Sliding through the crate it's two CDs that I thought would be a good idea to have but wasn't anxious to listen to immediately, or ever since they were never opened. Also, today we get to the 100th Amazon player widget. For those with adblock, it's a little player box above each post that allows you to listen to samples of the disc I'm listening to if it happens to be available for download at Amazon. So far, 100 of them have been.
Glenn Gould
Glenn Gould at the Movies
I was trying to think about what I'd say about Glenn Gould because classical CDs have proven to be a little on the difficult side for me to create content about and I realize something, I'm more interested in Glenn Gould as a character, or element, than I am as a performer.
There's that Cuban cigar element to his playing. That kind of thing where you think, "How much better can it really be?" until you actually hear it. Well, alright, that's pretty amazing in a world of just amazing piano players...big deal, right?
Except for what that means. I tend to think of Charlie Parker in the same way and have even used him in the Albatross that way. That monumental performer that sort of owns an instrument or a style in a way that sort of becomes unrepeatable. There have been great saxophonists since Bird, there have been great guitarists since Hendrix, and there have been great piano players since Gould. But they don't get 'the' spot. A transformational piano performer now will be the 'greatest since Gould...'
There is a novel I keep wanting to read (but c'mon, it's seriously a 200 page paragraph...) about the two piano players that show up to study with Horowitz at the same time as Gould and what that does to them. That's the kind of thing that fascinates me about Gould. Not so much the legendary status or what it was like to 'be Gould,' that kind of thing doesn't interest me. What interests me is what it's like to live in the immediate world someone like that creates, how does that change you're view of self if you're an amazing piano player in the same time and place as the amazing piano player?
This is stuff he either selected or recorded especially for films, or was used in films after his death. The first half is a bunch of harpsichord pieces played on a piano, which always feels wrong to me, but there's nothing really behind that.
On the last track he goes with 'original instrument' by playing the Art of the Fugue on an organ.
Jan Garbarek
Visible Worlds
So there was this CD I got as a promo, it was one of those rare 'classical sensations,' not as big as Chant, but did well. And this time, it was something I actually liked quite a bit. The vocal group the Hillard Ensemble recorded some motets and Norwegian saxophonist Jan Gabarek improvised over them. It actually sounded pretty cool, I loved it. I played the hell out of it at the store and even managed to lose it a few times as a personal copy and had to replace it more than once. In fact, I'm pretty sure I no longer have it, but here's hoping because on Amazon it ranges from fifty to seventy bucks, apparently.
I even attended a concert performance of that in the Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill seated right behind some important Norwegian, I don't remember now if it was a politician or a member of the royal family. All I can really remember is thinking it would be really funny to lean forward and ask if he knew of my mom's family. It was a good night for impulse control.
The success of that CD meant that there were suddenly going to be a lot more Jan Garbarek CDs. Awesome, I thought. Sucker. For the most part, Garbarek produces some pretty mild smooth jazz, though still manages to have long open solos instead of repetitive riffing, but that's what he plays. Which I guess goes to why they selected him of all people to perform with the Hillard Ensemble, but I was hoping for more experimental stuff. I mean, he is a European jazz artist, most of the European jazz artists I had run into were mostly pretty caustic free jazz artists.
Not Jan, he's mellow. And I have multiple CDs by this guy. As far as I know they're all like this.
There is no liner notes to explain the theme of this album, just this rather intense photo of Mr. Garbarek. He kind of looks like he's about to perform a feat of mentalism with his sax rather than play it.
I sound like I'm hating on him for not living up to my completely made up expectations of him and my own bias' against smooth jazz. And I guess I am, if I was fairer I'd not that he really isn't that 'smooth' with his smooth jazz, this stuff is just out there enough to avoid being played on the Quiet Storm.
I wasn't prepared for the last song to have lyrics. Of course, I have no idea what she's saying.
I don't really have much of a preamble to add today. Today's selection represents another set of people I know, but don't really know. I'm just going to get to it.
