There is an ad campaign out for Sour Patch Kids where little animated Sour Patch candies do something messed up to someone and then follow it up with something nice with the tag line, "First they're sour, then they're sweet." I've had my issues with it, since the messed up things that they do are way more severe than being adorable can make up for, but that's not why I bring it up.
I bring it up because the Albatross has just pulled a Sour Patch Kids bit on me. Yesterday I entered a smooth jazz saxophone player who had a name deceptively similar to a free/progressive jazz player who I was a fan of. As a result I was kind of moody about the whole entry.
Well, after two empty nests--a celtic 20th Century composition album and another Real World entry, there was a fake out. Inside a Scatman Crothers CD (you may know him as the voice of "Jazz" the Autobot on the Transformers. Or, as a legendary jazz performer and prolific actor. Or as a Martini Rossi 935 Porsche race car that turns into a robot) and instead there was an actual David Murray (not a 'Mc' in sight) CD inside instead. Completely random pick, I swear.
David Murray Deep River
Ah yeah, that's the stuff...Murray isn't the most 'agressive' of the progressive/free jazz players by a long shot. I haven't seen him by himself in concert (I have as a member of the World Saxophone Quartet), but I don't envision him leaning into his saxophone's mic and yelling like I've seen Pharaoh Sanders do (in one of the coolest shows I ever attended). There's a little more exploration that goes into his style than shear sound. The second and third tracks are longer, slower, modal pieces with sparse, drawn out solos, M'biza being done on a bass clarinet.
In any gathering of saxophone players my default favorite always goes bottom up. First the bari, then the tenor player, then the alto. If all you play is soprano and your name isn't Sidney Bechet, stop it. But my love for the World Saxophone Quartet is so convoluted that I honestly think that my favorite is which ever one of them I'm listening to at the moment. I arrive at this conclusion because I was about to declare him my favorite when I realized that I have the exact same reaction when listening to my Hammiet Blueitt recordings.
These Coltrane-style modal pieces have a tendency to hypnotize me. I might start off moving my head to them, but with the amount of poly-rhythm going on it usually slows and settles into a thousand yard stare. Not a 'thing I have on in the background,' even if it is, I'll slowly stop what I'm doing and commence 'contemplating my navel' as some soccer coaches have referred to it.
This is kind of the stealth progressive jazz, like if I catch it at the right moment I might lure someone who is resistant to more, lets say 'aggressive,' sounds. Murray works his way towards that. We're four or five minutes in before the madness starts gradually. It never ultimately works, though. Sooner or later someone goes, "You listen to this on purpose?" and I have to switch to something tamer.
This album contains Mr. P.C., which is my favorite piece of Coltrane's Giant Steps album. This also brings the total of songs called "Mr" something to ten. Oddly enough, jazz and surf music are tied for most represented.
Well, the Albatross can't be completely predictable even when it's making up for earlier cruelty. I've talked a few times about the new swing revival that happened for what felt like a couple of months in the nineties. In an attempt to cash in on this quickly flaring trend several labels pushed out these kinds of compilations. Some of them contained actual artists, sometimes there were super-bland recordings by studio bands. This falls into the former category at least, it's a sort of 'greatest hits' album...just not really a 'jump jive' greatest hits album, more of a general swing greatest hits.
It has such stalwart standards as Take the 'A' Train and In the Mood and Sing, Sing, Sing. It does have some actual jump jive on it, too, with Cab Calloway's Jumpin' Jive (makes you feel six foot when your four foot five) and Louis Jordan's Caldonia (what makes your big head so hard?) I think I've talked about this before, I'm so familiar with these songs that those lyrics jump in my head not because of the original artists but because of wearing out the recording I got from the Scottish jump jive group Fat Sam's Band I encountered at the Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee. I don't have that recording anymore (I don't think) and have since acquired the original recordings, but that was what made me familiar with it (and started my weird obsession with wearing pleated pants, but that's another story...)
I now have another version of Cherokee as well, this one by Charlie Bernet.
Alright, I don't know this one, 47th Street Jive. It's all the awesome elements of authentic jump jive, including a weird skit/exchange between the singer and the band leader thick with hipster (before the people that term applied to were insufferable) slang which carries into the lyrics which are usually a direct address to someone who either needs to lighten up or stop doin' you wrong (in this case stop talking because you're about to lie.)
And really what compilation capitalizing on the swing revival is complete without Sing, Sing, Sing, which closes out the album. But this is no slouch version of the song, it's Benny Goodman's nearly nine minute long version. Take that, swing dancers.
Starting out of the box with a fake out, I was looking forward to today, because I thought it was going to be Greg Osby and I was going to start having a progressive/free jazz saxophone representation to at least keep pace with the current leaders, blues and big band music.
