You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Top 7 Jazz References in "The Office" - #179

Episode Date: August 15, 2018

In today's episode, Peter and Adam discuss some of the funniest moments in popular culture that reference jazz. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast. Daily Jazz Advice and Entertainment coming at you. Dude, what was that? Well, today we're talking about the top seven jazz references in the television program, the office. Nice. And that's a little bit of one of my favorite ones, a little prelude, a little foreshadowing, if you will, since we're going to get dramatic.

I love it when there's a show where obviously someone either loves jazz or hates jazz in the writing staff. Yeah. And they put these references in all the time. I know. And I would always see these over the years. since I was a kid and I would always get so excited whenever jazz was mentioned in the mainstream media. And then I was like, man, I should keep a list of these. And then as I was coming up to this, I was like, oh, that's why I should have been keeping a list.

And I never did. I had them floating around in my head. And I knew the office. I'm a big fan of the office. And then, of course, the show's been off for a few years. But it's sort of cycling back with some young folks. Your kids aren't old enough yet, but they'll get into it. Yeah, yeah.

And of course, all this stuff is available on Netflix or whatever. No, my kids watched a B movie. You've seen this B movie? And there's a thing that Jerry Seinfeld does. He's done it in other shows, I think, where he says, you like jazz? And then my little six-year-old son, that's all he says. Right. He looks at me, smiles and goes, you like jazz?

Well, it's just like the perfect intersection for him between, you know, dad's world and some mainstream media, you know. Totally. So, yeah, so if you have not familiar with the office, this will probably not be interesting at all. you can just tune in tomorrow. But you might get a little bit of interest. Just a quick thing. The office is literally a show about the office. Actually, there was the UK version.

Did you ever see that one? Yeah, that's one of my favorite shows of all. Yeah, that was great. With, uh, what was the other? Dude, everybody knows what the office is. Okay, fine. Yeah. Okay, good.

We didn't lose anybody. Okay, good. So the first one, let's jump right in because we actually may have more than seven. I got excited. And what, you know, what happened was, I remembered all these, but it's surprisingly hard to find these. Like, I thought I was just going to be able to Google, like, jazz references, the office. office and then you get a bunch of stuff by like the Utah Jazz Basketball. Turns out no one cares

as much about the music music music. It's like all this stuff is on there but going by there. There's such little references but there's a lot of them, you know. So some of the ones that I kind of remembered I couldn't find but I found some important ones. This is a big one. This is the first one. So this is just to kind of let's see. Let me roll it back here. This is Dwight and Angela. And actually I think this was like a deleted scene or something I heard later. But I remember seeing this. Maybe I saw it as deleted. But they're outside talking. It has nothing to do with jazz. So like most of the references, it's just totally random. But here it is. You're not stupid. Jazz. It's played a right notes. That's a good point. It is a good point.

But I mean, it's just totally, yeah, some writer like probably loves jazz, but it's like, what are people's actual, like the 40 million viewers we have this week, what if they actually think about jazz, you know, to make them laugh. All right, bring up the next one. This is great, man. I could do this all day, actually. Okay, good. Yeah, are you available today? I am available. I am available. So this one was this like, you know, This is Creed. And Creed just says the most random stuff.

And this was the only one I could, I'm sure that he did a bunch of jazz. He's always kind of, because he's sort of old school. And he's weird. So they're like, of course, this is a perfect place to have some jazz references. But that was the only one I could find. But it's pretty good, you know. Jazz cats are blind. What's our third one?

So this one, now, there's a bunch of singing. It's a very musical show. Darrell, Andy, there's a bunch of them. So I was trying to find these. And I know there's a bunch more, but these are the ones I was able to find with a quick three-hour scurry. That's

Andy. Nice scatting, man. Thank you. I think I said dup instead of boob. Yeah. I think I said dupe instead of boob. Yeah.

Again, it's just like, what do people think about jazz? It's like going back to the Louis prima, you know, the, what was the Disney movie where he's just like scatting out of the Jungle Book, Jungle Book. Jungle Book.

three. What's number four? Oh, I guess I'm going to do all these days. That's okay. You get the phone up. All right. So then I was, it got me thinking. I was like, I know there was times when Darrell was scatting too. And then, oh, man, how do I get the, man, I'm off my game here. Can you pull up the next one? How's everybody doing today?

