So, longtime Heathen Tom asked on Facebook for a top-5 or top-10 list to serve as a jazz primer of sorts. I started typing, and then realized a wider distribution might spark more interesting discussion, so here’s where I exercise a staggering degree of hubris in compiling just such a list: the Heathen Jazz Top Ten.

First, an aside. What popular culture thinks about when they think of “jazz” is probably the stuff that happened in the late 50s and early 60s, and that period is well represented below. This isn’t to say that the stuff before (Charlie Parker! Louie Armstrong!) or the stuff after (Ornette Coleman! Terence Blanchard!) is less valuable; only that my the Heathen playlist is sort of centered there, and on things that grew directly out of that period (Miles’ electric work, e.g.). All that said, I’ve got enough ego to suggest that this might make a good survey of jazz for those interested but unexposed. Jump in here; branch out as indicated. In other words, come on in; the water’s fine.

So, more or less off the cuff — and in chronological, not quality, order — here we go:

1. Kind of Blue, Miles Davis, 1959. This is the biggest jazz record ever. I am not exaggerating. (It’s also the best selling — 4,000,000 and counting.) Davis’ band for this record includes giants-in-their-own-right John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderly. Its recording is the subject of a book. Despite being hugely popular and famous, it’s also incredibly important, and represented a real departure at the time. Jazz as we know it today would be impossible without Kind of Blue (hell, MUSIC as we know it wouldn’t be the same, either). Bonus: Totally safe for non-afficianado audiences.

2. Time Out, Dave Brubeck, 1959. You know half the songs on this disc already. It’s also the only example of “West Coast” or “Cool Jazz” on the list. Superclean and precise, its sound prefigures Steely Dan in some ways. Like KoB, it’s also extremely accessible; play it at a dinner party, and your guests will praise your taste.

3. Mingus Ah Um, Charles Mingus, 1959. You can’t have any list without Mingus. It’s just silly. MAU is my go-to Mingus recording.

4. Sketches of Spain, Miles Davis, 1960. It’s almost impossible to believe that Davis produced this and Kind of Blue in the same two-year period, but there it is. Sketches is unusual in lots of ways, but the biggest departure is that Davis worked with composure and arranger Gil Evans here, and so we get a “jazz” record that’s far more composed and far less improvisational than nearly anything else in this category. Davis’ own contemporaries tried to suggest it wasn’t jazz because of this, to which he is said to have replied “It’s music, and I like it.” You will, too. It’s an excellent choice for the dim-room-and-fine-wine treatment.

5. My Favorite Things, John Coltrane, 1961. Trane plunges headlong into free jazz here, but not in a way that makes the record inaccessible to casual listeners; the title track is a long way from Julie Andrews, but it’s also clearly the same song. I’m particularly fond of “next steps” records where artists are really finding a new form; this is a great example (as is Silent Way, also on the list), and reminds you of how incredible the 1959-1972 period was for American music. By this point, Trane’s already got McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones with him; they’ll still be there for “A Love Supreme,” below.

6. Money Jungle. Duke Ellington, Max Roach and Charles Mingus recorded this in a single day session in 1962. To hell with the Sun “Million Dollar Quartet;” I’d give eye teeth to have seen this trio. This disc is never “put up” at my house, and I have copies on my laptop, my iPod, and my iPhone at all times. It’s staggering and beautiful while also being COMPLETELY safe for nonjazz people. (Remember the black-text-on-white Flash animation “Samsung Means To Come” I blogged some years back? Its music was taken from Money Jungle.)

7. A Love Supreme, John Coltrane, 1965. Widely viewed as one of Trane’s masterworks, this modal opus is the earliest “concept album” in my whole collection. Play it all the way through the first time you listen, preferably in a darken room. Intoxicants are optional. Dramatically less accessible than Brubeck, but still recognizably post-bop and not anywhere near the free jazz or fusion entries you’ll find elsewhere on the list. Also still safe for dinner parties, but only very hip ones.

