The jazz vacuum

I've been thinking lately about my jazz journey to this point, mainly because now that I have some (what I consider to be) preliminary knowledge about the world of jazz, I'm in what I'm calling the "jazz vacuum". It's that certain, dangerous area where you know enough to know that you still don't know very much, but when you talk jazz with non-aficionados, they sometimes get that glossy-eyed look and don't have any idea what you're talking about. Although I've always thought of this blog as a blog for jazz beginners, I've recently had people tell me that it is "too advanced" or that they "don't know any of the songs" I'm talking about. And here, let me interject that I do not consider myself all that knowledgeable about jazz...yet. I know a lot more than I knew a year ago, but even one year of full immersion only scratches the surface of the jazz universe. Maybe I do know more about jazz than your average person (I hope so), but I'd be embarassed to compare my knowledge with, say, a 50 year old musician who's recently converted all his vinyl jazz records to MP3's and has been playing in a jazz band for 15 years.

The other thing I'm finding in the jazz vacuum is the variety of what constitutes jazz, or what people think constitutes jazz. Take my mother, for instance. She told me that she listens to the jazz station in the car "all the time", but she'd never heard of Miles Davis, Bill Evans, or Helen Merrill. She did know Dave Koz and Boney James, though, two names who I could recollect but whose music I've never heard. (And we could argue about the definition of jazz, and what constitutes smooth jazz, contemporary jazz, "classic" jazz, and all that, but we're not going to here. At least, not today.) That's part of the vacuum. Even if you talk about jazz, with a "jazz fan", you might not be talking about the same thing. (And again, you could argue who is in the vacuum and who isn't, but why bother?)

My point is I'm not real sure it is a bad thing to be in the jazz vacuum, or that there is a way out of it. Maybe it just is. Still, I've come up with some ideas for narrowing the width of the vacuum:
-Buy and read some books on jazz, maybe even college textbooks. (I like getting the second latest editions - you can get $125 books for like five bucks.)
-Sort my record collection by issue date instead of artist name. (This would probably be one of the single most productive and visual things I could do, but I haven't quite figured out what to do with boxed sets and compendiums, which I have a pretty good amount of.)
-Start hanging out in jazz clubs. (We don't have many good ones around here, and that takes a lot of time and money. I like a drink if I'm in a bar, you know.)

Or, I could just keep playing, listening and blogging. It's served me pretty well so far.