Besides the fact that he is no knowledgeable about Jazz, how can you over look someone who states he does not appreciate, like or understand a topic and then goes ahead to review. Who does he think he is? He must have become so full of himself. I’ve seen this happen so often with wine buyers and wine critics. the sales people often have to cater to ‘buyers’ of an establishment who become like Pufferfish. And Wine Critics take the treatment personally- that they receive from the wineries - beginning to believe their own self importance.
He is not blending his knowledge of a musical form to embellish his review of a wine. It is pure ego and he insults all of us. Why bother.
I don’t agree with his criticism of jazz, which was perfunctory. Seem pretty silly to me and I wasn’t defending that, per my other comment above. But who am I to judge whether he chooses to discuss music and wine together beyond his silly view on jazz?
See above. Again, I think his view on jazz is ridiculous, but that’s me.
Also, Mark, you don’t have to subscribe or read him. A friend of many years reviews for Vinous and I still don’t subscribe. I gave up paid subscriptions years ago by choice.
I think Neal is among the better wine writers, and I am interested in his views on the tastings like the 1959s, which is why I bother to subscribe. For the most part I didn’t really get too bothered about his music writing, but this last article was disrespectful, capricious and unnecessary.
If he is going to write about it, nothing is added by his dismissal of a whole genre of music.
Neal Martin on jazz: irreverent, irresponsible, ill-informed. Neal Martin on wine: happy to read him.
I was scrolling down this thread, looking for a post from Neal, knowing that someone whose avatar is Thelonious Monk without a hat would be obliged to comment!
I do wonder how many folks here who are trashing Neal for trashing jazz have ever, themselves, trashed heavy metal or rap/hip-hop … ![[whistle.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/87d24eb81ec6dc01d84f3d6c19fa9a357e90218e.gif "whistle"){kind=small}
that is very well put, Neal.
and the horrible thing about it is that most of the individuals who created this legendary art
did so while being reminded every day that they were not only second-class citizens,
but second-class human beings as well
that is not to say that jazz is exclusively Black –
were it not for Ellington’s and Strayhorn’s affinity for the music of Debussy & Ravel
we would have jazz of an appreciably different nature
Guilty. But then I don’t drag my dislike of rap kicking and screaming into an article about wines from 1959.
I fully agree with that, often overlooked here in Europe, unfortunately.
I fully agree with that, often overlooked here in Europe, unfortunately.
You know me too well Warren – an opinion on everything.
I don’t subscribe any longer, so I can’t really offer a substantive opinion on Neal’s piece. Mark quotes 2 sentences, necessarily out of context, with which I disagree. If Neal was reviewing wine and popped in that gratuitous jab at jazz, shame on him. “This cuvèe is 50% mouvedre – hang on a minute, jazz sucks – and spends 2 years on new Slovinian oak.”
But Neal has always written about music, since his earliest days with Parker. Sometimes I agreed, often I didn’t. But absent the sort of non sequitur I imagined above, it surely didn’t bother me if when wrote about it, and it is odd that doing so would piss someone off.
I went back to read the article (I didn’t originally because I have no interest in reading about old wine; I’m never going to have any). It was just odd. It opens with four paragraphs on jazz that basically suggested the level of sophistication of something I might have written when I was in grade school (I read something on the internet that said 1959 was an important year in jazz. I don’t like jazz, yuck. Now, onto the wine). Then it transitions to discussing wine with the only tie-in being the commonality of the year. I will quote the whole of the transition: “Nineteen fifty-nine was also fecund in terms of wine, not just in terms of the intrinsic and hedonic quality itself, but how the vintage was a pivotal stepping-stone between prescientific and modern winemaking.” That “also” represents the whole transition and carries the entire burden of the supposed analogue.
In terms of essay-writing, I gotten give that intro a 50. Even weirder to carry the the non-analogue over into the title.
Turns out the article is available for free for those who are interested: Vinous | Explore All Things Wine
That’s what all this fuss is about???
Yup. Kinda what my reaction was too. He seems to equate free jazz (about which he and I agree)*/ with all jazz, which is uninformed, but I can’t imagine being worked up over it.
*/ Anyone who thinks Brubeck’s Time Out is aleatoric is missing something. Ornette? Absolutely. Kinda Blue? Not feeling it.
I fail to see the connection between jazz that was being played almost exclusively in the US, and wines that were harvested from grapes grown three thousand miles away. It is completely gratuitous, and I am still curious as to why it should appear in a wine column, and even more curious as to why go to the trouble of writing about it since he doesn’t like jazz anyway.
Does it help me understand his review of Domaine de Chevalier any more? Would he like Latour ‘59 any better if he was listening to Miles Davis, or actually wanted to? Do I find his reviews any more or less credible because he doesn’t like the music?
Jazz was certainly quite popular in the U.K. in the late 50s. My father was and still is a huge aficionado, the widespread US military bases were certainly a major catalyst.
And hardly a peep about scotch? A wine critic who doesn’t get scotch somehow gives me more pause than one who is indifferent to jazz.
I think it was meant as nothing more than a tie-in to the historical period; it was, after all, an article on wines from 1959, and one not even limited to one wine region, country or variety. He could have done a basic recap, sort of “here are several things that occurred in 1959,” and it would have been facile, but wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows. I suspect he decided to focus on the jazz angle to try to make some kind of qualitative analogy between jazz in 1959 and wine, something he utterly failed to do in the article. Including his own personal feelings about jazz simply made it more ham-fisted.