Jason Crane »
Adventures Through the Mines of Mellow Gold 50: Mang!
Sing along with Jason Hare as he leads you down the path of smooth music, stopping to marvel at the genius of Chuck Mangione's "Feels So Good."
Read More »Jazz Don’t Hurt: Dr. Flügel, or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Chuck Mangione
The first album I ever bought with my own money (earned, I think, by babysitting for one of the neighborhood kids) was a two-cassette version of Chuck Mangione’s 1978 concert recording An Evening Of
Read More »Jazz Don’t Hurt: Taking a Stand With “Conscious Jazz”
Drummer Ted Sirota and his band Rebel Souls have a new record out called Seize the Time (Naim Jazz, 2009). It’s an explicitly political instrumental album, very in line with Sirota’s previous CDs, all
Read More »Jazz Don’t Hurt: Joni Mitchell, Jazz Musician
I was (briefly) in college in 1992. My best friend was a very talented drummer name Mike. We played in a jazz group together called, for no apparent reason, the Pre-Flattened Cats. One day
Read More »Jazz Don’t Hurt: The Industrial Jazz Group
Jazz don't hurt -- in fact, as Jason Crane points out in his latest column, it sometimes channels the mustachioed ghost of Frank Zappa
Read More »Jazz Don’t Hurt: What Is Jazz, Anyway?
What is “jazz,” exactly? I sure as hell don’t know. And neither, I would suggest, does anyone else. Sure, everybody knows what they think jazz is, and which particular elements music has to contain
Read More »Jazz Don’t Hurt: The Blazing Fire of a Man’ish Boy
Do you think jazz is hard to appreciate or understand? Jason Crane is here to set the record straight, starting with an appreciation of Darius Jones' Man'ish BoyRead More »
Jazz Don’t Hurt: Five Recent CDs For New Listeners
Recently, the fine folks over at NPR’s A Blog Supreme have started asking young jazz aficionados to recommend five recordings from recent years that they would give to someone who was just getting into
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