I'm going to hurt myself. It's going to happen, I complain about it happening every time and every time I do it. And I'm perpetuating it again, today, with today's choices. Though this time it's going to manifest itself as an impossibly long post in the next few days. Because I'm a deer in the headlights apparently.
This I believe puts Miles Davis in the lead as the most directly represented artist in the Albatross. There was of course that rash of Duke Ellington tributes, but only two of those were actually Duke Ellington.
So, from what I can gather from the liner notes this is a recording thought lost from a time when Miles was a trumpet player in Billy Eckstine's band. Eckstine's band also included such talents as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. This is a small unit recording from the larger band. How this makes it a Miles Davis recording is a little dubious. Certainly Miles Davis is in the band and featured (even if it's a young Miles, how can you not feature him?), but these aren't his tunes and from the rather confusing liner notes there doesn't seem to be an indication that Miles led the session. I suspect that someone rightfully assumed that the CD would be a much larger success as a Miles Davis recording than a Billy Eckstine recording. In fact, the liner notes go into great detail about how Eckstine's band was a 'musicians band' that never got the audience it deserved, largely due to poor recordings. And, apparently, Eckstine isn't on this recording, instead it's Earl Coleman. That might be another reason to not call it an Eckstine recording.
So this recording, this release actually, is for me. It's for the 'jazz historian' who wants that sample of early (20 years old at the time of the recording) Miles Davis, just after some sessions with Parker, a Miles in mid-development. Thus the completely listener unfriendly set up of the tracks. Each song gets anywhere from two to four 'takes,' all laid back to back so you can listen to the same song four different times, which is fantastic if you want to listen and compare the subtle differences between each performance, how the artist adapted and developed his approach during the session. Real jazz nerd stuff.
However, if you just want to listen to some Miles you might think that you accidentally putting the player on repeat. Sometimes you can get away with it in jazz, people won't notice that they've listened to the same song twice, or have been listening to the same song for half an hour. But these have lyrics, and that can throw the whole thing into focus.
And not only that, if you picked this up to get some Miles Davis it's like picking up a bunch of rough recordings of The Beatles doing Buddy Holly covers. Sure, you can hear the germ of the band that eventually recorded Rubber Soul, but it ain't Rubber Soul.
There is no information on the complete line up. I know who the singers are and who Miles is, but no idea who the saxophonist is. He sounds familiar, so I have this sinking feeling if I found out I'd be embarrassed to not know. And thanks to Google, now I know, Gene Ammons (I don't feel bad) but the drummer is Art Blakey, which is awesome.
Of course this puts Don't Explain to Me Baby in contention for most represented song on the hard drive with four off the same CD. Sort of unfair, but I have a feeling that it will hold at four for a really long time.
With all the repeated tracks, the album still manages to be just over half an hour long. Which is just long enough since it's the same four songs over and over again.
So I've come across another water damaged CD. This one is a sampler of traditional or 'dixieland' jazz. It seems to range from the earliest jazz, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, to Kermit Ruffins.
Where the last CD's liner notes were confusing, these are just fused together and therefore unreadable.
I've never been as into traditional jazz as other forms of jazz. Mostly because it's 'pre-saxophone' and I tend to not like the clarinet (despite the fact that one of the contenders for 'most represented' is actually a clarinet player...). I grew up to a rather large traditional jazz festival, so every spring I had plenty of traditional jazz on tap (though as I've related before, I spent most of that time listening to a Scottish jump jive band.) It might be a by-product of what I talked about yesterday, context being everything. Traditional jazz, good traditional jazz, top performers, were not in anyway a novelty to me, just something that was seasonal. So when I listen to traditional jazz I just think 'spring' and maybe being the dorkiest kid to ever cut a class to go watch jazz downtown.
Having said all that, I love second line music, the marches. I love the idea of a band just marching down the street until there is enough people in the street and turning around and having a party. That's just awesome, how can you not like that? Well, I guess if you had to get out of your house and there was some jazz band party parade blocking your way...
South Rampart Street Parade even comes with a raging marching drum solo. Not uncool.
These are all pretty clear recordings. Yeah, see, that's an electric bass on Whitle We Danced at Mardi Gras. These are not old recordings.
Maryland My Maryland sounds suspiciously like O Tannenbaum...and sure enough, it is.
Also, fantastic first line of a song, "I ain't gonna give you none of my jelly roll..." Awesome.
Ultimately, even when it's sad, traditional jazz music and related forms are 'feel good' music. It's hard to be in a bad mood when listening to it.
I should remember these moments every time I start a new bag or whatnot. These moments where I start doing the CDs I avoided because I didn't think they would be interesting or whatever. So what happens is that there is a big stack of CDs I dread for like a week and half. This is not the best sell for the post that is about to follow, I'm sure it will be awesome...
Various Artists Angel Sept. 2000 Sampler
This is probably the most amount of prep I've done in the set up for the post. And not really much of it will matter.
I've done these kinds of CDs before, these are the pre-release samplers that would be handed out in advance of the actual releases to both garner my excitement and presumably for me to play in the store to excite customers (the latter hardly ever happened.)
I would almost never listen to these unless for some reason there was something on there that I recognized or was intrigued by, but it would have to stand out because I hardly ever read them either.
For today's post I actually found five of the seven albums sampled here for the player. I could have just put the individual tracks that are actually on this CD in the player to be better representative, but I didn't think of it until I was well underway, so I didn't. Also, iTunes was unable (for the first time) to identify this CD so I got to be the one who labeled everything. After musing on how to label classical CDs in the player I finally decided the best way to go about it was to consider the performer the artist and to list the name of the track with the composer first. My logic being that if I wanted to hear a specific piece I would more than likely know who wrote it, so I could look for, say, Respighi if I wanted to hear Pines of Rome. This is undermined by the fact that I had to look up how to spell his name.
I've always wondered how much is put into these samplers. I mean, these aren't for general release, they aren't themed and packaged on anything other than, "This is the stuff we're putting out next month." But it's still a sales job, I'm being the one sold. How much consideration is put into how the tracks work together, over which performance is selected? It's (presumably) for a discerning audience, but it also has to work for people like me and 'below,' who either know some classical but don't listen to enough to be that up on it or people who just don't hate classical but it's not their thing.
