I really cannot tell you much about John Scofield, being that his brand of noodley fusion jazz guitar is just not my cup o’ concrete. You may dig it. I just don’t.
But the afore-cited Tumblr NYC Nostalgia (and I love, by the way, that they make absolutely no bones about the content they’re serving up) posted this video from 1986, and I thought it was worth sharing here -- not because I think there’s a long silent herd of fusion jazzbos whose tastes I’ve been derelict in servicing, but because this video features some great footage of Canal Street circa 1986.
I’ve spoken about my experiences on Canal Street a couple of times here (most recently here), but I’ve always been fascinated by it. Comparable to parallel byways like 14th Street, it seems to exist as a neighborhood all its own – entirely separate from the flavors of its bordering SoHo, Chinatown and TriBeCa.
And while much of the city that surrounds Canal Street has certainly transformed, one might be hard-pressed to say that Canal has really changed that much on the surface, or at least not to the extent that some other areas have. Sure, lots of shadier business operations that used to be conducted up and down Canal have gone (seemingly along with many of the plastics outlets that used to hold court there), but there are still myriad opportunities to procure goods of dubious origin along the street, although I suppose it does have less of a casbah-like vibe.
Anyway, enjoy this trip back through three decades, when hirsute hepcats and jazz dudes with guitars ran rampant…
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