I know you own a copy of Kind of blue. Hopefully it’s placed alphabetically under D for Davis, and you’ll be able to find it quickly. Go on, locate it and pop it in the CD player, or on the turntable, or in the cassette deck (if you ripped it from a friend’s copy back in the 1980s).* How does it begin? Very loosely, bass and piano featured, no real harmonic focus (nothing to do with the opening tune, when it arrives) – a romantic, vague, but inviting opening. Then the tune starts. So what? It’s just an album. And why pick such a very famous one? That looks loaded.

All right. Do you have Wynton Marsalis, Black codes (from the underground)? (If you don’t, you should.) How does that kick off. A busy rhythm section manifesto, a real ‘here-we-are’ moment that leads to the curly head of the title track, ‘Black codes’. And how does the album end? With ‘Blues’ – trumpet and bass alone, with some seriously staggering circular breathing for a very high C (talking trumpet here; it sounds as a B-flat).

Have you got Charles Mingus presents Charles Mingus? Another beauty. Opens with the leader instructing punters not to make any noise while the band is playing, not to rattle ice in their glasses, the staff not to permit cash registers to sound, even though it’s recorded in a studio. Then ‘Folk forms no. 1’.

When my trio recorded Nine open questions, I thought ‘Three’s a quorum’ was the perfect album opener. Another manifesto, a kind of ‘here we are’ statement that piano, bass and drums were perfect for the task at hand. Then we recorded ‘Must be’ and our engineer, the marvellous Mal Stanley, said, ‘That’s a killer opening track.’ So I had to rethink everything. ‘Must be’ went first, followed by ‘Three’s a quorum’, and then the gnarly ‘Stops on the road to smooth’. After that a ballad was indicated, so we placed ‘Esj”. with whom you can be who you are was similar. We premiered the work in 2014 in the order in which I thought the pieces were supposed to go. Then we got to the studio in 2018 and Chris Lawson, engineer on that date, said that ‘a.o.’ was the perfect album opener. It hadn’t occurred to me but I trust Chris to death so again I rethought things. And actually he was right. The drums’ quiet inauguration of proceedings is a truly affecting thing, and it permitted the album to finish with ‘t.h.’, probably my most complex composition and one of my most important for the sake of its dedicatee.

I am old fashioned, and I own a CD player, attached to a pre-amp and a power-amp and then feeding to a couple of speakers. (I also have a turntable, but more on that another time.) And also I cleave to the ideal of the album – a musician’s statement of where things are at at the moment it is (was, I suppose) recorded.

Almost Famous is a movie I really love, and watch regularly, for the attention it pays to a time when physical albums were the common currency of band-adoration and musical participation. In it, Anita leaves to her brother William her collection of LPs, instructing him on how to listen to certain albums, and he is switched on to the culture of popular music and aspires to be someone who can write about it.

In the old days, bands made records and then toured to promote them. Most of the band’s income came (as I understand it) from touring, so the albums were basically promotional. (The recording companies cashed in on their belief in the bands.) Still, when you weren’t at the gig, you had the album, so that was really your point of connection. People of my age have copies of ‘Mars needs guitars’ or ‘Your funeral, my trial’ or ‘The Swing’ or ‘Tallulah’ on LP and still occasionally play them. Even though we were fortunate enough to see the bands who made them, even once, back in the day, it’s the albums that are available for re-audition.

How does ‘Your funeral, my trial’ begin? That’s right, very simple guitar and bass. No indication of what’s to come when they rip into ‘The carny’. Now if the record had started with that it’d be a very different beast. ‘Sad waters’ is actually the most perfect opening to this recording precisely because it leaves so much else to be experienced.

My message: creative people think about this shit and if you care about their artistic expression it behoves you to listen to their work as they have imagined it will best meet you. Sit down, with nothing to distract you, put the album on, and listen to it from beginning to end. Perhaps you will love it. Perhaps you will perceive that track 6 should have been where track 3 is. That’s your decision, and if you load it into your computer you can make whatever adjustments you want. But don’t be happy with someone else’s idea about the playlist you need, or with putting everything on random simply for amusement’s sake. That’s a bit shit.