Pat Metheny A Map of the World
So, a long time ago, VH-1 used to have this block of programing, I think on Sunday nights, that ran just jazz videos. Sometimes it was hosted by David Sandborn... maybe it was always hosted by Sandborn, I don't know. But anyway, it was jazz music videos.
What's that, you say? How many jazz videos can there be? Not many, is the answer. Every week consisted pretty much of the same videos. There were some standouts:
And Last Train Home by Pat Metheny. It was a fusion song by this dude with crazy hair and an even crazier guitar, but damn if it wasn't catchy. That programing block started me on collecting Branford Marsalis and World Saxophone Quartet recordings. As it would happen, I already had the album that the version of Take the A Train came from. But as catchy as Last Train Home was, I never ended up even getting that album. After a while, Marsalis and the WSQ would lead me down the path toward more dissonant jazz, 'harsher' sounding stuff and I grew ashamed of the fusion I used to like early in high school. Metheny became part of that past.
Except I started seeing him playing on tracks with the guys I was listening to now. Like playing with Ornette Coleman. Clearly there was more to this cat than it seemed.
So every once in while a Metheny album would come up and I'd grab it and think, "This is going to be the crazy stuff, right?" To the best of my knowledge, none of it turned out to be.
This is another one of those soundtracks from a movie I haven't heard of. And again, a rather successful film, winning Golden Globes and starring Sigourney Weaver and everything. The music features really warm guitar with string back grounds. The music is pretty sad to melancholy. The logline makes the movie sound like kind of a bummer, "A woman's life falls apart after she's blamed for an accident on her property."
And, out of nowhere, there's a kind of funky track called Sunday. I have to say, that bit reminded me a bit of the scores to early Spike Lee movies. Not the soundtrack, the actual score--I'm not saying in the middle of a Pat Metheny album something like Public Enemy started happening.
There have been little specklings of sounds from the film, but not in the way we've come to understand that. It's not memorable lines or big sound effects, it's ambient sounds of cars in driveways or kids in a distant backyard, and then a really faint Weaver asking someone if they really want to run away to the desert. It adds to the overall eerie effect, really kind of cool. Though I don't know that I would notice if I wasn't wearing headphones.
There is a similar effect used on the soundtrack to Mickey One by Stan Getz. I'm really hoping that CD turns up in the Albatross... Anyway, it adds a unique feel to the score and helps connect it to the movie in a way that I had already commented was sometimes difficult. Especially when you hadn't heard of the movie until you read the subtitle of the album to realize it was a soundtrack.
This is a long CD with a lot of very short tracks. With the exception of that one track, Sunday, they're all pretty similar. You don't even get much of that distinctive sound of Metheny's super strange guitars, though it is there.
Probably not a good sign that I didn't quite notice the album ending.
Another CD that is surprisingly expensive now. Not the most, but a contender to be sure.
This is going to be fun for me, to be honest. It's about as perfect as it gets. Willie is one of those legends that I know is a legend but I really don't know much about him.
Well, I'm about to get a crash course in Willie Smith from Willie himself. The title of this CD isn't a euphemistic notion of playing greatest hits, it's literally Willie himself sitting down at the piano and telling the story of his life in the way an old vaudevillian stride player would, interspersed with songs and figures on the piano. In essence, you get a chance to hang out in a parlor with a legend while he tells stories.
He starts off delineating between ragtime players and stride players (stride players, apparently, have good left hands). He's rather proud of his studied musicianship, of playing good houses with other musicians who knew their stuff instead of what he calls 'three chord players.' There is certainly a hint of that piano player attitude that I hinted at earlier.
Seriously, it's too bad this is so expensive because it's about the most awesome thing that has popped up that I can imagine. I wish my Mac wasn't a busted hulk of its former self, then I could step outside and light up a cigar and imagine I'm sharing a stogie with Smith as he lays out the history of 20th century music from the first decade on from a first person perspective while laying down absolutely stunning piano tunes in between.
I've been trying to place Smith's accent, I think it's closest to Archie Bunker's. "First" is pronounced "Fiy-st."