As it is it's a pretty accessible collection. These aren't daring selections without being 'classical greatest hits' kind of stuff. It's heavy on the opera, but I don't know if that's a product of the selection or just that September was big on opera. The selections are also consistently moody, which I think has to be a matter of selection. I don't obviously think the sampler is assembled like I would the last second before a road trip...I just wonder what the criteria is that goes into it.
As if to punctuate the moodiness of the CD, there's a Chopin Nocturne. Chopin has become the Dali print of a college music collection. I run into a lot of college age people who will casually list Chopin as part of their 'classical cred.' I suppose the next thing I should do is scoff at this and offer up other composers that should qualify, but frankly I like Chopin, too, and there are worse things that they could like.
It ends with a modern composer conducting his own piece. It has a kind of 'overture of dances' feel to it where the piece builds to an intensity, becomes a lot faster, and then breaks down so it can build back up again.
I think my fastidiousness borked iTunes. Building on what I had done in the last CD I went through and corrected all of the artist listing on this CD, but now it won't recognize the whole thing as one album in that little flip-book cover viewer it has, so it lists it as an 'unkown album.' But when I click 'get info' it knows exactly what album and associates the art with it.
Curse you digital media...
Anyway, here's yet another tribute to Ellington. This one is made up of either Canadian performers or performers who spend a lot of their time in Canada. I dig Canada, and apparently from the liner notes, so did Duke.
This was recorded for Ellington's 100th anniversary (which is probably why I have so many of them, aside from him being an immensely influential performer and composer). I don't know if it was assembled from already available recordings or if it was recorded special for this album. The groups are pretty different in their approach so far ranging from regular swing combos to big bands to a simple guitar and vocalist singing one of my favorites, In a Sentimental Mood. I never knew the lyrics to that song. I still don't for the most part, she had that 'jazzy Novocain' style of singing where the words kind of bend together.
The liner notes mine the more obscure and far ranging elements of Ellington's compositions in a classic liner notes 'look what I know' kind of display, but the selections are straight canon. Only thing missing is Satin Doll, though it does end with a Mingus composition that itself is a tribute to Ellington.
Also, if I had finished reading the liner notes I would know that in fact these are recordings lifted from other albums and assembled here, each track is credited with its original album release. I guess you could look at that as the cheap way to go, to assemble stuff already paid for in your library, package it up, find a jazz critic to write a blurb inside the liner and you're set. But in a way it's almost a more honest tribute, what better way to show the influence of Ellington than being able to pull together a bunch of tracks from unrelated artists who were already performing his works for no other reason then they were good.
I used to play the snot out of Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me. I have no idea why I dug that song so much, except maybe the little figure in the A melody that would happen between phrases. Maybe it was because I actually knew the lyrics (which a girlfriend at the time forbid me to sing because she felt like I was singing to her my intent to cheat on her...).
I don't know what it is specifically, but piano pounders really like Lush Life.
The last three tracks move a little away from the standard Ellington catalog with recordings of Melancholia, Day Dream, and Chelsea Bridge.
Yesterday I noted that there was a surprising concentration of Latin music, most of it Cuban. Well, actually now that I think about it it's either been Cuban or Brazilian. I've already talked about why there was an explosion of Cuban music in record stores, so having them makes sense. I just didn't expect them to all be in one place. There is another one today and tomorrow I can see another bossa nova CD waiting to be listened to.
Today brings the Albatross up to 20 gigs. It's going to be a bit until we get to the point where it won't fit on an iPod Touch. I think at this rate it will fit its entirety on an iPod Classic. If only this blog had actual readers, I could get one...ah well...
Bobby Hucherson
The Kicker
Fun fact (alright, not all that fun), Joe Henderson appears on this album called "The Kicker" and has his own album called "The Kicker" which is what I, in my sax-centric ways, almost put in the player instead.
There are three vibes players now on the hard drive with no repeats. Not an easy feat.
I have some sort of Joe Henderson connection (not the six degree kind, rather that he was someone of some importance at some point, like I had an album of his I liked or he appeared a lot on things I liked or an instructor really liked him so I listened to him a lot...I don't think any of those are it though...dammit) that I can't remember now. I wish I could remember it because it would give me something to build on here.
It's another Blue Note CD and another Rudy Van Gelder recording. I wonder if this dude ever just got sick of awesome jazz. "How was work, honey?" "Ah, you know...just another set of legendary performers laying down another set of landmark tracks that players will be wearing their record players out on...same ol' shit...gah. Whats for dinner, anything good?"
This CD barely survived, and whats worse is I think the damage is recent because the card doesn't look too worn out. That's the back of the CD, obviously. I just have that card and barely enough ring left to hold the CD. I really need to get a handle on the CDs or this is going to become really difficult.
Huh, according to Wiki (which may not be true, obviously) this album wasn't released until 1999 even though it was recorded in 1963. No reason is given.
The whole album has a kind of laid back feel to it, as you would usually expect with a group headed by a vibe player, but still enough groove to it that it doesn't become too mellow.
I feel like I should have been including the line ups for all these CDs to track how much cross polination there is between them. Not too long ago a Grant Green CD went on the hard drive and now here he appears as a side man on Hucherson's CD.
Various Artists Cuba Caribe
Aaaaand more Cuban dance music. This is from Hemisphere.
All of this scrambling to capitalize on Buena Vista Culture Club didn't really work. Unless it was actually someone from the film most people weren't interested. The movie had opened them to a new style of music, but the exploration stopped right there and no further.
Even a sampler like this was just too much for a lot of the people to venture into. It was a safe philosophy to have, I guess. They had been presented with a relatively successful film that assured them that these guys were cool, anything else they'd have to start making their own selections, which actually might mean buying some stuff they didn't end up liking. The cynic in me wants to say that was the greatest fear right there. They might 'not like' the wrong thing, and then their new found connoisseurship would collapse. Better be predictable and within the lines then venture out and have to pretend to like stuff you don't.
