Steely Dan - Aja

Despite me and my mate Tim having a shared (was it just us?) obsession with Donald Fagen's solo album, New Frontier in the early 80's I was only ever marginally aware of Steely Dan until a mate at work in 89/90 put Peg (and a few other bits) on a compilation tape for me, and I realised that it was the sample from Eye Know from De La Soul's 3 Feet High And Rising which I had been rinsing.

I spent a couple of days in bed with a bit of a virus this week, and spent a febrile night playing this album in my head, convinced that I had to write a meaningful critique of it. Next day I re-watched the 'making of' docco on YouTube. Fucking hell, it's good. You don't come out of it thinking Becker or Fagen are particularly blessed in the people-skills department, but, oh my, the craft!

This is the perfect album. Special mentions, though, go out to Michael McDonald's BVs on Peg and Wayne Shorter's solo on Aja.

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#SteelyDan
#Aja
#Jazz-Rock

Alice Coltrane - Huntington Ashram Monastery

Just a lovely album to start the day with. Or finish the day with.

Since I've been documenting my listening, it's dawned on me how often Ron Carter pops up as bass player.

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#Vinyl
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#RonCarter

Harvey Mason - Funk In A Mason Jar

Mason is a drummer who never overplays his hand, which - on an album like this, where the cream of the jazz-funk players of 1977 came out to play - must be hard.

Till You Take My Love has become a bit of a rare groove standard for good reason, and I hadn't realised until today, that it's Merry Clayton on vocals, although it's obvious once you know.

I picked this up for $15 in Sydney a couple of years ago.

One side of the inner sleeve is a torso shot of Mason, from the rear of the sleeve, so you can add your own head to it, like I have below.

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Protoje Ft. Chronx - Who Knows

A few years ago, I was round the house of a mate who is a big reggae fan. He put this on. I really liked it and went to buy it on discogs. I already had it.

I live an exciting life.

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#Reggae

Neil Young - Comes A Time

In any sensible world, a fair measure of a person would be whether they like Neil Young or not. Unfortunately, it's like we did opposites day when the wind changed direction and we got stuck in the current shitshow. Turns out T***p is a massive Neil Young fan. How am I supposed to assimilate this information? You'd think it would be like a Labrador listening to Beethoven (I nicked that simile off Stuart Lee.)

At least Neil Young thinks T***p's a cunt.

This album has Young returning to his country-folk stylings. It's supposed to be one of his favourites of his own records.

Comes A Time, the song, is so good.

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#ComesATime

McCarthy - Red Sleeping Beauty

A bloke I worked with in the Post Office, was mad into McCarthy, Half Man Half Biscuit and the Wedding Present and the tapes he did for me became the soundtrack to my time trudging round my walk as a postie or flying round on my bike like a maniac.

McCarthy had the best political lyrics. Red Sleeping Beauty is one of the three best Thatch songs (along with Shipbuilding and Tramp The Dirt Down). I still wonder that they remain so relatively unknown.

When I was putting the record back in its sleeve, I noticed it had a stamp on the inside. My extensive research tells me that 376 Pitt St, Sydney is no longer the home of Ashwoods record store, but of Silver Fox massage parlour ($100 for 30 mins, apparently.)

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#McCarthy
#RedSleepingBeauty

Joe Gibbs & the Professionals - African Dub All-Mighty, Chapter 3

Despite the line-up of reggae royalty playing on this album, POTM goes to engineer, Errol Thompson, who, basically, goes fucking bananas and dubs it past the defence, through the legs of a hapless goalkeeper and into the back of the fucking net. Ten times.

This is an album so full of joy, it's hard to describe. My favourite dub album by a country mile.

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#Dub

John McLaughlin - Electric Guitarist

I believe that this was the first proper jazz-fusion LP I bought. I remember picking it up in JiFS Records, Chadwell Heath in about 1984. (Man, I'd fucking love to go back and have a dig in that shop again!) I was an avid reader of guitarist magazines at the time and kept reading about McLaughlin and his Gatling gun playing-style, and just had to hear it. There was no way of hearing it before buying in those days, so it was a bit of a gamble, although to be fair, I knew I was going to love it.

All the big guns are wheeled out in support of McLaughlin on this album and they all get a fair shake of the sauce bottle.

The second track, Friendship, is a frequent spinner on my earworm jukebox, and has been for some 40 years now.

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#Jazz-Fusion
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The Incredible Bongo Band - Bongo Rock

I listened to the Apache episode of Andrew Hickey's podcast The History of Rock Music In 500 Songs the other night and, being as meticulous as he is, he included the version from this album. And rightly so.

I first became aware of the Apache sample when it was used in Double Dee & Steniski's Lesson 3, being played by Jonathan More at Caister Soul Weekender in the 80's.

To be honest, there's very little else of any value on this album, and it's a bit of a chore to play all the way through. Especially on my barely adequate Italian pressing.