8. Straight, No Chaser; Thelonious Monk, 1966. I’m not the student of Monk that I am of Davis, but this record cooks.

9. In A Silent Way, Miles Davis, 1969. This is when things start to get a little far out for the mundanes. IASW is still recognizably the same kind of creature the early sixties produced, jazzwise, but is also well on its way to something else entirely. Miles and his band — which at this point included household names like John McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Chick Corea, and Wayne Shorter — are fully electrified here, which signals the start of a trend for Davis that would reach its apotheosis with his next album (Bitches Brew, only a year later but light years beyond in style and approach) and his live performances in the 1970s (e.g., Black Beauty, Dark Magus, Agharta, and the Cellar Door Sessions that became Live-Evil). N.B. that while Silent Way is listenable for nonfans, dropping the needle on anything after that — especially BB — will clear a motherfucking room. It’s musical durian. Of course, some will stay behind, but you’ll like them enough to open up the good Scotch.

10. Root Down, Jimmy Smith, 1972. There is little more magical and alive than the sound of Jimmy Smith at a Hammond B3. This live record captures him at his peak. Do NOT miss this one. (It’s also the source for the sample in the Beastie Boys track of the same name. Them kids got taste.)

And two not on the list:

• On the Corner, Miles Davis, 1972. Bitches Brew meets Funkenstein. I actually like OTC better than BB, but that’s not the “scholarly” opinion. I say check ’em both out.

• A Tale of God’s Will, Terence Blanchard Quintet, 2007. Like Davis’ Sketches, this is much less improvisational than the rest of the list; jazz isn’t always improv through and through. Blanchard’s reasons here are similar to Davis’ in 1960: he involves an orchestra. His tribute to his hometown of New Orleans — it’s subtitled “A Requiem for Katrina” — will raise goosebumps with its beauty.

Chris Mohney Hates You.

The Cellar Door Sessions frankly demand it. I mean, c’mon: that’s John McLaughlin. And Keith Jarrett. At the same time. With Miles Davis.

At a little club in LA, where the original lineup of Jane’s Addiction played. (Link’s to Navarro’s blog, with crowd video of “Oceansize”.)

Chinese Democracy is supposedly set to drop on November 23.

Purported recording budget to date: in excess of $13 million, spread over 14 years. In that nearly decade and a half, “chinese democracy” has replaced “Heaven’s Gate” as shorthand for enormous artistic folly.

Via Groovehouse, check out these excellent shots from U2’s famed ’83 show at Red Rocks that became Live Under a Blood Red Sky.

If you buy DRM’d music, you never really own it. Wal-Mart has just announced they’re ditching their DRM servers, which means songs “purchased” from their online store up to now are about to stop working. Wal-Mart’s suggestion? Burn ’em to CD and rerip.

Fuck you, Wal-Mart.

Amazon, eMusic, and even iTunes all have DRM-free music for download. Vote with your dollars.

Live vid of the Cowboy Junkies doing “Sweet Jane” with Ryan Adams, from their Trinity Revisited album (2007):

Or, if you prefer, the original CJ version. While you’re at it, why not also re-absorb Lou?

Isaac Hayes is dead.

Ed’s Furry Fucking Guide To Metal should NOT under any circumstances be missed. NSFW.

Years ago, I met FOAF Pascal in a beautiful and terrible bar in the Heathen Homeland. Then, years later, I discovered a fairly rockin’ tool for web development, and it turned out to be written by the same dude. Neato.

Just now, needing a fresh copy of said tool for some web tweaks — I’d lost mine somewhere, and don’t do much web layout work anymore — I discovered Pascal’s new pursuit is an inventive collective-band type thing called Balthrop, Alabama that includes, among others, his sister as well (sometimes) former members of Rainer Maria. From an April notice in the New Yorker, of all things:

