Back in the 60s and 70s, listening to jazz is what musicians did. There was a popular expression of jazz and many of these more popular guys had true jazz credentials. George Benson and Pat Metheny came out of what Wes was doing, Mclaughlin, Freddie Hubbard or Chick Corea had played with Miles, Art Blakey and Stan Getz. People who listened to rock also talked about Metheny or Mclaughlin as much as Dickie Betts or Eric Clapton.There was a certain respect for musicianship. If you were in HS band, you listened to Chicago and Tower of Power, or Earth Wind and Fire, the horn bands.. That really died with punk rock
I can remember seeing Buddy Rich and Max Roach at an early age and the experiences are still permanently etched on my memory. They were that good, that stunning and that incredible. If you were growing up as a drummer then you listened to Krupa, Buddy, Max and Louie. You just did. There was no leap of faith or getting into it. It was just what drummers did.
I disliked the 80s music, but looking back it wasn't all bad. The thing I hated about it was how bands that seemed to be doing the most useless tripe were often heralded as some great genius. I remember that came to a head for me with REM when they did Losing My Religion with a mandolin and it was such a big thing, as though they were this incredible band that had invented a new instrument. And it was a get tune. But we had to listen to it over and over and over again. It's like, hey we know Billy Jean is not your lover. Enough already.
I had worked in college radio and everyone loved REM; they were the Alt rock sweethearts. U2 was also an alt rock band in the beginning. The bands never did that much for me. I listened a lot to ECM: Metheny, John Abercrombie, Jack DeJohnette, Charles Lloyd, Ralph Towner even John Adams and Steve Reich were on ECM at the time. I saw John Adams last year and said I had been following him since ECM and he really just didn't know what to say.
I had quite a bad reputation at the station for saying that alt rock was really crap as compared to jazz. When Wynton Marsalis did a blurb in Grammaphone about how pop music was really not art and it was jazz that was the true American tradition, I plastered it on the bulletin board. Then Wynton's band went and joined Sting, who I loved, so that was just too funny. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with pop and that there were not some geat writers. it was just that it got too much undo attention.
I remember seeing Bono with Sting at one of those big fund raising concerts and he sang Sting's "Invisible Sun." At the end there is counting. I think he counts up to six, and Bono was putting up his fingers but didn't stop at six. He kept going. I realized he had never heard the song. For me, that really symbolized what alt rock was all about. There is something precious about reinventing I-IV-V-I. But it aint' that precious. I'd rather listen to somebody whose done some listening.
I can't say that I hated alt rock, it just wasn't my thing. There was really nothing not to like about Black Flag and Dead Kennedy's or Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Rage etc. I think it is great now that guys like Brad Medhlau and Ethan Iverson are arranging these tunes with a jazz sensibility. But Wynton was right; it was the jazz greats that were the true geniuses of the time.