(February 2021) Episode 315 is NINA SIMONE. There is so much that is remarkable about Nina Simone. Her deep and expressive voice, best suited to the jazz tunes of her early career IMO. Her skills on piano, arranging and songwriting. The diversity and eclecticism of her musical tastes (from gospel and blues to The Beatles and Hall & Oates). Her independence and activism for civil rights. She owned the 1960s.
Favorite album: Pastel Blues
Favorite song: Four Women
Compared to expectations: same
Episode 282 is RAY CHARLES. If you had to describe American music in the form of one person, it would be Ray Charles. He melded blues, R&B, jazz, and gospel into what we now call soul, helped integrate country, and reached out into pop standards and modern pop. A legend. That said, the albums themselves, especially after the mid-60s, are generally weak sauce. I recommend a greatest hits collection or, better yet, video of concert performances as his smile and sway light up the venue.
Favorite album: Doing His Thing
Favorite song: What’d I Say
Compared to expectations: ↓
(August 2020) Episode 275 is JOHN COLTRANE. It’s hard to be cooler than Coltrane. Although I have a mixed relationship with jazz and saxophone is far from my favorite instrument, I appreciate him for his talent, innovation and influence. I agree that A Love Supreme is his best album and see why My Favorite Things is his most popular song, but I find myself drawn to the sound of his later-career free-form recordings.
Favorite album: Ascension
Best album: A Love Supreme
Favorite song: India
Compared to expectations: same
(June 2020) Episode 271 is JOHN FAHEY. Fingerpicked guitar is so wholesome. If you love it like I do then John Fahey is essential. He didn’t invent the technique (that was southern blues players) but he made it its own art form, often called American primitive guitar (a label I don’t like because it connects him to Windham Hill-type New Age music, a connection he rejected). Amidst his personal eccentricities, Fahey tried several styles including Dixieland jazz, sound collage, and Christmas covers. But he’s at his best when his right hand goes full speed on folk and blues numbers.
Favorite album: The Dance of Death & Other Plantation Favorites
Favorite song: Jaya Shiva Shankara
Best song that Leo Kottke did a little better: The Last Steam Engine Train
Compared to expectations: same
(April 2020) Episode 259 of the “opus project” is STEVIE WONDER. Everybody loves Stevie and knows his hits. But you should dig deep into his albums, particularly from his “classic” period of 1972-76, to really appreciate his (inner)vision and talent as a song composer and multi-instrumentalist. Those albums are essential listening — the diversity and mixing of styles, the integration of synthesizers, the social commentary. His early teenage prodigy recordings are dispensible; the late-60s, early 70s albums a mixed affair, and the 80s pop cringe-worthy.
Favorite album: Innervisions
Masterpiece: Songs in the Key of Life
Favorite song: Superstition
Worst song: I Just Called To Say I Love You
Compared to expectations: ↑
(July 2019) Episode 222 of my “opus project” is JONI MITCHELL. Who doesn’t love Joni Mitchell? I love Joni Mitchell. She’s a legend, an inspiration to countless artists (especially women). And yet … when I started this episode I realized I had not put on a Joni album in 25+ years. I guess the confessional singer-songwriter thing isn’t my thing. Her strongest songwriting, of course, is the early-70s folky/hippy stuff. Mitchell’s later journeys into light jazz, synth, EZ listening and re-arrangements of old hits are really not my thing.
Favorite album: Ladies of the Canyon
Favorite song: For the Roses
Worst album: Dog Eat Dog
Compared to expectations: ↓
(May 2018) I have completed episode 166 of my “opus project,” in which I listen to an artist’s full discography. This edition: MILES DAVIS. I’ve had a complicated relationship with jazz, but Miles Davis has always been my favorite jazz artist — he was a trumpeter (as were my father and I), he was a constant innovator, and he was cool as hell. While it may be considered heresy, my favorite is his “electric period” of experimental, funk and fusion (1969-75). This was a long one — I covered the studio and live albums released under his name, but not bootlegs or his recordings as sideman.
Favorite album: Bitches Brew
Favorite song: Pharaoh’s Dance
Coolest album (in the history of the world): Kind of Blue
Favorite live album: Live at the Fillmore East, March 7, 1970
Favorite period: 1969-75
Worst song: Human Nature (Michael Jackson cover)
Best space jam that sounds like a Pink Floyd song that actually inspired Brian Eno: He Loved Him Madly (from Get Up With It)
Compared to expectations: same
(October 2017) I have completed episode 142 of my “opus project,” in which I listen to an artist’s full discography. This edition: PAT METHENY. One of my favorite guitarists. His long and prolific recording career (50+ albums) spans a wide range of jazz genres — straight, fusion, avant-garde, progressive, folk, Latin. It is rather odd that, in my opinion, the music of a jazz musician from Missouri (mostly the early stuff) can evoke images of driving on open roads under a big Western sky.
Favorite album: As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls
Favorite song: “It’s For You”
Favorite period: 1978-84
Most boring album: We Live Here
Most ambitious album: The Way Up
Odd outlier that not many like but I do: Zero Tolerance for Silence
Compared to expectations: same
(May 2017) I have completed episode 123 of my “opus project,” in which I listen to an artist’s full discography. This edition: TOM WAITS. One critic aptly described his voice as “like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.” Great lyrical storytelling too. I am drawn more to the weird stuff than the ballads or the jazz/piano material.
Favorite album: Rain Dogs
Favorite song: Gun Street Girl
Favorite period: 1983-87
Compared to expectations: ↓
Opus Project 