THE JAZZ LOFT

114. THE JAZZ LOFT:

The 'jazz' loft was not much like the 'art' loft - for one thing the jazz loft was always dark and crowded and usually did stink of alcohol pot or sweat and it was often airless or stale while by contrast an art loft tried to thrive on light and spaciousness and if it held any odor at all it was the odor seemingly of a grand oily enticing vat of paint - fresh and splattered dried and caked - people in an art loft had a complete and different view of things and they went about things based on completion or work or achievement and values based on a tradition of color perspective density and content - and I'd been to both types lots of times and even making it more odd was the fact that many times (as in the case of Larry Rivers) the artist was also the jazz man with much less of that happening the other way around but whatever - the overlap made for interesting groups of intermingling people : late night jam sessions dense and thick with smoke and booze sex and fury and the jazz loft was used by choice more than the art loft for these sorts of groups and encounters - groups of men with their horns and equipment long extended and wild jam sessions people coming and going no organized sitting in any way and rotating session men in and out of the group - which eventually wound up playing for hours and hours with shifting alliances and personnel - and as hard to explain as it was it worked - stairways filled with hangers-on and people wanting entry but the crowd sometimes was too much and here and there it always seemed there were one or two blind men who ended up playing grand solos on saxophones or other horns and keyboard guys - often enough blind too - would bide their intensity and time away playing fills on one of the often two or three pianos in these lofts : all in all it was a remarkable and often sex-charged scene with women as much an integral part of the music as anything else simply by their sexuality and loose morals (let's say) long dark windows drab and moist with dewey sweat and stained by streaks of water-condensate rolling down and there were darkened alcoves and elevator areas and stairwell landings and mattresses here or there on the floor or in side rooms - people making out or fucking or talking excitedly together - it was just never known what I'd run across or into upon entering any of these scenes and it was as if some great billowing New York artworld nuclear blast had occurred and expanded light and energy over the entire island and most intensely in these lofts where people stayed all night and sometimes for days while others came and went and the great black resonating voices would cat-call back and forth all night to each other - jazz-inflected insults and jibes which kept much of the tension going and creatively added an element of frisson to the proceedings - occasionally there would appear someone from the music press or the greater jazz-world to stay awhile and listen or take part while others clapped or roared or got sick silently along some sidewall alone somewhere - and the passed-out dregs of all this would be left alone or cradled by someone else - all in all an intriguingly interesting scene and by far I'd have to say jazz lofts were wilder and crazier than artlofts - which by contrast held professors scholars and the utmost of gentility all swept along by the brush and broom of art's more graceful arc.