Day 44: Chip Shelton "More What Flutes 4...Live" and Jacky Terrasson "A Paris..."

I missed a chance to name a day, I called the 42nd day the 'Meaning of Life Day,' I should have called yesterday Richard Petty Day. I got nothing for the 44th day.

Chip Shelton
More What Flutes 4.....Live!

There are CDs in here from people I've never heard of who have volumes of work, meaning that they've managed to sustain interest in at least a branch of their work to merit multiple volumes. Usually it's only a 'volume two' and yet I still feel bad that I don't know who these people are--especially since it was kind of my job to know who they were and someone handed me a CD so I would.

But I don't, and I didn't. And I don't know who this guy is despite him apparently having a series of four CD's asking...I'm not sure--if his flute said something? Which flute he should use? It's unclear.

Alright, enough of that.

I was kind of expecting a few things, either another one of those 'world of flutes' type CDs, or something on the 'easy listening' end of the spectrum, or at least cool jazz. I guess it's got some elements of the latter. But that might just be my bias towards the 'mellowing agents' that I think flute and guitar have (despite thinking Roland Kirk's flutes are awesomely funky.) But this is really just straight combo jazz, a little Coltrane, standards like Lester Leaps In.

Well, completely wrong about the album title. I guess not completely wrong, it is his fourth album. But according to the rather sparse liner notes, it's in response to the 'mad-positive' response he got to his previous album 3 Flutes Up where he played three different flutes. So on this he upped the ante. Fair enough. You don't usually get to hear much else other than the 'normal' flute and the piccolo.

This is really kind of good. Apparently not famous enough for Wikipedia. His bio tends to focus on the fact that he plays more than just the normal concert C flute. Released in 2000, this appears to be the last album he put out, at least according to his website. Too bad, I'm kind of getting into this. Flashback is pretty funky.

Jacky Terrasson
A Paris

Yet another Blue Note CD. I wonder how much of the Blue Note catalog I actually have...it has to be significant...it is a large catalog, but still...

Now we get Jacky Terrasson on his own.

This actually got off to a pretty good start with a slow funky groove (I know I call a lot of things funky, it's not because I lack another term but rather I listen to a lot of stuff that is in fact funky.)

These two albums are actually fairly complementary. There's a general lightness to them, a little playfulness in their set up, with some underlying funkiness thrown in and some straight up technical progressive jazz. Both kind of easy to listen to and kind of hypnotize. I feel like both entries are kind of light (I've usually written way more at this stage in the album, I'm already half way through), but that's because I start to just sit back and listen to it.

The sad thing is that I don't know that these songs are going to stand out on the iTunes shuffle. Already, at something like 88+ cds having gone into the hard drive when I put it on shuffle there have been songs that have come up where I think, "Where did this come from?" despite having listened to each one and written about it. So out of sheer volume good music like this, music that is just good to listen to, won't necessarily stand out. Rather what is going to grab attention is the bombastic, the weird, the caustic. Those are going to be the tracks where I go, "Oh yeah, I remember that." With this stuff I might think just as the song ends "That was good, who was that again? Ah, too late...next time around." I mean, I already forgot that I already did one Jacky Terrasson album.

This might be a quality shared in the world at large, where there is no time for the good to stand out--only enough for the loud and strange to stand out and be noticed. As a result, I feel like I'm condemning a CD when I merely call it 'good.'

Ah, sweet, La Vie En Rose is the name of that tune they always play when showing Paris. Now I know.

I don't understand the 'fade in'. I don't really like fade outs, but fade ins I don't get at all.

Both albums end with a kind of poppy bit with vocals, even. Terrasson's is a little more upbeat and more likely for me to not associate it with the rest of the album when it comes up on random later.