The John Scofield Interview

[princeplanet]

There was a time when Beato's video 'Why do People Hate Jazz' cropped up among the suggested videos on my youtube. I thought that this is such a stupid and indeed objectionable topic for a video that I have never checked out or watched even one of his videos!

Yeah, that's the click-baity thing that pisses me off too. I guess he's learned how to get attention. But let's face it, if he titled that video " Why, In My Very Humble Opinion, I Think Jazz Is No Longer As Popular As It Once Was", well, who's gonna click on that!

[kris]

Luckily, this video is called 'The John Scofield Interview'.

[ccroft]

Where else are you gonna find an hour long interview with someone like Sco. I don't like Rick all that much, but I do like Mr Scofield. Great guy. I like him even more now.

I think it's awesome that a player of his stature who's been killing it for over 50 years is still wondering if he's holding the pick the right way and isn't afraid to say so.

[Jonah]

Where else are you gonna find an hour long interview with someone like Sco. I don't like Rick all that much, but I do like Mr Scofield. Great guy. I like him even more now.

I must say that Rick does interviewing process at high level. I watched quickly some of his other interviews and they are all conducted very professinally (I also noticed that he often asks the same questions which is interesting too).

As for 'where else..' I think pandemics gave another push to online interviews...

Frisell during past two years gave a dozen of interviews - from 10-20 min. to 2 hours long...
Mike Moreno does interviews, Pablo Held, Samo Salamon (Dr.Jazz talks) and so on..

But I should say Rick's interviews are really at the top techical level and by contents... they are relatively concise, he does not let it turn into long 'hey remember that club there where X used to play... there was a red door and that was Y.. no there was a red stair... no a door.. ah the door was next door'... and at the same time he does it smoothely, stays there and still unoticeable.

I think it's awesome that a player of his stature who's been killing it for over 50 years is still wondering if he's holding the pick the right way and isn't afraid to say so.

In one of the interviews Frisell says: yesterday I tried to play pentatonics with one extra note... )))

This is what makes these guys alive... they are always at the biginning of the road and discoveries. Always 18...

[Average Joe]

my esteemed colleague pablo held has conducted a nice series of interviews including scofield.

the Held/Sco album isnt half bad either.

scofield is thankfully one of those artists who choose to make himself available so there are quite a few interviews with him on YouTube. The one where he’s basically wingman for Steve Swallow is particularly enjoyable. Even so, this is a good indepth talk and thank to Beto for putting in the work

[Christian Miller]

Oh no!, You mean there's an influencer out there in youtube land espousing personal opinion as fact? Outrageous! hehe, actually, that kinda thing bothers me too but we gotta give Rick a pass here, I'm pretty sure he's doing more good than harm with his voluminous content, and you can't deny that as an interviewer, he does very well at asking the kinds of questions most of us would like to hear answers to. Besides, his audience wasn't born yesterday, there can't be too many that take all his proclamations as gospel...

well it’s just a bit lazy. There are in fact YouTubers who give citations to back up their videos and lend support to their arguments when necessary. Adam Neely is generally pretty good at giving sources for instance.

[Litterick]

If only YouTube would allow footnotes.

[ccroft]

my esteemed colleague pablo held has conducted a nice series of interviews including scofield.

Thanks for posting that one dj!

Yeah...so... I kinda overstated it in my post. Sorry about that. What I meant to say is even though Beato is a minor irritation, I'm still very glad that somebody with his visibility is publishing interviews with people like JSco, Metheny, DiMeola, Ron Carter, Wooten and so on.

[Christian Miller]

If only YouTube would allow footnotes.

Well there’s a tool in the Studio app that allows you to link other videos in the video itself as you mention them and you can put hyperlinks in the description. So actually, you can do way better than mere footnotes.

Good examples of channels that do this include, well Adam Neely, as I mentioned, but it’s quite common in other corners of YouTube, especially seriously minded (if not always deadly serious) channels like Philosophy Tube, Unlearning Economics etc. for example, take the description of this (very interesting) video.

Neely is clearly influenced by creators who do this.

Needless to say this is not going to happen with Rick Beato lol.

[Litterick]

He is an Italian-American with a YouTube Channel. Of course he presents his opinions as facts, and ignores the citation guidelines. I see no harm in that. He is entertaining and informative. His unreferenced opinions do no damage, do they?

[Christian Miller]

He is an Italian-American with a YouTube Channel. Of course he presents his opinions as facts, and ignores the citation guidelines. I see no harm in that. He is entertaining and informative. His unreferenced opinions do no damage, do they?

I don’t think so in his case. So long as he doesn’t start selling snake oil or cult of the personality type bullshit I think he’s a force for good.

[Christian Miller]

Btw for those talking about the click bait thing - there’s a absolutely no way you can get big on YouTube without having appealing and hooky titles and thumbnails for videos. There’s different ways of doing this, but Beato tends to use the basic but undeniably effective approaches that we tend to think of as ‘click bait’.

In fact usually when I click on one of his videos I find them a lot more nuanced than the titles would suggest. I’m glad this is the case; it isn’t for every YouTuber, sometimes it’s click bait all the way down….

[Peter C]

Nice guy with a badass swing feel. Thanks for posting.

