Free Form Jazz

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‘Free Form’ is that style of jazz which is characterised by a rejection of traditional jazz conventions such as set chord progressions and melodic structures, opting instead for individual expression and group improvisation. It says here.

Anyway, it’s a kind of ‘music’ that puts me in a bad mood. The wife and I are not long back from lunch in a favourite café of ours, where the owners unfortunately persist in playing this tripe, no doubt under the misguided belief that it creates a bit of ambience to the place. So we sat and ate our admittedly excellent meal for an hour before I plucked up the courage to ask them to turn it down a bit.

Until that point, we had Animal from ‘The Muppets’ crashing about on drums. We had some cunt doing an endless, toneless ‘dum dum dum dum’ walk up and down the double bass. We had a collection of wassocks jangling and tootling a seemingly random collection of notes on piano, sax and trumpet. And we had some bird who fancied herself as Ella Fitzgerald occasionally chiming in with ‘yahdooby darby dooby darby do’.

In other words, a cachophonous racket of jumbled noise which constitutes nothing more than an assault against the ears. Who listens to this shit? Who actually appreciates it enough to pay to see it performed? That’s what I’d like to know. It’s a fucking atrocity.

Anyway, take it away fellas.

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Erm, niiiice.

Nominated by Ron Knee.

67 thoughts on “Free Form Jazz”

    • After reading, I was relieved that Ron was in agreement. I won’t eat where music or Muzak I tend to call it is being played. I don’t at home, then why should I elsewhere when paying over the odds wherever you go.

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  5. Now, I keep seeing Cleo Laine going ‘Dibba dabba dibba doobie doo’.

    And, Billie Holliday was one of the most overrated singers ever.
    She sounded like she was off the Muppet Show.

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  9. Jazz, just based on the word you might expect something pretty good, nope!

    Rap, just based on the word you might expect it’s missing a first letter ‘C’, yep!

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  11. “Jazz ist entartete musik.” (Adolf Hitler)
    “Jazz isn’t dead, it just smells funny.” (Frank Zappa)

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  12. Depends what sort of jazz it is – no to elderly Bunk Johnson, who was recorded after he was bought a set of false teeth in his dotage in the 1940s ( a trumpet player), the musicians answer to Joe BIden, Yes to Stan Getz at any time, and in this country I remember the Dudley Moore Trio with affection (remember their interludes in Not Only But Also), I can’t stand some of the old trouts who pretend to be “jazz singers” these days – just listen every Sunday afternoon to Jazz Record Requests Radio 3 1600-1700, you will get a cross-section of all klnds of jazz – they run the gamut from A to B.

    Lovers of striptease (of which I am one) will be forever grateful to Jimmy Forrest a saxophone player who converted Duke Ellington’s 1940s Happy Go Lucky Local into a vehicle for the bump and grind ladies called Night Train:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaFWKYqGrPO

    I can just see young Lisa Nandy now in her stocking tops, black suspender belt and nice big pasties:

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      • I can just see her bobbing down to show us those lovely orbs, before she starts her tassle dance, I’d be happy to choreograph her bump and grind, Ron.

      • Maybe with an uncomfortably tight corset I would give her a go, otherwise, shes become a little too porcine.

  13. We used to go to Ronny Scott’s in Soho on a Saturday night.
    Not for the jazz because that was shit.

    We were there because the place didn’t shut until 4am.

    Then off to the pubs around Billingsgate Market that had special licenses to open early.

    Finally at 11am, which was normal opening hours it was off to any one of dozens of local boozers that had strippers.

    Life was good.
    I am glad that I was around in those days.

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  14. Anyone heard of Jazz Manouche?
    It’s French Gypsy Jazz. Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli were it’s best known performers.
    Anyway, here’s a short piece – it won’t be to everyone’s taste, but if nothing else the Swiss singer Tatiana Eva-Marie gives me a trouser tingle:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Za8pKGT2E

    PS Free form jazz is a pile of utter crap.

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      • Afternoon Ron.

