Toronto – My fellow Panic Manualers are doing a great job covering the latest and greatest music of the day.  So I’ve decided to explore some uncharted territories for the Panic Manual. Time will tell whether this thought experiment pans out. But it’s high time I start writing about some music that I’m passionate about: jazz.

Jazz first came into use as a term in the early 20^th century from within its motherland, New Orleans. Some early newspapers from the era referred to this new music as “Jass”, before spelling consensus was reached. It was a simple idea really, and it comes down to one thing: collective improvisation. The concept is simple: get a bunch of musicians to improvise together, but also in concert. But there must be method in the madness.  And when done right, the results can be positively spine-tingley.

Indie rock as we know it today would be completely lost without the minor scale.

But how is jazz different from blues? They do share a common thread. In blues you have a 12-measure progression that moves from the 1^st, 4^th, and 5^th notes on your major scale (think, Do, Fa and So, a needle pulling thread). On top of this progression, musicians improvise in what we call “The Blues Scale”. This is basically a slightly modified minor scale. Minor scales sound sad. And that gives us the sad, brooding sound of the blues. Indie rock as we know it today would be completely lost without the minor scale.

So if blues is improvisation over a basic chord-progression, what then is jazz? That’s a good question, and tough to answer. Not everyone agrees, but much of blues is a subset of jazz, and the main difference would be the lexicon, or vocabulary. While jazz can make heavy use of the language of the blues, it also adds a whole bunch of flair. There are more scales to use, with different and more complex chord progressions.  More scales and complexity can lead to more expressiveness, but it can also lead to more chaos. Give someone enough rope and they’ll hang themselves.  The best jazz musicians can dance all over this tightrope and still make it look easy for us mortals.

The dots are everywhere, and its our distinct priviledge to connect them.

So is jazz dead? That’s a fair question. To a jazz lover like me, it concerns me that there seems to be less interest in this music that is both powerful and timeless. Jazz hasn’t been mainstream since the Swinger Era of the 40’s and 50’s, when people would go out and dance to the big bands of yore. But music evolves and marches on.  You have only look to your own music to see the traces of the past.

Rock wouldn’t be what it is today without the blues. You can chart a path from early blues guitarists in the 50’s like Buddy Guy, through Eric Clapton, to Jimi Hendrix and beyond. Sam Cooke passed the soul singer torch to Otis Redding, who passed it to Ray Charles and Marvin Gaye. Afrobeat? Ska? Reggae? Hip-Hop? All of these genres have the fingerprints of jazz & blues all over them. But you can’t understand why Feist, Cat Powers, and Jack Whyte are so blues-influenced without first spending some time with Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. The dots are everywhere, and its our distinct priviledge to connect them.

So where will I start with this first edition of Jazz in Review? I’m going to start in the 50’s and 60’s, the beginnings of the “cool jazz” scene led by Miles Davis. I’ll occasionally hop to modern times to review some contemporary jazz. But first up is The Sermon, by Jimmy Smith. This is one of my favourite all-time jazz records. Jimmy Smith is an organist extra-ordinaire who pioneered the sound of the Hammond organ in jazz and funk.

So why does The Sermon make my all-time list of jazz albums? In addition to being an influential album for later musicians of the funk variety, it is a delicate fusion of gospel, blues, and bebop. This album can command your attention if you let it, but it also has an amazing ability to gracefully step into the background. Highlights for me include the the title track, as well as the beautifully well-rounded work of trombonist Curtis Fuller on the track Blue Room.

To get an understanding of the mastery of these incredible musicians, it’s interesting to note that this album was recorded during two live dates in 1957 and 1958. After giving this album a spin, I hope you’ll agree that you just can’t fake this blend of skill and artistry.

 

 Jimmy Smith - Blue Room: Play Now

Toronto – The Toronto International Film Festival is in full swing now. It’s a great opportunity to check out movies from all over the globe. You can watch films before they are available to the general public. Often you get to do it in the presence of the actors and the director, and then ask them questions afterwards. Not bad for $15-20 a pop (if you buy a pack, and don’t go see the uber special gala presentations that is).

