by Minin pro
2. Jazz tunes with stupid names
One of the things that I've argued for passionately in the past on this blog is that if jazz wishes to expand its audience, people need to see jazz as relevant to their lives. Another thing that I've argued consistently is that there's got to be more to a jazz performance than technical excellence. It's a given these days that jazz players will be technically advanced and the advent of the digital era means that you can see the best players of all time with the click of a mouse. You're not going to out-technique Tatum or Bird or Buddy Rich, so you'd better have something to say instead.
The jazz convention of The Stupid Tune Name does a lot of great work in making sure that people don't relate to a tune and suggesting that there really is no emotional context to a tune, it's just a vehicle for showing off.
Some artists are worse than others when it comes to this pet peeve of mine. Much as I loved E.S.T. they really were the masters of stupid tune names - Spam-boo-limbo, Spunky Sprawl, The Unstable Table and the Infamous Fable and Like Wash It or Something are compositions that spring to mind.
A random scroll through my iPod throws up more than a few other offenders - including:
- Art House Soft Leg Incident - Andy Sheppard
- Speaking With Wooden Tongues - Bill Bruford
- Teaching Vera to Dance - Bill Bruford
- Tomato Kiss - from the Bill Evans album 'Affinity'
- 34 Skidoo - Bill Evans
- Turtle Shoes - Bobby McFerrin
- Random Abstract (diddle it) - Branford Marsalis
- The Chocolate Nuisance - Cannonball Adderly
- Jammin E. Cricket - Chick Corea
- I've Got to be a Rugcutter - Errol Garner
- Lawn Chairs (and other foreign policy) - Kenny Werner
- Piango, Pay The Man - Michel Petrucciani
- Back Arm & Blackcharge - Pat Metheny
I think that's enough to prove a point...
I'm sure that when musicians give tunes stupid, random names, or name them after some in-joke, they think they're being clever, ironic or iconoclastically post-modern, but to me they're just devaluing their compositions with flippancy.
Of course, not every tune has to be 'about' something - in the same way that paintings don't have to be 'of' something. However, if you want to be taken seriously as an artist (and let's face it, jazz musicians have been desperate to be taken seriously for years) then why would you want to put no thought or effort into the naming of your work?The problem with stupid names for tunes is that they commit the cardinal sin of all crap jokes - namely that of not being funny. Maybe it was funny for a while when it first began to happen (the Mingus tunes 'All The Things You Could Be By Now if Sigmund Freud's Wife was your Mother' and 'If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole lot of Dead Copycats' are undeniably classic), but trust me, that moment has passed. Nobody will think it's remotely amusing if you call your next composition 'Banana Ice Cream Sewing Convention' or 'Mikey's Faux Pas in the Launderette'.
Classical musicians got round this particular problem years ago by coming up with standard names for certain kinds of compositions - 'Etude', 'Sonata', 'Mazurka', 'Nocturne', 'Romance', 'Bagatelle' and so on. This allowed composers to write music for music's sake without having to come up with a title.
To me this is a more dignified solution than naming some tune you wrote after your producer's cat or something hilarious that happened on the road that nobody other than the band will ever know about. Maybe we could do the same in jazz? Here's few suggestions for standard names for some kinds of jazz compositions I seem to hear a lot these days:
- Cozwecan - A pointless, unmelodic and angular tune performed at 280bpm in 13/8 to show off how hip and clever the musicians are. Usually the first track on the album.
- Autofellatio in Eb (or any other key) - A fragment, rather than an actual tune used purely as preamble for a 18 minute saxophone exploration of how high, loud and shrill a saxophone can be. Popular with sax players.
- Maudlin' - An interminably slow and dull excuse for a ballad written when a pianist likes a set of changes but can't find a decent melody to link them together.
- Noodlin' - Any tune that involves 'So What' changes.
- KopOwt - A tune that starts with a Cozwecan-style head and then switches to 4/4 blues changes for solos.
When it comes to naming tunes, the only time a 'humourous' name is even remotely allowed is if the tune itself is humourous. Or you're Thelonious Monk. If neither of these is the case, then the 'humourous' name is simply cringe-worthy.
Can we be clear about this? It's not funny, it's not clever, it's not ironic, it's not cool - it's just lame. Lame as a three-legged mule after scaling Mount Kilimanjaro in broken-glass slippers.
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