Creativity Quote by Evan Parker

Parker’s comparison isn’t really about Madonna; it’s about the machinery that makes Madonna possible. By invoking “Bangkok to Birmingham,” he sketches the seamless global pipeline of pop culture: instant naming, instant distribution, instant consensus. The casual “It’s not like, I don’t know” performs a kind of shrugging realism, as if he’s refusing both bitterness and fantasy. He’s not pleading for the jazz avant-garde to be “recognized.” He’s pointing out that recognition is structurally engineered elsewhere.

The subtext is a quiet defense of marginality that doesn’t romanticize itself. “Our stuff” signals a community - improvisers, experimentalists, musicians whose work often depends on context, risk, and the unrepeatable moment. That kind of art doesn’t travel as a standardized product, and Parker’s phrasing “not in that mass market” lands like a neutral fact with an implied critique. It’s not that the music lacks value; it lacks the packaging that turns value into velocity.

Context matters: Parker comes out of Britain’s free improvisation scene, where the point is often to escape the predictable hook, the repeatable chorus, the “same week” release cycle. Pop’s power is its synchronization; Parker’s world is asynchronous by design and by circumstance. The line exposes a cultural economy where ubiquity gets mistaken for significance, while the less commodifiable work survives through smaller circuits: venues, labels, word-of-mouth, and listeners willing to chase something that won’t chase them back.