are The Necks dad-jazz?

I guess I would need an example of non-dad-jazz

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71k7KvqtMmL._UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

Fair point

My dad loved them, so a little?

I'm a dad and I love them too but it's not like my kids are listening to the hottest Gen Alpha jazz while I sadly shake my head, not getting it.

I'm a dad and my kid was born to The Necks and for whatever reason I feel ashamed

I liked the Necks in my 20s and I like the Necks in my 50s, before and after being a dad, no correlation that I can tell.

relatin' dads to jazz

living in sydney i have had many opportunities to see the necks over the years and they have provided me with some of my most sublime live listening experiences

i went to see them earlier this year after a few years off and they were good but i also felt for the first time that i had reached a limit, that i was over-familiar with the range of choices they were likely to make?

talking about it with a few different friends afterwards it felt like i was saying something a bit heretical, that people’s love for the idea of the band - and their reputation? - was an article of faith rather than active critical engagement. which in turn reminded me of how people will wax lyrical about the beloved pop music of their teens and 20s.

so i would say middle-aged jazz? but gender neutral

The phrase dad-jazz is more worthy of scrutiny in this regard than the music of The Necks.

Who else plays dad-jazz if The Necks qualify? Are Supersilent dad-jazz?

The phrase dad-jazz is more worthy of scrutiny in this regard than the music of The Necks.

Agreed. I think of "dad-jazz" as, like, Herbie Hancock, or the kind of acts that when they show up in between the neo-soul, hip-hop and singer-songwritery rock acts at a jazz festival, someone in the audience says, "At last, the real stuff."

I think of like Joe Sample or Flim and the BBs

but dads are getting older all the time

Dads are getting younger all the time. The other day I was in traffic behind a woman I thought was driving too slow, and I thought, Come on, grandma, find the gas pedal, only to remember that I am 54 years old so a woman in her seventies is not my grandmother's age, she's my mother's age. Now I think, Come on, ma, find the gas pedal.

For whatever reason, "dad-jazz" brings to mind men I have known who only began to cultivate a taste for jazz in middle age, in the same way somebody might cultivate a taste for expensive stereo equipment or premium whisky. There seems to be some kind of impulse in these men to settle into a respectable station in life and finally start appreciating the finer things that they had previously disregarded or scoffed at. Jazz is great for this, since as a cultural relic it emanates taste and sophistication. Still, it can be a hard music to wrap your head around, and additionally has the danger of making you appear like an "old fogy," which is never a great feeling on the front end or in the midst of a mid-life crisis. For this reason, artists who work at the outer edges of the genre (incorporating elements of Americana, ambient, electronic, or funk/soul), as well as artists who have some kind of "bite," some kind of cool cred, seem to be preferable for jazz dads. So, Wynton Marsalis would not be dad-jazz, but Bill Frisell or Kamasi Washington would be. The Necks? idk, borderline, maybe

Oh, Bill Frisell is definitely dad-jazz. Shit, he recorded an entire album of John Lennon songs (not just Beatles songs but also solo Lennon songs)! There's nothing more dad-jazz than that.

The Necks’ more approachable efforts (Sex, Aquatic, Hanging Gardens, Three etc.) could easily have been packaged and marketed as the efforts of a post-rock band if they or their promoters had wished - in fact if I had been told that Chemist or Drive-By were the work of (post-Talk Talk spin-off band) O’rang when I first listened to them I would not have blinked. To the extent I think of the Necks as “dad-“ anything it’s probably dad-that rather than dad-jazz.

That doesn’t apply to their more improvisational-sounding releases like Piano Bass Drums or Vertigo of course.

i'm an old sod so my Dad's jazz is mainstream 60s Verve etc - Ahmad Jamal, Yusef Lateef, Ramsey Lewis, Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, Cal Tjader, Gerry Mulligan, Wes Montgomery, Chet Baker, Nina Simone et al

Not to my dad, but I know dads my age who have gotten very into International Anthem and the Jeff Parkerverse. Not the Necks though.