This is a disjointed history, a sort of rambling through a half century of music with a who's who, anecdotes of various performers, a guide to terminology of either music of the scene, various practices of the piano hall player. Recorded in 1964 to preserve his unique perspective and knowledge of the history of 20th Century American music, apparently he sat in a room with two tape recorders going and a producer prodding him on with questions that have been edited out.
This is a fairly remarkable time capsule recording, if I had realized what it was at the time I would have been glad to have it. I'm glad that it eventually surfaced.
What I'm finding most is how much I remember of getting certain CDs more than I am how much I forgot about getting others. I think I remember getting one of today's CDs, while the other is a complete and total mystery to me. They clearly come from different places in my collection because they are in entirely different conditions.
Let's get started.
Barrington Pheloung Soundtrack to Hilary & Jackie
Every once in a while a promo gets taken home completely by accident. You're taking home a big stack of promos, and somehow one of these promos that's only in a sleeve slips in with them. You can't do anything about it, you can't sell them, they usually only have enough information on them for ordering when ordering was relevant, so when you discover them months later you really have no idea what they are or what to do with them.
I probably picked this one up on purpose, though, it's a soundtrack and it's a classical CD, so it was 'up my alley' so to speak.
Actually, as I look through the accumulated grime (this CD was still in its wrapper, so that was some persistent grime) it's actually mostly the work of composer Barrington Pheloung. I don't feel too bad, iTunes thinks the whole album is Elgar's Concerto for Cello.
I don't know very much about this movie. And by 'very much' I mean I don't know anything about it. Apparently it's a biopic about famous cellist Jacqueline du Pré from the point of view of her sister who wrote the memoir the film is based on. This explains the dominance of cello music and the inclusion of cello pieces from noted composers. The opening recording is by du Pré herself, the others are by Caroline Dale.
I've never heard of du Pré before, despite having a love for the cello. I'm not sure if I should feel ashamed of that or not. Apparently the movie was well received and nominated for two Oscars. What the hell was I doing in 1998 that I completely missed this?
It might have been right after I quit the movie theater where I had been a projectionist for a number of years. There was about a year or so I just stopped watching movies because for the previous years I had almost literally watched every major release to come out.
The music is dark and deeply emotional. The cello is really an expressive instrument. For a CD I really knew pretty much nothing about, this is kind of a treasure.
I was going to mention this on the Canadian Brass album, but there is something about classical music that makes people cough. I guess people cough at every concert, you can just hear it in classical. Even in recordings that don't appear to be 'live' recordings.
This provides a much classier soundtrack for the climax of Days of Thunder and this episode of Miami Vice, by the way. I don't know why I don't turn the TV off to do this. I have really good headphones, so I can't really hear it. I'm just used to having it on even if I don't particularly pay that much attention to it.
I'm kind of surprised that this CD has survived this entire time. To be as dirty as it was it must have been in some of the more neglected piles. I'm glad it did, I can always do with some good cello music. I might have to dig this movie up, it sounds kind of racy if not completely depressing.
Buddy Guy and Junior Wells Real Blues
Once again, I am completely stunned by the amount of blues in the collection so far.
There are no liner notes (disappointing for a blues CD, as I mentioned earlier) and I can find virtually no information on the CD except that it is widely available for download.
This is clearly a live recording, including his announcements to the audience and thanks to an unnamed sponsor for the concert. The first half is Buddy Guy who is joined on the second half by Junior Wells.
The instruments are recorded well enough, but the voice mic sounds like he was using a pair of headphones.
I've never heard a blues version of Satisfaction...interesting. Also, by the time this song started they have apparently improved the voice mic, it's not great, but it's better.
So far the Albatross has dealt up Chicago Blues, we just keeping getting older and older.
Well, the mic problem is back, which is too bad because I love Messin' With the Kid. Now it seems like they're running the guitar through the same amp. All in all this has a bootleg quality to it. But really, for blues, that might lend a legitimacy to it. Talking about the recording quality of a blues CD might be akin to complaining the seats aren't comfortable in a vintage sports car. This kind of recording gives it a kind of authentic feel. But the recording can't be that old that they can't mix it properly.
