When you think of jazz, you think of me, Ken Burns. Anyone under 40 that knows about jazz, knows about it because of me.
“This is what PBS was made for.”
“The best 17 hours of my life!”
Those were the bad reviews.
And now, the first generation of punks are starting to donate to PBS in earnest. So, on paper, it makes so much sense. Jazzcore should be the prestige public broadcast documentary of the decade.
So where do I get off telling people they’re supposed to give a shit about tattooed guys in checked pants playing trumpets?
Objectively, I’ve got to wonder what PBS was thinking green-lighting this. I mean, I know I make it rain for them during pledge drives. But come on, guys! Truly constructive criticism is invaluable.
I was on a conference call with the brass over there. I guess they thought it was on mute. But I heard them talking about how PBS has never had a 2 AM burn off before and would have to explain to the programmers how it worked.
Then they had the nerve to complain that the new administration took all their marketing budget. But come on! We had branded cans of Bud Light for The War, but now I can’t get poster money?
If only that were my biggest problem. How am I going to squeeze seven hours of public broadcasting from this shit lemon?
There’s no concert footage, no newsreels, no interviews suitable for PBS and barely any photographs. There’s only so many times I can pan and zoom before someone realizes that I just photoshopped Louis Armstrong into The Sex Pistols.
And that definitely won’t fly with the companion coffee table book which is shaping up to be 35 pages of pure filler.
I wonder if there’s a Razzie for public broadcast documentaries?
None of my standard celebrity talking heads want any part of this. Giamatti? Nope. Costas? Hard pass. Tom Hanks told me to go fuck myself! The nicest man in America! Told me to go fuck myself! And you know what? I can see his point.
I even tried to get the Mighty Mighty Bosstones involved. But they threatened to hunt me down and turn me into a zoot suit. “We’re ska, jackass!”
So now I’m stuck in the period between Captain Beefheart’s retirement and Brian Setzer’s second band. Thirty years of nothing interesting happening with a saxophone.
I can already see the eye rolling New Yorker review. “Ken Burns Shits the Bed: Misses the Point of Jazzcore” As if they didn’t just find the one NYU brat that happens to be into jazzcore to give them a couple of factoids.
I need to find that kid first. He’d probably work for a producer credit.
God, why didn’t I sign the papers on Baseball: The 10th Inning, Part 2 — Quidditch?