This hits home for me, I was a 15 year old kid taking the subway to all the village jazz clubs to hear guys like Elvin Jones, Miles Davis, The Gil Evans band, and everyone else that came to town, the music was alive and organic, and screamed with fire…Then production companies like CTI records, and the rest of the new order came along and slowly watered the music down to sell records, and 10 years later, Lollipop Jazz was born, and most all the great jazz clubs slowly disappeared into the yesteryear…Many famous Jazz artists became employed by major universities who in turn taught students what to play, the licks of all the great players, that did have their own voice, creating parrots instead of artists, in turn, those artists trained the public to hear what they were doing as “the real deal” …Gotta shake my head, industrialized Jazz,. Like farming, like community, like fashion, food supply, land developing, and world domination wasn’t enough! that had to mess with the Jazz ! Oh no, ! say it ain’t so…And now its excepted, packaged, and spoon fed to the masses like politics….Money is made by the production companies, and the production companies are in charge of the artistic content these days, and the artists think their in charge of the content by way of long term brain washing…The music didn’t die, but it is in a deep deep coma!…I’ve played with some great musicians at loft sessions, late night sets at friends gigs, and so on, back in the 70’s, they don’t do it that much anymore, this country has sold its artists out to corporate control at every turn over the last 40 years, slowly and methodically…If only young artists knew the intensity, and passion that was here before the production companies took over creative control they would be marching at the Lincoln Memorial as we speak, holding up saxophones and trombones, and guitars high in the air, and demanding freedom for quarter notes and pentatonic scales to be freely placed where the artists deems fit, and not where the production companies direct the artists to place them without their knowledge of the manipulation that is taking place as the artists thinks he or she is doing the creating … Of course, this an overview, and a vast generalization which I am taking the liberty to enjoy, and exceptions to this subjective observation are taken into account…
jeff bertolotti 