        I’d never heard of Jazz Manouche until I found that quite by chance. Tatiana sings French classics by the likes of Trenet and Piaf in the JM style which works really well in my opinion.

        She’s not got a strong voice (Piaf she certainly ain’t) but she makes up for it by being well fit (which Piaf wasn’t!). A touch of the Nigella Lawsons I’d say.

  16. Free form jazz is the equivalent of the green party, a load of made up bollocks that you will never have to prove or implement, because no-one will ever take you seriously.

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  17. Jazz is utter shite. In all its forms.

    Four musicians all playing their instruments simultaneously, just not to the same beat or the same tune.

    As Cuntemall has already nicked my fire in a pet shop comparison, the next best comparison is a bitching attack of aural diarrhea (parp! honk! toot! squeeeeek! plap plap plap).

    One of our sales mincers at work likes to play this shit to prospective clients as they walk into the lobby via an Alexa.

    Every time I walk past it’s ‘Alexa, play butthole surfers, independent worm saloon’.

    Not for the uninitiated and certainly an acquired taste, but still a million times better than free form jazz.

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  18. Crazypops daddio!!

    You cats arent hip to jazz?
    Skiddlebop adoddle,
    Jazz is life,
    CRAZY!!!!

    Know who likes Jazz?
    Bill Cosby.
    An hes a sex pest.

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  21. Free-form jazz is ultimate form of pretentious.

    It is inaccessible to musical plebs by design. The musicians that play it are amazingly talented and have to be to sound that bad.

    Give me a bit of lilting or some twiddly-diddly-dee any day. Something I can grab a tit too.

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      • Clam on bass. Priceless.

        The fast show did a whole serious taking the piss out of it….‘Jazz Club’’ was one of the most underrated parts of that comedy great.

        Another funny skit was ‘Indie Club’ featuring ‘Colon’ a complete piss take of the former Radio 1 DJ ‘Zane Low’ … what a wanker.

        The fucking BBC would never let them produce such masterpieces these days that’s for sure.

  22. The jazz music I find interesting is the 20mm type at an oblique angle and firing at around 10 rounds a second per gun. Devastatingly effective apparently.

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  23. Mr Beau is famous for his bongo solos, in fact, he`s a veritable funk machine.
    You can`t stop him when he starts pounding skins – sometimes I think he`ll follow through.
    🍖🪘

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  25. I take it you will not want to borrow anything from my Otnette Coleman and Keith Jarrett colections then, Ron?

    Good afternoon, everyone.

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  26. Jazz is not music.

    Music is essentially based upon physics and is fundamentally mathematical in nature. If that weren’t so, then we wouldn’t have MIDI. It has a defined and quantifiable structure. Its time signature being just one example.

    Anyone who ‘free forms’ or improvises in an ad hoc manner using a musical instrument is not creating music by definition. They are essentially just making a noise, but happen to be doing it with a musical instrument, ergo not creating music.

    Happy to help.

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    • Thank you IY. A good point well made.

      I don’t know about everyone else, but I have always found that music (and drugs) greatly enhance sex.

      For example both of you puffing on a nice big spliff and getting it on to the Beloved’s Sweet harmony for example.

      Fuck knows what you would need to be on to crack the fat to free form jazz

      Probably a mixture of DMT and ketamine for the most fumbled, disjointed and bizarre shag you have ever experienced. Where both parties end up sore, confused, embarrassed and with a dawning feeling of emptiness and self loathing.

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    • Excellent analysis IY. In an episode of “The Simpsons” Bart states, not verbatim but words to the effect of; “America invented only two art forms, Jazz and animation and Jazz is shit.”

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  29. Free form jazz is in the same fucking class as rap.
    As Eric said, all the right notes in the wrong pissing order.
    Like a chimp typing Shakespeare.
    Lazy cunts.

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  30. The late great stripey-double-breasted-suit-wearing jazz legend George Melly once asked Mick Jagger why his face was so wrinkled. Jagger told him they were “laughter lines”. Melly replied “Nothing’s that funny.”
    🥁

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