Satchmo's Jive Essence 42

C

CrAyOnS O_o

New member
#36 Hepcat - Out of Nowhere

54c8ffbba55be99f6ed08ddad067be2a.jpg

I have a love/hate relationship with ska.

When done well it's soul filling goodness, but when its done poorly it's the most campy bull**** ever. The whole third wave of American ska was the worst thing to ever happen to the genre. During the mid 90's it seemed like
I was swimming in a sea of Reel Big Fish-esque ska banRAB that came across as a bunch of former high school band geek frat boys that decided to start a band to help them get more pussy.

It was during this time that I was beginning to consider that cutting music education funding to public schools might actually be a good thing. There were just too many horny post pubescent boys running around with slide trorabones for me to feel comfortable anymore.

I had all but given up on the genre figuring that nobody cared about true ska, Jamaican ska, anymore and I predicted that the rest of my life would be a long drawn out pathetic scene of me curled up in my bed clutching my Desmond Dekker & Don Drummond recorRAB as tightly as i could while trying to keep the Hawaii Five O theme song from playing over and over again in my brain. It was just then that I saw a bright and beautiful light shining from the west and it was coming from, of all places, Los Angeles, California.

First off Hepcat, as I'm sure some genre nazi would inevitably chime in, are technically not ska they're rocksteady, and for those of you that don't know the difference I'll gladly explain it to you just as soon as i start giving a **** about the minutiae that separate the two genres.

Hepcat as a band have done more to revitalize the roots of Jamaican ska/rock steady than any band I know. The prevalent style of this album is quite jazzy with a bit of doo-wop flair that is largely due to the glorious harmonies created by the two vocalists Greg Lee and Alex Desert. Out of Nowhere has a very contagious up-beat and positive vibe with songs like Dance Wid' Me and Earthquake and Fire find me resisting the urge to start dancing right where I stand. There is a bold and vivacious cover of early Bob Marley and the Wailers' Hooligans as well as an amazing ska interpretation of Duke Ellington's jazz classic Caravan.

This is really one of my favorite albums. I couldn't be more emphatic about recommending a piece of music, and if anyone's interested PM me and I will gleefully bust one out for you.
 
I D/Led the album partly based on your reply to my Leviathan review and partly based on Kamikaze Kat's review of their newest album. As soon as I heard the first song I was hooked. I wish I'd spent enough time with the album to give a more extensive review.
 
#31 DJ Shadow - Endtroducing

endtroducing.jpg


Fuck....

Ugh....

This album....

Shit.

A lot of people have tried to pigeonhole DJ Shadow's 1996 monumental debut album into various different genres. Some will say it's trip hop, others will disagree and say it's down tempo (that's always a fun argument). You see it shoved into the "turntablism" genre once in a while, which is funny because there's not a single DJ cut on the album that isn't a sample of a DJ cut from another album. As a matter of fact this album is actually listed in the Guinness book of world recorRAB as the first instrumental album ever produced composed entirely of samples. Most hardcore Shadow fans are pretty adamant about classifying it as instrumental hip-hop, but as cohesive as this album is, it may just be one of the most unclassifiable albums I've ever run into, or maybe it's just jazz. As a matter of fact I'm sure of it.

Endtroducing is the album on my list where I'm tempted to simply say "Just listen to the album. If you don't own it, If you've never heard it, send me a PM and I'll set you up", which I will, but that would be letting myself off easy and not really serving you as the tour guide of this crazy field trip.

Endtroducing is the product of a brilliant mind's obsession with the collection of obscure sounRAB. Vinyl, but not just boutique shops, dirty church bazaar basements too. Television shows, commercials, what have you. To be able to do what he did; to compose a "moveable feast" of music composed of the distilled essence of the marginalized scraps of the unwanted or forgotten pieces of media from our collective past is beyond brilliant, it's a gift.

And in a sense the end product is exactly what we see when we observe the collective dynamic of a jazz enserable with an uncultivated ear. We see an amalgamation of a bunch of elements that have been, as i mentioned before, distilled to their essence. With traditional jazz that "end product" can come across as chaotic, a mess, or as many have put it like "a bunch of musicians are isolated in separate rooms playing separate song with separate instruments". despite this overall structural similarity, the same disparate sense of chaos does not come across with Endtroducing, because ,while the album still uses a similar rhetoric of instrumentally communicating themes that are stripped to their bare essence, musically we are still in the sphere of a "rock" rhetoric.

I'm not going to really offer much more in the way of an actual description of this album. A song overview would be pointless. This is yet another album that neeRAB to be appreciated as a single piece of music, a composition if you will. It flows nicely one song into the next with a very ethereal backdrop that provides a nice contrast for the beautiful evolution of beats, sometomes eclectic, sometimes heavy and abrasive, that progress throughout the album from start to finish. There are many surprises along the way and they usually come just when you think you've fit things into a nicely shaped box. I find that It's a fantastic album for a very rainy day, and that the rain seems to add a missing instrument track to the entire mix. Beyond that, it's really best if you just listen to it. and if you are at all reluctant, PM me and I will gladly sort you out with no hesitation. I'm gonna' let this walk. When you listen you'll understand why.
 