April 18: Balthrop, Alabama is an expansive local folk-rock collective led by the singer, songwriter, and guitarist Pascal Balthrop and his sister Lauren, a vocalist and keyboardist. They grew up singing gospel and pop tunes with their family in Mobile, Alabama, and now the pair and their band play paeans to the lovelorn and the droll. The group, whose name is meant to conjure a fictional town in the heart of Dixie (the band members go by aliases), released an impressive début double album, “Your Big Plans & Our Little Town.” Tonight the “townspeople,” including Kyle Fischer, formerly of Rainer Maria, on lap-steel guitar, turn out for a full-blown hootenanny. The group will be accompanied by the artist Michael Arthur, who will be drawing spontaneous ink-based interpretations of the songs. The drawings will be projected onto a screen behind the stage, in the tradition of a “chalk talk,” a lightning-fast drawing act from the days of vaudeville—practiced by such comic-strip luminaries as Winsor McKay (“Little Nemo in Slumberland”)—that was a precursor to animation. The singer Caithlin De Marrais, also formerly of Rainer Maria, opens.

Amusingly, the video (on their web site) for “God Loves My Country” is that same artist drawing as the song is sung, though it’s sped up a bit, so I imagine it captures a bit of the April show’s bizarre fun. Recommended.

Onion: Molly Hatchet’s Nightmare Descent Into Booze, Sex, and Drugs Not All That Nightmarish, Guitarist Admits.

Radiohead with lasers. I mean, duh.

Guitarist Hiram Bullock died yesterday, most likely of throat cancer. He was 52.

You probably have no idea who he was, but it’s just as likely (if not moreso) that you’ve heard his work. Bullock played widely on some pretty serious records throughout his career, including Steely Dan’s “Gaucho,” Sting’s “Nothing Like The Sun” (that’s him soloing during “Little Wing”), and Paul Simon’s “One Trick Pony.” Additionally, Bullock was the original guitarist for Letterman’s — really Schaeffer’s — band on Late Night back in 1982. Over his career, he also played with his share of giants — Miles Davis, Al Jarreau, Pete Townshend, Gil Evans, Clapton, Al Green, and Jaco Pastorious are all on his resume.

Via MeFi. The Letterman link at MeFi — one of many on YouTube — is to a performance on Letterman of a track from his first solo record.

Realize that the baby on the cover of Nevermind is now seventeen years old. The MeFi headline kills; it posits that his favorite pickup line should be “Want to see my penis again?”

This may well be the finest music video in the history of the universe. Yes, that’s Natalie Portman. (Via MeFi.)

Do NOT miss the subtitles.

Our pal Axe inspired me to go looking for this with his post about classical music in commercials of the 80s, and now I will impose it on you. When I was a kid, this damn commercial was on the TV all the fucking time:

Order now! Operators are standing by!

(BTW, don’t miss the McDonald’s spot at Axe’s site.)

Feist has gone on Sesame Street doing — what else? — “1, 2, 3, 4:”

(Via Unfogged.)

Ladies and gentlemen: Los Straitjackets perform My Heart Will Go On:

Fleshbot has a copy of the David Byrne video; the video is borderline, but Fleshbot itself is definitely NSFW.

Fellow Mississippian (b. McComb, 1928) Ellas Otha Bates died today. You knew him as Bo Diddley.

Clayton Cubit found this video, which you should watch, and ideally dance to, as a memorial.

At least we still have BB.

Tom’s coming.

Merlin Mann has posted video of an early R.E.M. appearance that happens to also be the first time I saw them. It’s from a Nickelodeon “teen talk show” called Livewire in 1983.

I remember watching this on a big console TV sitting in front of the couch at the house I grew up in, mesmerized, but didn’t have the presence of mind to write down the band name. It wouldn’t have mattered; the cultural backwater that was pre-Internet south Mississippi didn’t have any shops that would have stocked Chronic Town anyway.

Three years later, I found Fables of the Reconstruction, though, and that was that.

Scalzi points us to this excellent cover of “Pride in the Name of Love” by John Legend. Watch.

Apple has passed Wal-Mart as the top American music retailer.

In 1994, the Finnish “band” Leningrad Cowboys, together with the Red Army Chorus (yes), performed “Sweet Home Alabama” at the MTV Video Music Awards.

