5 Albums That Changed Your Life

[bellulah]

whoever said "you can't read a thread like this and not contribute" was right on!

1) "blue light, red light" by harry connick jr. - single handedly got me into jazz and big band music.

2) "charlie brown christmas" by vince guaraldi trio - it was the first time i'd realized that holiday music didn't have to be campy.

3) "kid a" by radiohead - i read an interview with some jazz chick somewhere, and she said that this record embodied what she thought jazz in the 21st century could and should be, which i think sums up my opinion quite nicely. it taught me about the economics of production.

4) "our endless numbered days" by iron & wine - sam beam could have stretched way out and gotten crazy with a studio now at his disposal, but instead he kept everything hushed and restrained, reminding everyone and myself that good songwriting must come first.

5) "a midwestern autumn" by the aeronautical legends - this is actually me, my music, my second record. after haphazardly tossing together a debut cd based on people's suggestions, i got to take some time and write a solid, lyrically mature, and melodic second record. i felt, and still feel, a great sense of pride and accomplishment knowing i did not waste a minute of the three years it took to write a record that i will always be proud of.

thanks for letting me play!

[cgarges]

3) "kid a" by radiohead - i read an interview with some jazz chick somewhere, and she said that this record embodied what she thought jazz in the 21st century could and should be, which i think sums up my opinion quite nicely.

I'd be curious what this "jazz chick" had to say about it. To me, there's almost nothing at all similar between this record and anything related to the lineage of jazz.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[I'm Not The Platypus]

OK Computer kicks the ass of Kid A

and CG is correct, i think Kid A has more in common with the Blues Brothers

[thunderboy]

I guess these are the five albums that influenced me most, in one way or another.

Blood, Sweat and Tears - Greatest Hits

From my father's record collection. Grew up listening to it, also sparked my love of low frequencies (loved playing with the tone controls on the stereo - man, I can still smell that old amp cooking!)

Rush - Exit...Stage Left

Bought my first cassette Walkman in NYC during a school band trip. Borrowed this album from a Senior on the bus trip back. Musically, probably the most influential of all as it solidified my determination to be a musician.

Primus - Frizzle Fry

More of a validation of my bass playing theories than anything else. Not that I played in any way like Les.

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica

Given to me by a bandmate in college - generally mind-expanding.

Radiohead - OK Computer

Right album, right time. Just important to me on an emotional level. This spot could be shared with Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas.

jt

[;ivlunsdystf]

3) "kid a" by radiohead - i read an interview with some jazz chick somewhere, and she said that this record embodied what she thought jazz in the 21st century could and should be, which i think sums up my opinion quite nicely.

I'd be curious what this "jazz chick" had to say about it. To me, there's almost nothing at all similar between this record and anything related to the lineage of jazz.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

I got the meaning, vaguely, I think. It reminded me of Beck's statement in an interview after Odelay's initial success that he figured Woody Guthrie would be having a blast with drum machines and samplers if they had existed in his lifetime.

The Radiohead/jazz statement is pretty nebulous, and will crumble like a two-day-old muffin if you try to apply rigorous left-brain voodoo to it, which your jazz purists are going to be tempted to do. As we can see. Anyway, I get the drift of it. Just sayin'.

[bellulah]

re: the radiohead thing... no, clearly i don't think she meant in the actual lineage of jazz or preservation of the history of jazz or anything like that.

i took it to mean the spirit of it- the freedom of expression and the forward thinking nature of the musicians. taking both the emotion they put into the music and the instruments in their hands in new directions. and that's what i think kid a embodies.

that's all.

[cgarges]

I get kind of tired of the idea that anything "free-thinking" is jazz. I'm sorry (and no offense, Tony), but Pere Ubu was not jazz. Neither was Metal Machine Music. Jazz certainly denotes a broad range of musical styles, but just because something is weird doesn't make it jazz. I find it amusing that Roger McGuinn was trying to emulate "India" on the intro to "Eight Miles High," but no one thought he might have been waiting by the phone for Coltrane to call after that. Saying that Kid A deserves a place in the history of jazz is just plain ignorant, regardless of the fact that people like Brad Mehldau have recorded some of those songs or that Miles Davis was ENORMOUSLY influenced by Jimi Hendrix. Kid A is no more a jazz record than Guns N Roses are a reggae band for that section in the middle of "Live And Let Die."

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[Brian Brock]

Hey Chris, if thinking that Radiohead Kid A is jazz is what changed someone's life, do you really want to try to take that away?

Of course it isn't jazz, but at the moment of inspiration people often equate opposites.

-- to go further into this --

Less firm entry requirements might be a good thing for jazz as a developing genre. No one could get away with saying that Kid A is renaissance lute music, because that is a specified, finished category.

On the other hand, genre labels are a useful way to get an idea of some sort of music without listening to it, and given the amount of music out there, you have to respect those who try to rectify language.

