I admire how you experiment with every possible form to tell a story. The thread that runs through all of them as your ability to make them heartbreaking. So many good lines in this one.
I had an intense dalliance with Coltrane when I was in music school, but I confess I didn’t feel the intellectual compulsion to subject myself to his more tortured explorations. Like most great players in any genre, it’s satisfying when they bring their powers to bear on simpler music, but you realize they could never achieve that if they didn’t go to the places they go outside.
That's a useful take on artists way out on the edge of accessibility. I'm always disappointed not to "get it" and wonder if the more accessible work is dumbed down genius, but truly maybe the one feeds the other. I have this about Philip Glass, for example. Some of it is torture for me, and some of it is divine. it's nice to think of it almost as they are training out there on the edge. Ascension for me is basically unlistenable. In fact, I think there is no music. Everyone is playing their own arbitrary thing.
Sarah is going to get her silence no doubt. Laszlo put her every last emotional turn and arc into that playlist. To place the needle on the vinyl of their story and listen, she’ll be stunned silent to hear just how “fucking opened” she actually was. But wait, maybe that’s just it…this is just a playlist. He listened enough to write the titles, but listening is different than opening.
Well put. If i feel for anyone here, it’s the guests who sat through the Japanese fusion while their hosts went at it! And the little one in her room blocking her ears.
A different kind of brilliant, Adam! (I wrote this line before I read The Köln Concert #3) . Would have loved to have actually seen a few of these, on an LP sleeve .
My top 10, liner notes,
Coltrane’s Ascension:
#6: Because how could it not be.
Runner up #5
Asayake: #1
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy:
#1: Cuz, Louis A. , being a trumpet player, must have soaked many a hanky with his loogies. I remember watching a youth jazz night at the Flynn theatre in Burlington, VT. Loved it, except for the kid who kept emptying his spit, out of his trumpet , on to the stage floor, quite frequently. Maybe he forgot his hanky.
and #5.
Baby, It’s Cold Outside:
#5
Coltrane’s Ascension, Part II :
#9, #1, #6,
Soap opera, Jazz style.
“I wish you nothing but silence”, Ooh, harsh, very harsh.
Cannot wait to read how you came up with this idea. An overindulgence of Jazz night , while hanging out in a bubble bath by candlelight, smoking a cigar ?
At my birthday party last night I played my chosen “theme song” for my big day: “We Have All the Time in the World.”
(This is a birthday ending in 0, so the accuracy of this is questionable, but it’s a perspective that can be tested with good friends, wine, and the right music.)
Anyway, a friend did an impression of Louis Armstrong wiping his bald head with a handkerchief, and it made me laugh.
I admire how you experiment with every possible form to tell a story. The thread that runs through all of them as your ability to make them heartbreaking. So many good lines in this one.
Thanks so much, Ben. Side question: do you know the two big recordings? Ascension is a workout and not in a pleasant way. I’m Team Sarah.
I had an intense dalliance with Coltrane when I was in music school, but I confess I didn’t feel the intellectual compulsion to subject myself to his more tortured explorations. Like most great players in any genre, it’s satisfying when they bring their powers to bear on simpler music, but you realize they could never achieve that if they didn’t go to the places they go outside.
That's a useful take on artists way out on the edge of accessibility. I'm always disappointed not to "get it" and wonder if the more accessible work is dumbed down genius, but truly maybe the one feeds the other. I have this about Philip Glass, for example. Some of it is torture for me, and some of it is divine. it's nice to think of it almost as they are training out there on the edge. Ascension for me is basically unlistenable. In fact, I think there is no music. Everyone is playing their own arbitrary thing.
Sarah is going to get her silence no doubt. Laszlo put her every last emotional turn and arc into that playlist. To place the needle on the vinyl of their story and listen, she’ll be stunned silent to hear just how “fucking opened” she actually was. But wait, maybe that’s just it…this is just a playlist. He listened enough to write the titles, but listening is different than opening.
Well put. If i feel for anyone here, it’s the guests who sat through the Japanese fusion while their hosts went at it! And the little one in her room blocking her ears.
I was concerned about them too.
Have you ever been at one of those hellish divorce-bound dinners?
The dinner table at my childhood home. Every full moon.
A different kind of brilliant, Adam! (I wrote this line before I read The Köln Concert #3) . Would have loved to have actually seen a few of these, on an LP sleeve .
My top 10, liner notes,
Coltrane’s Ascension:
#6: Because how could it not be.
Runner up #5
Asayake: #1
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy:
#1: Cuz, Louis A. , being a trumpet player, must have soaked many a hanky with his loogies. I remember watching a youth jazz night at the Flynn theatre in Burlington, VT. Loved it, except for the kid who kept emptying his spit, out of his trumpet , on to the stage floor, quite frequently. Maybe he forgot his hanky.
and #5.
Baby, It’s Cold Outside:
#5
Coltrane’s Ascension, Part II :
#9, #1, #6,
Soap opera, Jazz style.
“I wish you nothing but silence”, Ooh, harsh, very harsh.
Cannot wait to read how you came up with this idea. An overindulgence of Jazz night , while hanging out in a bubble bath by candlelight, smoking a cigar ?
I have a few other ideas, but I will hold off.
Three things:
The kid emptying his spit valve
The bubble bath and a cigar
Me scrolling up and down on my iPhone figuring out what you numbered
😝
Oh, yeah, and me scrolling on my iPhone, to make sure I had the right #s
Fug-get about the numbers, it’s all good 🛀 🍷🎶🎶
My absolute favorites, out of all my other favorites.
Agree so with what Ben Wakeman and Lor said so well. The use of the list effect: admirable!
https://substack.com/@mrjamesgreen 👋🙂
Jesus, this is good! Damn.
FYI: https://youtu.be/x0jbPN4QRVY?si=MCxUXyDR_vNJONBX
Hard to pick a favorite line. It might be “I don’t want a Louis Armstrong handkerchief collection on the console.”
At my birthday party last night I played my chosen “theme song” for my big day: “We Have All the Time in the World.”
(This is a birthday ending in 0, so the accuracy of this is questionable, but it’s a perspective that can be tested with good friends, wine, and the right music.)
Anyway, a friend did an impression of Louis Armstrong wiping his bald head with a handkerchief, and it made me laugh.
"We’re not naming her Ornette or Ella or Esperanza...." Or Billie, or Sarah, or Diana, or Carla, or Betty, or Cleo, or Carmen, or Ina Ray...
"No normal girl wants to play a saxophone."
"So I'm not NORMAL?" says Lisa Simpson.
😂 omg, that is too funny. I didn’t think of that at all.
Clever Adam, impressively compulsive... Coltranes Ascension... hard listening, actually impossibly so.