Miles and Coltrane, “So What,” live in 1958:

On the tenth anniversary of the release of In the Aeroplane Over The Sea, Slate asks Whatever Happened to Jeff Mangum and Neutral Milk Hotel?

Peter Gabriel explains his Fairlight, and in so doing uses tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of technology to do something now possible with a $600 no-name computer.

Tina Turner is sixty fucking eight years old, and ate Beyonce alive at the Grammys.

In this live video of Dave Brubek’s band, it is undeniable that Joe Morello is a god. Watch the whole thing. The drum solo is astounding.

It occurs to us that, at a certain point, the growing commodification of culture coupled with the gradual yet inexorable physical decline of their aging fanbase will cause someone closely related to the band to notice that there is a natural advertising licensing opportunity for a particular song from Radiohead’s early catalog, and that soon thereafter — we’ll bet 2020 or so — we’ll see adult diaper ads on television to the tune of “Baby’s Got Depends.” Possibly even with Thom Yorke as a spokesman.

Check out this big from the Jon Stewart show. Belly performs.

No, not The Daily Show; Stewart’s original talk show on MTV, back in the early 90s.

(Color’s awful, but still. Hat tip to MAD.)

Threat Level is on it again. Here’s the part you really need to understand:

The RIAA believes that if you want to listen to copyrighted music you bought on CD on your digital music player, you should go to Amazon or iTunes and buy a digital copy there. Anything else is infringement in their eyes — even if they have no way of catching you do it.

There’s been a lot of talk and confusion about the Washington Post story in re: the case against an Arizona man being sued for sharing MP3s over the Internet. One bit of the story was rather shocking, and we said so: it included the notion that the RIAA believes it’s illegal to copy a CD to your hard drive or put it on an MP3 player.

This is actually pretty well settled law, as we understand it: it’s Fair Use. However, the RIAA apparently wants it to be different, since they asserted in the Arizona trial that the defendant had broken the law when he did so, even before he started sharing the music online, and even though it was only for the latter act that he was being sued.

Ever vigilant, Wired’s Threat Level blog has taken up the story, most interestingly in their attempt to get a straight answer on the basic question: is it or isn’t it legal, as the RIAA sees it, for a person to buy a CD, rip it onto their computer, and copy it to their iPod?

They won’t answer. Instead, they provide a link to a long, obfuscatory statement that appears to say “it’s not legal, but we probably won’t sue you for it.” When Wired tried to get clarification — again, it’s just a simple yes or no answer — they clammed up.

What assholes.

If the phrase “Sugar La Las” makes your heart beat a little faster, head over to Mohney’s place, as he’s got a few (studio, somewhat dry) audio files from that long-dead Birmingham band.

Sony made news recently by announcing they’d sell DRM-free music, thereby becoming the last major record company to abandon DRM.

However, get a load of how they’re doing it. Instead of a simple approach via Amazon or the iTunes Music Store (like their competitors), both of which provide fairly complete and seamless customer experiences, Sony’s decided to re-invent the wheel with an approach so utterly braindead that it beggars belief:

To obtain the Sony-BMG tracks, would-be listeners will first have to go to a retail store to buy a Platinum MusicPass, a card containing a secret code, for a suggested retail price of $12.99. Once they have scratched off the card’s covering to expose the code, they will be able to download one of just 37 albums available through the service, including Britney Spears’ “Blackout” and Barry Manilow’s “The Greatest Songs of the Seventies.”

In contrast, online retailer Amazon.com offers 2.9 million DRM-free tracks in MP3 format from the catalogs of EMI Group, Warner Music Group, Universal Music and a host of independent record labels. Apple’s iTunes Store has around 2 million DRM-free tracks in the AAC format supported by its iPod and many mobile phones. No store visit is necessary to download those tracks, and an album typically sells for $9.99 or less.

To recap:

1. Only 37 albums will be available; and
2. Customers must visit a physical retail store and purchase a $12.99 “MusicPass” card in order to download the MP3s.

Wow. Just wow. How could they have missed the point more? Why on earth would a music-consuming teen even bother, when nearly everything is on the darknets for free anyway?