Though really it was probably an economic issue. They already knew they liked the people in the movie, they don't know who any of these people are, they're not going to spend $100 just to explore Cuban music when they're going to be listening to their Peter Gabriel and U2 and Paul Simon and Sting CDs most of the time anyway, just buy what you already like. Can't really fault them for that, I guess.
This music kind of sneaks up on you. I don't really know that much about Cuban music (despite my recent volume of listening...) so I don't readily make the distinctions between the different groups. Instead I allow myself to be distracted while the music plays and then all of a sudden I find myself halfway through a song going, "Wait, this is pretty cool."
Back to the blues again today. There was a brief respite from the constant flow of blues there for a while, but now a homeless CD has served up some more blues for the hard-drive. Just going to get right to it.
So I have no idea about this CD or even really how it got out of its case. I may have tried it out, I think I would break out every tenth blues CD and try and listen to it before moving on in favor of something weirder or more dynamic.
I was getting so many CDs that the ones that stood out were the ones that were essentially something I had never heard before. The wilder the CD the more likely I would end up listening to it. If it was at all what I expected I would keep digging. And so a lot of these admitidly fine blues CDs ended up buried. The blues, while many things, is rarely surprising.
Apparently he's a Philadelphia harp man who studied under Muddy Waters harmonica player Paul Oscher. This is kind of pure Chicago blues, really. Shuffle beats, electric guitars, early rock n' roll sound to it some of the time--especially in We Gonna Ride. We Gonna Ride is of course one of two back to back songs about getting a new car. The second the more direct My New Car. There's still time, perhaps Snake Oil will be about a new car as well...
Guyger uses that distorted harmonica sound with his band heavy on the reverb, giving his band a 'dirty' feel. It helps evoke that smoke filled dive with watered down whiskey.
Rib Shack Boogie is a straight boogie rhythm while Steve and someone else talk back and forth about how good a bar-b-que smells. And then, apparently their plan to head to a chicken shack afterward, interspersed with solos. I'm going to decide this is improvised. Or perhaps it was something they put together to pimp the rib shack they were playing at and they just got into doing it.
I crashed iTunes trying to use Ping and now I don't know where I was on the CD...
Monkey on a Limb almost doesn't fit. Gone is the distortion, the guitar comping is fairly jazzy, almost a bossa going on. I actually thought that the CD had ended and iTunes had moved on to the next one.
It was entirely rare that we'd actually get box sets as promos. More often we'd get these sampler discs as promos for the larger box set. This one is a five CD box set for Arhoolie records themed around its founder and his journey looking for 'roots' music. As a result the music on here is pretty eclectic. So far we've traveled through blues, zydeco, and something in French. Now we're on to Mexican music. And now back into country blues, beat up guitar sounds like it was recorded on one mic country blues. Awesome.
I have a new favorite lyric, "If it was raining soup, I'd be caught with a fork peoples, tryin' to live in this mad mad atomic age." Another country blues, Lady Luck by Mercy Dee Walton.
This must be what it's like to be a booking agent for A Prairie Home Companion. Rose Maddox's folksy and humorous Single Girl would fit right in, as would all of this music.
I mentioned that this would be eclectic? We're on to Klezmer music. I'm constantly surprised at how much saxophone there is in klezmer music. I have no idea how that came to be. There's a Charlie Parker anecdote about him picking up a bar mitzvah gig while hanging out at Milton's that was portrayed in the movie Bird. I didn't really have any coming of age rituals growing up, but having Charlie Parker showing up at one would have been pretty awesome.
Sweet, straight up boogie woogie piano. I love boogie woogie piano but I don't have any. Well, I do now. Awesome. I wish it was more than just this one track. Boogie woogie piano is the kind of piano that I would want to be able sit down and play at an unattended piano, it's the kind of piano that I imagine would be the closest to causing spontaneous dance numbers. That and stride.
There was a short period of time where I was listening to a lot of ragtime bands and I have no idea now what brought that on. (what brings on this mention is the selection by the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra playing Creole Belles. I think there was a snide comment that Willie "The Lion" Smith made on the album that went into the Albatross but I can't remember what it was. For a bit, though, I had a decent collection of ragtime band music. That's band music specifically, not ragtime piano, but ragtime bands. It went as mysteriously as it came. I don't dislike it in the least, it still sounds cool to me, I just don't listen to it...well, ever anymore.
This seems like it was the box set designed to fulfill my pretentious 'amateur ethno-musicologist' aspirations.
I encountered my first duplicate and it was rather quick for how separate the CDs were. Yesterday I did Jacky Terrasson's A Paris and today I fished out some drifter CDs that had wound up in other boxes (the truth is that just about everything has at least a few CDs in it) and I found another wrapped copy of A Paris. I'm not sure what to do with it, I don't know anyone who likes that kind of jazz off the top of my head and it's not really worth anything if I sell it to a used record store. Ah well, on with Day 45...the Colt Day? Yeah, that's not sustainable...
This is the kind of CD you might buy at a coffee shop. In fact, I'm almost certain that Putumayo specifically sells in coffee shops. Putumayo CDs are easy to pick out because the covers are all done by the same artist, Nicola Heindl. It's a world music label that puts together themed compilations that are more or less easy to listen to and therefore handy CDs to buy for someone who wants to dip their toe in a country's music. I'd be snide about it but really, people have to find out about other kinds of music somehow and things like this are pretty efficient ways to go about it.
And like any good patchouli-label, they donate proceeds of their sales to the area represented by the CD.
The descriptions are typical short-bio style usual in these compilations, and a little loose with the descriptions. Signe, for instance, was described as an acoustic guitar recording...which is true, but leaves out the heavy electronic beat and bass added to the Togolese love song.
The Albatross has provided some awesome. I started an ill-fated internet forum discussion a few days ago asking people to trace the lines in their musical tastes and one of the the people that actually tried mentioned a form of music I had never heard of before, Mbaqanga. Aparently I should have, it's the African music that Paul Simon used. Now with this recording by the Soul Brothers I have an actual sample to go by. Actually pretty cool. Thanks Albatross, you usually don't deliver this quickly.
