Sixth Annual Jaybee-bies: 2016, or Holy F*cking Sh*t

Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest


For once, I’m going to get this done before the Voice does their Pazz and Jop poll.

Anyway, it was the best of times (music) and it was the worst of times (everything else). You get the idea.

Unlike prior years, in 2016 there always seemed to be a really good record to listen to. Alas, like most prior years there didn’t seem to be any outright great ones (except one). But overall things could have been a lot, lot worse.


Resolutions:

I’m always trying to cut down on the CDs in favor of mp3s, and out of a total of 32 albums, only 15 were actual CDs. So I did pretty well not overfilling the house with plastic jewel cases, but I kind of miss the liner notes.

And in my struggle to stay more current, I’m treading water. As in 2015, I managed to get four albums from 2016. I’ve still got to work on that, since I can’t compete with Nutboy, who can spin off a Top 5 list and still say that Car Seat Headrest is great without including it. So I know he’s got a few more up his sleeve. I must do better!

And eat more vegetables.


Nutboy:

And speaking of Nutboy, here’s his list:

1. Bob Dylan: The Real Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert 
2. Radiohead: Heart Shaped Pool
3. Sturgill Simpson: A Sailor’s Guide to Earth
4. Drive By Truckers: American Band 
5. Angel Olsen: My Woman

Now I have no doubt Nutboy can listen to the six CD Dylan The Bootleg Series, Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965-1966  in a single sitting, and I wouldn’t put it past him to enjoy a collection of outgoing messages from Dylan’s answering machine, and good for him I say. But I’m guessing he’s onto something here.

Angel Olsen is the only one that I’ve got and I can understand why it made his cut. It kind of made mine, too.

And the rest have been on my radar, and now that they have the NSA (Nutboy Seal of Approval) I can proceed, but, as usual, I’m a dollar short and a year late.


Overrated, or Disappointments:

Without dwelling on it, I’ll just say that Elliott Smith’s Either/Or is Neither, and Joy of Cooking
stinks to high heaven of 1970. It’s not a bad smell, mind you, but it should have worn off by now.


Top Ten:

So here’s my list, which I’ll remind you contains whatever I got acquainted with last year, and is thus not limited to 2016 releases.

1. Car Seat Headrest: Teens of Denial

2. Erroll Garner: The Complete Concert by the Sea

3. Chills: Kaleidoscope World

4. Fairport Convention: Liege and Leif

5. Kinks: Lola vs Powerman and the Money Go Round

6. Philip Glass: Glassworks (Expanded Edition)

7. The Go! Team: Thunder Lightning Strike

8. Bach: The Well Tempered Clavier/Art of the Fugue/A Musical Offering

9. Apples in Stereo: New Magnetic Wonder

and tied for 10th
John Coltrane: Afro Blue Impressions
Robbie Fulks: Upland Stories 
The Go-Betweens: The Friends of Rachel Worth 
Angel Olsen: My Woman


Top Songs:

This is just some of them, and I’m sure I’ve missed a few:
Car Seat Headrest: "Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales"
Car Seat Headrest: “Vincent”
The Chills: “Cosmic Drift”
The Chills: “Rolling Moon”
The Chills “Doledrums”
Fairport Convention: “Come All Ye”
The Kinks: “Top of the Pops”
The Kinks: “Strangers” 
Philip Glass “Opening”
The Go! Team: “Bottle Rocket”
The Apples in Stereo: “Beautiful Machine Part 1-2”
The Apples in Stereo: “Seven Suns”
Elliot Smith: “Rose Parade”
Gavin Bryars: “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet”


Most Awesomest:

Bach: The Well Tempered Clavier/Art of the Fugue/A Musical Offering: 7 CDs, after all


Most Funnest:

Car Seat Headrest: It’s got everything I need.

Bestest First Cut:

Fairport Convention: “Come All Ye”

Best Last Line:

I'm cheating, because there’s short “coda” after this, but Car Seat Headrest’s “Connect the Dots”  ends with F*ck All This!!


Thoughts:

So how could Car Seat Headrest be better than Bach or an album with "Lola” on it? The shock of the new I guess. And I have to learn to trust that more.

It’s amazing that the election didn’t ruin Kaleidoscope World for me. That makes it rank pretty high.

I considered not listing Erroll Garner at all since I’ve had the original album for years, but it turns out that more EG is better EG.

