Borders Jazz Essentials Sale - Recommendations and Reviews

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I get email from Borders every week. I ask for it. They create a nice sense of false urgency by having very short duration coupons. I say it's false urgency, because they send me new coupons every week. So, I will buy when I buy. Of course, sometimes they have something special, and I have to take note. This week, they have a special on their Jazz Essentials collection. I have commentary for some of them, and thought I would share. I'm a big believer in credentials, so for mine on this, I took a class in college about Jazz Appreciation and have been a fan of the Bop, Cool and Free idioms since. I've also had a long appreciation for standard singers operating in Jazz. So, I'm maybe as qualified as your local paper's music critic.

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If you like the trombone (I do. It's a family instrument, even though I don't play), Mercy Mercy Mercy! Live at 'The Club' is a must have. Hippodelphia is my favorite track, but it's got a lot of really great stuff on there and is, for my money, the best album by the best jazz trombonist.

Best of Louis Armstrong: The Hot Five and Seven Recordings is the very best of a big box set of the guy who made it all happen. Louis didn't invent jazz any more than he was born on the fourth of July, 1900. But he was probably the first recorded jazz virtuoso and he could play stuff that no one else could. Add his singing and if you don't love it, you might want to check your pulse. Also check Kid Ory on the 'bone here. Basin Street Blues, Struttin With Some BBQ and Ory's Creole Trombone are personal favorites. And best of all, you don't have to shell $80 for the big box set that this is pulled from.

Time Out is Dave Brubeck's masterpiece. You know Take Five, you love Take Five. But the rest of this album is every bit as cool and smooth as that. And that's as cool and smooth as it gets. There is NO better jazz album to drink martinis to. Sorry Miles.

Shape of Jazz to Come is not for everybody. It's not for the masses. It's not even for a lot of jazz connoisseurs. What it is, is revolution. Ornette's later stuff would get way further from the norm, but would remain as masterful. If you can follow him, it's worth doing. This is Ornette at his most accessible. It's hard slogging, but worth the work. Conversely, if you love Brittney Spears, you should pass on this. If you like James Joyce (I don't) this is the musical equivalent of "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man."

The list has three Coltrane albums, of which, I can't pick between Blue Train and Giant Steps. That said, I would trade both of those for A Love Supreme. And at 11.99, it would easily fit into the $10 price point of the sale. I think the new expanded edition is worth owning, if only for the live version, and the breakdown of Resolution. But the core album, the four original tracks, comprise, in my opinion, the second greatest jazz album ever. It remains an accomplishment on par with Beethoven's 9th. And excluding it to sell the more expensive one puts a lie to the "Essentials" label for the series (as does the inclusion of a Harry Connick album). Not to dump on Blue Train and Giant Steps, because they are major, major albums. I'm sure Lush Life is good too. But Love Supreme is the single biggest thing that Coltrane did. There's even a church dedicated to St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane's finest album.

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Miles Davis is the one artist in Jazz who defies the "If you only want to own one" recommendation. Part of that is because he played forever. Think the Rolling Stones with Madonna's penchant for reinvention. That said, Kind of Blue is the single greatest jazz album ever. This is the album that helped me land my wife. If you can't dig this album, you have no soul. Sorry, I had to say it.

If you can only own two Miles Davis albums, check out Birth of the Cool. You have Miles typical lineup of modern jazz giants, including Gerry Mulligan's deep saxophone. This is "West Coast" jazz at it's best. And now that everyone under the sun has incorporated every little piece of everything on this disc, it feels like old slippers. Imagine it in 1950, when it was shiny and new. Giants.

You know when two titans of music come together, it rarely works. Miles made it work, even when they didn't get along. I look at an album not featured here, Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants, Miles makes it work with Thelonius Monk, who we will get to later in this article. They didn't get along, but it worked to great effect. Round About Midnight combines Miles with St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane to great effect. The contrast in their styles on most of the tracks makes this an awesome listen. When you listen to Miles, he is so smooth that you are tricked into thinking that his way is the natural way of going about his business. The Train shows us a different way, and it shows us his brilliance. It also shows us the imagination and brilliance of Miles as well. There were (a lot of) players who were better technicians than Miles, but his ability to interpret a song and not just see, but invent the future, remain unparalleled. Think David Bowie from the begining to Tin Machine.