All of this is pretty accessible with plenty of western pop elements fused into the African harmonies and poly rhythms. It makes sense that these come together so easily, African music influenced the development of modern music, it's only fitting that the influence comes full circle. But this could pass as a folk/jazz cd with lyrics you likely won't understand.
Various Artists The Colors of Latin Jazz: Cubop!
This compilation is a little more focused than the last, though truth be told there was a lot of similarity in the previous selections.
I've never heard latin jazz referred to as 'cubop' before, though there is an un-cited stub article on wiki about it. The idea is the combination of Cuban or Afro-Cuban rhythms with bop pace and harmony. So far songs don't really seem to reflect the blistering pace or flighty solos that I've come to know of be-bop, rather it sounds pretty much like latin jazz. I guess that is a wide enough term to need a distinction as this is certainly a little 'hotter' than other forms of Latin jazz.
Well, that'll show me for not looking ahead. Not only does this track have the blistering pace and flighty solo, it's an actual bop song--Charlie Parker's Donna Lee. Donna Lee is kind of the Matterhorn of jazz, completely doable for everyone of a certain skill set but still something musicians occasionally tackle to make sure everyone knows they're of that skill set. Alright, according to Wiki, that's actually a Miles Davis song wrongly attributed to Charlie Parker. Regardless, the tune is known through Bird and the challenge is sort of a goof. It's almost melody-less, as Bird seems to launch into his solo with only the fiegntest hint of any recognizable 'head.' Various performers have approached Donna Lee different ways, from Jaco Pastorius playing a transcription of Bird's solo to this version where people burn over the changes (taken from the song Back Home in Indiana) while making their slight bow to the head as well.
Work Song, one of the coolest hard bop songs every, also gets the Latin jazz treatments.
Apparently I should look at least at the track list before I make declerations about the theme of a CD, there's a lot of bop standards on here--the aforementioned Donna Lee and Work Song as well as Night in Tunisia and Yesterdays.
One thing Latin jazz gives you is a lot more percussion solos.
Kind of short entries today, though I guess that isn't all bad.
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.
This is one of those days that people like to use as their evidence that they're into 'anything good.' These are CDs I actively wanted where it's difficult to draw a direct line from one taste to the other. It's fairly easy to go, "First wave ska and contemporary composition? I'm eclectic." Except early on I stated that I don't but into that. Which is not to imply that everyone who owns a Heptones recording has a Kronos Quartet recording laying around as well or even knows who the Kronos Quartet is. But there is a line. I'm so sure of it that I'm going to try and draw one now even though I'm not sure what it is. Sort of a haphazard 'six degrees of my musical tastes.'
I like the Kronos Quartet through things like the Festival of New American music, which I'll get into later. They do challenging pieces with varying degrees of accessibility, and I like them because of their challenges and what the musical director of the group is able to select. This came about as a result of musical study, which was primarily on the saxophone. On the saxophone I was exposed to dissonance and irregular rhythm while listening to jazz. Also through jazz I began to enjoy blended horn harmonies and syncopation. One of the chief elements in ska is blended horns and syncopation. So while it's not a straight line, more of a V, there is a linear logic to me liking both ska music and modern composition.
So having gotten through that, lets get to today's CDs.
So really this is more of a reggae compilation than anything, but it was because of ska that I picked it up. Though reggae was fairly popular among the other employees as could be expected, so I'm not sure how I ended up with this one. It may not have been a 'general population' promo but rather something by circumstance I ended up with exclusive access to.
Almost half of this compilation is made up of Heptones songs. The recordings are remarkably clear for their age.
For a lot of people, and I'm not neccisarily excluding myself here, reggae is one album--Legend by Bob Marley. And honestly, that's all most people might need for their reggae fix. There's an old joke about what happened when the reggae fan came down of the weed he was smoking and then was asked about reggae, he responds, "That song sucks." I think that unless you're really into it, a little reggae goes a long way. But this really might be true of any music that you're not primarily interested in.
I'm definitely not in the category of 'reggae connoisseur' by any stretch. (also, I am a horrible speller, I don't want to admit the lengths I had to go to get close enough for spell check to figure out what I was talking about...). The only real reason that I am not one of the people whose understanding of reggae begins and ends with Legend is because I worked at a record store and the kind of people that means you hang out with. I like ska, I like some dancehall and rocksteady, but really would be hard pressed to be able to identify the difference between those three...so I just admit I like all of them in some way.
This Studio One has an actual Motown tinge to it. I don't know who influences who in this case, but there is that hint of popular music of the 60s and 70s over that tell-tale syncopation.
It's hard not to bob your head like you're hypnotized to reggae. If you get past the first song, you're in...it's only a matter of time before your bobbin' with that blonde liberal arts major with dreads who has named his bong. Might as well enjoy it.
Kronos Quartet Nuevo
You never really know what you're going to get with a Kronos Quartet album. Well, I mean, I was able to expect Mexican themed compositions. But not amplified strings run through a series of effects.
They tend to know how to start an album, every one of the albums of theirs I have (or at least hope I still have), the first piece is usually the one that hooks me the most and is usually the most dynamic.
As I mentioned, I got into the Kronos Quartet through Sacramento State's Festival of New American Music. I was a music student at Sac State for a short time until they figured out that I didn't have the money to attend. I got away with that for a surprisingly long time, really. Sac State had a rather robust modern music program and through that we were exposed to all manner of experimental composition styles and performers. Which for me at the time was hilarious. I really wasn't ready to accept what I was hearing there as music. I even think I kind of dreaded when the festival would come up.
