Jazz as a musical genre is held back by wrong headed fans who endlessly praise the same, usually dead guys like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis instead of seeking out and spreading the word about newer and/or lesser known musicians.

Interesting and I tend to agree.

The '70's had some fresh takes with Weather Report, Return To Forever and Mahavishnu Orchestra along with the huge extended family of those artists. Those bands actually were knocking on the door of mainstream but that was then.

BTW, I still listen to the album "Journey To Love" by Stanley Clarke a couple times a year. I prefer it to the acclaimed "School Days" and it even features Jeff Beck on the track, "Hello Jeff". Actually, that song crosses into rock and almost sounds like Utopia.

The best places on the internet are the ones that are not very active.

Surely you dont mean this place? I would have agreed 2 years ago but its too seldom added to now idk what can be gained

This board is doing a lot better than it was a couple of months ago. There are some enthusiatic new members and some veterans who might not have posted too much in the past (me included) who are posting more now. And the vibe is better than the other music-related sites I'm on.

Yeah, I do not know if I would count MusicBanter among them. Do not get me wrong, I still say that the best places are the smaller, niche communities, but this place might be too small. There definitely is such a thing as being too small. I think 5 people could be decent, but they would have to be 5 quality posters, here it just seems like there's enough people who check in, but they aren't carrying conversations.

I was looking for a music board to join and did a google search, this is one of the sites that came up. I didn't realize when I signed up that there were only a handful of people posting!

My early thoughts are that the site contains waaay too many categories, topics and stickys. The site navigates like a house of mirrors and I would like to see topics fall off that aren't recently active. Something to be said for less is more.

I'll keep posting for now and see what happens. I'm not here to change things, I'm just here to read about and talk about music.

I'd say those topics have fallen off.

Yeah, fusion got the attention of a lot of people. But there are other musicians sticking to more or less straight jazz that don't get the attention they should. For example, I saw Quin Kirchner's combo at a music festival a few years back. His band included bass clarinet in place of maybe a tenor or baritone sax, which was refreshing and interesing. The arrangements of the songs wre really creative as well. And even though Quin is a drummer, he didn't take a lot of solos, preferring to be mostly stick to his band leader role. And even though there were some samples used, it wasn't overdone. People like Kirchner, as well as musicians like trumpet player Jon Faddis and sax player Greg Abate, don't get nearly the recognition they deserve.

I see lots of topics that have not had replies in years. Not complaining! Plenty of great takes on music in those threads.

I guess I draw the line with fusion. The only jazz I like is the album by Queen and that's even a little iffy. (smiling)