Make It Ruff, Make It Smooth

Quentin E. Klopjaeger writes:

The other day I was in La Jolla and happened to run into Bon Schmidt at a record store. He was buying a Jan Hammer record, so I can tell you first that he is a man of his word, assuming that word is "smooth." We shook hands and he left. Later, much later, I noticed that he had slipped a note into my pocket. I don't know how he did it. It was a note about keeping the faith, and it was inspiring enough that I will reprint it in full here:

"Quent," it says -- he calls me "Quent" -- "there is rough and there is smooth in life, and we should never be afraid to admit that we like smooth, for we are the monarchs of our own life, and a good monarch prefers peace to war, prosperity to poverty, and ease to difficulty. If I am a monarch, music is my kingdom, and smooth jazz is the key to that kingdom. Go on like butter, Bon."

Amen.

A HEART FULL OF SMOOTH

Bon Schmidt: There was a neighbor of mine who was always trying to get me to listen to the Yardbirds, Blue Cheer, Led Zep…all of that stuff…when we were lads. I, in turn, tried to make him understand the true genius of Stanley Clarke and Spyro Gyra. As would be expected, we had little to relate to on the music end, and focused more on our joint appreciation of rollerblading. I took him to a Gyra concert a few years ago, and he totally flipped; since he passed the bar, the guy seems to have really gotten his head together about what I have been trying to hip him to (I have no idea if there is a connection).
So he took me kicking and screaming to the Jeff Beck show at the Fox Theater in Oakland last week and OH MY JIMENY the show I witnessed took my breath away. The Fox is a beautifully restored theater for starters. When Beck hit the stage, it was obvious from the first note that something special was going on. I was expecting banal rock antics. Instead, I got a smoother Jeff Beck…instrumental with a bass player that was RIGHT UP THERE with the feel and suavity of a Sting or Nathan East….and look again: it is a GIRL by the name of Tal Wilkenfeld! The two really locked in and the sounds were oh so pleasing…think of some of Joe Sample’s recent stuff. Near the ending of the show, they both played her bass…Beck on the lower strings…forming a momentary relationship that was as unique and dare I say it ROMANTIC as any one of I have seen on a stage in a long time. Long Live Jeff Beck and welcome to the smooth side.

The gentleman

Randy "The Pitstain" Pitowsky here: Tweeze and Bon, I hope it goes without saying that I have nothing but respect for your passion for SJ. You've both made the world a far Smoother place, and for that I'm ever grateful.

But this talk of yours has got off to a Rough start. I love me my Chuck, my Herb and I give all due credit to my Spyro, but any real rap about this music we love so much has got to begin with a flip of the blazer collar to the true gentleman of the artform.

I speak, of course, of Mr. David Sanborn.

Dig this: "A Tear for Crystal" is prime Sanborn, glam and glistening and brimming with the sort of effortless alto runs that make session players weep and the ladies cream their slacks. Backed by Mo "Curly Cue" Mahogany on fretless and Kevin "Kool" Finkel on keys (dig that DX7), Sanborn lays down layer after layer of soft cashmere sounscape before pinching his fabric into a divine seam at the four-minute mark. Listening to this lovely track lo these many years since its 1984 release, it is as smooth as a fragrant breeze off the Marina after a sweet evening strolling the shopping promenade with your suntanned and sandalled lover, the two of you pleasantly buzzed on a chilled peach wine cooler (or heck, three!), heading back to your glass-bricked condo to make tender, uninhibited love... all the while floating on Sanborn's sloshing waterbed of melody, so sweet and smooth it's brutal, violent really, laying waste to all the punk-ass pretenders you cite as the true practitioners of SJ.

You feel me?