pete

The Question: Can a jazz novice, untrained in the ways of “cool”, go from Pete Campbell to Don Draper by exposing himself to 100 jazz albums in the span of a year?

To begin, one must ask themselves this basic question; what’s cooler than jazz, really?  Drake? Lady GaGa? Artisan Coffee? Open concept office spaces? The Polar Vortex?  All reasonably cool, but nay, I say, nothing is cooler than jazz.  Let’s be honest, has anything stood the test of time better than a smoke filled lounge and live jazz music?  Peanut butter and jelly maybe, but not much else.

So that’s where I’ve decided to put my focus in 2019.  The pursuit of listening to, learning, and appreciating jazz.  The pursuit of finding cool.

To give this experiment a frame of reference, let’s go ahead and assume that i’m decidedly not cool (please see Pete Campbell mention above).   A quick recap;  I’m a middling aged man with a quickly receding hairline and government job.  I own multiple Agatha Christie novels, I frequently watch Disneyland vlogs, and I subscribe to a podcast dedicated to detective shows from old time radio.  I’m not ashamed of any of these facts, but it does qualify me as “not cool”…in fact, it probably over-qualifies me as a nerd.  I do have a super cool passion for hip hop that I keep to myself, and an unbelievably cool wife and three extremely cool kids.  But otherwise, I dislike super crafty beers, music festivals, and growing facial hair (are thick ridiculous beards still a thing?), so really, I’ll admit it, I’m not cool.

So that’s my baseline, and where this little project takes me, only time and Miles Davis’s trumpet will tell.  Pretentious?  Self indulgent?  I hope not.  Cathartic?  Seems a bit lofty.  I’m just shooting for a new appreciation for something I think I like, but don’t really understand…you know…like your love for craft beer.

Regards,
Some version of Pete Campbell

Appendix of Links in case you’re too lazy to click (unpaid youtube links just for fun:
1. Polar vortex explained in under 120 seconds
2. DisUnplugged
3. Idiot’s guide to making incredible beer at home