Unauthorised item in the bagging area

Saturday 12 March 2011

Jazz Club


Bagging Area doesn't know much about jazz and it's not even sure what it likes. Sometime ago I found a copy of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew on double vinyl in our local Oxfam. Lovely sleeve, highly rated etc. There's a lot of it I can't make head or tail of however. I bought Sketches Of Spain years ago and can appreciate some of it, but I kind of wish he'd stop tuning up and get to the point. Or the chorus. Maybe that's missing the point. John Coltrane's A Love Supreme? I like the bit in part 4 when the vocal comes in. Bagging Area may be a bit of a jazz philistine.

Recently I read two unconnected references to Miles Davis' 1972 album On The Corner, so when I saw it cheap in Fopp recently I bought it. On The Corner has a very 1972 'street' cover and features loads of electric instruments and unjazz percussion, like tablas. I think I like this. This track, Black Satin, sounds like it could have been recorded at any time in the last forty years, with it's looped rhythm track, brass parps and poops, electric bass, off kilter instruments, and James Brown and Sly Stone influences. Two of the tracks on this album are nineteen and twenty three minutes long respectively and I'd be lying if I said I can enjoy them all the through but parts of this are growing on me.

02 Black Satin.wma

2 comments:

drew said...

I like some of what I hear but to me a lot is just self indulgent noodling, so I guess i'm a bit of a pleb

John Medd said...

It wasn't always thus: So What, from Kind Of Blue.