Sketches of Spain is also very good.

Ella Fitzgerald was the first lady of song for a reason. She was really really good. She could sing pretty much anything and bring perfect pitch and inventive phrasing to whatever. A touch of class to any song. Probably her greatest accomplishment were the Songbook albums. The Best of the Songbooks is simply that. Tracks 8 & 9 are my favorites, but there is soo much good stuff here, it's hard to pick even a better half of the album. Best of all, this is really accessible. No deep thought here, unless you want to. Great intro to all that jazz can be for the casual listener but also a lot of great technical ability for the audiophile.

I am firmly in the camp of people who love Astrud Gilberto. I love her voice and I love the lightness of her interpretations. I don't have this disc, but I have about 75% of what's on it, so I can say it's definitely worth owning if you don't know Astrud. Fly Me To the Moon is one of my favorite standards. Nice stuff.

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People who don't know Jazz think of Herbie Hancock as a one hit wonder of early electronic music with his track Rockit!. What they are missing is a brilliant jazz pianist, who happens to play synthesizers on Head Hunters. This is a landmark album that sounds as fresh now as it did 33 years ago (ohmiGawd, I'm 33 this year). I'm amazed that more rappers haven't found it to sample. It's that kind of goodness.

Sketches on Standards is a nice introduction to Stan Kenton. Tons of great solos, base tracks that people know well, and that cool coolness of Kenton.

Here's one for the King of the Hill fans out there. I don't think Mangione is real jazz and I don't know a lot about it, but I think it's funny how he's been a recurring character on King of the Hill for a while. I love that show.

I love Charles Mingus. There is no cooler instrument than the stand up bass. I think the review with the listing is pretty dead on, particularly that Black Saint is a greater album. But excluding Mingus is bad, so he gets in. Period.

They don't have my Monk album listed, but this sounds great. You have some of the classic Monk stuff, with some great players like St. John and Coleman Hawkins. And they say it works. A little research confirms this with sources not trying to sell me anything. I guarantee it's cool and laid back and fun. Enjoy.

Apparently Jazz Essentials only includes artists from a-morgan. And no Modern Jazz Quartet. Go figure. Anyway, this is way longer than I intended, so I guess that's a good thing.

Gay Rights: My Position - A Conversation from the alt.support.diet.low-carb newsgroup

Google Groups : alt.support.diet.low-carb

As I may have noted before, I live a mostly Low Carb life. I belong to a newsgroup that functions in support of that lifestyle, as noted above. The discussion ranges far and wide from dieting and eating low carb, especially in this post-Google era, where everything ever written is easy to find.

Any rate, some moron, Captain BlubberSlap, trolled the group (and several others) with a rant about fat people. I responded (maxlharris@gmail.com) and noted that fat and gay are pretty much the only socially acceptable prejudices left in America, and both are sad comments on our society.

Another poster, Observer, rang back with the common false equivalence of priests who are also child molesters. I corrected this notion, noting that I don't support child molestation, straight or gay. Observer rang back with the common myth that gay people are more likely to be child molesters and promiscuous.

I thought people might be interested in my response to Observer's comments. My contention is that homosexuals deserve the same treatment as heterosexuals. That doesn't include license to have sex with children, or to inappropriate public sex acts. But if straight people can be slutty, why not gay people? If straight people can cruise bars, free from fear of abuse, why not gay people? I believe the operative word in heterosexual people and homosexual people has to be "people". If you accept that they are people, first, then have a sexual preference, the issue becomes a lot clearer.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal. That was a self evident truth back in the 1770's. We've updated that to include all kinds of men, including black men and wo-men. Gay people are "men" too, and their equality should be self evident as well.