*See how I didn’t invite you to stream it? Yeah I didn’t. Don’t.

18.iv.2021

Following on from my last post, I write to complete the story of the quarantunes. After a hiatus of almost a fortnight, in which I thought I’d finished, I recommenced on 8 July with an original tune, ‘Three friends in winter’. From an album of the same name this was the only composed piece, and one that has always has a special place in my heart. When the trio launched the album in 2006 Jessica Nicholas reviewed us and wrote of this selection: ‘utterly mesmerising, evoking the same organic sense of ebb and flow as the fully-fledged improvisations, but adding a hymn-like melody and an odd-metered waltz feel that saw all three players dancing in unison.’ (Such expression and the understanding behind it, being part of the reason Jessica’s departure from ABC Jazz is to be regretted.) Anyway, lockdown was still on, and playing a tune each day had been providing a kind of musical focus that I welcomed, in the absence of live performances or any meetings with colleagues. Some listeners had even expressed sorrow or disappointment at my having wound things up. So I kicked off again. The performances were not strictly daily – I took brief breaks here and there – but I got to a second hundred pieces, and here they are. Once again, uncredited pieces are written by me.

8.vii.20 Three friends in winter
10.vii.20 Never let me go (Evans/Livingstone)
11.vii.20 Spir (Luke Howard)
12.vii.20 Theme from ‘The Mask’ (Edelman)/This masquerade (Russell)
13.vii.20 He was too good to me (Rodgers/Hart)
14.vii.20 It’s easy to remember (Rogers/Hart)
15.vii.20 My one and only (Gershwin)
16.vii.20 April
17.vii.20 Circling
18.vii.20 Blue moon (Rodgers/Hart)
19.vii.20 Smoke gets in your eyes (Kern/Harbach)
21.vii.20 Shostakovich Prelude 1 (messed with, because it’s so bloody awful)
22.vii.20 Naked (Ben Lee)
23.vii.20 ’Round midnight (Monk)
24.vii.20 Que sera sera (Livingstone/Evans)
25.vii.20 Moments of lucidity
26.vii.20 Bodylistening
27.vii.20 The book of love (Stephen Merritt)
28.vii.20 Taking a chance on love (Duke/La Touche/Fetter)
29.vii.20 The one I love belongs to somebody else (Jones/Kahn)
31.vii.20 You must believe in spring (Legrand/Demy)
1.viii.20 Love is here to stay (Gershwin)
2.viii.20 Three’s a quorum
3.vii.20 Here’s that rainy day (Van Heusen/Burke)
4.viii.20 Blackadder (Goodall)
5.viii.20 Free-ism 5
6.viii.20 That joke isn’t funny anymore (Morrissey/Marr)
7.viii.20 Hereinafter
8.viii.20 We kiss in a shadow (Rodgers/Hammerstein)
9.viii.20 Free-ism 6
10.viii.20 Almost like being love (Lerner/Loewe)
11.viii.20 Ballad in search of a title (Grabowsky)
12.viii.20 Free-ism 7
13.viii.20 Little kids holding hands
14.viii.20 Cheek to cheek (Berlin)
15.viii.20 Make someone happy (Styne/Green/Comden)
17.viii.20 I’ll see you in my dreams (Jones/Kahn)
18.viii.20 Dienda (Kirkland)
22.viii.20 Persephone at Enna
23.viii.20 The mask goes over your nose, dickhead [free]
24.viii.20 Pure imagination (Bricusse/Newley)
25.viii.20 Guess I’ll hang my tears out to dry (Styne/Cahn)
26.viii.20 You make it easy to be true (Adamson/McCarey/Warren)
27.viii.20 Free-ism 8
28.viii.20 Oh! Look at me now (Bushkin/DeVries)
30.viii.30 Strike up the band (Gershwin)
31.viii.20 Charade (Mancini)
1.ix.20 Everything comes down to poo (Fordham/Marx/Lopez)
2.ix.20 Just friends (Klenner/Lewis)
3.ix.20 Spring is here (Rodgers/Hart)
4.ix.20 Craft and art
5.ix.20 Improvisation and ‘Slane’
6.ix.20 Yours and mine
7.ix.20 You’d be so nice to come home to (Porter)
8.ix.20 The new ships
9.ix.20 untitled 253/2016
10.ix.20 Recovery
11.ix.20 Stars fell on Alabama (Perkins/Parish)
12.ix.20 This quiet life
13.ix.20 Dream a little dream of me (Andre/Schwandt/Kahn)
14.ix.20 Free-ism 9 (for Sarah)
15.ix.20 Last night when we were young (Arlen/Harburg)
16.ix,20 untitled 274/2016
17.ix.20 I should care (Stordahl/Weston/Cahn)
18.ix.20 Maybe (Strouse/Charnin)
19.ix.20 Never having known
21.ix.20 We’ll be together again (Fischer/Laine)
22.ix.20 Untitled 264/2016
23.ix.20 Everybody hurts (Stipe/Mills/Buck/Berry)
24.ix.20 Golden brown (The Stranglers)
25.ix.20 Well, I mostly hide
26.ix.20 My funny valentine (Rodgers/Hart)
27.ix.20 Opinion fear
28.ix.20 The song is you (Hammerstein/Kern)
29.ix.20 Bridge over troubled water (Simon/Garfunkel)
30.ix.20 Joy Spring (Brown)
1.x.20 Shenandoah (Traditional)
2.x.20 Sigh no more (Doyle)
3.x.20 Four words of Elizabeth Hunter: Interlude
4.x.20 Heat wave (Berlin)
5.x.20 Improvisation and ‘St Clement’
6.x.20 You have been loved (Michael)
7.x.20 Sooty’s return
8.x.20 Earth (Sleeping at last)
9.x.20 I’ve got a crush on you (Gershwin)
10.x.20 Triste (Jobim)
11.x.20 l.s.
12.x.20 Spring Yaoundé (Marsalis)
13.x.20 The look of those leaves
14.x.20 Media vita I
15.x.20 Media vita II
16.x.20 Cyclosporin (Browne)
17.x.20 Prism (Jarrett)
18.x.20 Prelude to a kiss (Ellington)
19.x.20 Giant steps (Coltrane)
20.x.20 Mr Leckett’s etiquette
21.x.20 Someone to watch over me (Gershwin)
22.x.20 From this moment on (Porter)
23.x.20 Contrapunctus XV from ‘The art of Fugue’ (Bach)