Well, we had a fade out on the last live CD, now we have a fade in. That's a little weird. I would guess that this is an anthology, but the recording quality is consistently poor. The copyrights on the back are 1994 and 1999. The CD was still in its wrapper. The performances are pretty good, obviously, and if you don't have a problem with that 'bootleg' sound, then you wouldn't have a problem with this.
I'm kind of floored at how little info I have on this recording. It's another short one, too, at 42 minutes.
Feedback even. Was this recorded in a school gym? This is probably the best known blues artists to go in so far and it sounds like it was recorded on a $10 budget.
Still and all, it's kind of cool not in spite of its flaws but because of them, in a very weird way. What could I expect for free, I guess...
It really feels like I just started this a day or two ago, so it's a little weird to think I'm starting the second week. In the grand scale of how many CDs have to make their way to the hard drive I've barely scraped the surface.
Creating a relatively small benchmark right off the bat helped with the sense of accomplishment. But now I'm into one of the re-usable shopping bags full of CDs and already there is some dread welling up. I don't really know where these CDs came from (I can't seem to keep myself from peering ahead, though I'm careful not to alter the order), but there isn't a lot I remember in this bag. And of course, today brings my first intact double CD. After a brief internal debate on whether that constituted two CDs or not, I decided it was only one for these purposes.
In one week I've added 98 songs to iTunes and, with the music that was already there, brought the storage up to 9GB...wouldn't even fill a first generation iPod. So very far to go. Lets get at it:
Right off the bat, my favorite part about this is that it is World Flutes 1. There was much more flute territory to cover...I mean, they double back on a few of the world flutes on this recording, but stay tuned, man, there's more to come.
Rudimentary search says no. Got it in one.
I'm being mean, but I probably grabbed this one on purpose. I like the flute and, as I've said before, I'm interested in indigenous music. iTunes is less kind to this CD. All artists are listed as "Various Artists" despite actually being fairly prolific performers. Two tracks are provided by Native American flautist R. Carlos Nakai, who is sort of a go-to guy for Native American music. In our World Music section he was one of the few with his own leader card because he was one of the few our customers would know by name. I probably have some more of his music laying in wait in The Albatross somewhere.
Kazu Matsui also has two tracks and was a relatively big seller at the time. His wife Keiko a little more so, but still. (Full disclosure, I got just about every detail about him wrong initially. The bio on his wife's site, however, is awesome.)
So this isn't a collection of nobodies on some museum's collection of flutes, these are some internationally known performers playing some new and some traditional flute tunes.
And yet, it still kind of sounds like an incense infused bookstore. Or maybe that sound of regret that you've followed the guy in the sandals home and this is going to be a long, awkward conversation. Or maybe a friendly sounding narrator is going to tell us the native homespun wisdom we've seemingly lost, over B-roll of grass covered hills and worn out shacks.
Really, none of this is fair. This music existed long before patchouli-scented new-agers, long before self-help books and home published poetry anthologies, and long before pretentious documentaries. And it's not bad... I mean, it does what that tea-sipping dude sitting cross-legged on the bean bag says it does, it's pretty relaxing and ethereal.
Though Steve Gorn's Dreaming Shree (not helping, Steve...) is a little menacing with its low sustained tones underneath his playing. Apparently this is the first recording of this work. It's a derivative of three ragas essentially about the ambiguous boundary between night and day. Well played Gorn, well played.
Really, though, collections like this are as responsible as anything. More than flutes bind this collection. There aren't any uptempo pieces here, anything that would essentially challenge a Western ear with quarter tones or harmonies not familiar in Western music. This is the airiest collection of flutes that could be found. This is meant to be played in used bookstores with coffee shops in them, it's meant to be played by that guy in the sandals, or at the massage shop. It has been collected for that purpose. iTunes lists this as New Age, I was going to correct it but I wanted to listen to it first, and maybe it's more appropriate than not--at least in this context. Context is everything. On their own, most of these artists are traditional performers preserving indigenous music, but here, collected on this CD, they're relaxing people doing yoga or sipping Chai Tea while reading The Secret.
