Monday, September 21, 2009

Something to Make you Smile on a Rainy Monday

You know, sometimes, when it's rainy and sort of nasty outside, you just have to get your sillies out. I choose to sort of dance/spazz out* in my room, or put on some especially corny music.

This woman, who (for reasons related to the circumstances of this recording) shall remain nameless, felt the urge to do that on stage at a certain very large and well known Chicago event with some large and well known Chicago personalities. I will present to you a cringe-worthy moment in jazz, and I will follow it up with perhaps why it was so cringe-worthy:



Wasn't that awesome?

Ok, so what's happening here?

Basically you have a tribute to a certain well-known songwriter in which the band and the vocalist (the guy who is throwing down on some Ginsberg-style poetry but slamming it) are INTERPRETING his work. The band is playing some really free-form jazz and the vocals are pretty political, BUT (and isn't there always at least one?), this woman, a blues singer, did not get the memo that they were reinterpreting the work. She set out to sing some covers, just re-singing the songs, and her improv skills were actually pretty rotten (I won't give her name, but I'll provide her myspace page to anyone who asks), so she was just singing covers over everything else, which didn't please anyone on stage one bit.

So the vocalist shouted her down in front of a massive crowd of Chicagoans, and she stood there for a few seconds. You could see the gears turning in her mind, trying to figure out what to do next, and she decided that this was probably the best move: To spazz out on the stage--nay--TAKING UP THE ENTIRE STAGE before not-so-gracefully exiting.

Moral of the story: There's always something more stupid that you could do when caught in a difficult position; this was it.


*A QUICK DEFINITION
to spazz out- (v) (1) A reaction to something crazy or weird. (2) Another word for "freak out"

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