Reading Is Fundamental: Weird Music That Goes On Forever is the jazz book no one realized we needed.

Bob Suren’s cheeky, indispensable guide is a punk rock primer for the jazz-curious. It just has too many fershlugginer Kevin Seconds jokes!

“Music is any kind of sound made by one human being that moves another one,” our patron saint, Lester Bangs, wrote in an essay called Free JazzPunk Rock. Running in the April 1980 edition of the much-missed Musician magazine, I read it at 14, when my tastes and ideas were essentially forming for life. Unlike most of St. Lester’s work, this one didn’t grab me immediately and rewire me in an instant. It was more like a time bomb, ready to blow my world up in the very distant future….

“But any musician is only as good as his attitude, chops be damned or fall where they may, and rock 'n' roll is all attitude,” he continued, still connecting with what I was already thinking. “It was originally conceived as an outburst of inchoate obnoxious noise and that's what most of the best of it has remained. In other words, punk rock is as venerable as Little Richard.”

“By any standards of ‘good’ music, rock 'n' roll is just a lot of garbage noise, always has been and always will be or it's not rock 'n' roll anymore (cf Billy Joel).” Yeah, yeah, Lester was preaching to the choir here. He already had me at, “I love rock 'n' roll in its basest, crudest, most paleolithically rudimentary form. That's right, I love punk rock, and I'm not apologizing to anyone.” But then came his big crux; ”Great jazz is great art. But I submit that, when it's not arty, garbage noise can also be great art. Because great art is anything that stirs the human breast in profound ways that may even have deeper psychological and social implications, and that's just exactly what, say, the Sex Pistols did. You may despise them, but they can't be denied their impact. Who cares if they had no talent (a contention I consider debatable anyway)? Their talent was for aural carnage and rabble rousing.”

Okay, this was where I started getting confused, though I liked the defense of the Pistols, for sure. But I kept reading: “…Punk rock and the very best jazz can not only coexist among one group of musicians performing together at one time, but that successful examples of said mutant hybrid already exist in abundance. That's right, Iggy and the Stooges were every bit as good as Archie Shepp, and John Coltrane could have played with the Velvet Underground….It's all music, and has more qualities in common than many fans of either genre might at first think.”

Again, I read that when I was 14. I’d seen The Clash just six months earlier, and Patti Smith the year before. I’d just discovered Lester’s writing, and it was like gospel to me. But this piece? It made noises I understood, but others read like Sanskrit to me. I needed a secret decoder ring for this piece.

I think I’ve finally found that ring: Weird Music That Goes On Forever: A Punk’s Guide To Loving Jazz by Bob Suren.

Suren’s book’s comes at a moment when I’m almost (I repeat: almost) all punk-rocked-out. It happens when you spend two years writing a book about punk, and run a Substack looking at the world from a punk viewpoint. Jazz has been proving a panacea at this time, something I keep reaching for, rather than playing Rocket To Russia for the five millionth time. (Although Friend Of The ‘Stack Larry Hardy just sent me his label In The Red Records’ brand-new The Saints: (I’m) Stranded box set, which I’m appropriately spinning the bejeezus outta as I write this. Expect a full report next week.) And I already admitted in this space nearly two years ago that “I know jackshit about jazz,” in writing about that monument to human achievement, Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. “Asking me about jazz is a bit like asking Marjorie Taylor Greene advice on how to be a decent human being. I just know what I like in jazz.”

This is still the case. But there’s something about jazz—whether I’m really “getting it” or not—that resonates with me. The rhythms, the raw emotion, the freedom—it’s like staring into a fog of brilliance and hoping a few fragments will drift your way. Weird Music is uncovering a few more fragments and is hurling them at me. Which is kinda something Suren specialized in as a former record store owner. This is a jazz book written in the same irreverent, messy, don’t-give-a-shit style I would use if I were to take a crack at it. Suren’s approach is all about honesty and the punk rock spirit, and even though his perspective is shaped more by hardcore than the '77 punk ethos I come from, it’s still a book I can relate to. Well, somewhat—there’s way too many Kevin Seconds jokes to suit me, honestly. And how in fuck’s name can you compare the origin stories of Billie Holiday and G.G. Allin?!!

Where it works best, initially, is in Paul Mahern’s intro and especially original Circle Jerks drummer Lucky Lehrer’s foreword, where he recounts jazz and punk’s life-altering impact on him. The brief profiles of jazz greats are especially good. It’s like getting a backstage pass to the stories behind the sounds—quick hits on the innovators and revolutionaries who shaped jazz, all presented in a no-frills, digestible format.

But one glaring omission stood out to me: Gene Krupa. Sure, Buddy Rich, who is profiled, is a big name in jazz drumming. But to me, Krupa’s a far more influential figure, especially when it comes to the world of punk rock. Jerry Nolan of the New York Dolls, arguably punk’s greatest drummer in my book, was hugely influenced by Krupa’s style. The omission of Krupa from Weird Music felt like an oversight, especially considering his direct influence on punk's musical ethos. Krupa brought energy, a raw, dynamic power to his drumming that feels far more aligned with punk than Rich's technically impressive but often too flashy style.

Then again, my favorite Buddy Rich recordings are “the bus tapes”: “I’m up there working my balls off, tryin’ to do somebody a favor, and you motherfuckers are sucking all over the joint!”

But honestly, how in the holy goddamn can anyone write a sentence like “Kevin Seconds has written more songs than Duke Ellington and Adam Sandler combined”?! For one thing, WHAT THE FUCK HAS ADAM SANDLER GOT TO DO WITH ANYTHING?!!

So, yeah. Maybe the punk angle is the weakest thing about Weird Music? Maybe I would have preferred more serious analysis than some of these sophomoric jokes. (Mind you, I’m sure that’s also something the droves of unsubscribers The ‘Stack has seen in recent times are also thinking about This Space.) But the humor doesn’t completely undermine the substance—this book is packed with useful insights that make jazz feel accessible to someone who’s more familiar with The Saints than The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady. I flip through the pages, zeroing in on the select discographies and asking Alexa to play Suren’s recommendations. They’re a godsend. Having a jazz record guide written with a punk sensibility is something I didn’t know I needed, but now that I’ve got it, it’s a tool I’ll keep coming back to.

Microcosm Publishing is a goldmine for punk and DIY culture—I've picked up several of their books over the years, all of which have a lasting spot on my shelf. (In fact, there’s a bunch more of their titles I need to own. But that’s another story.) Weird Music That Goes On Forever already feels like one that’ll become more worn and dogeared as the years go by. Maybe Microcosm needs to send a couple of backup copies?

Whatever the case, Weird Music seemingly answers a call I never realized Lester Bangs placed to my teenage consciousness back in 1980. It does what Lester’s Free Jazz/Punk Rock essay couldn’t back then: It makes jazz feel like a natural extension of punk—a bridge from my past to my present. Now that’s a legacy I can get behind. And while I wish St. Lester had written this book (fewer Kevin Seconds jokes, bless your heart!), Suren has crafted something cheeky, indispensable, and unexpectedly essential—one that bridges punk pandemonium and jazz’s brilliance in a way this world never realized it needed.

P.S. – I said nothing about the fine illustration work throughout from Brian Walsby, possibly the only punk cartoonist in the world whose primary inspiration was Charles M. Schulz. And no, this doesn’t mean Thelonius Monk’s portrait looks like Schroeder, either! But his portraits here betray a depth of detail I can’t recall in his other work. I’m impressed!

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