11 July 1998: Jazz Nation

Saturday, 11 July 1998:

Jazz Nation

My "jazz quest" continues. Last night I hit several used CD stores on State Street and picked up a couple more albums:

Herbie Hancock, Maiden Voyage (1964): Hancock's first solo album, his group basically consisting of Miles Davis' group of the time with a different trumpeter. It's pretty good, but I don't think Hancock is going to become one of my favorites.
Oscar Peterson Trio with Clark Terry, Plus One (1964): A very upbeat, often playful album. Terry's trumpet is quite different from the (limited) Miles Davis I've heard (Terry was apparently an influence of Davis', early on). Overall a very fun album.

Then today I went down State Street again, but this time I went by the Madison Public Library and thought, "Hey, I bet they have a decent jazz selection I could check out." Well, their selection was by no means 'complete', but it was very eclectic. I ended up taking out seven albums from there:

Count Basie, The Jazz Collector Edition: Haven't listened to this one yet.
Randy Brecker, In The Idiom (1986): This struck me as okay mid-level jazz, much as The Return of the Brecker Bros (for the most part) did. Didn't really jump out and grab me, though.
Ornette Coleman, The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959): My understanding is that Coleman helped shape a whole movement of the jazz world ("free jazz") through this album and others around the same time. The instruments are sax, cornet, bass and drums (i.e., no piano or guitar) and it involves a lot of what I tend to think of as "noodling". Not really my thing, and I understand I'm not alone.
Duke Ellington and John Coltrane (1962): Didn't get a good feel for it the first time I listened to it.
Adrian Legg, Guitar For Mortals (1992): I'm not entirely sure why this was in the jazz section, as I'd thought of Legg (from his National Public Radio pieces) as a folk musician, and this album reveals that that's pretty much what he is. It is a fun guitar album, however, and I think I'll have to buy a copy.
Pat Metheny, 80/81 (1980): A very neat album which I guess was Metheny's "breakthrough" piece. The "Two Folk Songs" track is especially fun, and Michael Brecker's sax is arresting (probably the best I've yet heard by him).
Thelonious Monk, The Unique Thelonious Monk (1956): Haven't listened to this one yet.

There are several other libraries around the city which have a significant music collection, so maybe I can spend some time exploring large quantities of music in the next few weeks without blowing large quantities of money doing so!

I've also scoped out the radio options for listening to jazz around here. Right now I'm listening to Michael Hanson's jazz show on Wisconsin Public Radio, which runs from 9 to midnight Saturdays and Sundays. (I recall reading in the past that WPR management has tried to kill the show a few times but has never been successful. Indeed, their last schedule change resulting in expanding the show from 4 hours on Saturday [only] to 6 hours over Saturday and Sunday.)

And I've learned that WORT has a jazz show from 2 to 5 pm Monday through Thursday (actually a different show each day), and one from 10 to noon on Saturdays. I listened to the latter this morning, and it seemed to involve a lot of early jazz - from the 1940s and earlier - which was nice, but didn't move me to go out and grab any of the artists I heard.

Finally, my friend John tells me that his favorite jazz radio station in the Bay Area is now on the Web. Too bad I don't have a sound card in my computer at work! Ah, well!

On my shopping trip today I also picked up a copy of the German edition of The Settlers of Catan, since I've decided to be a snob about the game. (There are other reasons, too, but I won't belabor the point.) It's a bit expensive, should be worth it (especially when/if I sell my Mayfair Games edition). I checked out some used book stores, too, but didn't see anything I particularly wanted to buy.

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon being lazy, taking care of little things around the apartment, listening to all the CDs I picked up, and petting the heck out of the cats. One of the 'little things' I did was to spend about half an hour examining the details of my Raven map of the United States. Some of the peaks and valleys out near the left coast are very impressive! It makes me realize that my knowledge of geography (and topography!), although probably much better than the average joe's, is not all that strong.

Oh, and I was struck with inspiration to modify the software I use to keep our fantasy baseball league's stats. That was fun. I'll probably work on it more tomorrow.

Eventually I got off my butt and went for a bike ride through the arboretum. I'm always impressed with the 'muscle memory' in my legs; I haven't gotten much exercise in several weeks, but tackling the hills did not seem any harder than the last time I rode that route. I did stop once to catch my breath and chug some water, but otherwise I just kept on going. It was a nice day for it: Sunny, not too warm, and most importantly, not too humid.

I've also been keeping up with my reading-fest: I read Batman: Tales of the Demon, a collection of 1970s and early 80s stories featuring Denny O'Neil's villain Ra's al Ghul (pronounced - I learned from the cartoon show - "RAYSH ahl GHOOL"). The stories were more naive than I'd remembered (in particular, Ra's' motivation in nearly every story is murky at best; his goals are not well-defined), but the stories illustrated by Neil Adams are very pretty to look at. What a great artist he was when he was on!

I also caught up on the unread issues of Swamp Thing I had, read another chapter in Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct, and a few more chapters in Dorothy Sayers' Murder Must Advertise. I've been busy!

But at least it's been busyness that I chose, when I felt like it. I've been keeping up mostly with externally-scheduled projects for the last week, and this has been a great change of pace. Wonder what I'll do tomorrow...?

Michael Rawdon (Contact)