Day 58: Angel Sept. 2000 Sampler & Ellingtonia: A Tribute to Duke Ellington

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.

Various Artists
Ellingtonia: A Tribute To Duke

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.

Day 34: Funkdamentals, Louis Armstrong/Duke Ellington Selections from the "Complete Session," 4-Sight Self Titled

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?

That probably means I should just get to it...

Various Artists
Funkdamentals

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.