On a good night, players seem to wander in off the street, lured by the music seeping out through the windows. The DJ's at WYMS, guilty of overplaying the standards in the past, have recently displayed a welcome loosening of their playlists to include more contemporary players and obscure tunes. It's a complicated subject and, at any rate, a tempest in a teapot. Only a few lines of the article dealt with jazz in Milwaukee during the 1970s, but in my lifetime, this was truly the golden age of jazz-oriented music in Milwaukee. During the '70s, when I was in my 20s, it was Joni Mitchell's use of jazz forms and players in her albums that influenced me to check out more traditional jazz to escape the madness of disco.
Every new generation seems to be trashier than the previous one.
I have a saying that we've become a society that views its culture like candy, i.e. if it is not immediately warm, yummy and easily assimilated, it will probably end up a subculture of minor influence. Jazz is not an easily understood art and in this era, and in a city as small and questionably cultured as Milwaukee, it is just never going to be a major force or influence. The idea that jazz will ever return to a golden era will only happen if it again becomes part of the popular culture, a direction I feel we will be lucky to ever experience in our lifetime again. There was only one major flaw. I just recently returned from Munchen.