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So it turns out: good music is good.
A bit of background: basically, and I've mentioned this before, my thing with jazz is that I only like "hyphenated jazz". So I enjoy jazz-rock, and jazz-pop, and jazz-funk, etc etc., but I have trouble with jazz-jazz. And what ~Herbieguy9 here has given me is a mixtape of the very best of hyphenated jazz! In fact, the big question I found myself asking throughout writing these reviews was "is this album even jazz at all", which I tried to refrain from touching on, because it's actually a dumb question.
Anyway this was fun! Thanks!
The middle installment of a trilogy: first entry here, last entry here.
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Freddie Hubbard - First Light (1971)
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8/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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WHO SAMPLED: "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" was sampled by Souls of Mischief, which kinda makes sense, jazz covers of 70s pop songs was their thing. also somebody really should sample the bonus track "Fantasy in D (Polar AC)"
FACIAL HAIR: perfectly groomed goatee
REVIEW:
Okay, you might not have wanted "Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey" as a lengthy jazz epic, but it turns out you needed "Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey" as a lengthy jazz epic. That said, the real star here is actually the first track--what a great slow build! Really nice is that schamltzy cinematic way. And similarly, the real star performer on this very stacked album isn't Mr. Hubbard, it's actually the eternal Ron Carter on bass. I guess what I'm saying here is album is very early 70s, but what makes it good is the way that it's also somehow late 70s.
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Soft Machine - Fourth (1971)
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6/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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WHO SAMPLED: someone, surprisingly--Black Milk, with "Virtually, Part 3"
FACIAL HAIR: muttonchops
REVIEW:
God, there's just something that annoys me so much about this band. Their whole thing used to be that they were a poncey British psych-pop act that tried to play jazz, only now they're just straight-up playing jazz. And I mean--"Teeth"? "Virtually Part 2"? Those are, like, good jazz songs. Robert Wyatt (who apparently didn't like this album much) actually kind of kills it on the drums! But then you get shit like "Kings and Queens" and "Fletcher's Blemish", which are just about the worst attempts at noisy free jazz chaos you'll ever hear. Stick to singing about elves or whatever, is I guess what I'm saying.
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Santana - Welcome (1973)
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8/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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WHO SAMPLED: nobody I could find
FACIAL HAIR: moustache-goatee combo
REVIEW:
Santana: he gave us his heart, he made it real, but then he forgot about it.
No, this is not that. It's also not the kind of Santana that (frankly) stinks up a lot of classic rock radio--no "Black Magic Woman" here. See, right before this founding members Gregg Rolie and Neal Schon had left to form Journey, and good riddance I say because this is suddenly a cool, supple, subtly experimental guitar-jazz album. Crazy what good things you can do if you stop trying to rock! Moreso than anything else, this is a sequel to Love Devotion Surrender, an album I like a lot. Which means it's also a tribute to Carlos Santana's hero, John Coltrane--and it's John's widow Alice that gives us this album's best track, the Dvořák riff "Going Home".
Oh, and Flora Purim is on this album! Everybody say hi to Flora Purim!
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Oregon - Music of Another Present Era (1973)
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7/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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WHO SAMPLED: more people than you would expect! native tongues legends Black Sheep, plus anticon favorites Sage Francis and So-Called Artists. cool!
FACIAL HAIR: giant wizard beard
REVIEW:
Hippie-tastic!
EDIT: God, I really used to not care about my reviews. No, this band means a lot to me, I actually own this album--and some of their others--on vinyl even. But I gotta say, this has a little bit too much of a "hippie drum circle" vibe--this band is better when they're tighter and more conventionally melodic. Oh, and I love Paul McCandless and his devotion to Weird Horns, but here he's mostly playing the oboe and it sounds kind of dorky. Check out his later career when he'd start busting out the bassoon!
