> This surely is the 7th sign for the genre. We need to rename it and go back
> underground before Michael Bolton does a cover of Gil Scott Heron. U2 has
> always annoyed because of their attitude that their music was very important to
> civilization when it just more pop drone for VH1 watchers.
>
> I these were colonial times I would already have a mob marching to Bono's house
> to have him tarred and feathered.
>
>
I don't know why everybody is getting so up in arms about U2 doing what
everybody seems to deem as "acid jazz". If it really does qualify, then
all that means is that it is a pretty weak style of music anyways. I
don't really think that that is true, but I do think that the term is much
too loosely applied and that U2 shouldn't even be discussed here. But
then I wish a lot of other crap wasn't discussed here so much either. I
haven't actually heard the new U2 stuff, but I would gamble that it is
actually as good as a lot of the stuff that I have seen mentioned here and
not sneered at simply because it wasn't so popular. A lot of that
trip-hop stuff is all drum machines and pretty much lacks any musical
quality altogether, which is what I would consider to be necessary to
qualify as "jazz". "trip-hop" yes, but "jazz", no. people act as if that
drumming/sampling technology is a sacred art or something, but it was not
invented within this genre. Have you ever listened to techno or
industrial music?
I am just rambling at this point, but I would like to bring up a
proposal to standardize certain terms so that we could be able to
distinguish music that is more instrumentally inclined, using all real live
instruments (ie. the Greyboy Allstars), and then the stuff with the
sampling technology (ie. US3), and then the very heavily hip-hop
laden/rhythmically driven stuff. Acid jazz is such an incredibly vague
term now that it could include practically anything that has a distinct
beat. Whenever I check out something that was recommended by an acid
jazzer I have no idea whether it is going to have rap or not; whether
it will have real (acoustic) instruments such as a sax and real drums; or
if the only instruments are going to be a synthesizer and a drum machine.
well, that's my thoughts for now,
drew at achinton@ucdavis.edu