But instead, it was another progressive/funk jazz player hiding inside the Greg Osby CD.
Even better, there's also an ambiguous self help CD in today's line up. Seriously, I can't wait.
The Charlie Hunter Quartet Songs from the Analog Playground
There was a brief period of awesomeness for progressive/funk/free whathaveyou jazz in the 90s. Honestly, it might be happening now and I just don't know about it. But, for a while, it seemed like there were a bunch of artists coming out with interesting, quirky, funky jazz. Sex Mob, Medeski Martin and Wood, and guitarist Charlie Hunter.
I have to admit that, initially, I was way more into Hunter's saxophonist than I was into Hunter himself, though I certainly found him interesting. He had formed a band that was at first called James T. Kirk, named for James Brown, Thelonious Monk, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, but Paramount had something to say regarding that so the band became T.J. Kirk.
This exhausts the immediate knowledge I have of Charlie Hunter. I do know that there were bigger Hunter fans at the store than me, so I'm surprised I have this. It might have been something we got multiple promos of or maybe I squirreled it away in an act of pure dickishness (because I knew by this time that I wouldn't likely listen to it that often).
At the time, I had an aversion to anything too fusiony. I still have it for the most part, but I'm not as strict about it. And because I'm forcing myself to listen to these things all the way through, I'm more prone to letting the CD develop instead of ejecting it at the first hint of processing or electronic instruments.
And there is a lot of that here. It's definitely a funky album a little more than it is straight jazz. Mos Def and Norah Jones make contributions. It's closer to Branford Marsalis' short lived Buckshot LeFonque than it is Wes Montgomery.
The track that just started up is the lead contestant for 'best track title so far,' it's a funky little piece called Mitch Better Have My Bunny. Awesome. It's a pretty groovy little track.
Much of this is based more on the formula of 'figure/solo/new figure/solo/figure/out' rather than 'head/solo/solo/solo/head.'
Wait, I know this Norah Jones song... or rather, I know the Roxy Music single More Than This that Jones and Hunter have given the smooth jazz treatment. As you might have guessed, the dot dot dot represented a Google search.
This might be 'girlfriend jazz.' The kind of jazz you can listen to with your girlfriend that doesn't like jazz but have it still be at least remotely interesting. Or 'car jazz,' perhaps a less sexist way of putting it. Jazz you can play in the car without someone reaching for your presets.
Kurt Elling is doing his 'vocalese' bit on Desert Way. I have a hard time with vocalese, I find it goofy, but at the same time I get Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross' Twisted stuck in my head on a regular basis. And King Pleasure would give me an opportunity to 'sing' Charlie Parker solos with out going "doodlydodododdeededede". Though I'm not 100% certain which one is worse...
The lead singer from Galactic also makes a contribution on the smokey track Spoonful. It's another one of those 'cruising across the desert in the middle of the night' songs. I get enough of these, I think I'm obligated to actually drive across a desert in the middle of the night. As soon as I actually get a stereo in my Bus...
This second Kurt Elling track is also the second track that is just percussion and the guest vocalist, the first being the opening track featuring Mos Def. This is not an artist that splatters his playing wall to wall on the album. Certainly he is featured a great deal but, to his credit, he does not get in the way of the music, to the point of not even playing guitar on two tracks so far. And Percussion Shuffle appears to be, unsurprisingly, a lengthy feature of traditional and improvised percussion instruments.
If you've spent more than half a day with a percussionist, this track will sound all kinds of familiar. Eventually, around them, everything either becomes a drum or a stick and you quickly learn what everything you own or are surrounded by sounds like when struck against or with.
Mos Def is returning with a track called Creole, which so far sounds a bit like a variation on Miles Davis' So What. But rather than that stumbling forward rap style that Mos Def has (it always feels a little ahead of the beat, like a waiter with a tall stack of dishes that you think he's going to drop, but turns out he's just that good at carrying dishes that he can lean the stack ahead of him at will...) he's actually singing this track. Not actually in Creole, though. Pretty decent, really. Kind of like the 'smooth jazz' Roxy Music cover earlier, so not as funky as I'd like it. None of the dissonance I would have expected.
I might have an accidental albums worth of Norah Jones songs, but none of it her regular catalog. Essentially I like a bunch of people who also seem to like Norah Jones or who Jones recorded with to establish her jazz bonafides. Every once in a while, these CDs pop up with a track or two sung by Jones. To the rest of the world, she might be 'that chick who did that song' (or maybe to the handful of people who saw the Wong Kar Wai movie, 'that chick from the film') but to me she has become the perpetual guest artist.
Smart Music Series You Know, You Can
This one is a total mystery to me. I don't know why I have it. It's not classical music, its some sort of Yanni-esque pastiche of electronic music, sound effects, and what they call 'ancient music.' I guess this might have fallen under my buying domain, I don't know how or where.