The Necks’ more approachable efforts (Sex, Aquatic, Hanging Gardens, Three etc.) could easily have been packaged and marketed as the efforts of a post-rock band if they or their promoters had wished - in fact if I had been told that Chemist or Drive-By were the work of (post-Talk Talk spin-off band) O’rang when I first listened to them I would not have blinked. To the extent I think of the Necks as “dad-“ anything it’s probably dad-that rather than dad-jazz.

Yes, I don't hear very much "jazz" in a lot of their music but that's how they're marketed or perhaps it's how they think of themselves... I don't actually know, I've never read any interviews with them.

I wasn’t meaning to suggest I don’t hear much jazz in their sound. And they’re certainly more devoted to jazz notions of improvisation than most post-rock was, even post-rock with very clear jazz influences like Tortoise. Which is perhaps why the basic sound of their first few albums (In A Silent Way meets Future Days) remains such a handy skeleton key for thinking about their relationship to jazz and not-jazz both, because a commitment to both improvisation and studio editing come down to them from both sides of that family tree.

I meant more that if they sound like the “dad” version of anything to me - the music one might graduate to as a more mature and chill form of other stuff you were into previously - it would probably be the Future Days side of their family tree, and similarly stuff like Talk Talk, Bark Psychosis, Laika and, yes, Tortoise etc.

I am a dad and yes to that.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Perpetually offended at musical labels that rely on gender and reproductive status on the basis that they are exclusionary and not inclusive 👎🏻

even riot grrrl?

xp must be tiring!

much like the necks

sorry i like the necks just fine but that was a juicy dangler

“Dad-jazz” isn’t exclusionary like “riot grrrl”, it’s exclusionary like “manspread” or “mansplain”. Who wants to be included in it?

Dad jokes
Dad rock
If it’s an epithet ok I guess; but it’s not a category. Even taking gender out of the picture, relying on reproductive status is cheap and exclusionary.

I honestly never liked riot grrrl much either. At least it wasn’t reliant on reproduction.

xp most of all, it's pejorative and tiresome

dad jazz implies a mom jazz

riot laddd

A great bunch of riot laddds.

Tony Buck = dadfluencer

dad jazz implies a mom jazz

please, birthing person jazz

i ordered a tony buck cd from germany's slowest ebay giant, but it has exactly the same barcode no. as an offspring single so i got that instead

Maybe some Offspring fan got the Tony Buck

“is this great band bad?” no wonder people hate ILM, fuck off with the entire concept of this poll

"dad jazz implies a mom jazz"

https://i.discogs.com/QLg6twblx6GCwlY3OgKxo7IGdSoVD7wfIn3exm_FENk/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTYyOTMx/MzEtMTQxNTc1MDgw/MS02NjQ5LmpwZWc.jpeg

https://i.discogs.com/ScE27b665LKcGHmukIiKWoSEyZRcV8_ZpEL2jqnshJc/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:599/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTMyMzQ4/OTEtMTQ4MjIxNTA4/My03MjkwLmpwZWc.jpeg

https://i.discogs.com/waI7Al_50If-u0RXQvSaYyAJn9BCFsgg6KhuYZ-qEs0/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTk4ODgy/ODgtMTQ5MjgwODE2/Mi0zODIxLmpwZWc.jpeg

https://i.discogs.com/H4MNifWNK5SJlv3vQyj3CDXQbOT6VYQ2DACy8XXMQ8Q/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:597/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTMyODgw/MDEtMTUzNjc4ODU3/OC05MzYyLmpwZWc.jpeg

Bleach that skin tone even whiter

for the record i agree with the haters of this poll.

if ilx dads would like a special thread for themselves i support it.

They already have so many!

Even if we use this label, it's only a zing with a sting for those who have to have it that way. Otherwise, there is good dad-jazz and bad dad-jazz, like with other music etc.

Yeah, don't get the impression the poll creator was even suggesting they are 'bad'. More that H.P has devoted quality time to them, and seems to like them, but it's complex. I haven't contributed to the thread but did find this bit legitimately fascinating:

I'm a dad and my kid was born to The Necks and for whatever reason I feel ashamed

*I* don't get the impression, rather.

I think the Necks might have initiated that particular take

I don’t want to upset people unnecessarily, but suggesting that we cannot refer to standard cliches of heteronormativity negatively because it “centres” historically-accreted notions of gender, and the capacity for and activity of reproduction, strikes me as extremely counter-productive.

