Better Late Than Never (Part Two)

There's Been A Change of Heart

The Smiths and the occasional pop monuments that crept into my consciousness (my wife even hipped me to Kate Bush’s 1985 masterpiece Hounds of Love), turned out to be mere dents in my jazz armor. Much had been stirring up the airwaves since the mid-80’s yet I was making very little attempt to deal with any of it. A cocoon can be a very safe place to live in.

By 1997 big changes were brewing: I both became a father (of incredible twins) and left Rolling Stone. Jazz was still very much on my mind throughout my next full-time gig: a decade-long stint as a music editor for Barnes and Noble.com. The stylistic squabble between Wynton Marsalis-led jazz conservatism and all that opposed it was still raging. An aesthetic conflict it might have been, but for writers in the jazz trenches it was a plain old cat fight. And cat fights, when they don’t draw too much blood, can be fun. They keep things interesting while forcing you to continually assess your taste and critical stance. The only problem was that I was finding both sides equally uninspiring.

Far too often I would come up bored by the derivative slickness of the Wynton gang while simultaneously trying to convince myself that the opposing camp wasn’t mired in esoteric self- indulgence. Admittedly I’m painting with a very broad brush. Lasting greatness did originate on both sides of the aisle. But fewer contemporary jazz sounds of the Nineties and the new millennium were making my heart beat faster. And when the head is making most of the decisions there’s definitely a problem.

After leaving B&N in the fateful year of 2008, the New Yorker gig and freelance work kept me firmly in the jazz mode. But my interior struggle continued. I was slowly losing interest in jazz as it was happening in real time. The music was evolving, as it must, but I just couldn’t find my place within it. I found myself listening with an increased passion to classic jazz. The magic was still there, as I knew it would be, and magic — and the comfort it provided — was what I craved.

The final one-two punch came with COVID-19 and the social isolation that ensued, followed by the abrupt folding of the New Yorker’s Goings on About Town section in 2023. Put simply, if once I had skin in the game, now I didn’t.

It was a shock to the system. I felt unmoored and directionless. And then I felt liberated.

I needed renewal and I allowed myself to find it. If I wanted to slip into the warm bath of the jazz past I could, leaving any guilt outside the door. I could luxuriate in the classic rock of the Sixties and Seventies that I grew up on, as well as the pop, R&B, folk, and blues of earlier eras that I had always loved. And, now that I no longer had to prove my jazz bonafides to anyone, I could start acquainting myself with popular music and other musical genres — Country, Classical, you name it — that I had blocked out over the past forty (!) years. It was time to break out of the cocoon.

Which leads me to Tom Petty. I wanted to feature “Change of Heart” not just because the title is apt. Petty, and a no-frills song like that, is a perfect example of an artist and work that I would have avoided like the plague in the past. Now I’m all ears. “Change of Heart” is as meat-and-potatoes rock as it comes, and I love it. Let the song stand, in all its contradictions of garage band insouciance and pop skillfulness, as a gateway to welcoming once verboten music into my now happily sullied ears.

Let me wrap up this biographical narrative with a mission statement of sorts. I want this Substack to chart a personal, highly impressionistic journey of both memory and discovery. I want to look back at the music I love and reconsider it. I also want to delve into music, both of the present and the past, that I am newly lighting on.

For I am a firm believer that new music is any music that is new to your ears. That is, if I come upon a Bessie Smith recording from the 1920s that explodes my mind or a Glenn Gould interpretation of music hundreds of years old that brings brighter light into my day, that performance is as fresh and valid as any contemporary dish right out of the kitchen.

Yes, I have huge gaps in my understanding and knowledge. I know next to nothing about Hip Hop and Black Pop; for that matter I know little about current Pop and its myriad incarnations. Taylor Swift is as alien to me as Beyoncé. I’m not proud of this, but I have to admit its truth. And I have so very much to catch up on. But honestly, my goal isn’t to ultimately find myself on firm footing with the present. If I do, I do; if not, I’m perfectly happy enjoying what I enjoy. I can beat myself up for plenty of other omissions in my life.

If my limitations don’t put you off, I hope you will join me on this journey. My unequivocable aim is to share joy.

But enough about me…