There was a lot of this stuff that came out, mostly on the heels of that whole Baby Mozart stuff where someone had decided that Mozart could somehow make you smarter, or your baby smarter, or you a smarter parent... I was never really sure how it was supposed to work.
But it sold a bunch, which meant that there was a bunch of stuff like it bound to come out.
Like this.
Now, I listen to classical and jazz, and I've discussed the liner notes in blues, so I'm no stranger to pretense and hyperbole in liner notes. This, however, is my current hands-down favorite:
Do not use while driving or operating heavy machinery. In case of serious problems, The Smart Music Method does not replace sound medical or therapeutical advice. Producer, studio, record company or distributor are not responsible for any damages caused by inappropriate use of the music. Shuffle play is recommended (except for Dreams & Sleep albums). Play softly. Headphones improve the third dimension of sound.
The rest of the liner notes follow in the same vein. Checked off in the cover, apparently this makes use of brainwaves, nature sounds, ancient music principles, natural sonic surround sound. I guess I have to go to something else in their series for multiple music layers.
Apparently 'ancient Greek scales' were used in the composing of this CD (the ancient Greek scale is actually listed as "Lydian." I shouldn't mock too much. I'm well aware of how modality effects the mood of the piece, and Lydian mode is kind of a go-to favorite of mine.
The full list of elements on tap are laid out for me:
Scale: Lydian.
Nature Ingredients: Birds.
Brainwaves: Alpha States.
Planet: Sun.
I'm apparently free, according to the instructions, to do what I would normally do. Relax, think about whatever, keep my eyes open or closed. Just don't drive, of course. Oh, and think of a garden where I apparently can get away with anything.
I don't know why our minds have to always go to gardens. It seems like a bunch of people who can reprogram my mind and creativity with a CD could also come up with something other than the tried and true 'garden' that I have to take my mind to. I don't have anything against gardens, some of them are pretty nice. I went to a butterfly garden in Canada where a bird humped my shoe (true story). These are the things I think about when I think of gardens. Shoe-humping birds or peacocks stealing my bread. I guess if you don't pick something like 'garden' or 'ocean' (I like the ocean, I feel I have to be near it, even though I never go to it) then you end up picking something that sounds materialistic and that would throw the whole aesthetic off.
My racing games are buried in the Albatross storage, otherwise I think this would be a great experiment. I could do a few laps without 'Smart Music' and then do a few laps listening to it and see exactly what the effect on my driving might be.
The liner notes tout the advantages of what they call 'random music':
Suppose you walk in a forest. Birds are singing. They sing without a conductor and without any system. No bird sings the same song twice (tell that to the birds out my window ~me), no bird sounds exactly like any other bird. You never know when any bird will start singing or finish singing. You hear 'bird song.' Likewise, all separate instruments in random compositions can start and finish at any given moment. Together though, all instruments join to create a total effect that is more than the separate voices or instruments. The music in The Smart Music Series is based upon this unique natural principal.
I have to say, they're having a lot more luck, harmonically speaking, than I did when we experimented with random music in 20th century composition classes.
In the end this doesn't sound too different than the earlier World Flutes 1 compilation. It's ultimately a very repetitive music and I can't say that I'm overwhelmed with a sense of confidence or 'yes I can-itude.' I did have to stop it twenty minutes in to unplug and restart the router...maybe it threw off my karma waves or something.
I've mentioned before that the Albatross is full of lies and disappointment. Today it dished up a particular kind of lie and disappointment with a Fake Out. What I thought I was preparing to ingest today was the debut album from The New York Ska-Jazz Ensemble, but the Albatross had other plans. Instead, it dealt up Let's Go Bowling's Mr. Twist. I should at least be thankful that it kept in in genre. Must have been during one of those heady moments where I tried to organize the Albatross and it didn't take.
This is the second instance of music I bought on purpose, and strangely enough it can be linked back to the same uncle, which honestly didn't occur to me until I started to write this.
This doesn't trace all the way back to Junior High School, however, this happened when I was already an adult. I was visiting my uncle and he showed me a few tracks of the California Ska-Quake compilation of third wave ska. Sure, it was catchy, it was upbeat beat, but deep down the truth of it more than likely is that if you put horns in something, I'm in. A genre of music with saxophones? Sold.
So I went exploring. What I found was that I had a definite preference for what seemed to be labeled "third wave" or "California" or "West Coast" or whatever they settled on. But what I learned most of all was that ska was at its best when it was doing covers. I discovered this by buying albums like this and the album like this that the case belonged to. I genuinely like the New York Ska-Jazz Ensemble, another 'super band' of ska players from other big time bands doing jazz standards with reggae influenced dance beats.
