i'm glad i got to listen to a jazz album...despite numerous tries over the years, i've never really latched on to the jazz music...i've got a smattering of stuff by coltrane, miles, ornette coleman, coleman hawkins, lionel hampton, charlie christian, dave brubeck, and others, but none of it has really grabbed me...i mean i like it and it doesn't annoy me or anything, it just doesn't really mean anything to me...blue train was an album i hadn't heard...it followed along with my past experience with the jazz...for a classic jazz album, i'd give it a solid A+...but at the same time, i don't care if i ever listen to it again...
not to sound like that douche ken burns, but i think jazz reminds me of baseball...if you really understand it, there are alot of things there to pay attention to...in baseball, there are the pitching matchups, position of the infielders, and so on...with jazz, a lot of the action favors the educated listener...i don't think i'm really that person...like i know coltrane uses lots a different modalities or whatever, but if it was just up to me, i'd never notice those things...i don't have the music knowledge to get all that stuff without reading about it...i read a biography of miles davis a coupla years ago and i barely understood any of the music writing...i guess i'm saying this: jazz is enjoyable to listen to, but i don't think i can fully appreciate it...
i've got 3 spiritualized albums, including ladies and gentleman...this is my favorite of the three (i also have let it come down and songs in a and e)...i feel like jason pierce found a theme with this album and followed through with it pretty well...this is a quite ambitious batch of music and it almost always succeeds...as a negative, there are a few parts that just turn into noise for me...i feel like they must be fun to play, but not much fun to listen to a (kinda like jazz)...9 times outta 10, though, i'd pick to listen to spritualized...
winner: ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space...
This is the correct call.
ReplyDeleteI have to say I feel kind of relieved because if Blue Train took down Ladies and Gents, everyone would be pissed--I'm just not sure who they'd be more pissed at, you or me.
ReplyDeleteI do get what you're saying about jazz. I'm with you in that I don't understand all the technical stuff that other people seem to, but I'm not sure this is how it was meant to be listened to. In the past few years as I've really started to get into jazz, I've found two things:
1) The more I listen, the more I like it. It's almost like I just had to get used to it.
2) The less I try to understand it, the more I like it. Now I just feel like it either swings or it doesn't. It either works for me or not. When I figured this out, I also realized that I have pretty traditional taste. I think sometimes people who listen to alternative music figure they will dig the most experimental jazz, but I dunno. There's a place for it certainly, but I'll take Art Blakey over Ornette any day. That's why I picked Blue Train. I think it's one of Coltrane's most accessible albums. His real late stuff--like Meditations--is almost unlistenable.
Also, I do love Ladies and Gents, but these days at times I find their stuff a little contrived.
All this to say that I still stand by my pick.
This is probably going to make me sound like a snob, but I really like Meditations. Oddly, though, my two most listened-to Coltrane albums are on totally different ends of the spectrum: Meditations and John Coltrane and Johhny Hartman, which I can't help singing along to—to the point that Sarah has had to cover my mouth with her hand. My One and Only Love would probably rank in my top 20 songs ever.
ReplyDeleteI probably would have chosen Spiritualized, too. The one time I saw them live in Boston is up there in best concerts ever, too. I remember sitting at my desk at work the next day, staring at my new Spiritualized coffee cup and still feeling the awesomeness of the night before.
You know what's funny Bruce? When I said that Meditations was unlistenable, I almost added: Except for Bruce. I bet Bruce loves this shit.
ReplyDeleteI kid you not.
p.s. That's not a dis--I'm just sayin, you listen to some pretty weird shit.
Thank you for your comments.
ReplyDeleteZwartitude, I think you're totally right about the "i'm an indie rocker, therefore I must like the crazy jazz" hypothesis. My favorite jazz recording by far is the Benny Goodman Quartet doing "The Man I Love." I actually think the constant push to move the music forward has totally killed jazz. It seems to me that historically jazz has just became weirder and weirder from the 1910's to the late 1960's to the point where it wasn't even about riffing on a scale over a chord progression. And once you take that away, I just don't think there's anywhere jazz can meaningfully go and still be jazz. I think that's how we got to the fusion stuff w/miles davis, etc. Now, it all seems to have stagnated with the soft jazz stuff like kenny g, earl klugh, and the immortal michael buble. I know there's good people out there (brian blade, brad meldhau, joshua redman), I'm just being glib...
To me, jazz has always comes off as being about finding something new to do with the music and less about raw emotion. I think that's why I want to "understand" it, because the musicians seem to WANT me to understand it. The solos are like lyrics and singers usually want you to have some understanding or, at least a way of interpreting, what they are singing. Too often with jazz, hard-bop in particular, i find myself confused by the flurry of notes and left with nothing for my ear to latch onto until the them comes back around. This is why jazz often becomes background music to me and I don't think that's what it is meant to be.
You dig? Anybody?
Sorry about my length...
Andy W., A) I agree with your pick. B) I dig. C) Bruce can appreciate weirder sounding shit than a lot of people, and I appreciate that about Bruce. D) The two jazz albums I have spent the most time with are John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" and the Vince Guaraldi Trio's "A Charlie Brown Christmas". They are very different (although they have some similarities, as Zwartitude/ Madison might point out)and I love them dearly and I'm sure I can't articulate why in coherent fashion. E) You should never apologize about your length, Andy W.
ReplyDeletethanks, eric...you've alway been very accepting of my length...rimshot
ReplyDelete