How the hell did Philip Glass end up making one of the more emotional records I heard this year?

This has nothing to do with any objective musical quality, otherwise Bach would be at the top. This is about subjective experience.


The Year of….

If it’s an artist (and it usually is):
Bach? Maybe. I mean, 9 CDs worth just this year? So if it was an artist, it would be him.

But maybe it’s a thing.
World History Project? No, this is just getting started, musically.

A Concept? 
Disappointment? Not musically, though.

Maybe it’s the year of Things More Important Than Music, and Not In A Good Way. That’s probably it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still need music. As a matter of fact, it’s what gets me through it all.

And for the next four years, I’m gonna need a lot of it.

Jazz for a Rainy Day

Saturday morning. 1980, I think. Summertime. Didn’t seem like it, though.  It was cool, raining and windy as hell.

It was closing in on noon, and we (me, Roommate Mike, his brother and whoever slept over from bar-hopping the night before) were just getting up. And what, with the weather being what it was, no one was in a hurry to go anywhere.

So we decided to have breakfast, which at that time, meant an omelet for some reason, which was a big production.


Now there were a lot of things about this morning that were a just a little weird.

We usually made the omelets on Sunday. That’s when we would be recovering from a very late Saturday night out. Friday nights could be pretty late, too, but if you got up for working that morning, that seemingly bottomless supply of youthful energy was at least somewhat dissipated. So Saturday nights were usually the later ones.

Plus, there were usually things that had to get done on Saturday. But like I said, due to the weather, no one was in a mood to go out and do them.

And the very non-summery weather itself.  The rain was moving sideways. Like a mini-hurricane.

There were too many of us to fit in the kitchen, and since we wanted to see the weather anyway, we set up a table in the living room.


I was always the one putting on music, and now that the omelet was in progress, I’d have to find something suitable for the fragile sensibilities of hungover twenty-year-old white guys.

But it was such a weird day it was hard to find anything that felt right.

Mike and I had combined our record collections when we moved in. Mike’s collection was pretty respectable, and he inherited some albums from his uncle, which gave us some needed breadth. When I’d go through those records (btw, if you ever invite me to your house, I’m going to go through your records, and judge you accordingly), I could usually identify the artists, even if the music wasn’t in a genre I loved.

But there was this one record I didn’t know what to make of. The cover had a picture of a young woman (in pre-1960s style dress) standing on the rocks of a beautiful seashore, with her arms extended over her head in celebration. The record was called "Concert by the Sea".


What kind of music could this be?  Not muzak, certainly, as I assumed that it was painful enough to record that crap the first time around, why would anyone take the trouble of playing it again, in public no less, where rocks could be thrown?

Thus eliminating that genre as a possibility, and noting the overall weirdness of the day, I said, what the hell, and put it on.

And how was it?
Well, it wasn’t the dreaded (to me) overly familiar.
Nor was it an artist some of us (everyone but me, that is) loved but that the rest of us (me, that is) hated.
It didn’t have the taint (to me) of nostalgia since none of us had heard it before.
It didn’t contain any overplayed radio hits.
It wasn’t even the beloved familiar, which would not have fit this particular situation.
But what it was, was perfect.

“Wow, what is that you put on?” Mike asked from the kitchen.
“It's one of yours.”
“Oh, yeah? Who is it?
“Erroll Garner.”


Okay, some of you may recognize the name. Mr. Garner wrote “Misty”,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JwhJMFDybQ
after all. But what did I know at the time?

But when Erroll starts to play, there’s no stopping him. The music just flows effortlessly for 45 wonderful minutes.

The recording was not of the best quality, and the record was scratched. Yet this added to the overall otherworldliness (to us) of the music. If we put on anything else that morning, I have no recollection of what it was.

For some reason, this older African American pianist (accompanied by bass and drums) playing jazz versions of songs from the American songbook that I didn’t even know at the time, on a sunny beach in California in 1955, magically transfixed five hung over white guys having breakfast during a stormy Saturday morning (or by now, afternoon) in 1980.

From what I understand now, Errol was considered somewhat of a sellout. Jazz was getting very adventurous around 1955, and this record was probably very commercial sounding compared to what other jazz artists were doing.

