Sunday, July 19, 2020

Times Flies with Jazz Escapism

Where does the time go? Sometimes (most times, actually), the weekend just flies by. Today, that was the case. Jazz just let the time drift by with its usual effortlessness as I listened to potential tracks for the radio shows. Some recent releases (2019/2020) from tenor players - Jimmy Heath, Eric Alexander, Houston Person, Jerry Bergonzi, James Carter, a couple from Joshua Redman. Bit of a mixed bag really. Part of me really doesn't want to showcase a bunch of music I'm not really into. Not that all my programmes only feature music I dig.... but an entire (or majority) show of stuff that doesn't hit the spot for me might be pushing it. We'll see. I'm not afraid of spending some time with things that aren't my cuppa tea. At the urging of a friend, I spent a bit of time listening to Joey Alexander. His latest release, Warna, got a spin but I found my concentration fading in and out. Hype and media buzz often puts me off listening to artists/albums. And Alexander fits into the that category for me. I've always found that the music that sticks with me is stuff I "discover" for myself. But I'm willing to hang in there and give him some more time. Then there was a bunch of Miles Davis live recordings from 1960-64. Thought it could be good to put something together from the final Miles/Coltrane tour through to Wayne Shorter joining the group. Some of these are pretty familiar to me (Four & More/My Funny Valentine, the Plugged Nickel recordings), but it was nice to revisit the Blackhawk recordings which I hadn't heard in years (probably since music school) and the 1960 Tour "Bootleg" box set is new to me. I definitely want to spent a bit more time with the latter. It's the final tour Coltrane made with Miles, and you can hear he's ready (overdue?) to go his own way. From the little I heard today, Miles seems a little up and down (first impression) and the rhythm section sounded on form throughout. The fidelity of these sides are nice too... not essential, but an added bonus for sure. But as much as I enjoyed hanging with the jazz today, I still didn't manage to finish off the next two radio shows... and that was the plan.

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