But that all changed partially due to me desperately wanting to make fun of it. Outside of my fellow students, there wasn't anyone who had the background on what was happening to understand my 'clever' comments. So first I had to explain the music to them. And of course, I tried to make that as demeaning and 'funny' as possible. But then two distinct phenomenons happened. First was far too much attention to detail. I would get bogged down on little bits that didn't assist my joke in anyway that I would then have to explain further. The second was, my friends turned out to be some curious cats and would have follow up questions. So my little routine about this ridiculous music turned into me having to explain it. After doing that a few times, suddenly I actually understood what was going on. I think it was after maybe the fifth time I was trumped on insisting that 4'33" was actually the result of someone who forgot his composition was due that it all clicked for me.
This wasn't too long after they had done Purple Haze, which I think was the hook they tried to sell us on.
By the second year I was buying FeNAM t-shirts.
This album is just a sleeve, so I don't have the liner notes to tell me what the theme here is. I had seen an interview (or maybe this was a question and answer during a performance, I can't remember) that indicated that they collect compositions and recordings until there's enough of one theme to release an album and then it comes out.
So far this is pretty accessible. There are the wailing, screeching, crunchy recordings like Black Angels which we would occasionally use to clear the store at closing time. This isn't one of them.
I have to admit that there is the stupid part of my brain that sort of expected string quartet versions of mariachi music, which I guess would be about as accurate as expecting American composers to all sound like Conway Twitty. (Why Conway Twitty? I don't know, first thing that came to mind.) And thus I have to admit I don't know much about Mexican music outside of mariachi. Which is another thing I love about Kronos, they manage to confront me with music that I before hand might have only had a superficial knowledge. Of course, being a group that focuses on modern composition, I get the fun house mirror version of these traditions most of the time.
This is definitely headphone music. Not just because of the usual subtleties of string recording, but because of the odd atmospheric chanting and sound effects that come in and out throughout the album at faint levels. It provides a really cool strange atmospheric effect to the recordings.
This album makes them tied for second in most represented group on my iTunes in terms of number of albums. Overall that honor goes to The Shadow radio dramas.
There's a strange bit of what sounds like theater going on during the Chuavo Suite.
As a side note, iTunes, and indeed most modern cataloging of music, has a messed up time dealing with classical music in general and I believe it stems from the fact that most classical music is not performed by the composer. Popular music cataloging, which is what most of the cataloging is designed for, only allows for classification for artist, song, album, and genre. In doing it that way there is the assumption that the 'artist' refers to performer and composer. This isn't always 100% true (in that not all pop singers write their own material, or for covers), but it is a performer centric filing system. Claassical music as that extra tier, the composer, through which to classify things but there is no slot for that so it becomes difficult since you can be searching for a performer (Kronos Quartet, for example) or composer (perhaps more music by Chilano Sanchez whose carnival-esque Nacho Verdusco on this album is really intriguing), there isn't that extra slot. So the people who end up putting in the track names have non-standard ways of jamming in the composer into the track title. Or ditching the performer in favor of the composer. I had this problem at the store as well in trying to come up with ways to file the classical CDs. After years of refining my method into finely tuned sectioning that allowed people to browse performers, composers, periods, instruments, and styles, the person right after me did away with all of that. I'd complain that I had no legacy, but that store doesn't exist anymore anyway, so it's not like it would have lasted.
12/12 sounds like some weird techno-symphonic nightmare where we all dance to the collapse of society. Perhaps it was what they were going for in that Matrix:Reloaded rave scene I keep hearing about. (That's right, I never saw the second Matrix movie...you guys are suckers...). But then that's only one of its transitioning moods. It's actually one of the more interesting pieces on the album, which all have had their various charms so far.
And the whole album ends with a dance mix, which would be a strange thing if it wasn't the Kronos Quartet. But it is, so anything goes.
I certainly have a more extensive blues collection than I had imagined. This is the most persistent lesson so far from the project. I thought maybe I had hit a vein of blues and that things would start to balance out, but I think that it's time to face it, the Albatross is made up of a whole lot of blues CDs.
It's a party in my ears today, you're all invited...
Right off the bat, this is the jazziest blues album so far. This is closer to Joe Williams than it is Robert Johnson. This is not guitar heavy at all. It took me a moment to even identify if there was a guitar in there at all. There is a trio of saxophones and a trombone and a rather pervasive piano.
Of course as I write that, a lengthy guitar solo starts up. But not a grindy, gruff guitar solo, but rather an articulate, almost jazzy guitar solo with clean single lines.
The liner notes call it jump blues...I guess I could refer back to yesterday's liner notes for clarification, but I already don't know where they are.
As if to drive home the whole Joe Williams comparison, he's singing a song I associate with Williams, Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying. I really love this song.
I haven't managed to find anywhere in the liner notes yet that explain why he's nicknamed "T99." Seems a little old to make a convoluted Terminator reference.
I'm finding that when I like a CD I sometimes have less to say. I feel goofy just going on and on about how 'this is cool.' I don't really have anything insightful to say about the blues, especially at this point since it's I think the seventh or eighth blues CD to have gone in.
Sweet Mr. Cleanhead might top the list of potential super hero names should I suddenly be granted super powers.
Winter & Winter became one of my favorite labels while working at the store. I never really knew who distributed them, or maybe I did and I don't remember now, but that German label was pretty consistently awesome. I just started to assume that cardboard and cloth case meant, "I was going to like whatever was inside."
Usually this meant some rather strange hybrids of free jazz and modern composition with the likes of Uri Caine (who Winter & Winter introduced me to), but this time it's in the form of a zydeco collection. German label, zydeco music...sort of hard not to start thinking about Schultz Gets the Blues. I don't really have anywhere to go with that, though. Except to imagine that a quiet, large, good natured German dude is playing all the accordion parts.
There was a brief flair up of zydeco love at the store when the main buyer opened a Beau Jocque CD that contained the lyric, "Get 'em Beau Jocque." It was hard not to get infected with that, really. Zydeco would be a hard music to listen to all the time...that's a lot of pressure to be this enthusiastic all the time. Even the moderately tempo'd Ya-Ya (sittin' here lala waitin' on my ya-ya...) or this rather ballad like Turn the Page (that borders on being a regular R&B song with accordion in it...) it's a pretty high energy music.
