There was some ripping Miles Davis after On the Corner, in particular Get Up With It, Aghartha, Dark Magus and Pangaea, a roughly 3 year period from 72-75 where Davis and company recorded 4 double albums. Sort of at the same time, the Art Ensemble of Chicago returned from their sojourn to Paris to the US, Ornette Coleman began flirting with Prime Time, Cecil Taylor began performing and recording again after a stretch of obscurity, Anthony Braxton was writing some of his most innovative compositions, etc. The most fertile periods in jazz have always been those when the critics have insisted the music *wasn’t jazz*. Even John Hammond said this of Duke after the Carnegie Hall concert in 1941. “Duke’s not playing jazz anymore!” This is exactly what’s *irreverent* about Marsalis, by the way, this refusal to see the continually living breathing art form, to will it to stand still. Disrespectful and fatal. Worse than misguided. (Peter Breslin, comment to Rick Moody's Swinging Modern Sounds: A Post Somewhat about Jazz, 2008)

Did he mean *irrelevant*? Works that way too.