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)
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.