Jazz Don’t Mean a Thing at the Bowl

For an obvious newcomer to the Hollywood Bowl Jazz series, Enrique Lopetegui raised some interesting points in his review of the Bowl’s “Latin Jazz Explosion” (“Was the Salsa Too Hot for Bowl Crowd?,” Calendar, Sept. 16). While I dispute Lopetegui’s contention that one must dance in the aisles to “appreciate” Latin music (I enjoyed it immensely and didn’t dance a step; darn football injury . . .), nonetheless he correctly assessed the two major flaws in the show: audience members talking, and not enough time allotted to the artists.

However, I do feel that Lopetegui’s insinuation that the Latin jazz artists were singled out for this ill treatment is mistaken. I have held jazz series tickets at the Bowl for the last five years, and I can assure him that these problems are endemic. Palmieri, Blades and Puente merely learned what jazz performers from Dave Brubeck to Etta James to Tony Bennett have already learned: When you play the Bowl, you’re playing background music, and not much of it at that.

On this particular night I, like Lopetegui, tried in vain to listen to the music while people around me (specifically, behind me) chattered about what movies they’d seen or the “buttery kind of cheese” they brought with them. I am not making this stuff up--the Bowl jazz crowd can come up with some of the most inane dialogue this side of “Love Connection.”

What’s more amazing is that none of these folks have figured out that those around them paid their 20 bucks to hear the performance . But you can’t ask them to be quiet, not unless you’re ready for an argument and a whole lot of attitude.

I’ve tried to figure this out. I used to think there was something about an outdoor concert that made the music seem less important, a lack of intimacy perhaps--but the problem isn’t nearly as bad at the Bowl’s symphonic concerts. No, I think the problem is one of L.A. attitude. Jazz is something many people aren’t familiar with, and if they can’t appreciate it, they tune it out. But that’s only half of it.

Here in L.A., what’s important is not appreciating the music, but appearing to do so. You don’t have to be hip as long as you seem hip. So, for instance, at the end of each Latin piece the chatty types behind me started whooping and hollering like they were in the Dog Pound on “Arsenio!”

“Whooo! Yeah! Excellent! “ they screamed.

“Imagine,” I snarled, “how much you’d like it if you tried actually listening to it.”

This is not a new problem, either. During the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s set, a young woman behind me kept yelling, “‘Take Five! ‘ ‘TAKE FIVE! ‘ “ Yep, she only knew one Brubeck piece, the one even non-Brubeck fans know, but by golly she was gonna demand--loudly and repeatedly--that he play it, so that the rest of us could be impressed by her “knowledge.”

The other problem, on which Lopetegui touched, is one of the time allotted to the performers. The Bowl jazz bookers apparently subscribe to the “if one is good, two is better and three is groovy” philosophy. What you end up with is a two-act undercard before intermission, with the headliner performing afterward.

Unfortunately, this results in the first two acts being hustled off stage, sometimes when they’re just starting to cook. I’ve seen this happen twice to Etta James--somehow she always ends up being the second act, just before the intermission, and gets ushered off without so much as an encore.

So you get a situation in which the artists, as Lopetegui pointed out, don’t get enough time to perform a decent set, and the audience ends up sitting there until 11 or later on a weeknight, not counting the half-hour it takes to get your car out of the stack-parked lots.

My suggestion is this: First, book only two acts per concert. Start at 8, and let each act play for an hour or so with a 15-minute intermission. Even with encores, you’d be out by 10:30. Second, maybe do what the theaters are starting to: Make an announcement asking people to consider not carrying on conversations during the concerts (hey, somebody listens to the pre-concert messages, judging from the avalanche of applause that greets the “no smoking” announcement).

Finally, enforce the no-talking rule by stationing ushers to assist those concert-goers having trouble shutting up the chatterboxes (admittedly, they may have to hire bigger ushers for this).

I must say, though, that the Latin Jazz show had one distinct advantage over the other jazz concerts. The Latin music was so percussion-intensive, with such a wide variety of instruments, that the ubiquitous wine bottles rolling down the aisles ended up sounding like part of the program.

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