Talking about Jazz is like talking about Rock and Roll. Ummm, could you get any less specific? *Laugh*
The difference between dance band jazz, lounge jazz, freeform Jazz, and jazz fusion is the difference between early rock, Sergeant Pepper, Led Zepplin, the Ramones, and Goth. In practice, they are lumped into similar bins, but for all practical purposes, they are different animals.
Some jazz I like, especially dance jazz (the 20's through the 40's.) Some jazz just leave me befuddled and bored, and sometimes even leaves me wondering what the melody was.
True, jazz varies a lot and has a lot of subgenres like rock does ... but so far the phrases "lite jazz", "light jazz", "soft jazz", and more often than not, "cool jazz", in a radio station's promos, have meant "Glenn is going to wonder why anyone bothered". I guess I like it hot, hard, and heavy. %innocent look% (Despite the fact that I would actually describe Brubeck as "cool" myself.)
I don't know jazz and all its flavours and the language used to describe them as well as I do for rock (and even in rock, names and boundaries and styles change over time and labels get confusing -- compare the meaning of "heavy metal" in 1977 to the meaning of the same term in 1995), though I can recognize three of the four you listed. The tune I snarked about yesterday, despite not being on a "light jazz" station, sounded to me like what I hear when I do tune in a light-jazz station by accident.
(BTW, should fusion be subdivided based on what it's fused with, i.e. jazz-rock fusion, jazz-classical fusion, etc.?)
As for the "wondering what the melody was", yeah, different problem, but I've run into that one as well. Just never on a lite/light/soft/lukewarm-jazz radio station.
(no subject)
The difference between dance band jazz, lounge jazz, freeform Jazz, and jazz fusion is the difference between early rock, Sergeant Pepper, Led Zepplin, the Ramones, and Goth. In practice, they are lumped into similar bins, but for all practical purposes, they are different animals.
Some jazz I like, especially dance jazz (the 20's through the 40's.) Some jazz just leave me befuddled and bored, and sometimes even leaves me wondering what the melody was.
(no subject)
I don't know jazz and all its flavours and the language used to describe them as well as I do for rock (and even in rock, names and boundaries and styles change over time and labels get confusing -- compare the meaning of "heavy metal" in 1977 to the meaning of the same term in 1995), though I can recognize three of the four you listed. The tune I snarked about yesterday, despite not being on a "light jazz" station, sounded to me like what I hear when I do tune in a light-jazz station by accident.
(BTW, should fusion be subdivided based on what it's fused with, i.e. jazz-rock fusion, jazz-classical fusion, etc.?)
As for the "wondering what the melody was", yeah, different problem, but I've run into that one as well. Just never on a lite/light/soft/lukewarm-jazz radio station.