Laugh At What I Love - Jazz Fusion

It's very possible that Jazz Fusion (other than the obvious "World Music") may be the most hated and misunderstood genre of music, and for good reason. It's for nerds only. Well, nerds and sensitive middle aged white dudes with long hair. Fortunately for me, I have a genius-level IQ and perfectly understand it... "genius level IQ" being code for the fact that I used to smoke a TON of weed and ate the occasional bag of mushrooms before I realized I was too old for that shit.

I used to hang out with a b-boy crew in the mid to late 90's and got into what us hip-hop types call "digging". Basically we went to used record stores and with little or no prior knowledge of the artists we were checking out and blindly bought albums in the hopes that we would find a nice break or sample to dance over. When you're baked out of your mind and come across the cover of Herbie Hancock's Sextant LP for $2.00, it's kind of hard to pass up. This was also spurred by our curiosity to deconstruct a lot of our favorite hip hop songs, and it was fun to search out samples like that before the internet blew up and you could simply google or youtube it. The deeper I got into it, and studied a little music theory, the more the music blew my mind. Polyrhythms don't naturally occur in Wu-Tang and Nas songs, so in my late teens/early 20's, jazz fusion was my musical equivalent to the Wild West during the gold rush era.

At first it all sounded like a bunch of crap, and it still may be. It was confusing as hell listening to Bitches Brew the first time, and I didn't enjoy it, but there was this mystique about the music that made me keep going back. The further and further me and my friends explored, the more we discovered this amazing music that nobody ever told us about. Part of the beauty of it was discovering the most obscure shit we could find and sharing it with each other. And as much as I would love to go through who my favorite late 60's to late 70's musicians were, or the first time I heard a drummer play a 4/4 on top of a 7/8, I like you too much to put you through all that fuckery.

I tried my hardest to turn my other friends onto it but to no avail. It was like force-feeding them their own shit, and I just couldn't understand why nobody else was getting it. It's safe to say that those same friends still haven't come around more than a decade later, and honestly, I don't blame them. Had I not heard every Mahavishnu Orchestra album on mushrooms, I would probably kick someone in the balls for trying to sit me down like "DUDE... listen to the guitarist, his name is John McLaughlin, how fucking amazing is that, MAAAAAN!" and then play a 12 minute song with no vocals and about 8 changes. Jazz purists don't even recognize Fusion as being part of the art form, but most purists are elitist pricks (myself included), so Fuck those guys.

Not to slam the door on it for you, because at it's root, it's really amazing music, but half of it is complete shit. Hell, 75% of it is almost unlistenable at times, but the remaining 25% is straight up orgasmic to the right listener. If I ever found a magic lamp and a genie popped out with three wishes, I would have a hard time deciding on whether or not to pick Michael Jordan's basketball skills or Vinnie Colaiuta's drumming skills. I would more than likely go with the drumming though, as I'm a 6ft white dude who doesn't work out enough and smokes too much, but was blessed with an abnormal amount of rhythm for being as pale as I am.

It isn't something I listen to on a super-regular basis, but when Billy Cobham's Stratus comes on in shuffle mode, I'm definitely not turning that shit off. Something about it just speaks to me, bro.... and hey, it could be worse, at least I'm not watching "American Idol" with the lights off in my bedroom masturbating with my own tears. NOW... Jeff Beck, Tal Wilkenfeld and Vinnie Colaiuta playing together, that's a different story...