In this video, Howard Moon and Vince Noir share a heated debate concerning the worth of jazz. Howard reduces Vince's disdain of jazz to a mere fear of jazz. He says to Vince, "You fear the lack of rules, the lack of boundaries.... The shapes! The Chaos!". BBC's "The Mighty Boosh" is successful in portraying Howard as a socially inept square. His obsession with Jazz is a direct contradiction to that character, sharing good company with the beats who also venerated Jazz as something revolutionary.
The connection between Jazz music and the beats has been explored ad naseum and has been well documented. Howard is correct in the assessment that Jazz pays no mind to boundaries, improvisation being one of its key tenants. The beats mimicked this strategy, disregarding conventions of poetic form in favor of something more natural and unedited. "First thought, best thought," which is often cited as being Ginsberg's mantra, glorifies putting down one's meditations without second guesses. The result is the purest of poetry. In his Beat Attitudes Professor Wilson quotes Ginsberg as saying that "like all good spontaneous jazz, newness is acceptable and expected- by hip people who listen." Elektro Ponce Vince Noir is simply not hip enough.
Both jazz and beat literature can be criticized as being too raw or unfinished, but that is where the bliss lies. Kerouac said "Beat means beatitude, not beat up. You feel in in a beat, in jazz- real cool jazz or a good gutty rock number." Find your bliss!
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