I Promised Myself I Wouldn’t Say Anymore About WBGO, but…

by Anthony Medici in Editorials, In & Around Our Store, Opinion Posts, Uncategorized

…then I took another trip to the New York/ New Jersey area last weekend and found myself thinking that WBGO should advise listeners who are driving to keep their windows rolled down for fresh air lest the programming lull them to sleep while they are behind the wheel. OK, I’m being snarky.   In previous responses to my blogs on WBGO, I was told to give the station more of a listen than I had time to do on my last trip, which I thought was fair, so I kept the station locked in until I couldn’t stand it any more.  But this was initially going to be a blog about about baseball and jazz, so let me tell you about that first.My brother and I, both baseball fans, decided we wanted to see Shea and Yankee stadiums before they were closed/torn down and replaced with new corporatist arenas built for the rich and privileged (let the others eat $10 hot dogs).  My brother, who is older than me, is a die-hard Yankee fan.  We both grew up in the era of mantle and Maris, Elston Howard, Bobby Richardson, Yogi Berra, and all the other Yankee greats of the 50s-60s.  Being a native New Yorker myself, by definition I have to be a Yankee fan, but I am also a bit of an apostate, cheering for the Mets, as well as my current home-team, the Washington Nationals (not much to cheer about there).  I also carry a flame for the Chicago White Sox since I lived in Chicago for many years. 

Anyway, we bought tickets on the legalized MLB scalping site, Stubhub, and managed to get seats for the Mets game at Shea on Sunday the 27th against the Cards, and the Yankees-Orioles game at Yankee Stadium on the 28th.  The Mets game was loud fun, and the Mets performed brilliantly, whipping the Cards.  The new Shea looms beyond the current Shea centerfield wall, looking as socially acceptable and exciting as a pair of Dockers. 

The Yankees game was another matter.  Maybe it is because I am a New Yorker that the pilgrimage to Yankee Stadium was as close to a religious pilgrimage as I was going to get.  In fact, Yankee Stadium, even in its current dimensions (downsized in the 1970s) is something like a composite between the Roman Colisseum and St. Peter’s (hmmm).  It is a stadium capable of producing shock and awe.  Unfortunately, it was the Orioles that produced the shock and awe, trouncing the Yanks, to the dismay of a full house.  Oh well, at least I got the give-way commemorative keychain, which I am assured, will pay for the game tickets if I decide to sell it on EBAY.  Next year, the new Yankee Stadium, looking a lot like the old one, but filled with exorbitantly expensive seats designed for oil company execs, orthodontists, and other nouveau riche ,  trickle-down corporate myrmidons, will be ready for baseball.  Baseball stadiums used to be a place where the “people” of all classes and backgrounds rubbed shoulders.  No more.  It’s all about class distinction, privilege, and oligarchic arrogance.  I hope the game is great enough to overcome this latest Gilded Age. 

On the way to the games, I managed to squeeze in several hours at Princeton Record Exchange, where  I bagged (in fact, several bags) of jazz LPs, including many terrific avant-garde titles, at very decent prices. Good grief, I feel like a shill, but it is a fantastic record store and shouldn’t be taken for granted.  BTW, I get no remuneration or other bennies for blogging (would I did!) or for talking about PREX.  I just like the place.   

Oh well, back to WBGO.  A solid 4 days of listening not only did not change my mind about the station’s programming–and I honestly wish it would have–but it actually reinforced my reaction that something has gone seriously wrong at WBGO.    I went back and read the posts in response to my blogs from WBGO pesonnel, who seem to be very nice and thoughtful folks.  One staffer admits, “I can’t entirely disagree with some of what you say here” [so do something about that please] but goes on to assert that WBGO does play a wide variety of programming, including Mingus, Monk and Ornette Coleman.  All I can say is one must have to listen to thousands of hours of WBGO (an unhappy prospect) to find a few minutes devoted to these artists.  I’ve never heard Ornette on WBGO.  I’ve never heard any kind of serious attention given to Mingus, or even Monk for that matter.   I am more than open to contemproary jazz (yes, I have heard and seen Marc Cary twice in performance here in the DC area where Marc is from, and he is terrific), but WBGO routinely chooses pop inflected, MOR stuff stuff.  And I could live with that too, if they also included other parts of the contemporary jazz spectrum.  For example, the Vision Festival took place for a week in WBGO’s backyard, and as far as I know, WBGO devoted not a minute to these artists. 

Inadvertently, I think the staffer put his finger on the problem when he comments, “Our mission is to promote, protect, preserve and present Jazz, whether we love every artist or not. I might love to hear “Gillespiana” played in its entirety but Afro-Latin Diz ain’t for everyone …”  To which I say (echoing Miles, who you also won’t hear much of at BGO, especially his electric period), “So What?”  If you want to be the jazz station, you gotta play it all!  That’s how you keep the music alive.  That’s how you develop jazz fans.  That’s how you keep the ART of jazz growing.  You might not like “Gillespiana” the first, second, or third, time you hear it, but like most jazz fans, you grow “big ears” by confronting and responding to such music.  For goodness sakes, don’t pasteurize it in hopes of growing the audience.   Play it!  The Top 40 stations tried this and nearly lost their audience; now they are all about variety and open play lists.  If you play it, they will come.  You have a responsibility to the art of jazz.  You acknowledge that but right now, I believe, you are shirking that responsibility.  And that is why what WBGO does is important to me and anyone else who values what jazz is all about.