And honestly I can get by on this for the most part. I mean, saxophones go a long, long way. But it never really hooked. I bought a few of the albums from the artists on compilations that I seemed to like, but I don't really remember many of these CDs making much of an appearance in whatever kind of regular rotation.
Let's Go Bowling seems to have carried over a lot of 'second wave,' if I understand the distinction. They seem like they could perform some English Beat and be fairly faithful.
It's been so long that I really don't remember what song it is I identified with or liked. I'm hoping I"ll hear it and it will jog some memory and it will all come back to me. But perhaps not.
I haven't been listening to the lyrics as much, but what I have listened to hasn't had that sense of whimsy I usually associate with ska. But their horn parts are a little more involved than just horn blasts here and there, as well as plenty of solos. And an organ.
All good choices, but I don't find myself as into this as I think I should be. I remember having this feeling when I bought it and ended up listening to the Ska-Jazz band instead. All the pieces are here, I'm just not and was not as into it as I would have thought.
Various Artists Olympia 1994 Preview Disc
Probably the biggest contrast so far in the project, this, obviously, was the yearly preview of all the upcoming classical releases from the Olympia label. I wish I could say I remember much about them, but I don't. The sticker on the back indicates that they were distributed by Allegro, which I seem to remember were a rather small distributor, but had a lot of stuff I like, so maybe some of that came from Olympia.
I guess the part that jumps out to me the most is the date. I can never remember when I started at the record store, but clearly I was there by at least 1994. That was a healthy chunk of my life spent helping people find Usher and Pearl Jam CDs.
I was hired initially because of my knowledge of classical. I'm by no means a total aficionado, but I was a music major, I had just left college with my music history classes fresh in my mind and my newly seeded appreciation for 20th century composition. I was also hired for my knowledge of jazz, which was much more developed, but there was another jazz expert hired at the same time. He would have, by comparison, liked The JazzTimes Superband a little more than the James Carter CD and therefore his tastes were more in line with the commercial interests of the store.
Being the store's 'Classical guy' had some amusing moments. First of all, there were four people with my first name, so we all went by nicknames. Mine was given to me by another friend on a separate occasion and as soon as the staff of the store heard it, I was forever Walrus. In addition to that, I sported (still do) long hair and a narrow three inch long goatee that was at times died green and even experimented with a handlebar mustache that, before I stopped, was done up like Salvador Dali. I worked at a record store, my boss had a purple mohawk, it was the time to try that kind of stuff.
What all of this meant is that, when someone had a classical question, the employee would tell the customer to hold on, then go to the intercom and say, "Walrus to the classical section." And then when this help, apparently named Walrus, would show up, he'd be a green-goateed, handlebar-mustached, long haired guy. The reactions varied between disdain, disappointment, shock...very infrequently a shrug. But ultimately I think stuff like that was part of the record store experience. I mean, again, I am by no means the expert to beat all and there are a lot of cats who know more than me, but I still knew my stuff, and I knew that section pretty well. So if you needed help, chances were pretty good I was going to be able to help you.
What I'm finding sad is that sixteen (Christ...) years on from getting this CD I'm not retaining as much about Classical as I once knew. I think what I liked about Allegro was that they had some of the less accessible stuff, modern composers or under-performed works. In with the Beethoven, Rachmaninov, Liszt, and Shostakovich there is Roussel, Kabalevsky, Vainberg, and Gorecki.
Gorecki had the closest the classical section (before Chant) had to a break out hit. And he is a modern composer, so I was much more happy with that. For a brief time, his Symphony No. 3, a dark and brooding piece of minimalism, was a hot seller. I wasn't sure where people were hearing about it, but it sold at a regular pace. And when people had trouble finding it, I was able to push other modern composers like Arvo Pärt, Gavin Bryars, and John Tavener.
The earliness of this CD I think is the only reason I got it. By the time I left I had gotten the person who eventually ended up managing the store into 20th century compositions and he had a natural inclination towards Eastern European composers. This CD focuses on both rather well, including composers from the 19th century (Glinka) and 20th century (Gorecki and Vainberg (Weinberg)). Had this come in later I never would have gotten it. He might have listened to it a little sooner than I have, but he's one of the people whose "Albatross" was much larger than mine. I remember visiting him a few years back just after he had dumped thousands of CDs in the trash because he just didn't want to deal with it anymore. And he still had a sizable collection. This CD has a piece from the soundtrack for a 1965 Polish movie about a soldier in World War II (Salto by composer Kilar) followed by the Soviet Anthem. He totally would have taken this CD later on.
And hey, that part of the soundtrack is actually pretty cool. A hint of Mancini in it, really. I like this stuff, I just don't know as much about it as I used to. I used to be surrounded by it all the time, absorbing some bit of it on a regular basis. Now I just drag it around from place to place not knowing it's really there...