I try not to put things in personal terms, but as a gay man, I have spent my entire life grappling with the fact that I am extremely unlikely ever to be a dad, so I don’t think I am saying this from a place of privilege. Does this give me authority to tell other people how to feel about this issue? Of course not. But I’m surprised to be told that I am thinking about this stupidly or not in good faith.

“Dad” as a social descriptor is only interesting precisely to the extent it is not, in fact, a default category - it is a concept that, upon any proper examination, reveals how weird and arbitrary popular understandings of gender and power actually are.

I reject in the strongest possible terms the suggestion that it is wrong for me to engage with that concept in a critical way, so long as they do so respectfully.

basically Pittwater music

xp

Sex jazz will inevitably lead to Dad jazz in many cases

The Necks are great, they are not “dad jazz” or whatever other dumb fucking category you made up, and the premise of this thread is fucking ridiculous.

How do you respond to the misguided conception held by some that you’re merely a jazz band?

I guess grand piano, acoustic bass, and drum kit is a pretty iconic instrumentation, so it’s understandable some people automatically conclude we play jazz. That’s not to deny the presence of jazz as an ongoing influence on our music. The jazz scene is where we first met each other, we all still love that incredible artform, and outside The Necks we all still play it professionally in varying degrees.

https://i.discogs.com/8VPDJrvw6v0FtYAR-BDjxWtGNnpA2L0Ih-GMdm6nKts/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:596/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTQzMTcy/NTMtMTQ1NDQzMTky/Mi05NTY2LmpwZWc.jpeg

https://i.discogs.com/WcQ9O78Lh_9z8XXaWBzaiwbED3NLSMbMTdyw1RVJAAw/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:575/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTEwMDU0/MzA1LTE1MTcxMzI3/OTctNTg5MC5qcGVn.jpeg

in the most not malicious/not aggro/not poor disposition sort of way---

i think this forum needs a proper cannonball adderley topic before any sort of gendered jazz substyle discussion can happen.🎧🙂

also in a not mean but sorta very autistic way--the necks are kinda boring on recordings. fine, but meh.

bookmark removed

Rate ""Jazz" as a more questionable term than "Dad" tbh.

fascinating in-depth interview with Stollman from 2005 here:
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/bernard-stollman-the-esp-disk-story-by-clifford-allen.php?&pg=10?page=1

AAJ: Well, at least for the improvisational spectrum of the catalog, you never referenced the term 'jazz' on any of them.

BS: There is a reason for that. It's because the musicians, at least the ones I knew, more than one, expressed a great disgust at the use of the term 'jazz' as a racist thing. It's not a music thing—if you play the sax and you're black, the word itself is so imprecise and racist in general. Duke Ellington, as you know from his autobiography Music Is My Mistress, he detested the word 'jazz.' He did string quartets, symphonies, musicals, and here they're summing him up as a 'jazz' artist, which is a profound insult because the word does not describe what he is doing. He was not alone; I found this thread among many of the musicians I knew who opened up to me and said they detested the word. I constantly tried not to use the word.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, April 21, 2015 11:55 PM (eleven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've been doing some ESP-Disk digging recently ^^

It might have been better if he'd constantly tried to pay the musicians on his label tbf.

The Necks are great, they are not “dad jazz” or whatever other dumb fucking category you made up, and the premise of this thread is fucking ridiculous.

never heard "The Necks" in my life, but I wouldn't necessarily consider "dad-jazz" a pejorative, and I don't get the impression that HP (or his friend) does

bookmark removed

post flagged.👍🏻

Pearls clutched.

In the interests of critical genealogy I seem to remember dad rock being coined in Select mag some time in 1996/97 with the return of Weller and epigones like Ocean Colour Scene, Reef etc and the sense that people were making records their old men would like (in practice this was at least partly the influence of venerable IPC photographer Tom Sheehan). I doubt it was a conscious echo of the Cahiers du Cinema term "cinema de papa" (circa 1961) but it seems to be a term that boycritics find themselves reinventing for different forms at different times. Nothing for it but a systematic de-Oedipalisation of the canon.

