Documentaries vs. Woody Allen flicks

So here's the thing about jazz. Sometimes I really like jazz records once I'm a little way in, but they're, for me, in the same category as Harpers articles and documentaries: I have to be cajoled into beginning to listen or read or watch. Which is probably a symptom of intellectual laziness. And I do not like what I deem "crazy jazz." Apparently, some people call this brand of jazz "free jazz," but that seems overly generous to me. Take Pharoah Sanders: I cannot unravel the music from the noise in most of his "songs." Which is probably a symptom of tone-deafness. But there you have it.

As for Beatles' albums, the other set of things that I can think to put in a category with them are Woody Allen's early and middle-ish movies because 1) I always think I am more familiar with them than I really am, and that makes me pick them up off the shelf more rarely than I should, and 2) re-listening or re-watching is always worth it, but there's always also a little grit of something that I would rather edit out.

At least that's how it is with Abbey Road for me: "Here Comes the Sun" is sunny and tender, warm with earned nostalgia, but then there's the somewhat shoddy replica of that song's lyrics at the beginning of "The Sun King." "Carry That Weight," with its orchestral bits--from the sudden horns to an electric guitar that echoes their fanfare--also wins me over, as does "Come Together." And there's a bunch of songs here too that I think are playful without being vapid, one of which is "Mean Mr. Mustard." Then again, there's a couple of clunkers, by my lights, one of which is "An Octopus's Garden." I think it's stupidly psychedelic. It, like Revolver's "Yellow Submarine," is catchy and noisome. Perhaps I just don't like songs about being underwater. Nor do I tend to like songs written by someone horny improvising with a mod garage band, which, if I had to guess, I would say might describe the composition process for "I Want You (She's So Heavy)."

In contrast, Blue Train does not have a single dud track. My favorite track, "I'm Old Fashioned," saunters around its melody in a way that seems lazy but is secretly virtuoso. True--it doesn't hearten me the same way that "Here Comes the Sun" or "Carry That Weight" do. Indeed, nothing on Blue Train nudges me toward better cheer the way some Beatles songs can. Nothing on this record, though, seems cheaply done. When the horns solo, they do so with a memory of the song's melody. This is not free jazz: the instrumentalists tether their improvisations to a guiding tune with exactly the right laxity and right precision, easing your way between chord changes.

So: Blue Train wins over Abbey Road.