Again, one traditional piece. Thirty-five originals. Thirty-eight standards, including five Rodgers and Harts and five Gershwins. Eight pop tunes, which is twice as many as last time: finally something by The Smiths, a George Michael, some R.E.M., Simon and Garfunkel, and The Stranglers’ ‘Golden brown’, thought of because I was making a crème caramel and the instructions told me to work the sugar and water till they turned that way. Seven from the jazz repertoire, including Coltrane’s ‘Giant steps’, a piece I almost never play and have only once played in public, when a particular saxophonist who couldn’t play it himself called it on a gig half way up the Sofitel. Three written by colleagues – Allan Browne, Paul Grabowsky and Luke Howard. Two selections taken from TV programs, and five from motion pictures. And one classical item to wind things up. This one I rehearsed and rehearsed, and while in the end it wasn’t absolutely perfect I felt I gave it what I could. I was determined to finish things on my birthday, with a hundredth item, so time was limited.

I’ll go again with ‘sharing is caring’. To have music in common is to attest to our humanity. To see things imperfectly, amorphously, but with no imprecision of feeling. Your sense isn’t my sense, but both shake the heart. And if we feel like it we can talk about it. And smile. Behind our masks.

All selections are public and have stayed on Facey so if you’re interested and haven’t checked any of them out you can. The new Facebook is ugly and dumb and whereas you used to be able to go a page and scroll down with year and month options these have been removed, for reasons best known only to the blockheads who make the Facey rules. Still, scrolling is so 21st…

10/xi/2020