Hate to defend a Dodgers fan but dad jazz is not necessarily a pejorative imo, seems like a joke and this thread is wild. Also the description of something as dad jazz does not mean that something is only for dads, is that a controversial view or something.

(i have lesbian friends who describe the necks as "basically sex music")

― Tracer Hand, Sunday, August 16, 2026 4:39 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

wkiw these lesbians

Lots of jazz musicians hate the word jazz (see Nicholas Payton on BAM/Black American Music, and he's definitely not the only one), I also try not to use it in certain contexts.

Can't believe jaymc doesn't know The Necks.

*thread bookmarked*

I know The Necks from seeing ILM threads about them, but I get them confused with No-Neck Blues Band

Have not heard their music is what I meant.

Tribute bands I will almost certainly form next week: The Neckbeards, performing meditative, meandering jazz odysseys through the songs of Eliminator and Afterburner.

I like the Necks but obviously not enough to lose my mind over a piddling little poll thread on ILM

are the rednex grandad-jazz

do you think that granddads are younger than dads

Some are.

"Leisure Jazz" seems close! And I love "Cinema De Papa," and already in 1961! Have read that Sinatra became known in mid-50s as epitome of Adult Pop, vs. that greasy kid stuff, and certainly his 60s resurgence was Dad Pop, your DAD flauning his black straw fedora, his raincoat, his cigs, his hairplugs, and his custtomized big-hit ballads (also kicking boot w "That's Life," homage to Ray Charles, whom he had long called "a genius.) Appropriate yet cool duets w daughter Nancy, all of that.

And when I first read about pub rock, esp. or mainly Dr. Feelgood, thought it was not nec for actually old men, but maybe some in late 20s/early 30s, who maybe appreciated punk and/or new wave, but kinda wanted what Dion has called The British Infusion, turning American (and British and other) kids on to blues and older r&b via early Beatles, Stones, Animals etc. covers, wanting that kind of fun again, from their kidhood.
Although pub also actually incl. some original songs that stood on their own, like those of Ducks Deluxe. Nevertheless, such impressions continued when I heard contemporaneous original songs of for inst Graham Parker & The Rumour and Springsteen & E Street Band, both acts I was into at the time (when the stars lost or de-emphasized the bands, not so much).

If I actually had to invent a sub genre for the Necks it would be “meditation jazz”

Which goes back to my original point that maybe somehow was obscured: there’s a better option than “dad-“
That’s it!

Follow-on poll idea (that I won't be starting): are The Necks jazz?

personally speaking, i prefer dad tech house and dad j-pop

dadstep

intelligent dad music (idm)

(dad arr.)

the dazz band

did we ever get this sorted

speaking of the Necks, this new-ish Michael Beach live album is great (features Lloyd Swanton, not to mention Dirty Three-er Mick Turner). https://25diamondslabel.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-phoenix-central-park

Dad Beach! "Old men in tanktops/Bermudas and black socks." (my Dad and Grandad).

xp local record store has been shilling this. Big Black Plume didn't take me on first listen, but am enjoying this much more. Love an extended floaty mick turnery intro!

anyways, we did get this sorted, and my friends roll of film came back. Greetings!
https://i.postimg.cc/4y4B3qXq/775868414-1576466784170697-6393852635858284164-n.jpg

niiiiiiiiiiice

cant help but find it interesting that folks who consider "dad jazz" offensively exclusionary wouldn't also have a similar problem with class/status/money signifiers like "wine bar", "dinner party", "coffee table", etc

what

not the same

Sorry not the same

It's not a class issue

and "wine bar" "dinner party" and "coffee table" are not class/status money signifiers. but poor unfunny fiction is in line with this thread's premise so there's that.

sure theyre not in the sense that reproductive ability or a certain gender expression isnt required to be a dad, but its ofc implied. gender & class are obv different things but idk always worth reflecting on ones relationship to class-based language, ymmv of course

if someone said something is "wine bar jazz" i personally would not assume that they meant "the gritty street-level jazz of the working class" but hey its a big world out there, theres all different kinds of wine bars i suppose

and "wine bar" "dinner party" and "coffee table" are not class/status money signifiers.

I’m not even committed to this thread but…these very much are

ok i see, i misread one eye open