Stephen Colbert goes Avant-Jazz:
Hiphopketball: A Jazzebration!
John Zorn, Stephen Colbert, Joe McPhee.
It's true, we avant-jazz fans (like us poetry readers) are sadder bastards when it comes to begging for scraps of high-profile media attention than even we Canadians are about getting shoutouts in the U.S. (The Simpsons episode? The Conan O'Brien visit? Final Fantasy in the Times? Pathetic. Oh, wait, I did that last one.) There you go, my whole psycho-demo: Marginals desperate for approval.
Yeah, I'm still atwitter when I remember Bill Clinton calling Peter Brotzmann "one of the greatest [saxophone players] alive" in the Oxford American in 2001. (His enthusiasm for Igor Butman seems a tad more credible. I mean, the guy has praised Kenny G. repeatedly. But who knows? Ever since I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's jawdropping account of their friendship, I haven't tried to second-guess Clinton.)
But tonight's episode of the Colbert Report is one for the annals. I'll post a link when I find video Here's the video, but if you're on a slow connection.... Colbert, in his asshat-broadcaster character, off the top of the show, was ripping through the MacArthur prize winners of the year as boring and esoteric (except David Macaulay, whom he said dangerously arouses children's curiosity about the world: "My kid read it and now 'the sky is blue because God wants it that way' is somehow an unacceptable answer!") when he singled out John Zorn, with a picture flashed up, and actually played an excerpt from one of the 50th-birthday celebration CDs (The Firebook from Vol. 9, to be exact), started snapping his fingers sarcastically and then took up a top hat and cane and started boogying around: "Yeah, I wonder how your little genius came up with that toe-tapper? Maybe he saw my documentary with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hiphopketball: A Jazzebration. Roll it Jimmy! [cue clip of atonal sax being blown to a bass on a basketball court]. Genius grant, please! ... What a rip."
My eyes bugged out. The sad thing is that as opposed to all the political stuff he does, where the character clearly lives in a topsy-turvy, right-is-wrong world, the audience response felt depressingly literal for this bit. Cultural populism is so much more robust. But Zorn got played (uh, in both senses), and we'll take that as a victory. Heh. The real scandal is that Zorn is getting his MacArthur years after Ken Vandermark did - no harm/foul to Ken, but that's kinda bassackwards.
All of which reminds me to urge Toronto readers to go hear American multi-instrumental free-jazz improvisor Joe McPhee, who'll never get a genius grant but deserves one, tonight at the Music Gallery and throughout the weekend with local improvimentalists in the X-Avant and AIMT Interface series. More about which in the next coupla days. Meanwhile check the sidebar!
| Posted by zoilus on Thursday, September 21 at 3:47 AM | Linking Posts | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
COMMENTS
I've always suspected that Colbert's (and Stewart's) audiences are no more culturally advanced or appreciative of nuance than, say, Arsenio Hall's or Tony Danza's.
Posted by David on September 28, 2006 12:20 PM
Thanks for the nod to Joe McPhee; he's probably my favorite working jazz musician....
Posted by Richard on September 22, 2006 7:47 AM
On the other hand, I recall Colbert giving a positive shout-out to Pere Ubu at one point in the first season.
Posted by Peli on September 21, 2006 4:47 PM
Don't worry, Jordan. Tongue was inserted at least partway into cheek for that whole opening paragraph.
Posted by zoilus on September 21, 2006 3:47 PM
Hey, easy now. The poetry readers I know are far from begging for scraps of attention, and would be perfectly happy with the mainstream media just laying off the derision.
Wait, did I mean to leave this comment on the victim-identification post?
Posted by Jordan on September 21, 2006 12:20 PM