The City of Prague Philharmonic, Paul Bateman Conductor Psycho: The Essential Alfred Hitchcock
This is my first double CD that actually has both CDs in it, probably because I never actually listened to it. What lies before me now is over two hours of compiled scores from Alfred Hitchcock movies and his famous television show. I don't know that I'm going to find a lot to say about the music that wouldn't already have been said by someone hipper than me.
I have mentioned before that part of my initial intention was to play music for a while then transition into scoring films and whatever else. This CD both demonstrates that purpose and why I'm not now currently composing scores for films and whatever else. I collected every score CD I could come across, and any collection of this nature that would come along I would consider a 'get.'
But while this wasn't in its original wrapper, the CDs certainly have that snap that comes with never having been removed from their case. Because, intentions aside, I could never bring myself to sit down and listen to music that was meant to be played with images casually. So when it came between putting something like this on or something else, soundtracks would tend to lose out unless they were spectacularly bizarre or featured an element I had a leaning towards (like Ornette Coleman on Naked Lunch or Stan Getz on Mickey One.) Ultimately, because I didn't study these like I had intended nor do the other things that would go along with it, I had to face that, whether intentional or not, I had given up on composing film scores. Plus, when I finally studied composition, it turns out I wrote really slow due in part to my lack of aptitude on the piano.
This, I think, marks the third European group themed anthology in two weeks.
I think that some of my problem with studying scores is that you have to actively do it, especially in anthology form. In some way you can sit and listen and decide, "Okay, what does this evoke?" but then you have to at least check to see if it evoked the right thing or not. But ultimately, it's meant to sync up with something happening on screen. In my regular iTunes I have The Carl Stalling Project, a collection of recordings from the Warner Brothers/Looney Tunes composer, and it's fascinating. But it can also drive people absolutely mad as they involuntarily crane their necks around looking for the cartoon every time a familiar cue comes up. So I get lost in the admittedly beautiful music, but I lose the relationship with the images they were intended for, so when the figure switches to motion, or menace, or glee, or romance, without the visual cue to inform me about the sudden change of mood, it can get jarring.
On the plus side, the liner notes are fairly detailed and include a synopsis of the films including the film's making and place in the canon as well as a brief (sometimes too brief) paragraph on the compositions selected into each film's mini-suite or selection.
It's tempting to do that whole "They don't make films scores like this anymore," but that's either not true or misleading. First of all, they kind of do--there are clearly a lot of film composers who actually did get these recordings and actually did study them and you can hear it in today's film scores. And the misleading part is, if someone actually made a film score really like these, with the broad, sweeping movement, wild flourishes, etc, it'd be properly laughed at as dated and ridiculous. This belongs to its time and place, when the full credits of the movie ran up front and at the end were just the words "The End." Big orchestral crescendos when a couple kisses have their place, just not in modern film.
Ah, Rope. It provides that two tiered nerd-dom for film geeks. First is the 'one shot' look. If a film nerd isn't quick enough on the draw bringing that up, they are forced to trump whoever did with the details of how Hitchcock pulled off the one shot look. Meanwhile, the girl or guy they were talking to goes to see if s/he can freshen her drink...
So as not to make you act like it's a one CD set, they separated Funeral March of the Marionettes (which makes up the theme to Alfred Hitchcock Presents...) and the themes to Psycho and Vertigo. You can't have a Alfred Hitchcock collection without the theme to the TV show...that show as much stole the identity of that piece as The Lone Ranger stole the identity of The William Tell Overture or 2001:A Space Odyssey stole the identity of Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss. But then, if you don't have the violins from Psycho, do you really have the essential Alfred Hitchcock?