For the stargazers among you, this is also a great time to look for your favourite celebrities hovering around the city. Now is the best time to grab a latte in Yorkville and look for stars. Then, when you notice them, you can pretend that you barely noticed them and it’s no big deal. This will make you feel good and lead you to believe that you are on the same level as the Dustin Hoffman’s, or even the Richard Gere’s of the world. I swear this could be an entry on Stuff White People Like.

Anyway, the first film up for review is Soul Power. A documentary about a music festival held in Africa in 1974 that was to culminate with a boxing match. The year was 1974, and the festival was in Africa. The place was Kinhasa, and the boxers were Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The mix in question was soul music and boxing.

The story starts off firmly in documentary mode. We see the musicians getting organized, the organizers getting the musicians, the planners organizing the organizers, and the musicians playing the organs. At this point we don’t know if everything will actually work out on schedule. Then about halfway through the documentary, the concert starts and the gears shift from documentary to music film with loose ends practically dangling off the silver screen.

The saving grace of this doc is the footage. It’s simply spectacular. Highlights for me include a relatively young B.B. King playing The Thrill is Gone, as well as a virile and mustachio’ed James Brown doing his thing. This documentary may lack resolution and a storyline of the concert know as Zaire ’74, but it certainly delights with fantastic music footage from an amazing concert. Time well spent for soul music lovers.

Soul Power: 3.5/5
Soul Power Footage: 4.5/5

One of my favorite genre’s next to Twee. When I think about it, Indie Pop artists do borrow alot from Northern Soul with bands like Belle and Sebastian and Camera Obscura creating the same upbeat, floor stompers with sometimes (who am I kidding, pretty much all the time) sappy lyrics. For those of you may not know what Northern Soul is, get hip to the info you square - The term is attributed to some music journalist, who in 1970, coined the phrase to describe a specific type of soul music that was popular in the clubs of northern England during that period. Although some of the more popular groups at the time were The Supremes, The Temptations and Marvin Gaye, lesser known and often commerical flops in the USA such as Tami Lynn, The Fascinations and The Velvelettes became popular amongst the British Soul fraternity.

With the plethora of songs that were released during it’s heyday it’s hard to pick just 4 good tracks, but I’ll give it a shot:

 

 The Blossoms - That's When the Tears Start: Play Now

 

 The Detroit Executives - Cool Off: Play Now

 

 The Jewels - Opportunity: Play Now

 

 The T.S.U. Tornadoes - Getting The Corners: Play Now

Similar to many bands I discovered back in the day, I just happened to come across Paul Weller on MP3.com as he was listed as an influence for a lot of my favourite bands at the time (I subsequently ‘happened’ to come accross his entire collection on audiogalaxy, man that site was awesome). Hard to believe I had no idea who he was considering The Jam, The Style Council and his solo material have made it to the UK Top 10 more than 15 times since 1978.

Not many artists can manage such dramatic transitions in their sound and still be successful. The Jam were an integral part of the punk phenomenon and at the height of their fame, Weller decided to disband and take a route of ingenuity by experiementing with many different styles (soul, jazz, funk, rap and rock) and formed The Style Council. Moderately successful, they released a few chart topping tracks like “Long Hot Summer” and “Walls Come Tumbling Down!”. TSC disbanded in 1989 after their popularity began to slide in the UK. Weller disappeared from the public eye for a couple of years, before returning to prominence as one of the major influences of the mid 1990s and hasn’t stopped since.

It’s easy for me to say I like or love alot of bands, but rarley do I say I respect an artist. Paul Weller is a man I respect.

I had the pleasure of seeing Paul live at Massey Hall back in 2005 and I gotta say, if you like Britpop, you must check him out. If you want a taste, here’s a recording of an entire acoustic show in Amsterdam with Steve Craddock thrown in to give it a little more Mod flavour.