Thursday, May 06, 2010

Jimmy Jazz


Since I the blog was out of commission for a few days, I'm sure I have an event or two to catch you up on. Like going out to Nighttown with friends to see some jazz guy named David Frishberg. He is probably more cabaret (old chum) than jazz - but that's how they billed him.

To be perfectly honest, he was kind of awful. An alleged songwriter and not much of a singer - and an octogenarian. A 'kook' as James called him.

The friends we went with wanted to see him. We wanted to see our friends. Ergo..........

I'm not that much into most jazz. It's not my thing, daddy-o! But clearly the people who attended were into it. More porkpie hats than you can shake a groove stick at. More people closing their eyes and groovin' to the tunes - even when it was clear the tunes did not warrant grooving.

The guy had written an unproduced musical based on the 1919 World Series that was thrown by the Chicago Black Sox. ......and he ended up doing most of the score. It was horrid.

He did one other baseball song, not associated with that failed musical that was nothing - and I do mean nothing! - more than singing the names of the 38 players on a Minnesota Triple-A team before that state even had a major league team.

SNORE!

Even I can't make this shit up.

It was fun to see my friend David have such a good time, but now and again, I'd catch Denton's eye (or vice versa) where he knew I was just in massive pain.

That being said - looking through his songwriting credits, he did write some Schoolhouse Rock stuff ("I'm Just a Bill" and a few others I have never heard!). Even had I known that going in, I'm not sure it would have been worth my time. Actually, I am sure it wouldn't have been.

The only thing that made it ok was hanging with David and James. For them I'd suffer through "jazz".


Song by: the Clash

2 comments:

Breenlantern said...

Only "I'm Just a Bill" became a classic...the others are crapola and were part of an attempt to do a newer series of "money smart" songs in the vein of the previous Science, Math, Grammar and Hostory Rocks. they bombed big time and just don't have catchy tunes. (I'm a school house rock fan and have the collected series on DVD and CD)

Birdie said...

Oh, yeah. We have Schoolhouse Rock too. I still have "I'm Just A Bill" in iTunes. I have to admit the rest of the evening sounds like a snoozer. I enjoy some jazz, but purists leave me cold. Pure jazz is like listening to calculus.