What Are You Listening To?

[bste]

This tune popped in my head today, had to find the video and thought I'd share.

Jethro Tull: Locomotive Breath

 

Edited May 7, 2016 by bste
lost the video, lol

[DaveP043]

For no particular reason, I was flipping thru channels earlier today, and came across some concert footage from the Pretenders, and was reminded of this song, one of my favorites.

I find many women rockers incredibly sexy, and Chrissy Hynde may be the queen of women rockers.

[nevets88]

Love The Pretenders

They covered Hendrix - Bold as Love

Before Prince, there was Hendrix

 

 

[bste]

 

 

Joe Bonamassa

 

[nevets88]

 

[longdrive23]

 

[jamo]

+

etc.

[nevets88]

 

[Gator Hazard]

Known of them for quite some time and although I have heard this song before, just something about it recently that I'm totally digging:

 

 

[RandallT]

I've always felt I should like jazz more than I do. Any aficionados here? This article reminded me that I used to enjoy exploring jazz, but then kinda lost it as life got in the way. I need time to enjoy jazz, I think, and it's in short supply raising a family.

I'm in no way plugging the book- it was just part of the article I enjoyed and thought others might be interested.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/patience-and-open-ears-14465.html

Quote

How to Listen to Jazz, by Ted Gioia (Basic, 272 pp., $24.99)

Twenty-odd years ago, working nights in Manhattan, I stumbled into jazz. My gateway was a coworker, a baritone-voiced Brooklynite steeped in true crime, foreign films, modern art, city lore—and America’s music. (“Stay away from Coltrane albums with cosmic or planetary titles,” he advised. “They’ll rip your head off.”) Through his guidance, and the stewardship of WBGO-FM, Newark, which played throughout our graveyard shift, I made my way as a jazz listener, focusing mostly on recordings from the 1950s and early 1960s, variously known as hard bop or post-bop, and steering clear of the musical eras preceding and following—everything from Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and the big bands (I wasn’t looking for a good time) to “free jazz,” fusion, and the like (I had mostly conservative tastes, though this would have mortified me to learn).

Somewhere along the line, I lost the jazz thread. Maybe my curiosity played itself out, or maybe my interest reflected a superficial, twentysomething need to be “serious.” This can’t be all of it, though, since even now, the opening chords of John Coltrane’s “Spiritual” make me stop and listen—as do “Lonnie’s Lament” and “Wise One” and “Naima.” Other, more up-tempo tracks—“Pfrancing” (Miles Davis), “Adam’s Apple” (Wayne Shorter), “The Sidewinder” (Lee Morgan)—have stayed in my head for years. My real problem was ambivalence about improvisation, which lies at the heart of modern jazz. I’ve found instrumental solos an imposition as often as a revelation. It’s not a matter of wanting to hear a song played the same way over and over. I’d welcome hearing different arrangements every night; that’s not the same thing as improvising. But a jazz listener who resists improvisation is like a classical music devotee who rejects formal Western musical structure.

These misgivings came flooding back as I read Ted Gioia’s How to Listen to Jazz. Gioia, an esteemed jazz critic and historian, and a pianist, addresses his book to general readers and listeners. Many, he knows, have struggled with jazz. He hears it all the time: people don’t “get” jazz; they think that it’s music for intellectuals, not regular people; they don’t know where to begin. Not to worry, says Gioia. “Most of the jazz idiom,” he writes, “is accessible to anyone willing to approach it with patience and open ears.”

How to Listen to Jazz is really two books. The first is an engaging, accessible attempt to explain what’s happening inside the music and how to train one’s ears to hear it better. “The first thing I listen for,” Gioia writes, “is the degree of rhythmic cohesion between the different musicians in the band. . . . In the great jazz bands, you can hear the individual members lock together rhythmically in a pleasing way that involves an uncanny degree of give-and-take, but with a kind of quirkiness that resists specific definition.” He suggests listening to amateur bands to hear their lack of cohesion, and then comparing their performances to those of the masters.

..... more.... (just a snippet)

 

[nevets88]

38 minutes ago, RandallT said:

I've always felt I should like jazz more than I do. Any aficionados here? This article reminded me that I used to enjoy exploring jazz, but then kinda lost it as life got in the way. I need time to enjoy jazz, I think, and it's in short supply raising a family.

I'm in no way plugging the book- it was just part of the article I enjoyed and thought others might be interested.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/patience-and-open-ears-14465.html

 

Just dive in. Start with an artist and listen to the most popular songs and move on to another. Or take songs you know, and listen to all the covers and soak in the astounding imagination of musicians. One of the covers you'll probably listen to over and over again. Explore that artist.

For example, the song Cheek to Cheek.

Original - sorry Fred, you're a great dancer, but singer, not so much  The Oscar Peterson (have seen him live) cover is my favorite.

My recommended artists to start with. Nina, Ella, Oscar, Coltrane, Blakey, Davis, Brubeck.

Nothing will pull you in more than seeing a live performance though, once you hear music as it was intended, in person, you're hooked.

 

[RandallT]

Thanks, @nevets88. You reminded me Erroll Garner was someone I really enjoyed and could use a deep dive back into. Loved his style, but never could pinpoint what it was I liked.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Jazz/comments/2hk0wl/why_dont_more_current_pianists_model_their_styles/

Quote

Why don't more current pianists model their styles after Erroll Garner? 

Submitted 1 year ago by electriclomein

I don't see many pianists on the current scene who show any direct influence from Erroll Garner's style...His melodic invention alone should be a reason...

[–]jazzguitarboy 6 points 1 year ago 

I think it's because that approach doesn't lend itself that well to a more modern conception of jazz that has more space in it.

The Erroll Garner "thing" is the left hand comping four-to-the-bar with a slight time displacement from what the right hand is doing, emulating what a rhythm guitar player (e.g. Freddie Green) might do. The problem is that it fills in everywhere there might be a hole otherwise, which runs counter to the democratization of the rhythm section that started in, say, the mid-'50s with Miles Davis' groups.

Modern piano players usually comp more sparsely and rhythmically, and when you hear them playing in that older four-to-the-bar style, it's usually more for effect.

jazzguitarboy above sounds like @natureboy, with the detailed and precise academic-style response.  

[nevets88]

11 minutes ago, RandallT said:

Thanks, @nevets88. You reminded me Erroll Garner was someone I really enjoyed and could use a deep dive back into. Loved his style, but never could pinpoint what it was I liked.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Jazz/comments/2hk0wl/why_dont_more_current_pianists_model_their_styles/

 

That's a master pianist. Plays it like it's nothing. No need to look at the keyboard. Just in the zone, enjoying the moment.

Bach WTC 2

A jazz cover

That cover, live

 

[nevets88]

Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers

Michel Legrand

Diana Krall

Stacey Kent

 

 

Wynton Marsalis

Miles Davis

 

[nevets88]

Marc RIbot

 

[boogielicious]

This kid was on 60 minutes last night. Phenomenal does not do him justice.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-overtime-12-year-old-jazz-prodigy-joey-alexander/

 

[JetFan1983]

Pavement -- Range Life

 

[nevets88]

Beach House