The Antique sucked me into a badass alien spaceship!
(I need to stop doing drugs.)

On a more serious note, "bittersweet" is a perfect word for this album. I can't get over how smooth and destructive it is all at the same time... A+.
 
there were certainly remarkable jazz elements to Minutemen's career. they were steeped in many genres and it's a shame that D. Boon died so young, when the band was on the verge of making it big. some of their albums are a little sparse (their debut clocks in at under seventeen minutes), but this one delivered and in great fashion.

incidentally a record i've been obsessed with lately and one of the greats to emerge out of SST's awesome (but short-lived) run.
 
It really must be appreciated in its historical context. Much of the credit it's given is due to the fact that it's such a primal piece of music and it was the introduction to a different side of Miles' playing and conceptual skills. In 1970 when this album was released the world of jazz hadn't no precedent for the visceral experience that this album provided.


I'm on it.
 
Something just clicked.
I think I'll be listening to this with a whole new perspective now. (Which I suppose was the point.)
Frick-frackin' awesome write-up, btw.
Keep it up.
 
Being that this has been a create-as-you-go project, I've definitely hit some periodic creative obstacles in regard to this thread. That and my usual exploratory jaunts into new and exciting styles and genres of music, but I really think its time to pick this up again.
 
Beautiful choice, my friend. Great album. I, too, love Mr. Hunter. What other projects have you heard from him? I've really been into Mistico by Charlie Hunter Trio. It's got a real old school vibe. I was hooked at first listen. Also, I really loved Garage a Trois when C.H was playing with them. Heard of 'em?
 
hey Satchmo, just posting to say i really enjoy what you're doing here and keep it up. i especially like the Leviathan mention :D.


oh and good review on A Tribe Called Quest, i dl'ed the cd after reading it
 
So It's fair to assume you're a Firehose fan too. I'm a big fan of anything that Mike Watt is involved with. His solo albums largely went under the radar, but they're pretty good. What an underrated Bass player.

Jackhammer: I just replaced my copy of Double Nickles today, just after I had the idea for the thread entry. Until this evening I hadn't listened to it in years. For a 25 year old album it has certainly aged beautifully.
 
#36 Tortoise - Millions now Living Will Never Die

millions_now_living.jpg

It's not amazing to see a lot neo-traditional jazz artists falling short in their attempt to emulate the essence of jazz's golden age. So much of the greatness of certain perioRAB of musical history is dependent on the respective cultural zeitgeist that inspired it. It cannot be recreated, only replicated. Some would go so far as to say that jazz is dead. I just think it has shed its skin. Its traded in its pork pie hat for something a little less, or more, disenfranchised.

Tortoise have been largely considered the godfathers of the post-rock movement, but in the 90's "post-rock" as a catch all term was not readily available. Their music preceded any apt classification that comfortably contained it. To me, and to the small but growing fan base, this was jazz.

Millions Now Living Will Never Die is an excellent example of a piece of music reflecting the jazz essence of the contemporary culture and social climate of the 90's as being an incubatory period between the excesses of the 80's and the stark repercussions that have reverberated into this millenium.

Experimental in nature yet always cohesive Millions transitions frequently between arabient introspective sounRABcapes and aggressive indie rock-esque structured themes and everywhere in between. It is definitely an album like all Tortoise albums that evades description and categorization and begs to simply be appreciated.

Recommended tracks : DJed, Glass Museum, The Taut and the Tame
 
So It's about time I had my "Top Something or other" thread so here's the pitch:
Every once in awhile a thread gets started on this forum by someone with the intention of giving themselves a proper introduction to jazz music; a very noble intention I believe. More often than not the usual suspects make their appearances: Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, John Coltrane A Love Supreme, a whole host of fusion albums, and then the thread dies.
Why? Because contrary to the popular saying, You can't get there from "there", if you could you wouldn't be puzzled by where to start in such an enormously vast genre of music. No, you gotta' get there from right where you're at right now.
You see, jazz, much more than a genre of music, is a concept, an ideal. I'm going to put forth 42 albums that I believe capture the essence of jazz, starting with very untraditional examples and albums that could in no way be considered jazz by conventional standarRAB. Gradually I'll work my way toward more traditional, and in some instances, less accessible pieces of music, while at the same time hopefully giving y'all a decent education. OK, excuse me while I get started......
 
Satch, i know how frustrating it feels to have your album reviews go uncommented. all i can really say is keep at it, just because people haven't been commenting doesn't mean they don't view the thread. this is a good thread you have going and i'm looking forward to what else you have coming up.

i'd also like to say thanks for the review on Low End Theory, it led me to downloading a really good album. also kudos for Leviathan and Double Nickels on the Dime ;)
 
Haha, maybe you need to do more!

I new I was in love with this album when I decided to go to sleep to it. That's something I almost never do.
 
Back
Top