[Gabor]

There was a time when Beato's video 'Why do People Hate Jazz' cropped up among the suggested videos on my youtube. I thought that this is such a stupid and indeed objectionable topic for a video that I have never checked out or watched even one of his videos!

That is an effective and time consuming method to formulate opinion and general understanding. Just ignore things, without even bothering to get know them. Do not read, do not listen, do not try to understand anything what does not fit our current mindset. This spares a lot of time for us, With this method of course we may miss the Scofield interview too...

I am following Beato just from the beginnig, when he had less than 10k followers, because his main topic was perfect pitch, and he was very authentic. He also did general music topics, what were also authentic. Later... to be short: popularity makes everyone a bit populist. In the last years I do not watch his videos, just in rare cases, but his contribution is valuable so far.

[kris]

I have the impression that sometimes it is more important for Internet users who is having the conversation than who the conversation is with.But perhaps it is all even more complicated.

[Jonah]

I have the impression that sometimes it is more important for Internet users who is having the conversation than who the conversation is with.But perhaps it is all even more complicated.

Interesting idea... I think youtube substituted TV and TV had some essential features 1)entertainement first 2) consistency to hook the viewer.

I guess what you are talking about is similat to TV shows - I often noticed that in TV shows/fictional series it is important that the lead actors are good and charismatic and fit the characterd, and it is more important than anything else... the audience gets used to them and watch the seriesfor a long time even if it gets poor... because they get the feeling of an old friend coming to them and they want to know what's up...
With the movies it is not like that - it is more distanced, more complete and integral.

And this idea concerns also TV hosts... charismatic host holds the audience whatever the topic is - to some reasonable extent of course.

And these features are on youtube now...

what puts me off is that they are too much self-promotional.

I understand why and I do not blame them but I feel like there are people of great knowledge and great ability to deliver those knowledge (I know some personally) but they just do not accept this format - and they are outsiders. But they muct be supported and promoted.

I think there is more general problem behind it, we speak about the principles if purely commercial market - it has its benefits, but I think some things should be just supported socially - we are in a very bad cultural phase I believe... not everthing good should be selling good.

One of my friends said: the civilization dies when poets are outsiders. Real poets I mean... remember the days when poets were at the courts or Robert Frost was invited to Kennedy innaguaration, or when in the early 20th century or late 19th century - great poets were recieved as pop-stars today... girls collapsed at the readings of Alexander Blok or Sergey Yesenin, Verlaine was real mistermind of his generation (though not succesful commercially), Elliot, Jimenez, Neruda, Appolinaire and so and on.
And compare the distance between those poets and modern pop-stars.

Today it is all gone... and there are no more great poets too in my opinion at least those that are more or onless accesable in the marginal communities.
Some say rap substituted it but I do not believe in it.
Poetry (even ironic, even with low language) had always one important feature - it had to elevate the souls, to exalt it.

[Gabor]

I have the impression that sometimes it is more important for Internet users who is having the conversation than who the conversation is with.But perhaps it is all even more complicated.

because many times the interviewer is more important to herself/himself than the guest...

[Gabor]

When a young person wants to learn something, he will learn it. This applies not only to the young.
The possibilities are really huge thanks to the Internet.

sounds good, but it is only the half of the story.


I mean where is the responsibility of the teacher/parent/prev. generation(s)/influencer/etc?

a) a young person can spend years rediscovering the wheel or going wrong direction, where a good teacher can observe the student's state/capabilities/goals and accelerate the discovery and understanding process to days, weeks.

b) external and authentic feedback is mandatory for the student when discovering/understanding. Without this the learner can stuck his concept/misconcept bubble, always finding and comforting himself only his concept/misconcept confirming sources on the Internet.

c) what if the young person does not want to learn? Without a supporting teacher this young person has way less chance to improve. This case the role of teacher/parent/prev. generation(s)/influencer/etc could be to give the missing motivation or show a new direction.

[kris]

sounds good, but it is only the half of the story.


I mean where is the responsibility of the teacher/parent/prev. generation(s)/influencer/etc?

a) a young person can spend years rediscovering the wheel or going wrong direction, where a good teacher can observe the student's state/capabilities/goals and accelerate the discovery and understanding process to days, weeks.

b) external and authentic feedback is mandatory for the student when discovering/understanding. Without this the learner can stuck his concept/misconcept bubble, always finding and comforting himself only his concept/misconcept confirming sources on the Internet.

c) what if the young person does not want to learn? Without a supporting teacher this young person has way less chance to improve. This case the role of teacher/parent/prev. generation(s)/influencer/etc could be to give the missing motivation or show a new direction.

Complete agreement here.
As for me, I never treat the Internet as the one and only source of knowledge.
In my opinion, the internet can help as well as it can harm, you just have to have some kind of experience.
It is definitely a kind of information digging.
People who already play have access to information about training programs, they can compare interpretations of songs, etc.
Long ago, it was not possible to listen to one tune in 100 interpretations ... e.g. classical music.
All this is also a kind of training.
Problems arise everywhere, also in real school.
You have to skilfully use new technologies - I think it develops.

[kris]

because many times the interviewer is more important to herself/himself than the guest...

It may be, but it may be just such an individual impression.
Someone has to prepare such an interview and arouse the interest of the audience or viewers.