Don’t miss John Scalzi’s take, by the way, which is hilarious. Sample line: “So to recap, what you’ve got here is a system that makes people leave their house in order to download music at their house, and makes them go to a store to get music that they could get at the store, somewhere else.”

The RIAA is now asserting, in plain language with little room for interpretation, that ripping legally purchased CDs onto your computer is illegal, fair use (and years of VCR-related precedent) be damned:

Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing.

Still, hardly a month goes by without a news release from the industry’s lobby, the Recording Industry Association of America, touting a new wave of letters to college students and others demanding a settlement payment and threatening a legal battle.

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

[…]

The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG’s chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that “when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Copying a song you bought is “a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy,’ ” she said.

Yup. We’re sure this is going to go over well. The story continues:

But lawyers for consumers point to a series of court rulings over the last few decades that found no violation of copyright law in the use of VCRs and other devices to time-shift TV programs; that is, to make personal copies for the purpose of making portable a legally obtained recording.

And the money shot, from the WaPo writer who clearly understands these things much better than the RIAA:

As technologies evolve, old media companies tend not to be the source of the innovation that allows them to survive. Even so, new technologies don’t usually kill off old media: That’s the good news for the recording industry, as for the TV, movie, newspaper and magazine businesses. But for those old media to survive, they must adapt, finding new business models and new, compelling content to offer.

The RIAA’s legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed. Four years of a failed strategy has only “created a whole market of people who specifically look to buy independent goods so as not to deal with the big record companies,” Beckerman says. “Every problem they’re trying to solve is worse now than when they started.”

There is zero chance that the RIAA will prevail with this “no ripping” doctrine. There is zero chance that they’ll manage to put the digital genie back in the bottle. There is zero chance that they can survive without a radical reevaluation of how they make money. It’s my fervent hope that an awful lot of these money-grubbing sue-happy weasels end up out of work in the very near future; they’ve got to be scared, what with developments like Radiohead’s online success and Madonna signing a deal with a concert promotor instead of a record label. Big labels aren’t required to make it or succeed anymore, and no one will miss them when they’re gone.

Jazz giant Oscar Peterson died yesterday at the age of 82.

Biz-press dinosaur Fortune’s got a list out of the 101 Dumbest Moments in Business from 2007, to which I will not link because they’re stupid. Case in point: Entry 59 is devoted to Radiohead, who famously allowed their new album to be downloaded for whatever the buyer wished to pay. Fortune cites figures (that Radiohead has disputed) saying only 38% paid anything at all.

Techdirt:

I would argue that the only thing “dumb” here is the inclusion of this move on the list. CNN seems to think that Radiohead expected everyone to pay for the album, when even the band has clearly stated that this was a promotional move. Is CNN “dumb” for putting this article online for free? Of course not — because they make money through other means, such as advertising. In the same way, Radiohead did quite well even if people downloaded the album for free. After all, even if the Comscore numbers are accurate, Radiohead still pulled in millions, distributed millions of tracks to fans all over the world with no promotional budget, got its name and its music talked about around the globe and found at the top of popular playlists everywhere, and got a tremendous amount of free advertising for its upcoming tour and CD box sets. Can you name a single band in the world that would turn that down? Hell, can you name a single Fortune/CNN editor who would turn that down if he were in Radiohead’s shoes? Not unless he was pretty dumb.

Word. It must be sad to be as clueless as Fortune; perhaps they’re so clueless that just don’t know how bad off they are.

They had a little feature interview with Jack White, who was discussing his upcoming singles which happen to include a cover of “Conquest,” Patti Page’s 1952 hit.

It happens that White is friends with Beck, and was recording these tracks at Beck’s LA home studio. When it came time to do Conquest, they realized they wanted a trumpet player. Does Beck know any trumpet players? No, but what Beck did know was that there is apparently a park in LA where mariachi bands congregate waiting to be hired.

An assistant was dispatched, who quickly called back: not only was the park for real, but before hiring one must decide if one wants a 4-piece or a 5-piece, like chicken.

