87. Miles Davis, "Bitches Brew"

 


Let me be very upfront about this: I am not a Jazz Guy, have never been a Jazz Guy, have never willingly attended a jazz performance, and have only owned one jazz album, this one, for reasons I'm still not clear on, because I think I put it on once at a dinner party.  [Edit: it was actually Kind of Blue, a different Miles Davis album, I now recall I had, and I liked it quite a bit more than this one.]  That being said, what happened when I listened to this album?  Nothing.  I disliked it intensely.

Maybe, as Rolling Stone wrote when this album was released, "[t]his music is so rich in its form and substance that it permits and even encourages soaring flights of imagination by anyone who listens."  I did not get any soaring flights of imagination, but I'm on an SSRI so maybe that's why.  I would say my predominant emotion listening to this album was boredom, followed by slight annoyance and exasperation that it wasn't over.

People like all kinds of weird shit.  Some people love Jim Carrey movies and some people like kale.  Some people, I am led to believe, like this music.  It's a wild world, go like whatever you want.  But this is most definitely not my shit.  Call me a imbecile or an uncultured vulgarian but this to me sounds like a bunch of msucians just jacking off with no point and recoirding it.  Nothing much happens, they just dick around some more.

Also, god it is fucking long.  Seven songs, one hour and 45 minutes.  I'm gonna be straight with you, I did not finish it.  Let's move on.  Better days.

Is this album in my personal Top 500? You have got to be fucking kidding.  I would listen to one hour and 45 minutes of 100 Polka Classics - The Greatest Accordion Collection On Earth before I listened to this again.

Comments

  1. GGSeptember 20, 2022 at 10:23 AM

    I feel the same way about jazz. One of my favorite Kids in the Hall monologues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_R5NBQqi3g

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. TKSeptember 20, 2022 at 11:05 AM

      This comment below it: "Jazz is unanimously hated by those lacking the intelligence to handle music that's more complex than justin beiber. LOL" oh fuck off, that's why people hate people who like jazz

      Delete
    2. GGSeptember 20, 2022 at 11:26 AM

      EXACTLY!

      Delete
  2. StephenSeptember 20, 2022 at 11:36 AM

    I like jazz. Kind of Blue is fantastic. This is jazz fusion (aka jazz-rock fusion). It is not fantastic. It is cocaine-fueled self-absorption.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

103. De La Soul, "Three Feet High And Rising"

Image
  Sorry for the service interruption!  Monday I had, like, work stuff to do and yesterday I was picking my wife up at the airport and they lost her bag and we had to file a claim about that and by the time I got home it was well into my Work Hours and you know, I'm just sorry.  (This was tail end of quite a journey for my wife that found her taking off in Ireland and landing in Newark, New Jersey, and then sitting in a plane for almost three hours and then the flight just getting cancelled and then staying in the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Newark, NJ [not recommended, she says] and then getting on a flight to SFO at 6:30 am and finally getting back here a solid 14 hours later than expected.) Speaking of the greater New York City metropolitan area, a group of kids from Amityville, Long Island, got together in 1988 and started making songs and released this album, one of the best in hip hop or any other genre, in 1989.  De La have been called the "Beatles of hip...
Read more

3. Joni Mitchell, "Blue"

Image
  Do you want the good news or the meh news first?  The good news is that this album is better than the other Joni Mitchell albums we've seen , or at least better for me.  I hated one of them and barely tolerated the other, so I was not expecting to like this, and after three listens yesterday, it was not as bad as I'd feared it would be.  The meh news?  I still don't love Joni Mitchell and I don't particularly like this album. Obviously, since it's the number 3 out of the Top 500 albums ever made, a lot of people feel differently.  Pitchfork called it "possibly the most gutting break-up album ever made," which may be true, who knows, but if it is it's about breaking up with a whole series of dudes, from Graham Nash to James Taylor to some guy named Carey.  (In Pitchfork's estimation, this is the 86th best album of the 1970s, so not exactly in number 3 overall territory). One thing that bugs me is Joni Mitchell's voice, which I find kind of g...
Read more

1. Marvin Gaye, "What’s Going On"

Image
  500 albums later and we're out of albums.  This album was number 6 on the last iteration of the Rolling Stone list and has now moved up to number 1 (displacing Sgt. Pepper , which was the last album to hold that spot).  I think it's a lovely album with maybe three absolutely incredible songs, a fair amount of average-to-good, and some not great songs.  I'm not a voter and will never be a voter but I just don't think this is the best album of all time. In fact, I would be perfectly fine with this list if they just sawed off the top 3 and left the rest as is: 1. Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life 2. Beatles, Abbey Road 3. Nirvana, Nevermind 4. Fleetwood Mac, Rumours And so forth.  But let's take this album on its own merits. The first of the three absolute bangers is the title track, "What's Going On," the scene-setter for the rest of the album, a loose concept album that's told from the point of view of a Vietnam vet returning to a country th...
Read more