One of the perks of getting older, especially if you’ve had many years of cognitive behavioral therapy, is that it gets a little easier to forgive yourself, at least for the small stuff. The most recent post for this blog until now is more than eight years old, which might as well be a lifetime ago. (For seven-year-olds, it truly is.) Anyway, reviewing some of those old posts now, I can look back with more fondness than expected on the early-thirty-something who wrote them, certainly more charitably than I would have just a few years back. These posts had to be written fast, before the editor in me had time to brutalize and shame the writer into silence, and I'm pleasantly surprised at just how well the writer managed to acquit himself under such harsh conditions. I think I’m most proud that he (I!) actually found time to write at all. It’s been considerably harder in recent years to carve out that time.
The biggest change in the blog’s subject matter in the intervening years has been my almost complete abandonment of “Project 90s” (which, fine, we can agree is a pretty cringeworthy hook) and my subsequent immersion in collecting jazz records. I sold at least a few of the alt-rock records reviewed here, something that old me would have seen as a deep betrayal. I even sold that Matthew Sweet record, which had acquired something near grail status for me when I spotted it on the wall at Academy. Still, I've never regretted selling it until only recently, though with power pop’s stock priced indefinitely low I can’t imagine I’d have too hard a time buying it back. Maybe even for less than I paid the first time.
That’s more than I can say for most of the jazz records I’ve acquired since, which tend to be of the original Blue Note/Prestige variety and have repeatedly busted through the top end of the market in the last couple of years, especially during the pandemic. No doubt thousands of smart comics/action figures/laserdisc dealers have made a mint during COVID as the disposal income saved from thousands of never-to-be-had work lunches and gas refills was plowed into the collectibles market, and record sellers certainly weren’t left out of the bounty. In short, these things have gotten stupidly pricey and I’m grateful to have bought what I have, which I’ll admit came mostly through refreshing eBay with junkie-like single-mindedness and snapping up severely underpriced Buy-it-Now listings. I welcome your scorn (and will happily wallow in your pity).
I’ve been collecting jazz in earnest for quite a while now, and perhaps with some embarrassment I should say that I still feel like a novice in evaluating the musical content of these records beyond saying that I know what I like when I hear it. A good number of years in now, I can only occasionally pick out a particular player by ear. (Coltrane, sure. Rollins, on a good day. Piano players somehow easier—I seem to be able to ID Wynton Kelly or Red Garland more regularly than even I expect.) And while I’ve been playing the guitar for decades and have a basic grasp of music theory, the technical explanation of why a particular solo works from a harmonic standpoint (rather than rhythmic or simply pure intensity) often eludes me. I suppose a crude measure of what draws me to the records I like is simply the unexpected—a song or player’s tendency to go in a surprising or intriguing direction, or something that strikes me as risky. Maybe music is more like storytelling than I’ve previously considered.
Anyway, this all brings up question of what exactly this blog (blog!) should be, since I think there are many people on Instagram who do a far better job than I could hope to do in analyzing the music, and compared to the most thorough collectors the contents of my shelves would hardly quicken anyone’s pulse. My instinct, then, is to just keep doing this for myself as a way of stimulating whatever writing muscles haven’t atrophied into powder.
Plus, there’s the images. I doubt even the most musically focused collector could deny the sheer visual power of these vintage jazz covers, many of which have to be considered classics of mid-century design. That’s why I’ve led this post with a photo of Lem Winchester’s Winchester Special. Not only does it happen to be on my turntable as I write this, but it’s also just beautiful. It's fun to post these photos just so I can look at them on my phone when I'm not home. Plus, I love a good vibes player. Probably I’ll get around at some point to writing about Walt Dickerson (another New Jazz artist), but Winchester and Golson together can’t go wrong here. Really, it’s hard to go wrong with Benny Golson in general. This is the first Winchester record I heard, and I was excited by the melodicism Golson brings to the compositions. His absence is felt, I think, on the other Winchester New Jazz outings. There’s a nice sonic tension between Winchester’s playful vibes and Golson’s thicker tenor tone, something that’s missing when Winchester plays with, say, Frank Wess—the vibes and the flute are both delicate sounds and to my ear the pairing doesn’t offer quite enough contrast.
Anyway, I’ll stop before I don’t finish this, because if I don’t finish I probably won’t post it, and I can think of ten better ways to feel like a minor failure. Am I back? Is this blog (blog!) back? Who knows. Check back in a month and if this is still the latest post it’ll probably be another eight years until the next. And hopefully by then I’ll be telling you how I don’t grasp a thing about classical music despite being long on Dutch Gramophone pressings from the 50s.
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