ed into the Sty­lus Hall of Fame. Like soon.

Zoilus’ Carl Wil­son donates his two cents to Des­ti­na­tion: Out­’s ’90’s jazz poll [part three here.] I think that what Car­l’s on to is that it’s hard to argue for any genre after it’s passed the idiomat­ic baton to the Next Big Thing. But, as the com­menter right­ly notes, lists are great too, espe­cial­ly when well-respect­ed crit­ics con­tribute them.

Then again, hav­ing lived with a work­ing jazz vio­lin­ist for a year, my ears were opened to a num­ber of things, for bet­ter or worse, hap­pen­ing right now. Like the­ater, jazz is still being played and adored by throngs, just not as pub­licly as in the past.

[Damn it if Ornette Cole­man’s Tone Dial­ing isn’t avail­able on cer­tain music ser­vice that I get to use for free.]

Cocaine Blunts gets meta, crit­i­cizes goldrush/flavor of the month blog­ging, and notes the viral mar­ket­ing aspect of so much rap blog­ging. From the blog:

Despite often being brand­ed with the term “tastemaker,” most rap blog­gers (and most music writ­ers by and large) have no taste. [1] And I don’t mean they have bad taste. That would be the least of their prob­lems. I mean no taste. Their rela­tion­ship with rap music is sole­ly about find­ing what’s hot (the tastes of oth­ers) and either rein­forc­ing it or tear­ing it down. Taste is not a bina­ry deci­sion. I want to read writ­ing from peo­ple who are active­ly going out of their way to find rap music that they aren’t yet famil­iar with. And when they do find it, I want them to gut that shit and wear it’s skin like a new fur coat. Lit­er­ar­i­ly, of course.

I think a lot of indie types went through some­thing sim­i­lar dur­ing the late stages of the rock­ism debate. Most crit­ics inter­pret­ed pop­ism as an excuse to cel­e­brate a lot of garbage artists, rather than to cel­e­brate what was good about them and trash the rest. When I read crit­ics who strug­gled to accept, or whole­heart­ed­ly reject­ed pop­ism, I find that their reviews still hedge a bit: the pop­tomist school was to rock crit­i­cism what the Gang of Four was to the Cul­tur­al Revolution.

As for the pul­lquote above, it’s dif­fi­cult to lis­ten to music in the way Cocaine Blunts wants us to. Music crit­i­cism demands new mate­r­i­al all the time, new pitch­es, new angles, new artists and gen­res. It’s the Great Noth­ing come to sweep clean the face of the Earth. With so many hun­gry writ­ers out there, whether they’re free­lance or blog­gers, it’s hard to keep up with the Jone­ses. There’s not always the lux­u­ry of liv­ing in a record before you review it. Trust me, I miss lis­ten­ing to music that way. But keep in mind: the more you lis­ten to music, the eas­i­er it is to tell whether you like it or not, regard­less of intense pub­li­cists and elbo.ws hype.

[As I fin­ished this up I’m giv­ing Dan Dea­con’s Spi­der­man of the Rings a lis­ten. This is what a day on noise board looks like in terms of hype cycle. Music — it’s a love/hate game any way you play it.]

Des­ti­na­tion: Out­’s Best Jazz of the ‘90’s poll is real­ly great because too many casu­al fans are afraid to think about jazz past the ‘70’s.  Check out parts one and two now! And so far Joe Lovano has only been men­tioned once. He’s a fine play­er but as a co-work­er/­jazz afi­ciona­do once told me, “He’s influ­enced, but not influential.”

I made the com­mand deci­sion over the week­end to give up free­lance music crit­i­cism, at least for now. I think the new job takes up the slack and, with luck, I’ll be able to do some cre­ative things there short­ly. And by cre­ative, I mean inter­view Rihan­na or some­thing like that.

Mean­while, a list of things I’m present­ly, pleas­ant­ly enjoying:

• Grilling.
• Gar­den­ing. Our block had an impromp­tu, total­ly unsanc­tioned Arbor Day cel­e­bra­tion two week­ends ago, result­ing in a ser­i­al plant­i­ng of flow­er­ing pear trees everywhere.
• Read­ing real­ly long nov­els in the time for­mer­ly spent on com­ing up with angles and pitch­es. I’m final­ly dig­ging into Pyn­chon’s V. and I’m lov­ing it. I’m also not­ing how much Rushdie seems to have “bor­rowed” for ele­ments of The Satan­ic Vers­es. Like Gibreel Far­ish­ta, f. ex.
• Inde­pen­dent music. Now that I spend so much time sort­ing out which main­stream releas­es end up on what day of the week and why and what video pack­ages and news items suit them, it’s real­ly relax­ing to unwind with what­ev­er’s wait­ing for me at home. Then I find cre­ative ways to include it at the job. Cir­cle of life and all that.
• Learn­ing Google Sketchup to land­scape the back­yard. I need to fig­ure out how to rethink ter­race gar­den­ing, this table and that grill.
• Falling back in love with movies too. Bear in mind that I stopped using my house account at my old job well before get­ting laid off. I haven’t been the rabid renter I once was, and in the inter­im, I’ve not bought much either. I fore­see a boun­ti­ful Net­flix har­vest in the near future.
• Dono­van. Rihan­na. It’s going to be a great summer.