I'll see what I can do. Wait, maybe I can get it. You got it? Open. Yeah, yeah. Here comes. We're high tech here. So this is, um, this is Darrell. And this is like some scatting, I think. And then also a little bit of like in the,

side. So that like, you know, he was totally not talking about jazz and some of these things. And then then, you know, he kind of does. So the thing about Daryl's, the actor who plays him is actually, I've met him before he came to a gay guy. Craig Robinson. Craig Robinson. He's a musician. He's a really good piano player, good singer's musical guy. His brother, his younger brother, they're both from Chicago, is a really good jazz piano. It's on the scene up in New York now. So that was the only one I could find. from searching, but there's some other good ones I know with Darrell. Oh, okay.

Now, this one I finally found three hours into this last night when I should have been practicing one of our other seven lists. I have this queued up. Okay, this classy Christmas? Classy Christmas. You ready to go? Yeah, let's see what you. Thank you. Hi, I'm looking for Michael Scott.

Yes, that's me. Come on in. There's nothing classier than boring jazz music. I'm here to tell you. I made a bit of a judgment call. I hired one musician because I thought, what's better to hire an entire quartet for half an hour or one basses for the entire day?

So, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there, as we said. That was so great, man. So the first thing is, I think this guy's like a recrary. I couldn't find the other part, but I think it's like his neighbor, the bass player, but his condo building or something, because he's definitely showed, like you hear him practicing the background

on some other episode. And he can't play at all. He just like, boom. I mean, it would sound like me or you just like detuning the base. It's probably a writer on the show. I love the, I love that. There's nothing classier than boring jazz. So great, man.

And this is, yeah, this is from the episode The Classy Christmas. Oh, man. And Michael's trying to, you know, make it classy. And you just, why hire a whole trio, just hire a solo bass? Actually, I've had clients suggest that to me before. Of course. Clients, that's classy right there. All right, what's the next one?

You got the next one? I do. It's on YouTube. The basketball is like jazz. This is classic. Oh, yeah. And you know, this is one of the first episodes. It wasn't the pilot, but it wasn't that first pilot season.

That's right. I think this is one of the first episodes that wasn't based off of the UK show. Right, because they don't play basketball in the UK. They do not. And this one I had trouble finding a good, like a good version of. It'll be funny, though, because I think you can hear it at least. Here's the quote. So it's like, this is somebody that put it up on YouTube.

As they were watching it and laughed, that's why you heard them laugh. But he's like, basketball is like jazz. It's all boobab. You know, the usual kind of stuff. That episode, though, was amazing. The basketball is great. So for the seventh one, I added one. That's not from the office.

It's from Seinfeld, actually. This was a whole episode arc where Elaine was dating a jazz edition, a tenor saxophonist. And something happens in their relationship where basically, after she convinces him of this thing, he loses his sound, if you want to bring it up there on the old YouTube. Okay. He loses his sound and she like,

after he loses his sound, also she's like, I'm out. Okay, here we go. And Elaine's like walking out during this. It's her fault. Yeah, yeah. She's kind of looking unapprovingly and now she's leaving.

It's very time-town. This might be the same as the bass player. and classy Christmas just picking up an instrument for the first time but could he actually play earlier in the episode? Yeah.

Oh, he could play. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's worth, I don't want to get into it, it's a little dirty, but it's worth checking out the whole episode. Alvancard jazz, there you go. That's good stuff.

Good stuff. Well, this was fun. This was fun. Yeah. I mean, I love, I mean, really, it's all about the sort of mainstream jazz references. And I just want to give a big shout out to

it didn't make it in because I couldn't find anything, but I was sure there was a James Spader jazz reference somewhere. He's a huge jazz fan in real life. Yeah, and he was only on the office for a little bit. He was kind of the boss and it was a little bit of all. I always thought it was great. He played Robert, California.

A lot of people felt like, you know, it was a tough role to fill. After Steve Carell. Exactly. But I know he must be because he's a really big jazz fan. That's awesome. Well, and shout out to the office. I mean, we have a whole episode on pretty much office clips about jazz is pretty great. But we should do another one, just general like jazz and mainstream.

popular culture, I think it would be fun. Because there's a lot of, I'm thinking of some from movies that are pretty funny too. That's right. You ever see like Jerry McQuire? Anyway, we can get into that later. We'll do a whole other episode. Yeah, well, I mean, when we do get into it, you'll hear it.