I admire this more than I like it

fair enough. how do you rate ALS in comparison to other Coltrane-led albums?

I mean... certainly in the top half, wouldn't you say? I can't say I've ever thought about which Coltrane albums are "the best" or "my favorite" but I go back to Love Supreme a lot and my opinion of it hasn't diminished at all.

a love supreme is a magnificent record and even if you've listened to every goddman coltrane recording you would be a fool not to rate it among his best work, the fuck do i care if jazz dabblers only pick up that one and no others

(sorry polyphonic that was not directed at you at all even though the posting sequence looks like, i don't meant to call you a fool!)

i'd probably lose it a little if i heard it in a club, i'm sure the bass would sound divine.

Fabric soundsystem:)

The question of aspiration and its relationship to taste is really interesting. There was a period in my late teens/early twenties where most of what I listened to was jazz and classical, but then I turned back to rock and pop music. I bought a number of complete opera sets that I haven't played in several years, and now I have practically no desire to listen to them at all (I started to have the perception that the culture that values that form is moribund, though you could read it more favorably as carrying on a tradition, or talk about vital if obscure new works).

I do think there's something fundamentally valuable about being a "good listener," but the real desire to engage with music that is radically difficult (especially in the improvisational vein) left me at some point in my twenties. By contrast, it seems there's a common trajectory is for people to start taking up, say, jazz around that time, maybe because they no longer identify with the fantasies (or realities) inscribed in pop music, and seek after something that engages them on a more overtly intellectual level. Despite having worked through a fair amount of Adorno at this point, though, I'm comfortable admitting that I still turn to music largely for affective reasons (though I also like to relate the feelings to a sense of history — my own and that of the music, the culture that produced it, etc.). This could still change, though!

I mean... certainly in the top half, wouldn't you say? I can't say I've ever thought about which Coltrane albums are "the best" or "my favorite" but I go back to Love Supreme a lot and my opinion of it hasn't diminished at all.

yeah, it's impossible to rank the music.. my mistake for implying that. it was my entry point, and it sort of put me off of his music until i got older, heard "India" and a live recording of "My Favorite Things", etc. i'm still a n00b. it's that most every conversation i've been a part of (on the topic of Coltrane jazz) invariably leads to somebody proclaiming it the end-all be-all of John Coltrane music, or all jazz music (as well as the conversation), which is disappointing.