Jazz Musicians at The Yardbird Suite

A tough room is better than a vacant room
a live room than a dead room

Fill any room with converts to the jazz medium
and expose them to a clean sound
a pure sound
a strident limbeck of notes
held to the straight line of the time signature
by metronome mind
and skin-beat muscular

Place a verb in the sound
modify it
dramatize it
direct its patterns
reflect on its narrative possibilities
A tale's being told in many voices
one loaded with philosophical debate

Go reedy clarinet and the saxes
pick up the vibes
the staccato 32nd notes
parlay the male protagonist into character!

Anthropomorphic and protohuman guitar
with her double font of octaves
her hourglass shape reflects her lover's
manipulating picks and frets
her bubbling lead lines obtrude not at all
maleness is the guitarman
yet his guitar is woman
her responses under his fingertips
prove the sensual alternative

The bird scats unison
a hungry three and a half octave need
modulating vocal chords
to become the melody unfretted
effortlessly traversing the treble clef
conjuring sheer magic
as timbre disappears into the lead instrument
an echo with no bounce time
exercising perfection of pitch
exhorting listener
to join her agape state

Thin low bass line slides a new voice into the fray
offering machismo tempered by growl and lunge
his alternative even tastes diminished
he grieves a minor fourth suspended
and arpeggiates a new sonic echo
from deep pelvic recesses
no scream here
in his philosophy of compromise;
lay back, bass man,
then lunge your predatory skill,
your callous
(See how his ear funnels this combo
into his basso-centric gestalt
and slopes and curves the stereophone)

Enter the lip-stridden horn
leaping the redundant melody
then yodeling the scales
proving the accidental nature
of much human discourse --
every every major ninth scale
in a great circle of fifths
that moves the dialogue
into a dizzying rush
horn pulls horn along
until the bone-man proves his power
bugling a maternal climb
over the reedy ladders
of the woodwind men

The horizon for this setting is cruised
by the 880-fingered piano man
follow his flying fingers
his wilderness
of melody and harmony
and discord and resolution
brain and ear connected
nearly without synapse
to the reflexes of fingerprint on ivory
he gives this mating of staccato and sustain
a leveling and a flow --
that narrative absolute
the wordsmiths call transition,
the film makers' segue

Hail the brazen cymbal-crash and brush on taut skin
hat me a double, deario
doff it in appreciation of this tale;
control, oh time-keeper
synco my pate
cool my heat
break my reverie
echoplosive the openings left by the protagonist,
while the monologist cries for emphasis
brush me a snare to trap my fancy
leave me a-dance and a-laugh
drum me into dreaming, swaying catatonia
my head will bob all the way to the next gig!

So flute and marimba and the Duke of Whyte play
their roles in this unending discussion
this battle with only one victor --
this audience
whose lives are characterized
by these stage-hounds
these irrepressible egos
these working musicians

Thanks, everybody!
You've gotta love this playhouse!
This sweet, sweet Yardbird Suite!