As this illuminating book shows, jazz still has a lot to say about the world—and a lot of eloquent artists ready to say it.
A music critic assesses the current state of jazz.
By the end of the 20th century, some observers of the jazz scene had concluded that “jazz was enshrined in the popular imagination as a historical practice, a set of codes to be reenacted endlessly.” What possible surprises could be mined from an art form that “had already completed a full life cycle of creation, maturation, obsolescence, and revival”? A lot, it turns out, as Chinen (co-author, with George Wein: Myself Among Others: A Life in Music, 2003), the current NPR contributor and former jazz critic for the New York Times, demonstrates in this analysis of the state of jazz in the 21st century. No fan of “an overintellectualized, preciously ennobled, eat-your-vegetables idea of great American music,” the author focuses on artists who are pushing jazz in new directions. These include saxophonist Kamasi Washington, who, with “The Epic,” his 2015 debut album, “emerged as jazz’s most persuasive embodiment of new black pride at a moment when few forces in American culture felt more pressing”; pianist Brad Mehldau, whose solo in one particular track so impressed guitarist Pat Metheny when he heard it while driving “that he pulled the car over to give it his full concentration”; drummer Tyshawn Sorey, composer of the “unclassifiable suite” The Inner Spectrum of Variables; bassist Esperanza Spalding; and more. Chinen gets bogged down with repeated references to the awards many of the cited artists have won, but jazz fans will find much to enjoy. Anyone looking to start a jazz collection will be happy to know that each chapter concludes with five recommended recordings. The author has a gift for memorable lines, as when he writes about D’Angelo’s 2000 album “Voodoo”: “There’s an odd sensation that you often encounter listening to the album, not unlike absentmindedly reaching the top of a staircase and being startled when there isn’t another step.”
As this illuminating book shows, jazz still has a lot to say about the world—and a lot of eloquent artists ready to say it.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-87034-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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