I'm Anstrained Champs, and this is to the best of our knowledge.

Do you remember the first time you fell in love with a piece of music?

I think back to my first introduction to jazz, and it was really a life-changing moment for me.

I was in high school.

I went into a jazz club, the lighthouse.

It's down on the beach near Los Angeles.

And literally within the first 20 seconds of hearing the music, I said to myself, this is it.

This is what I've been looking for.

And ever since then,

my life has been changed by that introduction to jazz. This is jazz critic Ted Joya. And what he says reminds me that we all have these seminal jazz moments. Like the first time you heard a

love supreme or finding out how cool Miles Davis was, or taking

a maiden voyage with Herbie Hancock. And for me, I don't remember a time when jazz wasn't part of my

life. My dad was a professional jazz musician in New York City, and from the time I was born,

jazz just permeated my childhood.

I can remember lying in bed and hearing this recording, or something kind of like it,

playing somewhere in another room, and it would feel like waves of sound were rocking me to sleep,

like floating in an ocean.

But somewhere along the way, people started talking about jazz as an artifact.

There's an attitude prevalent in jazz nowadays.

And it's one I've got to say, I think it's so bad for fans and for the music.

And it's this idea that jazz is a kind of nutritional supplement or it's a kind of vitamin. You listen to it because it's good for you. And to my mind,

that completely negates the reason I came to jazz and the other fans I know the reason they came to

...