jazz death

been thinking lately about how, in spite of my continuing enthusiasm for the shit i was listening to as a snotnose between, say, '68-'74 and the proto-punk noise (detroit and other) that i got reacquainted with ca. '96, i'm still the jazz snob i became when rockaroll got lame in the pre-punk mid-'70s. these days all i seem to write about for the fw weekly is new obscuro jazz releases (thanks, ant'ny, for the forum), and i've spent a lot of time last year revisiting late '60s freeblow, '70s noo yawk loft scene denizens, das kinder von ornette, etc., and re-reading gary giddins and francis davis' post-'80s scrawl on the music. so today it definitely piqued my interest when hembree forwarded this article from the wsj. the writer's premise is that the jazz audience is getting progressively smaller and older, and the music has morphed into a "sophisticated art music" rather than the popular medium it was from armstrong to kind of blue: from the marketplace to the academy and the museum. a down thought.