I never listen to music as “background music”. I prefer to be doing nothing but listening. But, life being what it is, 95% of my listening is while driving. I still haven’t made the leap to ipod, and if I tough it out a couple of more years I probably won’t have to. I’m still an album guy, I want to hear 45 minutes or an hour of what an artist wants to say, where the artist wants to take me. I know the world has gone back to singles. My car dealer was amazed I wanted a cd changer installed in the trunk. “Let me see if we still do that”. I miss LPs; there was room for great art and liner notes. I bought my first Kenny Burrell records as an 11 year old because of the art (racy Any Warhol nudes!) and the liner notes. I figured this guy had to be serious.
I love the physicality of ordering cds from Amazon, getting the package, opening it up. They are not LPs, but they are as close as I’m probably going to get. Recent purchases have been Robben Ford Live at The Independent (I was there!) Moby’s Play, from 1999, the latest Vicente Amigo recording, Paseo de Gracia. And today, Herbie Hancock’s debut solo recording, Empyrean Isles, from 1964, and the two Boz Scaggs standards recordings, But Beautiful, and Speak Low. Of all the pop stars who have done the American Songbook (Rod Stewart being the most dismal) no one comes close to Boz. A true bluesman, he understands the music. “I improvise very little on the melody; rather, I try to coax nuance and expression out of timing and tone”. “It is the stillness we tried to preserve, a transcendent feeling of stopping time – doing nothing – and letting these great songs carry us along.” It’s taken me 40 years to learn what not to play.
Gregory James
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