Weeds Sometimes I think, through sheer tenacity and stubbornness, weeds have earned their right to be a part of the garden landscape. Heck, some weeds are just prettier than some flowers, in a rugged and natural kind of way. Music I've read recently that a person's taste in music tends to calcify and stagnate when they're in their thirties and forties. I don't know how true that is, but seeing as how Dala and I like more genres than I can care to list and we're constantly finding and falling in love with new stuff all the time, I don't think that's gonna be an issue with us. That said, while I can enjoy stuff that's "jazzy" I don't think I'll ever enjoy straight up Jazz. It's just not for me. Libraries So it turns out that when a book is ordered through the inter-library loan system and is returned, it goes back to its branch of origin. Which, on the one hand, it makes sense because maybe it's easier to inventory things. On the other hand, it seems like that uses up both a lot of resources, both in shipping the books back to the library or origin and putting them on the shelves. Obviously, I'm not in charge, so I don't get a say in things, but I think I'd do things differently. Maybe. I dunno. So I went to a few other branches to see what they look like. It seems like selection is kind of weak across the board, where most of the stuff on the shelves are filler and there's maybe a handful of good books at best for any given category. I don't know what all goes into their purchasing decisions, but I feel like there's a chance they're wasting a lot of money on sub-par books. kleinbl00 is a fan of the adage "90% of everything is crap," which is debatable, but even if true, I feel like someone should be doing a better job filtering the crap out and filling the shelves with good content. It really makes me wonder what their curation process looks like, whether or not their open to feedback, and how influential that feedback is. Maybe sub par books are the weeds of the library world.
Libraries and librarians are exquisitely sensitive to their community. They have to be. That's where their money comes from. Libraries have experienced a pretty massive sea change over the past twenty years as they went from "places that people borrowed books" to "places immigrants and the poor take their kids." They've become a social work project where people who studied taxonomy at school are suddenly helping ESL families fill out paperwork, protecting vulnerable children from abuse and becoming the Third Place for the disadvantaged many. If you walk around my neighborhood, we're white. If you go to my library, we're Somali, Ethiopian and Romanian. The books that are at your library are the ones that are being checked out by the people who are using your library. There's undoubtedly good content and the librarians can probably even tell you what it is but it may not be available without an interlibrary loan because for every copy of The Joke they've got to stock 30 copies of Twilight.
This reflects what I know about libraries. My mom was a librarian and if a system is at all well run it's responding to aggregate needs and desires of it's patrons. Libraries churn through a ton of low brow fare and also do a ton if work serving immigrent communities, job seekers, kids and the elderly. There is always the chance that your library is poorly managed. My Mom fought to buy 10% less of the shit you could get from a red box to spend some dough on more thoughtful stuff. A copy of Koyaanisqatsi will circulate a few times a year, a copy of Game of thrones will be in circulation as soon as it gets on the shelf. There are two compeating theories or at least there is balance that must disatisfy some people some of the time either way you go. You can go for maximum circulation and stock mostly stuff that's hot or you can currate a broader selection. It's expensive to give the people what they want. A hot DVD is garbage after a few months, popular books won't last a year.
An interesting related blog post on library’s and scope creep https://lj.libraryjournal.com/blogs/annoyedlibrarian/2018/02/08/the-homeless-and-the-future-of-libraries/
There may be a type of jazz you don't like, but I guarantee there is more jazz you like than don't like. Vince Guaraldi is fully jazz... and he wrote all the music for The Peanuts. Ornette Coleman is a freeform jazz sax player who breaks all the rules and assembles them into new shapes. You won't like him. Stan Getz is as cool as they come, and even if you hate melody, "Take Five" is a drum solo that you love, and can probably already mimic most of, because it is so woven into our culture. Al DiMeola. The Modern Jazz Quartet. Medeski, Martin & Wood. Earl Klugh. Kenny G. Spyro Gyra. And that's not even moving to the edges of Jazz, where people will argue with you whether it is even jazz or not... Dr. John, Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, Frank Zappa, Nina Simone, etc, etc, etc. Something - Side B, track 3 of that one LP you really like, but it's a weird song, but you like it and find yourself humming along to it - will break the shell on Jazz for ya... and it will seep in, and one day you will realize that you actually like a lot of tracks that kinda venture into that territory... and then you'll find your particular "flavor" of jazz. But Ornette, and Parker, and Coltrane, and Miles, and ... they might always be off the plate. Who knows? :-) I don't think I'll ever enjoy straight up Jazz. It's just not for me.
I was a jazz studies major for a bit in college, which I think give me licence to make the claim that I hate way more jazz than I like. I own maybe two hundred jazz albums that I think are worthwhile. When I get a crate of records off some old guy or gal I usually toss 95% if the jazz right in the dumpster. It's roundly derivative unispired wankery. Every once in a while I'll find some Ellington or Ella but mostly it's more godamn Dave Brubeck or other white jazz bullshit, fit only for elevators or the timid elderly. Off the top of my head list of jazz musicians that have some albums that are great. Duke Ellington John and Alice Coltrane Sonny Stitt Sonny Rollins Less McCann Charlie Parker Dizzy Gillespie Eddie Harris Mose Allison Don Cherry Miles Davis Sun Ra Errol Garner Billy Cobham Branford Marsalis Wes Montgomery Charles Mingus Jaco Pastorious Ornette Colmon Nina Simone I'm running out off the top of my head pics but I like most if it. I forgive anyone that hates the general, there way more chaff than wheat.
We went to the record shop today and most of the cds I bought were Béla Fleck. Two used and one new. I call Béla Fleck and the Flecktones 'banjo jazz' sometimes when people ask me to try to describe them. It is kind of weird how sd86 and I share quite a bit of the same tastes musically but I listen to a lot more jazz and jazz-adjacent stuff than he probably ever will. Most of the stuff I have gotten from bandcamp has been British jazz, lately.