"Because they're the best songs"

Andy Hamilton's Sal Mosca interview:

Like Konitz and Tristano, you focus a lot on standards.
Yeah, that's it – just standards.
Most of the originals I like are based on standards.  I've composed some that are based on
standards, and some that are not.
What is the reason for focussing on that repertoire?
Because they're the best songs.  They're better than folk music, better than classical or opera
they speak of the people, and they speak of Broadway, and they speak of love and they're by some of the greatest composers – Gershwin, Kern...it's much more pleasant to be singing a beautiful song inside yourself while you're improvising, than to be singing some senseless ditty.

I had intended to blog on about the above. But I've decided not to do so. See Prof. Hamilton's home page. By the way he's one of the few writers on music aesthetics that I am able to read without coming down with a recurrence of that nauseating virus without a name, but which might bear the description, "academic - why not publish anyway - music aesthetics?".