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For those of you who haven't seen this yet:
YOGI BERRA EXPLAINS JAZZ
Interviewer: "What do expect is in store for the future of jazz?"
Yogi: "I'm thinkin' there'll be a group of guys who've never met talkin? about it all the time."
Interviewer: Can you explain jazz?
Yogi: I can't, but I will. 90% of all jazz is half improvisation. The other half is the part people play while others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play the wrong part, it?s right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play it too right, it?s wrong.
Interviewer: I don't understand.
Yogi: Anyone who understands jazz knows that you can't understand it. It's too complicated. That's what?s so simple about it.
Interviewer: Do you understand it?
Yogi: No. That's why I can explain it. If I understood it, I wouldn?t know anything about it.
Interviewer: Are there any great jazz players alive today?
Yogi: No. All the great jazz players alive today are dead. Except for the ones that are still alive. But so many of them are dead, that the ones that are still alive are dying to be like the ones that are dead. Some would kill for it.
Interviewer: What is syncopation?
Yogi: That's when the note that you should hear now happens either before or after you hear it.
In jazz, you don't hear notes when they happen because that would be some other type of music. Other types of music can be jazz, but only if they're the same as something different from those other kinds.
Interviewer: Now I really don?t understand.
Yogi: I haven't taught you enough for you to not understand jazz that well.
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that was hilarious. thanks, andy
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Got this in an email today from a friend of mine. LMFAO! then sent on to ALL my musician friends. I might just print it out, frame it and hang it in the practice room. No one says things as eloquently as the great YB.
"It ain't over 'till it's over." [img]wink.gif[/img]
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That was literary jazz right there... i think i heard Vinnie say that same thing, once, during a solo... maybe not, but is was equally confusing...
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this is what a Phd student of philosophy friend of mine, wrote me when i sent him the same email:
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I think I understand now that you can't understand jazz to understand it. and if you understand it, then you don't understand it the way it is to be understood. thus, understanding it is not understanding it, then you begin to understand what can't be understood.
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