Music pioneer and wifebeater Ike Turner, dead at 76.

If you gave birth to a kid on the day Thriller was released, that kid would now be old enough to drink, vote, and rent a car. Somehow, I’ve managed to live my life without ever owning a copy of the best-selling album of all time. I like it that way.

This long Wired profile of Universal head Doug Morris makes two enormous points:

• The record labels really have been just as stupid, if not stupider, as we thought; Morris’ worldview and business plan seems wed to the notion that taking a bottom-line hit today to be better positioned later is a bad idea, though most businessmen I know call that “investment.”
• iTunes is much, much more dominant than we realized. Apparently, in 2007, 22% of all music solid in the US will be through Apple’s iTunes Music Store.

Wal-Mart became the go-to retailer in nonurban America a long time ago via sheer ubiquity combined with loss-leader prices, but Apple’s done one better: they win with the trifecta of (a) lower prices than Wal-Mart; (b) near instant delivery without leaving the house; and (c) being literally only a click away on most computers. (Plus, Apple’s not run by or beholden to puritan fundies who blanch at racy lyrics.)

Morris and his cronies still don’t get it, though. They’ve branched out to Amazon, sure, but they’re hoping to roll out the Total Music store soon, with some sort of DRM plus all-you-can-eat subscription model. Rick Rubin at Columbia wants to do the same thing, but it, too, will require some kind of lock-up to work like they want it. That’s not what consumers want, clearly.

Total Music is designed to unify Apple’s competitors in what amounts to a coordinated attack on the iPod. The details are far from finalized, but in Morris’ conception a Total Music subscription would come pre-installed on devices like the Zune, the Sony PlayStation, or a mobile phone. Universal is well aware of the difficulty of convincing consumers to pay for music subscriptions, so Morris wants the devicemakers to pony up the cash themselves, either by shelling out for a six-month introductory offer or by assuming the cost forever. This would be money well spent, Morris argues, because it would help the Microsofts of the world eat into the iPod’s market share. He has already hammered out preliminary agreements with Warner and Sony BMG and has met with executives at Microsoft and several wireless carriers. If Morris is able to make Total Music a reality, he will once again have succeeded in bending the industry to his will — in this case, by using the combined catalogs of the major labels to help establish a true competitor to the iPod. After all, why buy an iPod if a Zune will give you songs for free?

Unfortunately, Total Music will almost certainly require some form of DRM, which in the end will perpetuate the interoperability problem. Morris likely doesn’t care. He is more committed to Total Music — or any other plan that allows protection — than he is to a future where music can truly be played across any platform, at any time. “Our strategy is to have the people who create great music be paid properly,” he says. “We need to protect the music. I know that.”

The music’s fine, Morris. Bands are already breaking on their own, without major label help, by looking to the net for distribution and booking. It’s middleman companies like Universal that need protection, and we’re betting consumers aren’t dumb enough to play along.

Additional commentary at BoingBoing and TechDirt, the latter of which has a bit of fun with one of Morris’ analogies:

Morris is so clueless that he chooses the worst possible analogy to explain his position. Lots of entertainment industry execs have thrown up their hands and ignorantly stated that “you can’t make money from free.” That’s wrong, of course, but Morris takes it one step further up the ridiculous scale, with the following example: “If you had Coca-Cola coming through the faucet in your kitchen, how much would you be willing to pay for Coca-Cola? There you go. That’s what happened to the record business.” Hmm… and what is coming out of your faucet in your kitchen? That’s right… water. And how much are people willing to pay for water? That’s right, billions. In fact, it’s a larger market than (oops) recorded music. Can someone please explain how Morris keeps his job?

It’s the worst cover song ever. Really. Click through if you dare.

Chief among them, however, may be “why is the xylophone player wearing oven mitts?.” We might also ask “does the camera just not HAVE a wide angle setting?”, “what the hell is wrong with that guy’s beard?”, “where did they find this many people with such questionable musical taste?”, and “where is their medication?”