[cgarges]

I just wish people weren't so ignorant about it. Like, no one says that Bitches Brew is one of the greatest rock albums ever, even though it was largely influenced by Hendrix and Sly.

I feel the same way when people talk about "Latin" music as a specific genre or "Africa" as a country.

I don't necessarily think that everything has to fit into perfect little holes, but I don't like the perpetuation of stuff that's just not right. Regardless of what a bunch of friends of mine said in junior high school, Rush was not, is not, and probably won't ever be a jazz group. Neither is Najee or Kenny G.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[;ivlunsdystf]

So, Chris, now please define 'jazz' for us.

[I'm Not The Platypus]

jazz: horn players arpeggiating super-fast over way too many chord changes in as many ways they can think of in a loose and largely improvisational manner over rhythm sections who go crazy swinging hard and sometimes also playing in odd time signatures

not jazz: everything else

[Jay Reynolds]

Less firm entry requirements might be a good thing for jazz as a developing genre. No one could get away with saying that Kid A is renaissance lute music, because that is a specified, finished category.

On the other hand, genre labels are a useful way to get an idea of some sort of music without listening to it, and given the amount of music out there, you have to respect those who try to rectify language.

I used to hate Wynton Marsalis. Not his playing, but his ultra-conservative definition of jazz. But the older I get, the more I find I agree with him.
I think it has to do with being exposed to a lot of jam-bands and crappy jazz/hip-hop fusion. Or just fusion.
Really, though, you'll not find two people who agree on a definition. If we use Wynton's (its only Jazz if the player's vocabulary shares in a tradition that can be traced back to early 20th century New Orleans), we have to exclude Ornette Coleman and the late John Contrane era. And Antonio Carlos Jobim. But if we use my old definition (its Jazz if you're making things up), we have to include Phish.
The answer is probably in the middle (hopefully somewhere that excludes String Cheese Incident and Boney James).

As far as Kid A, I don't think that Radiohead thought of it as Jazz. There are some Art Ensemble of Chicago-esque moments, but those are hardly cutting edge. Group improv like that dates back to the 60's.
Another reason we can safely exclude Kid A is that it sounds waaaay to overdubbed/punched in to me. I'm not saying that there are bad punches or that I know exactly which parts were recorded at the same time. But with Jazz, there is usually an effort made to capture the whole ensemble at the same time in one take. That and the meat and potatoes of the material is songwriting/presentation, not improvisation.

[;ivlunsdystf]

I think bellulah mistyped (or has backpedaled). I don't think any of us disagree on some definition of jazz, although we might quibble over things that are sort of jazzlike. For example why is Blood/Sweat/Tears not jazz? Why not friggin' Steely Dan? (We all know, it's just NOT).

The point about Kid A is getting lost here, which was: Kid A reminds some of us of the thrill-of-discovery-at-the-moment-of-creativity that was so prevalent when Coltrane and Charlie Parker and the others were on a roll and every note they played went straight into the canon. This makes some of us compare it to jazz but I don't think bellulah meant to claim that this makes Kid A eligible for categorization as jazz. In other words, I don't think he was saying that the Kid A album should be moved to the jazz bin in record stores.

Chris, I was just haggling you. Jazz is hard to define, but we all know what it is. String Cheese Incident is about 3 percent jazz and 4 percent bluegrass and a few other things tossed in there; in my opinion if you add up everything in this manner for SCI you get to about 45 percent total leaving 65 percent of the original 100 unaccounted for. There was an interesting tale about an outbreak of hepatitis A amongst their unwashed followers on a long summer tour in 2003 or so, though. You gotta give them credit for that.

[Jay Reynolds]

There was an interesting tale about an outbreak of hepatitis A amongst their unwashed followers on a long summer tour in 2003 or so, though. You gotta give them credit for that.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/health/ ... etail.html
Wow.
Anyway, I guess "jazz" as a label gets thrown around a lot because its a lot easier to say/type than "epiphanal moment of rule-breaking that anchors the listener in the now". On the other hand, the actually genre of Jazz takes a lot of dedication to perform well. Its a pretty big commitment and folks who have invested the time required to be even halfway decent might get sensitive when the name gets applied to just any old thing where someone is just "makin' shit up". Kinda like the way some recordists get a little sideways when some guy with an MPC 2000 calls himself a "producer".

[;ivlunsdystf]

... folks who have invested the time required to be even halfway decent might get sensitive when the name gets applied to just any old thing where someone is just "makin' shit up". Kinda like the way some recordists get a little sideways when some guy with an MPC 2000 calls himself a "producer".

Right! Yes! But I don't think anybody said that until 12 hours ago, and that was just somebody going for easy flames!

Here: Phish doing "Caravan" isn't jazz, it's Phish playing a jazz standard. Blood, Sweat, Tears doing some latin rhythms with a flugelhorn solo isn't jazz, it's BS and T doing some latin rhythms with a ... you get the idea. I think we all know that and anybody who claims otherwise is just baiting for more flames.