A Question Going 'Round

A Question Going 'Round

Just saw this in jazz fan circles: what are your top 3 album recommendations for folks who are new to jazz?

I have opinions... and I think I'm going to extend it beyond just jazz. What are my criteria?

1. Easy to listen to and enjoy regardless. It has to stand on its own.

2. Relevant to the music it's representative of. It has to connect to the broader music genre it's a part of.

3. Personally, is it an album you can return to even after you've become old and cynical about the genre?

Ok, then, let's do this. Jazz, Rock 'n Roll, Country, R&B/Soul, Rap/Hip Hop, and Classical. (My list for today, completely arbitrary, your list will and should be different! That's the most wonderful part of having so many recordings, we all can pick our own variation and have a good listen.)

Jazz:

1. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong: Ella And Louis

2. The Dave Brubeck Quartet: Time Out

3. Duke Ellington and John Coltrane: Duke Ellington And John Coltrane

I think jazz, for a new listener, needs to lead with the best vocalists of the 20th century.

Rock 'n Roll:

1. The Beatles: Revolver

2. Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band: Born In The U.S.A.

3. Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers: Damn The Torpedoes

Yes, I know, I know, Born To Run... This is about a straight run of 4 minute rock songs that never quits and shows a new listener what is possible. Just like I often prefer U2's Boy, but Joshua Tree is more accessible. Answers to different questions.

Country:

1. Ray Charles: Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music

2. Willie Nelson: Redheaded Stranger

3. Lyle Lovett: Joshua Judges Ruth

Country has never really found comfort with the album format; these are the big 3 I think. There are others out there but I'm hard pressed to find any that are more meaningful to the genre as a whole. Dwight Yoakum, Allison Krauss, Roseanne Cash, Garth Brooks (first 2 albums especially) all honorable mentions here.

R&B/Soul:

1. Stevie Wonder: Songs In The Key Of Life

2. Al Green: Let's Stay Together

3. Gladys Knight and the Pips: Neither One Of Us

Oh lord could I go on. Roberta Flack, Earth Wind & Fire, Sly and the Family Stone, P-Funk. Have to put up a list and move on.

Rap/Hip-Hop

1. Fugees: The Score

2. Lauryn Hill: The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill

3. Outkast: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

Yeah, I know. I just love the sound of these records. Obviously there's a list of honorable mentions; one really cool one I find fascinating is an album by Branford Marsalis: Buckshot LeFonque.

Classical:

1. Van Cliburn: My Favorite Chopin

2. P.D.Q. Bach: The Intimate P.D.Q. Bach

3. The London Symphony Orchestra: The Planets (there are several here to choose from, any of them work)

More than any other genre here, the list is too long to do anything but generate arguments, so I just went with accessible and, yes, silly.

Oops, almost forgot.

Blues:

1. B.B. King: Live In Cook County Jail

2. Buddy Guy And Junior Wells: Alone And Acoustic

3. The Robert Cray Band: Strong Persuader

A good mapping to past and future here. And one hell of a way to get the butt moving and the blood flowing in Cook County...

Covid testing advance

Wow, now here is something really interesting: a completely open source, lab in a backpack Covid testing kit that costs 51 bucks to put together, and 3.50 per test.

open paper link in PLOS One

3d printing, scavenged parts, and they made sure to test using tap water for the solutions. plus it can run using a car battery, 12V, as power source.

we really do live in the future, don't we?

Damn

Ah, damnit to hell.

R.I.P. Taylor Hawkins.

I sat down to write what I thought would be this entry. Turns out it was more of a diary entry.

Not because of anything other than, really, that when I set my work aside to stew and come back to, I realized I'd written in two ways. One, to work out something I'd been sitting on for most of the past couple decades.

And two, about as circuitously as possible, which meant frankly it bored me just to re-read it. So, important and useful to write and stick in the diary, not so much of interest here.

Ok then, I thought. I'll just take a wandering surf around the web.... yeah, not happening. Because of the general chaos, of course, but also because I ran across something entirely different and separate from the headline events.

And I just couldn't. The story I pieced together didn't have anything to do with me, world events, important artists or writers or really much of anything that would matter to an audience of more than an eclectic handful. It was inside gossip involving players I stumbled across only in the course of following a web's worth of bread crumbs.

And it threw me completely back to the diary entry that was. I'd tried to work my own way, without naming names, through a... not action, a feeling inside a small community long sense lost to memory. A feeling I'd, knowingly, carried around with me for close on thirty years now.

And so I couldn't much write about that, either, could I? Both stories, mine and this flare up that others are dealing with in their place that could only have become known because of the way the internet works... Well mine I could at least keep to myself.

Besides, I like those folks in that long ago group, scattered as they might be these days. Digging up old bone likes that I can best leave safely to the extraordinarily unlikely future digital archaeologists who might need the work.