Jazz SUCKS
and I'm going to tell Jordan Call why, LIVE!
Okay, okay, I’ll admit it, I don’t think jazz sucks, I quite like jazz. I think a very specific kind of jazz sucks. I abhor the wave hyperdense-yet-unserious jazz that has emerged as the dominant form among enthusiasts the 21st century thanks to, as I will argue, university-level jazz programs at the Berklee College of Music and other institutions. The kind of music I was mocking in this post:
Intellectual dadstacker and capital-T Thinker Jordan Call saw this post, disagreed, and offered to debate me:
And I said “hell yeah, let’s do it live.”
I then realized that Jordan, in addition to running a wonderful newsletter that you should all read, is both a UChicago-trained lawyer and a jazz musician who, in his words, “was (kind of) educated at Berklee.” I, by contrast, am some guy who occasionally pretends to be a cabbage. But I am a man of my word. If Jordan humiliates me by dogwalking me the entire time, so be it.
Clementine (عائزہ ), who writes Persimmon Manor, graciously offered to moderate this entirely frivolous debate between two grown men and we thank her for it. Towards the end of the debate she’ll ask us (some of) YOUR questions! Please submit questions for her to ask us by clicking this link and filling out this form.
Tune in! Tuesday, March 24, 8:15 PM Eastern, wherever you watch Substack livestreams!
In other news:
Cairo Smith and Lillian Wang Selonick invited me to appear on the first episode of the revamped Futurist Letters Show to talk about my Gay Roman Emperors article with Grindr and how to succeed without really trying. I appear at around 1:10:20, but do listen to the whole thing. Cairo and Lillian put an excellent show together. They’re also, in their own rights, supremely talented writers and I was honored to receive the invite.1
Sarah Beth Spraggins recruited me to write a short piece on the Kennedy curse for Secret Ballot, and I took that as an excuse to momentarily shed the clown mask and write something that isn’t funny. What evil spirit inhabited me? Who am I becoming? Anyway, Secret Ballot is doing a superb job capturing the culture and vibe of the busiest people in DC, I truly believe it’s one of the most fascinating newsletters Substack has to offer, and you can see my writing above the paywall in last Friday’s edition.
I am still looking for people to interview for a class I’m taking! Do you write (or want to write) a newsletter? Do you pay (or want to pay) people to write newsletters? I want to hear from you!
Happy St. Patrick’s day,
🍀🥬🍀🥬🍀Russell Sprout🍀🥬🍀🥬🍀
As an aside, I will go on your podcast. My only condition is that if there is a video component, that I am allowed to have the same appearance that I had on Futurist Letters.
Aww Russell Sprout!
Zoot suit rioooot...