{"id":15609,"date":"2008-06-15T13:07:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-15T17:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2008\/06\/15\/the-chet-list\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:49:44","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:49:44","slug":"the-chet-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2008\/06\/15\/the-chet-list\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chet-List"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other night, I went to see Let’s Get Lost<\/a><\/em>, a documentary about the life of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. The friend I went with fell asleep at one point, and I didn’t blame him, because it was a meandering, undirected collection of archive clips about Baker in his young and handsome days then later in his drug-addled ruin, pieces of music set to unrelated film stock, and interviews with musicians who admired him and the many women he”¦ well, basically f*ed over.<\/em>
Now that my novel is finished, I’m finding it fun to have all my creative energy free to do anything I want, instead of needing it all directed at the book. One of the things I wanted to do was try to sketch Baker ’cause it’s been a long time since I tried sketching, and by the end he was a haggard mess, which should make for a good life study. (That’s another thing: drugs are boring<\/em>. Amazingly, Baker stayed talented and capable till the end both as a singer and a trumpet player, but when he spoke”¦ my God, the slow, lingering drawl of his junkie voice sounded like it would never find a thought.)
Two things struck me on thinking back about the movie. First, Baker definitely did have something<\/em> that made him more compelling than other musicians, and it wasn’t technical ability. One of his women, a hard-edged, junk-shaky lounge performer, sang a number and was fine. In terms of vocal ability, she was probably equal to him. But”¦ she was just singing. I wasn’t a fan of Baker’s before this film, but when he sings, it’s like the smoky thought-stuff of a great poem or a dream you get lost in that you keep remembering for half the day. What is<\/em> that difference?
The other thing that struck me was the bickering between these women over this wreck of a man, who obviously had an ability to mesmerise people, either with his talent or an affected vulnerability. And make no mistake, he was awful<\/em> to them all, each in a uniquely abusive way. “But,” I thought, “Chet Baker didn’t have a problem. These women<\/em> had a problem with Chet Baker. But Chet Baker had no problem with Chet Baker.” There’s a lesson in this for me somewhere.
I’m going to the reunion of my university theatre school this week. Chet Baker aged 57 was a frightening sight, and I couldn’t help wondering how I’ve weathered over these last twenty years. I’ve pulled out some pictures from back then and”¦ I think I’m better off now. At least a lot of my pictures from the Eighties have me in costume, sparing posterity from visions of my bad dress sense (which is no better now).
I dunno; I think being an adult suits me better. Not being a junky helps, too.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other night, I went to see Let’s Get Lost, a documentary about the life of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. The friend I went with fell asleep at one point, and I didn’t blame him, because it was a meandering, undirected collection of archive clips about Baker in his young and handsome days then later […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}