JAZZ IS LIKE HEROIN TO ME ! ! ! ~~~~ ILM POST-1945 JAZZ ALBUMS POLL - THE RESULTS COUNTDOWN (now counting top 25!)

spiritual hat records making the list

i am starting to love this description.

If you want to learn about jazz steer clear of the Mingus "autobiography". If, on the other hand, you want to read improbable stories of Mingus having acrobatic sex with every woman he meets, go ahead.

this book is hilarious fwiw

The mingus autobio is ridic and pulpy but imo a highly entertaining read

xp Me too - once the rollout is done I'm thinking of polling all the hats.

Roland Kirk bio "Bright Moments" is really good. Miles' autobio is interesting and (as should be expected) completely self-serving. "Space is the Place" is fantastic.

44    Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out (1959) 1378 Points, 9 votes
http://zenekucko.ucoz.com/_bl/25/38975176.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/6P3jzdPK5VMbzuJ2HcRt9y

"Space is the Place" is fantastic.

xps Dunno - about halfway through Beneath the Underdog I started getting queasy at the weird fantasy stuff like Mingus getting his two lovers into prostitution and them being all "yeah baby!" about it.

About the putative jazz vs not-jazz distinction: what did key players such as Miles and Coltrane think at the time? Did they see projects like Bitches Brew or Ascension as extending the tradition or breaking from it completely?

― dubplates and monster munch (seandalai), Thursday, September 1, 2011 3:04 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

My guess or at least hope is that as consumate musicians of the highest order they gave up on trying to figure out whether they fit "jazz" or not and just aimed to make the music they wanted to make. That said I think there's a cool thesis/antithesis/synthesis thing going on, where I can see how someone at the time of Bitches Brew might throw up his hands and say "Ok, this is SO far outside of what I think of as jazz, and brings in so much non-jazz influence that I don't think it's jazz anymore," but meanwhile the very fact of a jazz musician making records like that in the long run kind of pushes the line outward so that eventually what people in later decades consider "jazz" is broader.

weird fantasy stuff like Mingus getting his two lovers into prostitution and them being all "yeah baby!" about it.

this is just him wanting to be Iceberg Slim or whatever

xp haha but that's the thing, D-40, your stance is still arbitrary. You have failed to explain or mention what musical qualities make these "overvalued" records less valuable or worthy than whatever ones you prefer. You're referring to extramusical things - like, y'know, hats (WTF) & how much fans of music made by people with said hats annoy you.

I want a spiritual hat.

glad Time Out didn't make the top 20. I just don't get what makes it such a canon record. Well its in lots of adverts I guess.

yeah just seems like you're judging a record on the merits of its audience. sure, some of these things have a "hipness" cache that doesn't have anything to do with the music -- "check out Sun Ra man, he was from outer space!" But there's still the music.

tbf deej is more of an audience critic than a music critic

glad Time Out didn't make the top 20

never dug Brubeck either. I get why people like it but it just doesn't do it for me.

this is the one i play for people not into brubeck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1X8CvYAK-E
i think i'm more of a paul desmond fan though -- his records with Jim Hall are worth searching out.

tbf deej is more of an audience critic than a music critic

― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, September 1, 2011 3:28 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

http://moochey.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/336-ice-cube-chris-tucker-damn.gif?w=350&h=263

And now for another fusion album (sans hat) that didn't make the top 20

My guess or at least hope is that as consumate musicians of the highest order they gave up on trying to figure out whether they fit "jazz" or not and just aimed to make the music they wanted to make. That said I think there's a cool thesis/antithesis/synthesis thing going on, where I can see how someone at the time of Bitches Brew might throw up his hands and say "Ok, this is SO far outside of what I think of as jazz, and brings in so much non-jazz influence that I don't think it's jazz anymore," but meanwhile the very fact of a jazz musician making records like that in the long run kind of pushes the line outward so that eventually what people in later decades consider "jazz" is broader.

― Helping 3 (Hurting 2), Thursday, September 1, 2011 3:23 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

Good points. Also, I'm not certain that too many (or any) of the music's innovators consciously approached their work as being part of a genre. Duke always said, "Oh, we stopped using that word ["jazz"] in the 40s"; Miles, when someone said, "You're a jazz musician, aren't you?" replied, "I'm a musician, that's all"; Thelonious Monk, talking to Bob Dylan: "We all play folk music."

i feel like i've heard other brubeck (solo maybe? its been a while) that i really enjoyed but time out just seems kinda rote compared to what his contemparies were doing.