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The Revolutionaries - Kunta Kinte (Kentaro Remixes)

Tokyo's DJ Kentaro is one hell of a turntablist and, on this 12" from 2009, he throws the Kunta Kinte riddim around like a fucking blindfolded juggler on a unicycle...on a tightrope...over a tank of piranhas. It's all very fancy.

There's nothing at all wrong with that, in my book, but then I'm a complete sucker for the Kunta Kinte riddim however it arrives to me, although this does seem like a lot of hard work at times.

I'm also partial to a lock groove. Saves you having to get up to turn the record over.

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#DJKentaro
#KuntaKinte

Chick Corea and Return to Forever - Light As A Feather

The second RTF album, with Flora Purim on vocals, her husband Airto Moreira on percussion, Stanley Clarke on bass, and Joe Farrell on flute and saxophone, has them gliding through really complex Brazilian-jazz-fusion flavours, without compromising on complexity or losing the groove - a very hard balance to achieve.

It's one hell of an album, even on my rather shitty Australian pressing.

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#ChickCorea
#ReturnToForever
#Jazz

Robin Eubanks - Different Perspectives

In 1988, when this album came out, I had a mate who was a rep for a record company, and I would leave his flat with my pick of whatever records/CDs he was promoting at the time. That's how I got this.

This was Eubanks' debut album and it holds up well, despite being festooned with slightly jagged eighties rhythms.

Eubanks is a player of some aplomb and is one of FOUR trombonists on this album. That's a lot of trombone.

There's a fucking awesome version of Stevie Wonder's Overjoyed, where Eubanks and his guitarist brother, Kevin, interact beautifully, and which I frequently experience as an earworm.

You can't beat free tunes, man.

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#Jazz
#RobinEubanks
#JMT
#StevieWonder
#Trombone

Roberta Flack - Killing Me Softly

I thought I'd play a bit of Roberta Flack to mark her death earlier this week and discovered this LP, released in 1973, which I'd picked up somewhere and forgotten about.

For an album with an all-star cast of jazz players and arrangers, and dedicated to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, it's a remarkably low-key, MOR affair. There's nothing here that'll frighten the horses. Which is a shame, because she was at her best (IMHO) when she was in a less languorous mood.

The title track is still so much better than its better-known cover version, and her version of Leonard Cohen's Suzanne really works.

My copy has a slightly pointless die cut sleeve where a piano is overlayed on the cover in two flaps. I have one flap missing.

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#RobertaFlackRIP
#RobertaFlack

Squarepusher - Feed Me Weird Things

It's an indication of how many of my musical boxes Squarepusher ticks that I can clearly remember the first time someone played his music to me and how it felt so exciting and new.

This is the 25th anniversary edition - double LP and a 10", with a booklet containing more information than you would ever care to read.

Twenty-five fucking years, man! (More now). Still sounds fucking great.

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#Squarepusher
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Planxty - Cold Blow and the Rainy Night

In case you're not already aware: all Planxty albums are great.

Things I love about this, their third LP, recorded in 1974:
- It was recorded in Whitechapel, a place close to my heart. (Although Bohemian Rhapsody was recorded in the same studio and I think that's wank.)
- The cover has a cartoon portrait of the band, which is...unflattering.
- It has a killer version of one of my favourite folk songs - the title track. What a timeless tale of humanity's flaws and mistakes that is?

#Planxty
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#Vinyl

Thundercat - Drunk

Yesterday, my granddaughter and I watched Yo Gabba GabbaLand!'s NPR Tiny Desk Concert, which features Thundercat. It reminded me to sit down and give this a rare spin.

Now, I love Thundercat's music. His playing is simply beautiful, and who doesn't love a falsetto vocal?

This box set of four 45 RPM 10" singles on red vinyl, each in its own double-envelope cardboard sleeve, is a thing of beauty. Unfortunately, it's such a ballache to play that I never touch it. A format only good if you want to get your steps up.

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#YoGabbaGabbaLand!
#NPR
#TinyDeskConcert

Charles Mingus - Pre-Bird

I borrowed this album from the library when I was about 13 and really enjoyed it. It was the first jazz album I had really listened to and I remember reading the sleeve notes, learning about contrapuntal arrangements and being blown away. I was a bit of an odd teenager, at times.

Got myself a mint 1961 mono copy a few years ago off discogs and promptly (literally) dropped the needle onto Prayer for Passive Resistance, making a big old skip in the middle of Eric Dolphy's amazing alto sax squawking. Oh well.

This album is a stone cold 10 and I'm playing it twice.

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#Jazz

ZZ Hill - A Man Needs a Woman

Mid-8Os blues was where 60s soul went out to pasture.

The first side of this LP is structured as a 'blues opera', with clunky dialogue between the tracks, playing out a tale of relationship discord. A precursor to hip hop's awful skits, I suppose.

ZZ Hill has a classy voice, and I love blues from this period.

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#vinylabel

The Headhunters - Survival of the Fittest

A Herbie Hancock produced Afro-space-funk project.

If You've Got It...takes me back to listening to pirate radio in London in the late '80s.

Alas, this is just a reissue.

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#funk
#vinyl