ART APPRECIATION

A good friend of mine has been in town recently, the only person that I spent time with in both San Francisco and New York. (For good reason. She's the one who talked me into moving both times.) We hadn't seen each other in years and had much to catch up on so we weren't just strolling down, we were jogging all over fucking memory lane. One of the episodes that came up, was when Art Blakey was playing some jazz club in San Francisco. You could see a good amount of the band from the street without going in, including Blakey, his mouth wide open when he was really going off. Ever the tightwad, I happened to catch part of his set from the sidewalk on two consecutive nights. Now that I think about it, he's the only big name jazz guy I've ever seen live.

Check "The Sacrifice". Yeesh. That's an opening cut on his Drum Suite album. How do you follow that? The second song on the LP is "Cubano Chant" which settles back in to a less frenzied pace. Maybe "The Sacrifice" is like coffee starting your day, with a jolt. Works for me.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers - The Sacrifice mp3 at Internet Archive
Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers - Cubano Chant mp3 at ATumblr (?)
Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers - The Drum Thunder Suite mp3 at ATumblr (?)
Video:
Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers - Caravan (live) at YouTube