12:20 p.m. - 2008-09-17
Jazz Festival, Part III: The Bejazzened
To be fair to Granola McBufferzone in the aisle seat, she did move her backpack off the seat next to her at the beginning of the Coleman set, making it available to the increasing numbers of seatless people wandering around. I'm afraid the same can't be said for the obdurately melonheaded gentleman seated directly in front of me: the seat to his right remained occupied, by his backpack, for the entire three-plus hours of our concert experience/stakeout. These things are all very noticeable and distracting to me, because I'm a terrible concert-goer. I like the IDEA of live music, but in practice it often involves being crowded together with other people in a high density feedlot type of situation, thereby bringing out the selfish eight-year-old that lurks woefully close to my normally composed surface. What was that thing that the existentialists were always going on about, the thing that was hell? Oh, yes: OTHER PEOPLE.
That said, the Chicago Jazz Festival really is a remarkable and worthwhile event. It's free, they always get amazing talent and given the numbers of audience members, it's a surprisingly relaxed and civil atmosphere. The beer was a rip-off, but what's the point of visiting the big city if you're not going to get ripped off?
Anyway, so the Colemans (Ornette and Denardo; Gary couldn't make it due to professional obligations) were playing their set. It was all very enjoyable, Ornette was playing long, uncluttered lines with lots of bendy high notes and bluesy verve; the bass players were accompanying, the electric bass often sounding like a guitar owing to his high-register chording; Denardo was perhaps in his own world. About halfway through, they performed Turnaround, one of the couple of tunes I was able to identify by name. Turnaround, unlike a lot of the stuff they were playing, has an immediately discernable form: it's a blues, and most of the band was more or less sticking to the form. Not so much Denardo. Or at least it didn't APPEAR that he was playing with the rest of the ensemble. The two bassists and Ornette in fact slowed down the tempo at one point, with Denardo not slowing down the tempo. This prompted Kia to give me a "what's going on?" look. I was sort of baffled myself.
The amazing thing about Ornette Coleman is that he's remained something of an enigma a half century into his career. A lot of prominent jazzmen seem to settle on a consistent sort of ensemble sound over the years, so that when you listen to them you get a pretty good idea of what they want to hear from the ensemble and what they want the listener to hear. With Ornette Coleman, I have no idea. His alto sound itself is recognizable and clearly his own, but how does he strive to fit it into, say, this particular ensemble? To what degree is he responding to each bass part? Maybe he likes it when the drums are kind of all over the place? Or maybe he's encouraged Denardo to not become too polished because unpolished drummers unwittingly generate spontaneity? Maybe there was something major we were missing, and Kia and I were just big Philistines?
These questions vexed me. Since I often attempt to play the drums myself, I tend to listen to the drums closely at concerts such as these. I told myself that I'd need to tune out the drums in order to enjoy the show. This proved even more distracting. QUICK, DON'T PICTURE AN ELEPHANT! I couldn't stop noticing the drums. And I could never focus my eyes on Ornette, because whenever I tried the melonheaded gentleman in front of me would shift his head and somehow ALWAYS block my vision. I mean, it was uncanny! He never failed to move his head into my field of vision when I was trying to look around it. It was as though his huge skull had enough extra room in it for an extra sense that would always know when someone behind him was trying to see around his titanic noggin. Eventually, the band tore into one of the Bach cello sonatas, played with a rock beat. Kia was delighted, since we used to while away the evenings playing Bach inventions with rock beats. Ornette Coleman had STOLEN OUR IDEA. This piece turned out to be screechy and fun. Meanwhile, the lady on the aisle to my left who had finally allowed someone to use the seat next to her was making the "I'm so into the music it's like prayer to me, man" posture, facing the ground in front of her seat, eyes shut, nodding along to the music ever so slightly.
The Coleman set continued on for about an hour, alternating between the older jazzy music and the less older rocky music. Eventually they finished amid a torrent of actual fireworks over Lake Michigan. We were glad to be free of our hard metal chairs at long last. The jazz festival was over. It had been by turns enjoyable, annoying and thought-provoking. We staggered out of the park with the rest of the festival-goers, stunned by music. We went back to our hotel room to rest and ruminate.
The next day was a holiday, so we drove around to people's houses, mooching food. Then we drove back home, a little older, a little wiser, a little warier. In a word, we had been bejazzened.
