After llunch today I got a hankering for some ice cream, so I went to Sonic with the intention of maybe getting a cookies and cream blast or something like that. Instead I decided to try one of their “Java Chillers”. I got the hazelnut one. If you don’t already know, let me tell you….those things are DELICIOUS!!! If I’d known they were that good I would be drinking them regularly by now.
In other important news my musical mood the last several days has been for modern jazz. Just about any jazz, actually, except for that bland “smooth jazz” (the stuff they play on XM 71, Watercolors. It’s not that I always avoid such fluff…there are times when it’s just what I’m after, but those are rare occasions and haven’t come around in a long while.
I make it a point to check the receiver for song title and artist for most of what I listen to, but I don’t remember too many of them, as there is just too muchy to keep up with. I’ve come to appreciate John Scofield and Brad Mehldau from listening to XM 72, Beyond Jazz. XM 70, Real Jazz, has exposed me to so many styles of the music that I have a better idea of what I like and what doesn’t really do it for me. For instance, I don’t really like latin flavored jazz and I’m not particularly fond of the real old-timey New Orleans & Dixieland stuff. I prefer what I’d consider the “Blue Note: style---small combos with lots of improvisation.
When I haven’t been playing jazz lately I’ve listened to classical on the XM Classics channel. Sometimes they get a bit too obscure for me but it’s usually all good.
Plus a couple of hours of death metal today…seriously. There’s nothing quite like the transitional culture shock that you get when a Mozart string quartet is followed immediately by Cannibal Corpse.
Obviously I’ve utilized my XM to a great extent, as I am prone to do. It’s not just because I want to get my money’s worth ort of the $13 they take out of my account every month. I just live the variety. The down side is that I find myself channel hopping much in the same wy that I would with a television. It’s really a better experience when you stay on one particulat channel for awhile, but the temptation is strong to find out what’s playing on the others, and that’s when the surfing begins.
I DID, however, lkisten to a couple of CDs this week.
I’ve had a very thorough Pearl Jam collection for some time now, thanks to my brother. But for some inexplicable reason I have just never really been able to “get into their music”. I’ve enjoyed a stray PJ song now and then, but I can’t help but think that they’re a lot better than I give them credit for being. So I busted out “Binaural”, as it was one that I’d given short shrift to when it first came out. It had to be better than I initially thought it was.
And it was. It didn’t blow me away…it wasn’t some grand revelation of how I’d been ignoring such a marvelous band. I didn’t find myself asking, “What have I been waiting for?” But it was good. It did make me want to listen to more and re-evaluate my opinion of their music. Which I shall do, just as soon as I get out of this jazz mood.
Also, I listened to the Rolling Stones live album, “Get Yer Ya-Yas Out”. I’m pretty sure this one was recorded in 1970…I know it was right after “Let It Bleed” and before “Sticky Fingers”.
It is one sloppy mofo of a record. Truth be told, I have never believed the Stones were capable of much as a live band. At least, if they are, you’d think the would release the better stuff on their live albums. Yet, in my opinion, each and every one of them have been at best mediocre (this one) and at worst just downright unlistenable (“Still Life”).
They butcher the two Chuck Berry songs they cover here (“Carol”, “Little Queenie”). Both of them are churned out at such a lumbering tempo that they lose every ounce of energy they might have had, with Mick slurring and wailing the words on top of the whole mess. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” sounds like a halfway decent garage band. “Stray Cat Blues” is re-arranged to the point of being practically unrecognizable…not as if that’s a bad thing in every case, but it is in this one. “Love in Vain” actually turns out pretty good, marred only by Jagger’s wailing towards the end. The only real “keeper” on this record is “Midnight Rambler”. It has so much more energy than the original “Let It Bleed” version. Jagger’s attitude seems to fit the song better in this rough live version, as opposed to the hushed tones of the earlier one. It could just be that I subconsciously cut it slack since it was the version on the “Hot Rocks” album, which was my introduction to the group. But I don’t think that’s the case.
Anyhoo, the Windows Media Player is stocked with more Autechre than you can shake a stick at (all of it, actually) plus scads of other weirdness (Diamanda Galas, Bongwater, Porter Wagoner…ha) as well as everything I know of by Sigur Ros. This is what I listen to when I work at the computer, which is to say that it’s aboiut the only thing non-jazz music I’ve exposed myself to in over a week.
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