Okay, this is kind of awesome. Ah, I spoke a little too soon. I thought it was about to be a zydeco cover of Abraham, Martin and John. That would be fantastic. It's sort of making me unfairly disappointed in this soulful Motowny song with accordion.
Now we're back up to speed with Let's Say Goodnight. Feet Don't Fail Me Now is a tune I know from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, now I get an even faster version of it with...say it with me...accordion.
There was an accordion in my house growing up. No zydeco music, though, so I never knew its potential outside of being an instrument to accompany bubble making.
Iko Iko, awesome. Terrance Sieman is taking the song easy, I'm used to more cookin' with people doing this song. But the energy that sits under the surface of all zydeco music makes this laid back take work rather well.
I may have a second form of music that makes the best covers. Right now I'm listening to a zydeco Tequila and I'm completely sold. Get 'em Beau Jocque! (who happens to be doing this cover...)
I guess I can take a few minutes away from obsessively checking the status of the video to work on my long term project. The completely clean and unrecognizable CDs keep popping up, including a sampler from a box set I don't remember coming out. Apparently they over-fed the beast. I guess you can't entice a dog on a full stomach. How many times can I restate that metaphor?
I almost feel like I shouldn't have to listen to this album to consider it listened to. Thanks to a friend's parents growing up, I listened to all of this all through my childhood. Other people my age might have Thompson Twins or Depeche Mode or Wham! in their closet of shame--or maybe they have a bunch of metal bands they have that they guiltily admit that they really liked (or no guilt, who knows...), but I have this stuff. Before Jazz (and before a brief detour in early rap), there was Funk for me. In fact, Funk is why I played the sax. I saw a video with Clarence Clemens standing on a tall white pedestal playing the tenor sax and I thought, "Damn...that's my instrument, I want to play that!"
My vision was to stand in the horn section playing Earth, Wind and Fire or behind someone like James Brown. I wanted to be on that giant white pedestal growling out an eight bar solo in a funk or soul song. That was my very first image of my potential future self as a saxophonist. Obviously, that image evolved and I've talked about the various stages of that daydream before.
These are the songs I sing mindlessly when I'm completely idled. The "Give It To Me" chant..."Giveittomegivemethatstuffthatfunkthatsweetthatfunkystuff(give it to me!)" I don't really think about it. It's just the music in the back of my head. And since it's the first music I 'learned,' it shapes my tastes in music I like now.
The weird thing is that outside of funk, I really don't like dance music. And I absolutely don't dance to this or anything. I bob my head, but no dancing.
Man, I love Fantastic Voyage.
I don't know what the dancing thing is, really. I could come up with a bunch of excuses. It's not that I'm ashamed of my dancing (though it is, really, just awful)--I don't have the desire to dance (my brief romance with breakdancing aside--also, just awful). Dancing is one of those things where I don't know if I'm watching a good display of talent or I should put a wallet in the person's mouth to keep them from swallowing their tongue. I even took a graduate level class on dance analysis, nothing.
Do your dance, do your dance, do your dance QUICK! Cameo never managed to popularize the cod piece.
Familiarity is probably a big contributor to why this CD was never opened. I knew all these songs, I could play them back in my head pretty easily, there was no rush to get them on the player. No doubt they came home with something I hadn't really heard. Certainly it didn't come home during the Great Monster Rancher Play.
For record store employees who also loved their video games, Monster Rancher was a godsend. A video game where you make monsters from your own CDs? Couldn't be more perfect. In fact, the game was designed to get you to combine monsters and make them better that way, presuming I guess that people would run out of CDs to make monsters out of. For us, this was not a problem. We never really made it far in the game, we were too busy finding out what monsters all of our CDs made. We even had informal tournaments where we'd bring over ten CDs we hadn't put in yet, generate the monsters and have them fight it out for supremacy.
My champion monster came from Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz, a pretty spectacular Naga. It seemed fitting. I miss that game.
For all of the fawning over Funk, the only other just pure funk on my iTunes before the project is a couple of Funkedelic albums when I realized that I was losing them. I used to have the entire Funkedelic catalog, but they all went adrift and only two, Hardcore Jollies and The Electric Spanking of the War Babies, were saved.
Duke Ellington/Louis Armstrong
Selections from "The Complete Session"
This seemed too short to count as its own CD. This is another one of those advance promos where they don't even have the artwork sorted out or at the very least produced and they're not giving me the complete cd.
This is really a CD that was waiting for iTunes or related media player. Because there really wasn't going to be an instance where I was going to throw in a CD with four tracks, one of them with false starts and conversations to have in the background or something of that kind.
I guess if I had a multi-cd player, like my brief moment in my bus, then it would work.
This is another one of those legendary artist CDs where I don't really know what to say. I can't really comment on the sounds that everyone knows even when they don't listen to jazz.
I went through a heavy Armstrong phase for a bit when I was living in a house with a lot of roommates. One of my roommates was pretty into The Carpenters. This created a fusion in my head when bored at work and I started singing Carpenters songs in Armstrong's voice. It's a moment that delights me to this day. Try it, it's awesome.
4-Sight
4-Sight
I usually have been listening to the CD for a little bit before I start typing. The process goes, I pop in the CD, transfer it to the hard drive, get the Amazon player link, scan the cover, and then start assembling it into the blog. By then, the CD has digested and I've been listening to it for a little bit. Usually I've looked up anything I didn't know as well. I haven't done this one because I really didn't know who the hell it was and I kind of wanted to see what my reaction was going to be.
Turns out it's a progressive jazz quartet. Everyone in the group has managed to continue playing (and the bass player has apparently become a professor at Michigan State while playing bass in the Lincoln Center Orchestra.) But as this particular group, just this once.
Wow, on track four it got all fusion-y on me. Still a little funky though.
There were a few groups of like this when I was there, jazz combos with names (instead of the "So and So Quartet). I usually didn't see many follow up albums from most of them. In fact, Sex Mob is the only group I can think of that I saw two or more of.
Which isn't to say that these groups aren't any good, they are. I really like this, not as much as Black/Note, a group from the same period, but it's pretty good.