43 Miles Davis - Agharta (1975) 1393 Points, 12 vots
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_l2FFgW8KVL0/S0sLPfjDHXI/AAAAAAAABpQ/zN_9u0sfzHk/s320/Miles+Davis+-+AGHARTA.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/7ACMLIVtCkZP7EzxzsZISW

that is a dope cover at least, poss. miles's best.

ok i've just noticed a brubeck record called DAVE DIGS DISNEY and have a morbid curiousity. should i?

^^even without miles, that'd be classic. what a band. i feel like a lot of the 70s miles stuff is his bands trying to *figure* out what they're doing -- which results in some really exciting music (and some stuff that's a little bit tough to get with). But Agharta/Pangea sound like they know exactly what they're doing, like they're playing everything for maximum effect. really well named records, too, the music sounds like tectonic plates shifting, life starting.

maybe dave digs disney is good i dunno? i kind of love his version of singin in the rain.

But there's still the music.

the tuneless, ugly, noodly music is the real draw! (I keed, it's cool y'all dig that stuff, I've never been able to get into it)

http://img2.wantitall.co.za/images/ShowImage.aspx?ImageId=Miles-Davis-Agharta-Blu-Spec-CD%7C61IeQ89LYlL.jpg

agharta's japanese cover > that other cover up there

ha whoa, never seen that before.

ok this blue cover book is a+ but what i really want to mention is how many make me want to laugh. albums covers should be funnier/funner more often.

also i definitely don't think that deej is having a jazz vs. not jazz argument; he's just annoyed at the records that are critically enshrined by the rock dudes, which are enshrined for sort of arbitrary reasons also ("spiritual," "sounds like rock sort of") and direct attention away from records that are instrumental in defining the actual sound and feel and culture of jazz (which is also sort of a hard thing to pin down but deej definitely has something in mind)

42    Alice Coltrane - Ptah The El Daoud (1970) 1447 Points, 13 votes
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2IjE77e29wQ/SQEZCwNvPWI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/SxvinJz6NjQ/s400/61GjcWK%252BPKL__SS500_.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/62RMymUs9Cb4rDqYqXfTCf

maybe what puts me off w/ that line of thinking is- i don't think of rock as "spiritual" or "transcendent" or whatever, most of the time, unless it incorporates other genres like jazz or classical strings etc.

i definitely wasn't conflating the two. still trying to figure out in my head why rock crits got so attracted to the spiritual beat but i have a feeling it has something to do with some sort of racism

being atypical in the rock world tends to get you more notice than doing what's been done before (or a slight variation of that) extremely awesomely.

oh no not the 'r' word!!!

lol bradnelson

agharta isn't jazz though

being atypical in the rock world tends to get you more notice than doing what's been done before (or a slight variation of that) extremely awesomely.

This can also be a matter of having trouble making more subtle distinctions between works in a relatively unfamiliar genre. It's definitely easier to see the really divergent stuff rather than seeing why someone in a tradition is doing something considered better than others equally grounded in the tradition. (I am inadvertently supporting deej here, I think.)

41    John Coltrane - interstellar Space (1967) 1461 Points, 15 votes
http://jazzismylife.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/cover49.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/4t43Wkg1efBwey0Y5GPyEy

^^^^my jam.

sam talks about his book some more pt 6: stanley turrentine sure can pull a face.

oh hey that's a good coltrane record right there

rashied ali for president

(And the religion angle of rock critics might partly be related to the whole Christgau type emphasis on social significance.)

that's not specific to rock at all

i haven't heard interstellar space yet (same goes for a lot of the post- classic quintet stuff) -- i'm kinda saving up. I gorged on Coltrane records a few years back and didn't want to run out! maybe now's the time, though.

40    Donald Byrd - A New Perspective (1963) 1481 Points, 12 votes
https://www.ifmusic.co.uk/images/product_images/donaldbyrdnewperspective.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/3LG1c3DYgaEtCxea2z7ZSa

Interstellar Space is definitely the place to start for late-period Coltrane and, I'd argue, one of the key documents of 20th century music.

xp

I went backwards to the Byrd stuff from his 70s funk albums, but I found I really liked a lot of that era too and this was definitely my favourite of the albums.

Zvookster its not specific to rock but how it Is about social significance can vary genre to genre

That byrd seems a bit high to me but I do dig that album. Byrd had a great pop ear

idk, stanley crouch, richard cook, brian morton, downbeat, ashley kahn etc. still being called rock dudes itt

various critics bailed on coltrane at various points along his journey i'm sure but where is this jazz canon of non-rock dudes who all put down a love supreme?