Several years ago a neighbor stopped by to chat and, he being a fellow music fiend, our conversation was all over the place. This band, that record, this genre and then, jazz. I, for one, was jazz-nostic. I thought anyone like Kenny G was intolerable. But Ron Ashton (Stooges) was a jazz freak. What gives? My neighbor told me that his real jazz introduction was when he listened to his dad's copy of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, listening with his full attention. Ah, now I get it. Really listen.
So it's been a few years, and if you've been around here any length of time you have probably guessed that I like jazz. Not all jazz, but a lot. For me, the more wigged out the better. It's a punk rock rush when it gets crazy. Last night it did. I ran into Coltrane's Ascension, an album with two versions of the same song, "Ascension Edition II" is 40:23 minutes long, "Ascension Edition I" is 38:31 minutes. Overdoing it? No, not all. They're sufficiently different, with a shitload of improvisation going on.
Rather then run off at the mouth about what my listening experience was like, just listen to it. It really is fucking amazing. There is a link to the reissue liner notes so you can get an idea of the Who's Who of jazz greats that were hunkered down with him, all going ape-shit at the same time. If you get it bad, there's a lengthy thing at Jazz Times.
Listen:
John Coltrane - Ascension Edition II mp3 at Internet Archive
John Coltrane - Ascension Edition I mp3 at Internet Archive
Visit:
John Coltrane - Ascension liner notes at Internet Archive
Highest Trane: John Coltrane’s World-Building Ascension at JazzTimes
2 comments:
With a 1 GB fiber Internet connection here at the abode, I now usually have an Internet radio station playing in the background while I view another tab [Firefox v109.01].
On Wednesday night, I tuned to a Poland-based jazz station called Open FM Jazz. It segued from Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald to Wynton Marsalis' "Where Y'All At?".
Ohmigawd.
I dare scribe if any U.S.-based "listener supported radio" jazz station played this, it would get calls from people declaring they were withdrawing their pledges to the station.
Go dig out this song.
Steve, The local jazz station here often plays crazy shit. The Marsalis is not far off in intensity from Gil Scott Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" or something by the Last Poets, both of which I've heard. And they play a lot of free jazz as well. I guess we're lucky!
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