Another day, another bag, the same old Albatross. I'm back and the stack of CDs doesn't seem any smaller. I've found a bag of 'fresh' CDs, it seems, and there should be less 'failures' in this one. But just from the surface of it, it's also a bag I'm not entirely aware of. Both of today's CD's I don't really recall seeing that often if at all. I don't know how this bag (it's still in a paper bag, most of the CDs had been moved to a re-usable shopping bag) managed to survive, but now it's the second to be digested into the Project. Let's get to it.
Rizwan - Muazzam Qawwali
Sacrifice to Love
This is another Real World CD, Peter Gabriel's vanity world music label. I've talked about it before. We move from Africa to Asia for this collection of Pakistani music by Rizwan - Muazzam Quawwali.
I know next to nothing about what's going on, to be honest. Fortunately, the liner notes are intact.
Of course, the liner notes are a little sparse on the subject. This seems to be a Real World failing. These are the nephews of the renowned Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan who introduced the west to Qawwali music, essentially (from the liner notes) Sufi and Islamic devotionals. Musically it seems to rely on heavy call and response, lengthy flowing vocal lines and a diverse and driving percussion, though not really heavy. The harmonium is kind of cool. According to wiki (no thanks, Real World liner notes...) the music is supposed to be rather high energy to "induce hypnotic states both among the musicians and within the audience."
Maybe it's the harmonium working overtime, but I'm feeling a lot of similarity between this and Zydeco music. It's not just the drone of the harmonium sounding like an accordion (natch), the percussion and tempo kind of fit in, too. Zydeco doesn't really go for as long, flowing vocal lines, but otherwise, it's not entirely different.
These are some long songs, each over 15 minutes.
The liner notes have a weird quirk. On the translation of the third track (the lyrics are remarkably short for songs that go on for so long), it starts off with what the Qawwali is supposed to be. This one is called I Am the Dust of the Street of Mohammed. The discription contains a brief note on the piece, "A 'naat' - a song in praise of Prophet Mohammed, Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH)." It's that last bit that seems trippy, the acronym there. I mean, I'm used to hearing that following the mention of Mohammed, but I've never seen anyone put it down as just initials. I wonder what the story there is.
This was released in 1999 when the two artists that make up the group were teenagers, apparently. I don't have anything insightful to fill in that information, really. I think it just exhausts what I know about this CD.
Various Artists
Blues Routes: Blues & Jazz - Worksongs & Street Music - Heroes & Tricksters
Well, another bag, more blues compilations. This is pretty interesting in that it's part of a Folkways series of concerts. Apparently it collects various folk permiatations of the blues in American culture. It started off with a raildriving song by the Gandy Dancers (Gandy Dancers apparently a term for railstraighteners for the tool manufacturer, Gandy...see Real World, those are useful liner notes...) lead by a guy named John Henry followed by the song John Henry.
Not that anyone can tell, but I haven't been writing much about this CD because the liner notes are actually fantastic. I've had my fun with some of the more over the top liner notes so far, and of course blues has been a leader in the field of ridiculous.
But these, these are pretty good. Each track gets its own little section where the style of blues represented is given a brief but clear introduction including what makes it distinctive, its history, development and place in the rest of the blues cannon. So while I should be winging my way through commenting on the music and searching the nooks and crannies of my brain to try and remember all of this stuff that I may not have known in the first place, I'm instead filling in a bunch of gaps, like the railroad thing at the beginning. Or the history of the banjo, which I never apparently knew.
According to the liner notes it more or less evolved from a stringed gourd instrument brought over by slaves from West Africa. When it became a common feature of minstrel shows mocking black culture it sort of fell out of favor for the guitar. I never knew that. Of course, I never really liked the banjo, but I should have at least known where the instrument came from.
This is another Smithsonian CD so I guess it shouldn't really be that much of a surprise.
I'm on to a recording of the Mardi Gras Indians, black groups that act as 'tribes' during Mardi Gras with elaborate costumes. It even gives a list of CDs that contain nothing but Mardi Gras Indian recordings. This is like the champion of liner notes.
Following that is a band with paint bucket percussion. I had the opportunity to interview San Francisco's own Bucketman (who will be the first to tell you that he's been featured in Pursuit of Happyness and various TV shows.) He's a pretty entertaining guy to talk to. Doesn't really relate to this recording, but he was fascinating to talk to. This recording is apparently an example of Washington D.C.'s go-go music, a sort of folk rap form using bucket percussion. Awesome.
This CD should come with a unit of American Music History. It's probably the most informative thing I've listened to without actually getting a unit or two in the process.
See, I didn't know there was a San Francisco/Oakland 'sound' to blues. But it's clearly awesome. Joe Louis Walker is quoted in the liner notes describing it as "more swinging, as opposed to th real hard Windy City shuffles. It's more of a swing jump thing --very danceable." Show all
But mostly it started off with some heavy slide guitar, which I love.
So this is the thirty-first day. I've been actually doing this for a month. The time period is longer because of the hiatus, but thirty one actual days of cds going onto the hard drive. I don't really have anything profound to say about it but that I'm rather enjoying doing it.
It's all jazz day on the 31st day, and all jazz that I tend to prefer, so it's an easy day for listening because I'm likely to enjoy the heck out of it. We'll see if that translates. I was also suckered again by CDs in sleeves, but this time it's only going to result in three hours of music instead of yesterday's marathon five. When I originally decided to do this, five was the first number I came up with until I realized that five CDs a day meant listening to five hours of music straight through every day and write about it while it happens. It doesn't sound horrible, I'm sure critics do it, and just listening to music that long is not bad at all. But having to comment on it, and my decision to wear headphones to give the music it's best (under the circumstances) representation, that clearly would have been too much. And besides, critics get paid to do this, and I don't know that this blog has a reader I haven't met, so two it is.
Except today, where it's three.
