Jazz News: New Jazz Jam at Monolith Brewing; Todd Coolman’s “Cool Zone” blog; Gene Simmons: “It’s the fans”
This is Jazz News, a look at what’s news in jazz, music and the arts.
We reported on the growing number of jazz jam sessions around Denver and along the Front Range a few years ago (including a chat with Brad Goode on “What Makes a Good Jam Session”
A new addition to the list is the Tuesday night jazz jam at Monolith Brewing, 1290 South Broadway (with Gabe Rupe on bass).
(SOURCE: Monolith Brewing)
Bassist Todd Coolman is blogging on the Substack platform these days. The blog is called “Todd’s Cool Zone.” His latest post covers his time in the house band at the Holiday Inn on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. The club was called Rick’s Café Americain, decorated in the style from the movie Casablanca. He was there for a full year. “It was a gift from the heavens,” he writes. “Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison, Marian McPartland, Urbie Green, Sonny Stitt, Bucky Pizzarelli were my weekly university courses.” (SOURCE: Todd Coolamn / Substack)
Everybody got paid, including the record company.
The end of the old music business, says Simmons, came with Napster and all that free downloading in the late 1990s. Simmons equates all that illegal file sharing to “a cancer that killed the record industry.” To extend the food chain analogy, the farmers are out of business. The trucks are out of business. The 24-hour food stores, aka record stores are out of business. And the new bands are the ones that are really getting hurt when there’s no record company as a safety net.
To Simmons, even though a few fans are willing to pay $1.29 per single, the songwriter gets a tiny fraction of that. Further, says Simmons, there’s no minimum wage for composers.
Today, the biggest acts are the female soloist, thanks to the Beyhive, the Swifties, Little Monsters (Lady GaGa), Daydreamers (Adele), etc. My takeaway from Simmons’ comments is that the fanbase has never been more important. Whatever happened to the fan club?
Colorado blueswoman Erica Brown just posted on Facebook an impassioned call-out to fans to support her paid show at Dazzle with Lionel Young, which allows her to do free shows at Levitt Pavilion.
Jazz fans, your festival pass, your ticket, your cover charge, and the merchandise you buy have never been more important to today’s artist. (SOURCE: Music Radar / Artists)
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