Smoke in blue bruises

The Jazz Boys

just play, no posing, no pumping fretless instruments into victorious air, just play for playing music sakes. Inversions splay the fingers spastic, diminished augmented suspended ninths provide the safety net for a muted trumpeter to walk out certain and balanced over improvised, dangerous air.

The jazz boys are cool. Way cool. Every band I was ever in was never this kicked back because we couldn’t be. Rock and jazz elicit different expectations. One enters the idling vehicle by different methods and the manner is as much the drive as the going, the blazing, the crashing.

Rock is about rebellion and resistance, running until ruin redeems whatever remains. Jazz is about a shaded nod of appreciation when the solo subsides and the lips are unpressed from fleshy purses paid out in the sheeted coinage of black notes staining smoke in blue bruises and minted beats.

On stage, the jazz boys whisper and cue in a language invented before their father’s fathers were born, a cool cool tongue they are readily fluent in beyond the soft palates of their tender years.

The jazz boys play.
They just play.

And it is enough.

Joseph Gallo
February 1, 2006