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers At the Cafe Bohemia V.2
This has always stood out to me as the halmark of post bop jazz. Not this particular album, which I apparently didn't even take out of its case until just now, but The Jazz Messengers in general. I may have mentioned this when I did the Tony Williams Trio, but drummers make the best bands, and the biggest proof of that is Art Blakey and his messengers. The jazz critic written liner notes tell me that this is the original line up (as much as I admire the Jazz Messengers, I don't really know the line up history--I just know that any time I pick up a Messengers CD the line up is going to be awesome.) The Messengers went from this super band line up to be the greatest predictor of remarkable talent until Blakey hung up his sticks.
This is not a volume two in the box set sense, but it is a companion recording to another that I'm hoping comes up because it's got some of my favorite Horace Silver numbers on it, apparently. It's of course another Rudy Van Gelder edition...I wonder if I should have been tagging those all this time?
I have been sitting on my Art Blakey anecdote, and I don't think I've already blown it. I wanted to use it yesterday when it was probably a little more appropriate. I was backstage at a Terrance Blanchard performance at Yoshi's in Oakland--I don't remember if I got back there because of the record store or because a former record store employee had become artist liaison for Yoshi's--anyway, I was sitting backstage while Blanchard held court. He was talking about his days as a Messenger and playing with Art Blakey. He was part of that crowd I talked about yesterday, the musicians that came out of school jazz, the technicians. He even talked about how they (including himself) loved to flex their skill by creating complicated, difficult, technical pieces. They'd all come in, Blanchard explained, with these hard, technical pieces to try out. But they'd get three or four bars in and Blakey would wave them off. "What is this?" Blanchard quoted, doing his best raspy Art Blakey voice, "Look here, anyone can write something no one can play. It takes talent to write something people want to hear." Blanchard explained that it changed his entire approach to music. To be fair, this is in no way an admission that Blanchard rejected his academic, technical past. He had reached a point of training himself, of study, that all of that was completely on demand. He wouldn't have been the player he is without that command. It just signaled a time to develop a different direction built on that philosophy.
That story effected me pretty deeply as well, even if I didn't continue on in music.
The CD opens with a track that threw me off completely, and the internet didn't help at all. The liner notes cleared it up, the track that sounded an awefull lot like Tenor Madness but was labeled Sportin' Crowd was in fact what Tenor Madness...when it was recorded six months later by Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. And when a young Walrus played the snot out of it in high school. I had not sufficiently understood how chord changes related to each other for far too long, so I jumped at any chance to play the blues progression.
There's a weird thing that happens at the end of I Waited for You. At the end of the nine minute track the band launches into another tune for 15 to 20 seconds until it fades out. It's a weird choice.
Various Artists 32 Jazz Sampler
This is the kind of thing that I could only get from working at the store. I don't think it's the first of its kind I've done, because that seems familiar. I don't even think that this is the first one from 32 Jazz now that I think about it. Maybe not, my posts aren't as searchable as I'd like them to be...probably my fault.
This is a collection of 32 Jazz's hard bop/post bop artists, for the most part. This was a sampler of upcoming re-issues. Sometimes this meant that I was about to get six new awesome re-issues, sometimes it meant that this was all I was going to get. Since the Albatross is completely unorganized I have no idea which one is the case here. I don't know that I've seen these albums at any point, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.
The second track on this album is one of those Real Book charts I never really got the hang of, Freedom Jazz Dance performed here by Eddie Harris. Turns out I wasn't that far off, it's just that kind of melody, I just never listened to it with a rhythm section. Or maybe I did and never made the connection.
You know, one of the things I'm discovering about myself through all of this is that I am a way bigger fan of hard bop that I thought I was. I liked it when I was learning jazz because it was funky, not as hard to play as bop and not, in my teenage estimation, as corny as swing. But my impression of it was that it wasn't always as funky as I thought it was, but that really seems false. Or I've grown into it, or something. Because of the 'straight jazz' CDs that have gone in, I've really enjoyed the hard bop ones most consistently. Rather than trying to use my own words to define hard bop, since it only seems appropriate at this point, I'm going to link to a definition.
It might be that any song named Feels So Good is going to be pretty cool. Mose Allison gives a groovy, laid back, very different Feels So Good than Chuck Mangione.
It was only a matter of time before Satin Doll came up. I had invoked it as the 'generic standard' enough times that here it is. It's being done by Raashand Roland Kirk, who sounds like he has a few saxophones in his mouth. I'm being literal here, Kirk would occasionally play multiple saxophones at the same time.
This is also a much different Angel Eyes than I am used to. A little groovier. This one is performed by Hank Crawford, not the high school big band favorite of any band that had a really good lead alto. I should explain that, but that's really it--there is a ballad called Angel Eyes that about three or four jazz bands would do at every competition that's lead by the first alto. I was expecting that song, but it was apparently a different Angel Eyes.
I really hope these albums pop up in the collection. I only managed to find MP3 downloads of two of the albums on Amazon, but they're both good.
Miles Davis Blue Miles
I'm pretty sure I have this twice, but the other one may not have survived. This is a themed compilation of Miles Davis recordings that, at least according to the CD, try to establish him as the "King of the Blue Hours between midnight and dawn." Apparently to refute him being the prince of darkness, which I've never heard him called, though he did record a song called that. Not sure that really counts.
This is the Round Midnight I'm most familiar with, the version from the movie of the same name the second most. This is probably the version of Round Midnight that everyone is most familiar with, even if they don't know they know it.
Miles Davis was really, really good at ballads. I mean, he was really good at trumpet in general, but he really smoked ballads. He's famous for saying, "You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads." I guess there's a couple ways to take that, I don't know what he said after or before that. Certainly Miles wasn't one to wallow in a comfort zone to be sure.
I usually don't like compilations, I prefer to hear the whole album. I want that artist's 'moment', so to speak, their complete thought. I would hear people complaining about having to buy a whole album for one song and I would think, "Man, listen to better music." But I guess there is an argument to be had for, "I just want to sit back and relax to some mellow, smokey Miles Davis music."
Or, I guess, if I was trying to seduce a classy lady in a cliched movie in the roll of pretentious douchebag. I do feel like I should be sipping wine instead of water for this. Though now any water I consume makes me a little nervous if the computer is anywhere near it...
