When December 1st rolled around, I pulled up an album I'd been saving of a Japanese Harmonica Virtuoso playing with a blues cover band. I was totally unable for it, I just can't process new music right now. I couldn't deal with it. So on went Hancock's Headhunters, which was the only music I listened to for about 3 days. I didn't want lyrics, I didn't want opinions, I didn't want ambience, I just needed something that was music, pure and simple, and something I had already processed. From there it was downhill, the next couple of days was Earth Wind & Fire, the Bee Gees and the Boogie Nights Soundtrack.. And you want to know something, Disco is fucking awesome. There's a reason it took over the world for a brief period. I mean even when Marvin Gaye tried to parody Disco he made one of the best Disco tracks there is.
So from there I went back to my five albums (this had came up when I had discussed the plan months ago with Jimmy, and he decided to mix some music from them). These albums are really in no particular order, and I'm not going to rate them per say, but say what they meant to me really.
The Blues Brothers - Original Soundtrack
Wow, what an incredible lineup. This is effectively the entire back line of the Stax studio from the golden era of Rhythm & Blues (the real kind, not the bastardized kind). I saw this film when I was young and impressionable, and it's musical leanings has affected me ever since. And to be fair to the two Blues Brothers Belushi & Akroyd, they sing quite well. As Steve Cropper said in the behind the scenes "they sang in key, and they didn't miss their queues!". The anecdote that always stays with me is how when Akyroyd & Landis were looking for the stars for the movie, effectively everyone they asked was available because their careers at that time were in the toilet. We've got James Brown, Arethra Frankling, Ray Charles and John Lee Hooker in here (to be fair, John Lee Hooker wasn't on the soundtrack, but the movie is definitely where I was introduced to him). And what else is great, so many of these amazing danceable tracks. How can you not like this album, it's just simply amazing. Some tracks are slower than others, but this stuff is toe tappingly great. This album lead me to investigate classic Motown, James Brown, John Lee Hooker and many others.
Jamiroquai - Synkronized
After being exposed to them a few albums earlier, Jamiroquai were an early favorite of mine. Are the greatest jazz funk band ever? Probably not, but these guys were the gateway for me to get in to funk, and later on jazz. Those bass lines are incredible, and Jay Kay still lays down vocals that fit the music fantastically. From an instrumentation perspective at least, let's be fair and say that the content of said lyrics may not stand up to scrunity of any intensity. This album was the last album that had Stuart Zender on bass, and whilst the funk disco based direction of the album is one of the things I love most about it, it's also the pushing in that direction that made him leave the band. I remember getting tickets to see Jamiroquai in Dublin for the tour of this album, and purposely didn't listen to the album for the several months before the gig. There's a few tracks on this album, such as "Black Capricorn Day", that many people will not even realise is Jamiroquai. The track that stands out to me the most coming back to it is "Were Do We Go From Here". Such epic bass! This always made me want to dance, and get further in to disco and funk.
John Carpenter - Escape From New York
Film is a big thing to me, sometimes I think more so than music. And one of my favorite directors is John Carpenter, who also led me towards electronic music. I have listened to this soundtrack over and over again, with the notable exception of "Everyone's Coming To New York". Surprisingly for a film OST, it glides from track to track like it was intended to be that way. Each track has this gorgeous simple slow build, at time a thumping beat that accentuates the tension. I mean there's almost an entire new genre of music now called "Synthwave" which in no small part takes it's queues from this era of music. I would say he was ahead of his time, but I think he was exactly of his time, these kind of soundtracks would most likely not be made today, and that would be a crying shame. The fact that this is one of my favorite movies and I can envisage the badassedness of vintage Kurt Russell running through the charred remains of St. Louis can only help.
Cowboy Bebop - Cowboy Bebop
This was most definitely my gateway in to jazz. I first saw the series Cowboy Bebop back around 1999, and was totally blown away. I had seen things such as Blood and Akira, but they always seemed to be focusing on the shock and the drama. Cowboy Bebop however was something totally new, something I had never seen before. It really got me to appreciate television as a genuine media. People talk of how Sopranos changed television in to an acceptable form, well I assure you Cowboy Bebop changed anime in a similar way. Each episode almost like a miniature film, and it always felt relatable (obviously not to say I can relate to piloting a spaceship and picking up criminals for bounties), and the writing and cinematography was incredible. I still contest some of the best fight sequences I've seen are contained within this series. And the music is simply phenomenal. Yoko Kanno is the master of cermonies here, and how with such little experience of jazz she can arrange such incredible pieces with forever astound me. I remember being alone after having moved to France around 2001, and this was one of the few CDs I had brought with me. I listened to it over and over again, sometimes for hours on repeat. Each time you can hear the littlest pieces that add more and more to each track, there is so much texture and life to the songs it almost defies belief. When they recorded their New York style pieces, Rudy Van Gelder was the engineer. It's simply incredible stuff, and in a simliar way to the Blues Brothers, has some of the best musicians in the genre, by virtue of the fact that it's not popular music. I love these guys, I feel like I will listen to them till the day I die.
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - Moanin'
Whilst I always like to say I enjoy jazz, it usually comes down to I enjoy Art Blakey. This album is important, as the title track is the one that made me want to pick up piano again after an almost twenty year hiatus. Bobby Timmons silky touch over the ivories is simply mesmerizing. Every time I hear that title track I just want to sit back, close my eyes, and take in all the beauty that it has to offer. And this is the absolute beauty of jazz, it's not being minimalist, it's not trying to be anything more than it needs to be, it has almost exactly the amount of notes and instruments it needs to make an incredible textured, detailed and yet simple performance. It is pure music, for the sake of being so. It's not pretentious, it just is. I'm listening again to this, and the chills are traveling down my spine as I type to the sultry tones of Lee Morgan on his trumpet, which gracefully transitions to Timmons exquisite touch. I love the Jazz Messengers, I have over twenty albums of theirs on my phone so I just throw them on and listen through. Art Blakey is the true band leader, he is perfectly content to keep the beat, sit back on the drums and not interfere with the flow when it is there. And that's not to say he can't drum, you just need to hear Evidence when they played with Monk to know that man CAN drum, but chooses only to do what is needed. He's so good he almost doesn't need to be there.
No comments:
Post a Comment