Al Foster

Today, I went on a Pandora adventure that took me through the melodies most algorithmically related to Sharon Jones & Dap Kings (inspired by my recent viewing of Up in the Air, which features a sultry yet upbeat Sharon Jones cover of folk/3rd grade music class favorite "This Land is Your Land" during its opening credits). As such, I was already feeling pretty jazzy & funky. And yes, I realize that I sound like a mom who appliqués bunnies on jean vests when I call myself "jazzy" and "funky." Unfortunately, I've been having a real adjective problem lately.

In any event, this day of uber-cool jazz-funk (not g-funk) is only continuing as I explore Al Foster, former drummer for Miles Davis. Is it bad that I grew up so entrenched in my own generation's pop culture phenomena that when I hear Davis's name, I can't not think of the old lady from Billy Madison who laments that "If peein' your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis"? I think it might be. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry most of all to my grandpa, who was actually an incredible jazz pianist. He had piles of Oscar Peterson and Duke Ellington albums stacked among his own recordings that he "laid down" (I'm not cool enough to say that, hence the quotes) on his totally badass keyboard. My sister and I used to have a ball messing with that keyboard. We'd put on the pre-fab"swing-jazz" backbeat & melody and dance around the rec room, speeding up and slowing down the tempo bar to force each other to prance furiously like Flashdance, then stop short and sloth around for the next few bars. Yes, it's okay to sound the nerdalert now.

You'd think being surrounded by all of this would've bred a true jazz connoisseur. It did. Her name is Amy and she's my sister. She listens to all the albums she inherited from Grampy. She's one of those cool people that has a record player and actually uses it.

I've tried. I have. I want to love these great musicians, and, of course, pop culture has inspired me to do so. When I saw Jerry Maguire, in which Chad the babysitter claims he's going to introduce Jonathan Lipnicki to Coltrane, I was like "yeah, introduce me, too." When I went through the obligatory "I find John Mayer endlessly attractive & soulful" phase, the lyrics "...but you could distinguish Miles from Coltrane" in reference to Mayer's "Comfortable" ex obviously made me want to educate myself.

It never happened. But you know what? Al Foster never learned to read music. So there. Even Mr. Mariah Carey, Nick Cannon, learned how to read music in Drumline. Maybe, someday, I'll learn to appreciate highbrow, important cultural icons. But for now, I'm going to go watch "The Bachelor" on DVR.

Just kidding. I watched it live.