MetalJazz

I hate to disagree with people who know about either subject than I do, but I just think that you've created a connection where there is none. One could make the connection between jazz and any other kind of music that involved lots of technique driven improvosation, I think. But that doesn't mean that Bulgarian wedding music or progressive rock or electrified ragas or Brazilian trio electrico or modern bluegrass or nuevo tango are jazz. They are just different musics that even if they pick up influences from one another do not become jazz. I don;t think metal needs to even be considered jazz at all. It's Metal. Metal can be plenty smart without having to become "Jazz Odyssey". To me, metal guys making really loud improv, thsi extreme jazz..it just ain;t jazz. It's just a new and creative take on heavy metal. Unless by jazz you mean the really broad definition, like the Playboy Jazz Festival uses when they book slick r&B & quiet storm & smoove jazz acts. They too improvise. But to me it ain;t really jazz. And to me, Latin Jazz is not really jazz. It is a new music that actually owes more to Afro-Cuban music than it does to jazz. There are exceptions, of course, but the stuff I go see all the time isn't jazz. It's Latin jazz. Totally different thing. Just as Bossa Nova isn;t jazz (it's a jazz influenced samba), and modern jewish music isn;t jazz eiher. It's jazz influenced Gypsy based music. Tower of POwer and Santana aren;t jazz either. The Flock, BS&T, Chicago and Spirit and Hendrix weren't either. Nor was Mahavishnu. And all of these were great bands (well, not Chicago, and only Al Kooper's BS&T mainly). But a lot of the pure fusion bands certainly were jazz dressed up and turned up with rock inflences. I don';t think jazz is a superior form to any of these other musics I listed. Maybe some of the players are superior in terms of abilities, but jazz is not in itself a superior music. I don;t see why people think they have to claim they are playing jazz to attain a certain credibility. It ain;t necessary. Metal is metal. Some of it may have jazz influences, and even some jazz inspriration, but jazz it ain't. And I never thought Jeff Beck was really playing jazz on Blow by Blow and Wired. He was a rock player through and through (and my favorite English guitarist, actually). Then again, I can't play guitar, so i don't know. I did play some drums, though, and I think you can tell jazz by the drums more than by any other instrument. If it's jazz drumming, real jazz drumming, then it's jazz. And you can;t really have jazz drumming in rock. It doesn;t work. Just as you can;t have jazz drumming in Latin jazz, nor in bossa nova and certainly not in any of the gypsy based musics. I mean you can, but it keeps it from being the real thing. And if the drummer's playing rock, it's rock.