That's an interesting note. Nowhere does it really indicate that 'the essential' Alfred Hitchcock in any way refers to the scores. And as much if not more real estate in the liner notes is dedicated to the movies themselves. In fact the preamble to the individual track notes talks exclusively about the films and the filmmaker. Nothing about how the pieces were selected, the orchestra performing them, Hitchcock's relationship to the music in his film--nothing. Here are the films, and since this isn't a DVD, here's the music that went with them.
Onto disc two...I have to say it's certainly classing up the episodes of Family Guy playing in the background.
There it is, an hour and a half in and five minutes in on the track, the first thing anyone thinks of when they think 'music' and Alfred Hitchcock-the violins from the movie Psycho. But you can't fill a two CD set with just that one figure...
Ha! Fake out! I know that the CD ends with John Williams, so when a march started I was pretty sure that was the end. But nope, it's the march from Topaz.
After being faked out by the ending, the John Williams' score to Family Plot kind of snuck up on me. I feel the need to comment on the CD in some way that directly addresses the recording, like the fact that it's clean, well arranged, well performed and selected music from the catalog of Alfred Hitchcock's films (which is true) and someone who wanted a good selection in one spot would like this (they might), but then I have to remind myself, this isn't necessarily a 'review' website...these CDs came out at least 8 years ago.
I'm going to start out with some more comments on The Albatross itself again because todays first CD is too awesome to be distracted by anything else, plus there are so many stories it evokes that this would get lost.
I was thinking of how the Prime Stack came to be, how to explain how these discs were up front. It really is the most accessable set of CDs, a munched mismatched stack of CDs right by my door that had been assembled from refugees from other storage places or orphans that had found themselves packed in with other items and tossed aside when I needed something else. Most had mercilessly found themselves underfoot, or under something else. I had moved them into their current 'Black Sheep'-esque squadron by the door in order to give the cable guy access to the room, never really looking at what they were.
And that's how it ends up working. I've been relying on this Olduvai Gorge method of discovery, that through movement and non-related activities music from the collection would shuffle up, surface and be either discovered or rediscovered. The metaphor became more fitting when earlier today I went looking for a hat in the main storage where the bulk of The Albatross now sits and actually unearthed an audio cassette I had made in high school from LPs, one side containing Gil Evans Out of the Cool and the other Sonny Rollins Bass Trio. I had discovered both of those artists, very different from each other, that summer and bought those albums immediately. They ran on a near continuous loop on my Radio Shack 40w (with equalizer!) car stereo. That is, until I discovered The Dirty Dozen Brass Band...There have been many tragic casualties in The Albatross, CDs I've really liked either swallowed by the beast or sacrificed in a move. And then some remarkable retentions, like a tape of maybe the first time I started to understand and enjoy jazz.
Also, I should mention how, at the moment, I'm writing these. Since I have to listen to the whole album according the arbitrary rules I set out I'm essentially writing these as a stream of consciousness as I listen to them and what they make me think of. So some of them might be short if the CD doesn't really make me think of anything. Or, if the CD is particularly packed with memories, it might be quite long...so, here's Hank...
Henry Mancini Music from Peter Gunn
You could argue that Henry Mancini might be the Norman Rockwell of American music, but dammit, I like him. Perhaps it would be more accurate to think of him as the John Williams of his day, the go-to soundtrack guy that was going to give you something iconic for whatever movie it was you're going to make.
Perhaps too iconic. The theme to Peter Gunn is easily more popular than the detective show it opened. Hell, there are a lot of people my age who still think of it as 'the Spy Hunter' theme. (Just thought about it, that game was named for the antagonist...after all, you were the one being hunted, so you didn't play a spy hunter, the game hunted you...I guess that wasn't unheard of, but it just occurred to me.) I don't know that anyone associates Baby Elephant Walk with Hatari.
There is another issue with this album specific to The Albatross. I love the Peter Gunn Theme. A lot. I mean, who doesn't. About a year ago, I thought, "Surely I have this." But therein lay the problem...where? And how the hell was I going to find it? It has been a subject of conversation, especially when working on plays and theater projects or the like. Someone knows I have this collection and they ask, "Do you have x?" Probably. "Do you think we could-" I have almost no hope of finding it before the show goes up. (Incidentally, I'm pretty sure I don't have anything by the punk band X, but it's possible.)
