A recently found YouTube video has been floating around, featuring Spinal Tap’s “deep” philosophy on quality music and opinion of jazz. In case you haven’t heard of Spinal Tap, they were a big metal band back in the day. They give their thoughts on what jazz is, commenting that “it is just a bunch of people playing wrong notes” among other comments.

Wanna hear your thoughts on this people.

Video

Our Thoughts

No, you are not mistaken. That’s what kind of deep thought you get when asking a bunch of 60 year old metal guys what jazz is. But what can you really expect them to say about it? They probably have never even given it a chance. To say that jazz is just “playing wrong notes” is just ridiculous, and I would love to hear more about playing in one key.

I suppose they are very familiar with playing the a key – that is ONE key. Most of their music is confined to the same key and simply relies on about 4 chords. Guess what guys, you can buy a guitar and amp, turn it up real loud, and be able to play ALL of Spinal Tap’s music in like 4 minutes.

Apparently “Jazz is an accident” and when Spinal Tap’s guitarist improvises, it is intentional (unlike jazz). So, apparently jazz musicians never play what they intend to play – I guess they just play some random notes and call it jazz. Absolutely ridiculous. And so what if it intentional. Their guitarist probably learns one riff, then plays it for the rest of his life. Way to go – great guitar playing. Wouldn’t want them to explore anything new or anything.

To top it off, they take a few seconds to rip on Miles Davis. Seriously, not even in the same league. No authority to speak about Miles that way – or about jazz for that matter.

I don’t understand these guys come up with this stuff. They are simple musicians, and they probably don’t understand jazz. They are probably afraid of it because they don’t understand it. In my opinion, they should just stick to the simple stuff, and stop offering opinions on topics that are beyond their comprehension.

Feedback please.

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