What are you listening to?

[Malthus]

Maybe they were purposely dosed with a lethal amount? It is Russia... 

Yeah. I'm suspecting murder is frankly more likely. It would be pretty easy to murder someone with nitrous. Just hold them down and force a mask on them.

[The Minsky Moment]

John Coltrane - My Favorite Things (1961)

McCoy Tyner died over the weekend, one the last great living players of the postwar American jazz golden age.  Among the highest tier of latent, Sonny Rollins - retired for years now - is still alive, as is Herbie Hancock. A few good sidemen too like Jimmy Cobb - still playing nicely at 91, Roy Haynes - still not officially retired at age 94 and with a Grand Theft Auto DJ credit to his name, and Reggie Workman and Pharoah Sanders, who I believe are now the last living people to have recorded with John Coltrane in a significant role.

My Favorite Things was Coltrane's commercially most successful work - the album sold about as many copies as Love Supreme, and the title track, despite its 13+ minutes of length, became one of Coltrane's only well-played singles.  Of course the song itself was written by Rogers & Hammerstein, and the arrangement and performance was as much due to Tyner as anyone else.  A lot of what would become Tyner trademarks are here including the percussive ostinato patterns played in the left hand and the use of modal harmonies.

Tyner didn't become as famous a name in the wider world as Coltrane, Miles Davis or Hancock - either sadly or luckily there is no Tyner equivalent to "Rockit". But if you play a keyboard instrument and attend an jazz academy, you will learn Tyner - his style has been foundational for decades now.

[Josephus]

The Moody Blues. Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

[The Minsky Moment]

McCoy Tyner - Trident (1975)

On the surface a gimmicky 70s album where Tyner plays a bit on harpsichord and celeste.  Past the surface though is a high horsepower piano power trio reuniting Tyner with fellow Coltrane alumnus Elvin Jones.  Ron Carter does some of his best playing ever on this album, saying a lot given that he played bass for a good part of a decade in Miles Davis' best quintet lineup. The celeste parts are mostly a distraction, but the harpsichord works as a nice intro and coda on the first track. 

[Savonarola]

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has put up all their recorded concerts for free online: here

There are children's concerts if you're homeschooling (and homeschooling allows such things - I really wouldn't know.)

[Savonarola]

Simon and Garfunkel - Bookends (1968)

The first side is a concept album, but every bit as dark and brooding as "Sgt. Pepper's" is bright and sunny.  The record company agreed to pay for their studio expenses, figuring a folk duo wouldn't really rack up the bills; but they did.  The arrangement allowed Simon and Garfunkel to experiment and create a much more layered sound than on any of their previous albums.  They also took much more time putting the album together (it had been two years since "Parsely, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme") and Paul Simon was smoking an awful lot of hashish; which made him super depressed giving rise to the albums themes of mortality, emptiness and loss.

The second side is mostly singles that had been released since 1966.  It features some of their best songs (Mrs. Robinson, Hazy Shade of Winter) and others that critics have since tried to read profound meanings into (At the Zoo, Punky's Dilemma.)  It's not bad, but nowhere near as breathtaking an experience as the first side.

[The Minsky Moment]

I saw the following headline:  Chess stars found dead, laughing gas suspected and thought, "Damn, those bluesmen were hard core up until the bitter end."  To my disappointment they had meant people who played chess; not artists featured on Chess records.  (There are still a handful of Chess recording artists left, though of course they're quite old.)

Reminds me did you read the story on the Universal fire?  Supposedly the Chess masters were heavily impacted.

[Savonarola]

I saw the following headline:  Chess stars found dead, laughing gas suspected and thought, "Damn, those bluesmen were hard core up until the bitter end."  To my disappointment they had meant people who played chess; not artists featured on Chess records.  (There are still a handful of Chess recording artists left, though of course they're quite old.)

Reminds me did you read the story on the Universal fire?  Supposedly the Chess masters were heavily impacted.

No, I missed that story (here if anyone is interested.)  That does sound terrible.

[Savonarola]

The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle (1968)

No, that's not a misspelling (or at least I didn't misspell "Odyssey", their record designer did.)  The Zombies had fallen on hard times and decided to make one final record; but what a final record.  In addition to their biggest hit^1.) "Time of the Season," the album features far and away the most sophisticated compositions of The Zombies career.  It's all the more amazing in that they had almost no studio time and so little budget that the band had to pay for their own stereo mix.  By the time "Time of the Season" charted in the United States the band had been broken up for two years.  (I see from Wikipedia that there were a couple fake "Zombie" bands that toured the United States in 1969; one featuring Dusty Hill and Frank Beard soon to be of ZZ Top.)

1.)  In the United States (and Canada), "Time of the Season" did not chart in the United Kingdom.

[Eddie Teach]

Good thing you clarified that, Savronela. 

[Syt]

I really like this cover of Gordon Lightfoot's Northwest Passage by Unleash The Archers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRD3vrSLPaw

[The Minsky Moment]

No, I missed that story (here if anyone is interested.)  That does sound terrible.

There were rumors about it for years.  The first time it came to my attention was about 8 years when I got a collection of Ahmad Jamal's recordings on the Argo label. The set was delayed and the explanation given was that it had to be pieced together from a variety of analog and digital sources in various archives because the original analog masters were destroyed in the fire.  At the time it didn't seem totally out of whack with UMG's spin because Argo wasn't exactly a high-profile label, even in the postwar war jazz niche.  But there was some speculation that the fire might have been worse than indicated - see eg  - http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?/topic/59041-2008-universal-fire-how-many-argo-masters-burned-up/ - and that speculation turned out sadly to be understated.

[11B4V]

What am I listening to? Good stuff here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIXh0JNvuHs

[Liep]

Abbey Road

[Savonarola]

Peter Brötzmann - Machine Gun (1968)

Several years ago I heard a story on NPR about  a trend called wyatting, which is what happens when the Apple store runs out of the latest incarnation of the iPhone wyatting.  Now that many bar jukeboxes are connected to the internet they offer an enormous collection of music including some off the wall tracks.  Wyatting (named after Robert Wyatt) is putting on the track that you think will clear the bar out quickest.  This album; especially the title track, would be my pick for a wyatting session.

It does improve upon repeated listens, (the first time I heard it I thought it was the jazz equivalent of a mugging), but it's still way more avant-garde than I am (even though it was released before I was born.)