So with Peter Gunn I did what I encouraged others to do. Give up. I went to iTunes and bought the hell out of Peter Gunn. I bought the original that I'm listening to now (with other cool themes from the show), I bought a version done by Ray Anthony. I bought a version by Dick Dale. I even hunted down the Art of Noise version with Duane Eddy. It was easier to assume I didn't have it than it would have been to go on the archeological expedition neccesary to discover the unobtrusive, badly damaged little yellow sleeve it was in.
It was opened, I had listened to it (how could I not?). But by now the cardboard had warped and stuck together and I had to rip the thing apart to get to the CD. So now Hank, as I like to call him (more on that in a second), will be an orphaned CD without a case. It is one of the worst fates for a CD in The Albatross, an almost certain death knell of scratches, stains, or being crushed underfoot. It's a crying shame, really. While there have only been three CDs so far, this is the greatest save that this project has put forth.
There is a kind of 'really good high school big band' element to this. That I guess won't make sense unless you had a really good high school big band. I think it's because these kind of charts were naturals for student big bands and because so many people just really were trying to do what Hank did.
The track names are awesome:
The Brothers Go to Mothers
Dreamsville
Session at Pete's Pad
Fallout! and Spook! (exclamation points not added by me)
A Profound Gass (I just finished listening to that one, correctly billed)
This CD, released on June 15, 1999 according to the weathered package, was riding the heels of that whole retro-lounge scene that sprung up from the ashes of the short lived swing revival. During those two years I got a lot of old Hank, among other things.
The "Hank" thing comes from a brilliant piano player and friend of mine in high school. I had talked about him in a blog entry from an earlier blog telling essentially this story: I was at his house to rehearse, or hang out, or both, and there on his bookshelf was a thick biography of Henry Mancini, "Or Hank, as I like to call him" Jacob would intone in his usual deadpan. It was a gift from a relative, no doubt a desperation gift as reading Jacob was a near impossibility. "Well, he plays piano, maybe he'll like this." I applaud their restraint, my relatives often resorted to things like sunglasses with musical notes on the lenses. But he actually read it (he also being more polite than I) and had gained an admiration for Hank and, he felt, a familiarity enough to call him Hank. Being a saxophonist, I naturally knew the theme to The Pink Panther but until that conversation had not really appreciated Mancini the way I should. Listening now reminds me of that. And of Jacob. That guy was awesome. Still is, as far as I know. You can buy one of his CDs here. He probably has more, but he was never one to brag.
Honestly, is there anything cooler than that low "BWWW-AAAAAAHHHH!!!" from a group of trombones? Oh sweet, this is Spook! It features the aforementioned trombones, a heavy almost surf reverb guitar rhythm and some great slack-jaw saxophone (I just made that distinction up, but it's the best way to describe it.) Seriously, if I had theme music I'd want it to sound like that piece. It's the kind of music that would enable you to lean back at a 45 degree angle as you walk.
Because of the way iTunes has decided to order the tracks, it's finishing with the theme...I actually don't want this to end, I'm kind of bummed. This really has that "I could listen to this all day" thing going for it. I'm sorry Hank...I didn't mean for you to get lost in the shuffle like that.
So, just a quick note. When I decided to do this I wanted to be able to put up samples if it required it, but that was going to be a lot of work, that's when I ran across the Amazon widget. For those of you with AdBlock, there's an Amazon widget that plays samples from the albums without me having to do much. The trade off is you all can't see it. The other shortcoming is that some of this just isn't going to be on MP3, such as this album. So the Amazon player that those without AdBlock do see has MP3s from a similar album with shared tracks. The album name links directly to the actual album on Amazon. Why not the iTunes Store? I don't know...the Amazon widget came up and I used it.