But to someone like me it was completely new. I had already gotten Kind of Blue so Concert by the Sea wasn’t my first jazz album.  But KOB was easier to absorb because it used some very simple modal themes that even a rock n roller could absorb. CBTS however, is filled with standards that I didn’t know, so there was the parsing of the songs themselves, then the arrangements, and finally the improvisations. There was a lot to hear and learn, but it was played in such an entertaining way, I kept going back to it.


After Mike moved on (and out) I had to buy my own copy – this time with a slightly altered cover and a “Jazz Masterpieces” sticker on it and the bright colors replaced by a monotone one that was supposed to be an improvement. The sound quality was only improved by the lack of scratches.


Erroll Garner: Concert by the Sea 

And while it was all still quite enjoyable, I never captured the magic of that first listen.

That’s okay. There was plenty of magic still to be had. And now there’s more.


The original record was a single disc with 11 songs, so it obviously was an edited version of the show. Recently, however, the Garner family discovered tapes containing the entire concert, which has now been released.


Erroll Garner: The Complete Concert by the Sea

This version consists of three CDs: the first two of which comprise the entire concert, and the third containing the original album plus a long (and  unnecessary) interview.

And the original cover has been restored in the best possible way. The bright colors of the shore are back, but now the young lady is African American. Why? Probably because at the time it was originally released record companies were reluctant to put non-white women on jazz album
covers. They didn’t want to scare away the white customers, who I'm sure weren't racist.

Anyway, the expanded version is better, if less intense, than the original. There’s more room for variations of mood and pace. And the cool thing is that if you don’t have time for the entire concert, you just put on the third disc. This is one of those rare instances where more is better.


I had no idea what to expect when I first put this record on, but it provided the perfect soundtrack to that very weird day. And now it’s back and almost as good as that first time around.

I don’t know exactly where this record stands historically – commercial sell out or jazz cornerstone – but I am sure I wouldn’t want to live without it.

A

"I Remember April"

For Art's Sake

When it comes to jazz, I say the smaller the better. (A convenient motto overall, I admit.) It’s just easier to follow that way. So I like small combos, and love solo piano.

Budd Powell, Thelonious Monk, Erroll Garner, Scott Joplin (or at least the person who plays his music),

and Keith Jarrett have all made wonderful records by just sitting down at their pianos and playing. (Okay, I lied about Errol Garner -he gets help -but you get the point.)

Art Tatum: Solo Masterpieces, Volume One

And now I’ve got one by Art Tatum, who plays like a mofo. Of course, as impressive as virtuosity is, it won’t matter if the record sucks. So how is this one?

Quite nice, thank you. Tatum plays the standards, which until recently I couldn’t have cared less about. But he manages to play them straight enough to help a boob like me recognize them, and, by putting his own stamp on them, makes me like them like I never have before.

There's a generous 65 minutes of graceful, pretty and not at all intimidating music here. Just put it on first thing in the morning, and go do your... early morning stuff.

By the way, who's better? Tatum, Powell, Monk, Garner, Joplin, Jarrett or Tatum?

Well, let’s see. This is how I’d classify them:

Monk - With his utterly weird songs and playing, he’s by far the Most Fun.

Powell - Very, very impressive but I hear he doesn't always show up. But when he does The Snazziest.

Garner - The audience sounds very, uh, white. So that makes him The Crowdpleaser.

Joplin - Pretty and graceful, but kinda slow. He’s The Relaxer.

Jarrett - Your Sensitive Artiste friend from the 70s, who you keep hanging around with because, although he goes on a bit, he’s basically a good guy. And purty as hell when focused.

Each of the above artists have hit more homers, but Tatum combines technical skill, exquisite taste and expressiveness, which together give him the higher batting average.

Does that make him the best? How the hell should I know? Anyway, like I said, it doesn’t really matter how good the player is. It’s about how good the record is. (So why did I just put us through that little exercise, you ask? Just let it go, okay?)

All I know is that the piano is my second favorite instrument and Tatum is now my second favorite piano player. (Ah, so who’s the first? Powell, I think. But Monk sure is fun!)

With jazz, I'm never sure if I ever get to the bottom of the music, even when there's only one instrument playing. So it’s too soon to tell if this will be my absolute favorite piano record, but it will do just fine while I find out. So the grade is anticipatory - where I think I'll end up with it. Right now, it's a pleasure all the way through. A-

When to Play It: It’s perfect for first thing in the morning.

When Not to Play It: When your company is comprised of a bunch of clods.

“Moonglow”