still unimpressive

… that I dedicate posts to something, because I usually write a conglomerate of crap but when I do it’s usually for something/someone special most of the time at least. So today I would like to write a post about just how much I love jazz, and all it has done for me.

Lets start with a little history. Back in the 7th grade, I was one of the unlucky few who were picked out of their classes and given new schedules. Of course it was flagrant that the school was underprepared for our class. This basically meant that we had to use the art room as our classroom, with no materials or supplies or any of that fun stuff. Yes we had math science core everything in that room. As if all that wasnt unpropitious enough we didn’t even have a teacher. It seemed that everyday we got a new teacher. For a while Ms. Davis, the principal at AMS, actually taught our math class. For english we had a nice 20 or something asian girl teach us. I call her girl and not lady because she was damn young. Anyways neither temporary teachers liked us, and for good reason. Our class was obnoxious and in every definition of the word, stupid. For a while we had Ms Sorg teach us science for 7th grade. She didn’t like using the art room as a lab, and we didn’t like her. Long story short she ended up screaming “shut up” at us with acerbity that would make mom jealous. Finally the faculty found some teachers for us, Ms Skrivan and Mr Wade. They taugh our English, history, math, and science classes.

I told you that story to tell you this story. On the first day of class with Ms Skrivan made us fill out surveys and talk about our hobbies like every teacher makes their students do. So Ms Skrivan had us each answer a couple of questions to the class. When it was my turn she asked me what kind of music I listened too. For most of the other students it was such a simple question and an opportunity to show their compassion, “oh… my… god like oh my god N’Sync is soooo hot!! Like, I like love oh my god like Lance Bass, he is so oh my god like my boyfriend like oh my god you don’t like even like know oh my god”. Well I certainly don’t listen to N’Sync nor any other band for that matter, I had no response. Back in 7th grade I had no LimeWire, no eTunes, no mp3 folder, no cd player, and not even Winamp. I only listened to the radio, but not music. I listened to KGO AM 810. Thats right I listened to AM, where everything is mono. Yes it’s quite archaic technology. The only music station on AM I know of is Radio Disney, which by the way is a terrible, terrible station. Of course I still listen to KGO, much better than KCBS 740. I wish Henry’s mom would start listening to KGO instead of KCBS on the ride to school every morning. Anyways my favorite hosts were Barnie Ward @ 10PM and Len Tillem @ 4 PM on weekends. I hope you guys listen to them sometime they are wonderful hosts and absolutely entertaining. So anyways I told Ms Skrivan and the rest of the class, I listen to talk radio. Yep yep from then on I was officially a loserr. With two r’s.

Now I told you that story to tell you this story. Of course it’s impossible to listen to talk radio all the time, you get tired of listening to white people coming together to bitch about how much politics suck. During trips on the road with my parents the only radio station we would ever listen to was KKSF 103.7 FM. Good stuff. I didn’t really care for it but it was satisfying and my parents didn’t hate it. Actually we didn’t know any other radio stations. I’m just glad I didn’t grow up listening to Star 101.3 or KMEL 106.1 . Who knows how I would be now. I’d probably have friends. Anyways our families radio station of choice was KKSF. Of course at home I would never listen to music, because I had to reason. Whenever me and my friends talked about music I would just be confused. In addition my friends were white and black, so we didn’t have verbatim music tastes. Of course I had no sibiling to discuss music with, and my parents didn’t know the difference between 50 Cent and two quarters. It went something along the lines of “Mom, who is 50 Cent?” “50 Cent?? 50 Cent!! You save 50 cent here and go somewhere else and save another 50 cent and you have one dollar! Then go buy something at dollar store”.

It all changed when I discovered P2P. Now I’m not old school enough to use Napster, but I was downloading music back in the Kazaa days. My first music downloads were Reggie’s recommendations of Lil Bow Wow and G-Unit. It was all I’d listened too and I must confess I did enjoy it. However it wasn’t lasting and eventually I discovered there was much more music that I enjoyed. Soon instead of playing AM on my little radio I started to listen to the only radio station I knew, KKSF. It was wonderful, the more I listened to the likes of Grover Washington Jr, Bobby Caldwell, Soul Ballet, Bill Withers, US3, Dave Koz, Dave Brubeck, Doobie Brothers, Art of Noise, Stevie Wonder, Diana Krall, Chris Botti, and I could go on forever. This was back in my day, when I had only one person added on MSN, when AIM was something you do before shooting a gun, and MySpace was a storage rental company I had to write down the lyrics to the songs I like so I could google the name of the song before downloading. For the songs that didn’t have lyrics, well that just made it extra special when I heard it on the radio. Of course eventually I discovered KKSF’s website listed previously played songs. That was wonderful. I remember so many long trips from San Jose when I heard a song I liked and when I got home I flew on to the computer to check the song name.

Ever since my jazz collection has expanded indefinitely. My favorite jazz artist of all time is of course Joe Sample. Joe Sample is a American pianist from the 60’s that has still been active recently. He was part of The Crusaders responsible for many great Jazz pieces. Joe Sample has about 50 million albums and some of my favorite songs are Night Flight, Stolen Moments, Hippies on a corner, X Marks the Spot, and After Hours. They are all just absolutely the best music to play in the evening. Joe Sample + lights off + H₂SO₄ = much requiescence. Also Cream by Soul Ballet, Drive Time by Chris Botti, I can’t go for that by Hall & Oates, Feel Like Makin’ Love by Roberta Flack, The Look of Love by Diana Krall, are all absolutely required listening.

During the day I prefer rock, pop, r&b, whatever but at night when it’s dark and the sound of rustling leaves replaces the sound of incoming instant messages the jazz goes on and the tension goes away. And thats why I love jazz.

`Cause you know, with the right music life coule be just jazzy. =)