This is another CD that I was likely pretty happy to get. Not only is it jazz, but it's a jazz saxophonist, what better? Art Pepper has that West Coast sound, more melodic and smoother than the harder driving stuff on the other coast. My theory is that the Pacific Ocean has a calming effect...I guess that doesn't really account for the war in the Pacific...it's not a perfect theory, but in general West Coast tends to be synonymous with 'more relaxed.'
I liked getting albums with standards on them, because then I'd get to hear something out of The Real Book and maybe learn a new chart or a different way to approach one I already played. Or even more embarrassingly, find out I've been going about it all wrong. Which is not to imply that I didn't like new stuff, I loved it. Just for different reasons.
On headphones this sounds like it was recorded using the 'dreaded bass direct'--the method of recording a bass with pick-ups vilified in the liner notes of Branford Marsalis recordings as, of course, the 'dreaded bass direct.' Now that I think about it, probably kind of like relying too heavily on lav mics to record dialog, something I've been guilty of in less than ideal conditions I'm afraid to admit.
Here's something from the liner notes-
On these, Art teamed with cohorts old and new to record a variety of tunes, many of which had been in his repertoire years ago. But there was a rub: while Pepper was the de facto leader, selecting the material and the participants, and deciding what takes would be issued, the albums were, due to a contractual agreement, released under the other artist's names. For example, one was called Sony Stitt and his West Coast Friends.
So this is kind of a 'best of' for a larger box set that gathers these recordings under Art's name. That's kind of cool.
Ah sweet! Bernie's Tune. I love this and I can never remember the name. I have a recording 'somewhere' of Gerry Mulligan doing it with Chet Baker (who I think took heroin for our sins...you can't be that good looking and sound that smooth and play trumpet that well without making the rest of us feel just far too inadequate...the heroin had to be so he could walk among us...)
Bernie's Tune is just damn catchy. This is a pretty good version, though I have a deep and unnatural love for the baritone sax, so that's probably where my loyalties lie...
If J.J. Johnson was the music I wanted to play, this is the music I thought I'd end up playing. Pepper can fly through those bebop lines in a way I never could, but the melodic stuff, that I tended towards. I felt if I could just get a few fast lines under my fingers I could play this jazz in hotel lobbies all over the world. I had a knack for dreaming big and small at the same time.
I don't think that How High the Moon should have lyrics (it doesn't here), the only way to properly play this song is too fast for lyrics to be sung.
Speaking of Chet Baker, My Funny Valentine is on this album. A fellow playwright in school had written a monologue into a play about this song that changed the way I viewed it. Everyone thinks of it as this sweet, romantic heartfelt song--but the lyrics (not sung here) spend the entire time slagging off the other person...kind of makes the 'I love you' message sort of backhanded. It's like the theme song to some sort of emotionally abusive disproportionate relationship where one side is constantly reminded of how 'lucky' they are to have the other. Well, he just mentioned the insulting part, but that sort of leads to the rest of it. Pretty song, though. This is kind of a Zack Snyder version...slow-fast-slow...
The "Playboy After Dark" effect is a little creepier when the movie playing on the TV that I can't hear is Spanking the Monkey, if I understand what just happened...
This album I think is perfectly fit for my new-ish 'iTunes' lifestyle. Wanting to listen to this is like wanting a flavor, not a specific food. Like, I get the urge to listen to Bird or Trane specifically, but this stuff more generally, which would then lead to Art Pepper because he's awesome at it. This, then, is perfect for the shuffle.
In contrast to HowHigh the Moon, 's Wonderful works better with lyrics. Too many repeated notes.
Shadow of Your Smile with Lee Konitz on sax and Pepper on clarinet...I love this song. I would play this song a lot and pretend I wasn't trying to seduce chicks with it...mostly because it didn't really work.
But I was totally trying to seduce chicks with it.
Kind of a weird opening line by Konitz. Still pretty cool.
It just occurred to me that clarinet might be the Ray Romano of jazz instruments.
Five and a half minutes and it still felt quick.
That's it. Day two and the merest fraction of The Albatross has been chiseled away at. It's a strange feeling to confront the beast.
