What are you listening to?

[garbon]

DJ Khaled feat. Rihanna & Bryson Tiller - Wild Thoughts

[The Brain]

Kesha - Woman

She dropped the $? This is worse than Alanis cutting her hair.

Yes, her new album now has her name with an 's' as well as isn't all auto-tune pop but actual singing / features two tracks with the Eagles of Death Metal.

Oh and Alanis is a blonde now.

Jesus. I'm full fetal in the corner now.

[PDH]

Bauhaus - She's In Parties

[The Minsky Moment]

Hank Mobley -  Blue Note 1950s Sessions (Mosaic)

Mobley is like the Rodney Dangerfield of jazz musicians.  He's perhaps most famous for being fired by Miles Davis.  The old Penguin Guide routinely damns him with faint praise, or worse, with comments like: "solidly reliable player,"  "despite frequent personal problems rarely gave less than his best," "rarely delivered a killer punch,"  "almost pallid in comparison."  His biggest shortcoming was to play tenor sax during a period when Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane were in their prime, and not to be either of those people.  Mobley had a beautiful tone, and could swing hard and fluently, but his virtues lie more in subtlety than virtuoso pyrotechnics.  Along with Art Blakey and Horace Silver he was the key player in developing the "hard bop" sound.  That sound is what many people think of now as "straight ahead" or even (erroneously) "trad" and in the present day it isn't fashionable among the hipsterish contemporary jazz crowd.  But there is a good reason that 60 years later, this music still stands as a benchmark - these are tight sessions by talented musicians who respected each other and took their craft seriously.

Most of this stuff is out of print, but (for now) streamable in Spotify under "Capital Vaults Jazz Series."  Or you can just go straight to his later early 60s work, even more impressive, in "Soul Station", "Workout" and "The Turnaround"

[Savonarola]

Otis Redding - Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul (1965)

I didn't know Issac Hayes was the pianist at Stax.

Booker T and the MGs + Otis Redding + Tom Dowd all at the peak of their careers; I don't think they could have made a bad record if they tried.  This album is great; it's mostly covers all done in in Otis's rough soulful style over the Stax groove.  The three songs Otis wrote (Ole Man Trouble, I've Been Loving You Too Long and Respect) are every bit as good as the covers. 

Tom Dowd thought Otis was going to be the next Bobby Darin or Ray Charles ().  I guess we never got to find out.   

[Savonarola]

CB and I watched a documentary last night about the making of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  I learned that the rise before the final chord in "A Day in the Life" was a type of Aleatoric Music; that is music based on chance.  The musicians were told to play the lowest note their instrument was capable of, then rise in pitch by selecting random notes over a set number of bars and end up on a note in an E-major chord.

The Wikipedia article on Aleatoric Music reads like a who's who of awful post-World War II avant garde music (Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Iannis Xenakis).  I'm impressed the Beatles got anything out of the movement.

[Savonarola]

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme (1965)

My favorite jazz album, and one of my favorite albums.  Every time I listen to this I hear something new, and I can listen to it over and over again and never get bored.  It has an unusual quality to it that I find difficult to explain; sort of like a sense of completion - a musical catharsis, maybe.  By the time the album ends you feel like you've been somewhere and returned, or taken part in a ritual.

[The Minsky Moment]

Stockhausen had very wide influence - not surprisingly, a lot of the free jazz guys were disciples (Cecil Taylor, Braxton, Zorn), but Miles Davis' electric period also took a lot from Stockhausen, and there are a bunch of lines of influence to late 60s and early 70s rock.

[Savonarola]

Stockhausen had very wide influence - not surprisingly, a lot of the free jazz guys were disciples (Cecil Taylor, Braxton, Zorn), but Miles Davis' electric period also took a lot from Stockhausen, and there are a bunch of lines of influence to late 60s and early 70s rock.

Well, Miles Davis and the Beatles were musical geniuses, and I'm not.   

I've never heard anything by Stockhausen that I liked.  The one that I remember most is a piece where the pianist plays notes based on an atomic formula while sighing (or maybe he was playing notes at random while sighing based on an atomic formula); in any event his music is considerably more avant garde than I am.

[The Minsky Moment]

I'm also not a fan.
It's a recurring cycle for performers in more popular genres to reach out to European chamber or concert music traditions, either for inspiration, legitimation or both. From Ellington doing long form compositional suites, to Charlie Parker with Springs to Procul Harum or  MJQ incorporating Bach and the prog rockers being influenced by Bartok.  I do think Bach and Baroque counterpoint are generally more adaptable for this, and at least commercially, more successful.

[Savonarola]

The Beach Boys - Today! (1965)

Brian Wilson had quit touring to focus on studio work.  The results are hit or miss; the album version of "Help Me Rhonda," for instance, badly misuses the fade (the better known single version would be on the next album Summer Days (and Summer Nights.))  On the other hand you can hear the sound that would would define Pet Sounds on "Please Let Me Wonder."  The songs are all about love, longing and wonder set from the perspective of an adolescent (Brian was 23 when he wrote this); no more songs about surfing and cars. 

[Malthus]

You early music mavens may enjoy this:

http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/arts-culture/item/106319-philly-company-digitizes-collection-of-25000-old-records-and-growing-free-to-download

[The Minsky Moment]

Audio quality is a bit shaky (heavy crackling on the old sides) but the price is right.

Good side by Allen Eager and Max Roach in there off a Savoy recording with Stan Getz on the other side.  Both still teenagers at the time.  Got both on CD though.

[Syt]

Tom Waits - Hell Broke Luce

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fju9o8BVJ8

[Savonarola]

BB King - Live at the Regal  (1965)

If you only own one BB King record it should be this one; it's even better than his greatest hits.  I did once see BB perform, even in his late 70s he still was a great performer.  Here he was in his prime and the audience was really into it as well.