The Jams

In Boston, we are fortunate enough to have excellent jazz programming on the radio every day from 5:00 am until 1:00 pm, thanks to Harvard's radio station WHRB. It may be hopelessly old fashioned, but that's still how I find out about a lot of the music I eventually come to love. I hear new things on the radio, write down the names and seek them out. Add to that my late-to-the-party discovery of discogs.com and we have a potentially dangerous situation. Most recently I discovered the album "Puttin' It Together" by the Elvin Jones trio, currently on it's way to the house. "Sweet Little Maia" is from that album. Besides being a mega-jam, this performance serves a triumvirate of style lessons, hence making it loosely appropriate for a clothing blog.

Elvin Jones, the groups leader and drummer, keeps things simple and classy in a plain tuxedo, not unlike what he often wore during his six year stint with the massively influential John Coltrane Quartet. The tie tucked under the shirt collar may be a dated, and the barrel cuffs on what appear to be a normal white shirt rather than a pleated formal one remind of that old style casual black tie that we lost sight of in the last forty years. Despite how you might feel about these inconsequential transgressions, playing the drums as well as Elvin does kind of gives you a pass.

Jimmy Garrison, also late of the John Coltrane Quartet, shows us that maybe, just maybe, there are situations in which a Nehru jacket and turtleneck can be not only acceptable, but downright cool. Those situations include being Jimmy Garrison and performing jaw dropping bass solos in 1968. Don' try it at home.

Joe Farrell presents a style anomaly. His look is very high school chemistry teacher, and I can almost feel the thickness of his polyester through the screen. But he proves that just because you're a badly dressed white guy playing a soprano sax doesn't necessarily mean you're painfully lame. This of course flies in the face of Kenny G.'s entire musical career.

Can't wait for this record to arrive. Once it does, I can almost guarantee that it will be in regular rotation on the turntable at the AAW Shop. Drop by some Saturday if you want to give it a listen.

The Jams

H-E-L-L-O Hello Please don't rattle the ice in your drinks.

 I bought the record last week and have listened to this song almost every day since. The Jams on a high level.

Casual, not Sloppy

The word "casual" gets bandied about in reference to clothing or the situations in which we wear clothing so much that it's definition tends to get blurred. For a guy like me who actually enjoys clothing and dressing to suit the occasion, it's all but become a dirty word. It shouldn't be. I may have a habit of being what many consider "overdressed" much of the time, but I'm not such a stiff that I don't know how to wear casual clothing in casual situations.

The outfit above is something I consider to be casual, but adult. A striped button down shirt, favorite vintage wool crew neck sweater and soft flannel pants. In it, I am comfortable and warm, but I also feel like a grown man to be taken seriously. A younger fellow, or someone more fashion conscious, might try the same thing with dark jeans and come off just fine. Topped with a Barbour jacket and tweed cap, this outfit saw me through taking a small child to a doctors appointment, lunch and ice cream to follow, a trip to a thrift shop, after school pick up, playground time, and a night shift at work. I was comfortable and appropriately dressed for each of these situations.

I'm not about to go on some silly rant about how "casual" means a tweed jacket and tie with cords and loafers. There was a time when this was true, but we simply do not live in that time anymore. Ranting about things like men who wear brown shoes in the city and the fact that we no longer wear black tie to dinner at home is not only pointless, it marks one as an out of touch curmudgeon with little better to do than complain about what everybody else is or isn't doing. However, it's not a bad idea to remind ourselves that casual doesn't necessarily mean sloppy. You won't see me out of the house in my pyjamas, and the older I get the less likely it is you'll see me even in jeans. For men who care about clothing, it can be challenging these days to dress in a manner they consider appropriate while not looking like a stiff. As unfortunate as this may be to some of us, it helps to remember that you can be casual and well dressed simultaneously, despite what the world at large may be telling you.

This is my kind of casual:

p.s. If only Ralph Gleason would get off the stage. It's embarrassing.

The Jams

So many people have this misconception that jazz music is some kind of exclusive club reserved only for snobs and highfalutin intellectuals. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jazz can be, and often is, a downright freak out (if a minimally controlled and structured one).

People who over think things like jazz and other forms of art are like people who always want to know "what are you so dressed up for?", or worse "who died?" every time they see a man in a tie: they just don't get it.