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Joe Farrell - Penny Arcade (1974)
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8/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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WHO SAMPLED: no one, which is crazy to me, so many of these would make great boom-bap and/or funktronica beats
FACIAL HAIR: fu manchu
REVIEW:
More than anything else, this album has swag. Like, I listened to this thing, walking around the streets up the Upper West Side wearing a leather jacket with a baguette in one hand and a bottle of red wine in the other and I felt like a million bucks. Which is weird, actually, because there's something almost goofy about how bouncy and funky some of these rhythms are--but what is true coolness but the confidence to be publicly goofy?
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Bob James - Two (1975)
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8/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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WHO SAMPLED: Run-D.M.C. and N.W.A both famously flipped "Take Me to the Mardi Gras"
FACIAL HAIR: pencil-thin moustache
REVIEW:
Hey, ever wanted to know what a jazz album that had the same texture as a bottom-tier classic rock album would sound like, like a jazz version of Bad Company or Bachman-Turner Overdrive or something? Well here ya go! And it's not bad--like both the compositions and the performances here are actually pretty good, although some decisions were made involving repetitive vocal chants--but it is kind of... queasy. It makes me queasy. Like being in the back seat of a Camaro that's hitting the curves too fast and you're coming down off some suspect weed. That kind of queasy.
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Coryell / Mouzon - Back Together Again (1977)
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6/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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WHO SAMPLED: nobody, as far as I can tell
FACIAL HAIR: handlebar moustache
REVIEW:
Okay, so that opening precussion thing in "Take Me to the Mardi Gras", you know the one--it has no business being in a song as corny as "Take Me to the Mardi Gras". Although that's mostly Paul Simon's fault.
The rest of this album is... still corny, but in the best way. This takes the very 70s tack (same as First Light actually) of trying to marry funky jazz rhythms to big sweeping orchestral arrangements. And you know! It works! I'm particularly fond of "Farandole", even though it's very Hooked on Classics, and also "I Feel a Song (In My Heart)"--having the second song be a pop ballad sung by a lady is sort of a Bob James tradition, but I love them all, and anyway the lady in question happens to be Patti Austin! Everybody say hi to Patti Austin!
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Jean-Luc Ponty - Cosmic Messenger (1978)
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9/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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WHO SAMPLED: big beat DJ Mint Royale flipped the title track, while Slug & El-P flipped "Don't Let the World Pass You By", in case you're interested in some more very, very white rap
FACIAL HAIR: trying to grow a full beard but you can't actually so it's weirdly patchy
REVIEW:
Okay, new genre alert: that very nerdy, prog-rock-influenced strain of electric jazz fusion that trades in spacey black-light balladry and showoffy guitar/analog synth soloing, and often has cover art that looks like it should be airbrushed onto the side of a van. I call it D&D Jazz, and I love it--there's something about it that just feels so fun to me, so comfy yet so exciting. And this album is a sterling example of it, put this on next time you're putting on an epic MTG tournament in your wood-pannelled basement.
Oh, and rec me more albums like this--only other ones I can think of are the Al Di Meola-era Return to Forever records. I want more!
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Herbie Hancock - Mr. Hands (1980)
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9/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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WHO SAMPLED: surprisingly, nobody all that well known--some guy named Knxwledge did something with "Textures", and Count Bass D had his way with "Spiraling Prism", but the only big name I could find was The Roots, but that was just a live track so it might not count
FACIAL HAIR: clean shaven
REVIEW:
Oh my god, "Spiraling Prism" is so cool! Like, that song just feels like you're a child again and the world is huge and unknown and there for you to discover, and it's unfolding in front of you--but you're safe, at the same time, safe to enjoy the endless possibilities that are given to you by the love underlying all existence.
Rest of this album is good too.
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Prince - N·E·W·S (2003)
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8/10
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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WHO SAMPLED: no one--i thought this would be a case of "Prince never cleared anyone to sample him", but it turns out it was a case of "everyone forgot about this album"
FACIAL HAIR: beard that's too short and kind of looks like it's sprayed on
REVIEW:
Yo, so I am very much a Prince Poser, by which I mean to say I really don't know anything about him post-80s. But I do know that he got very into jazz for a while, which always kinda struck me as odd, because wasn't his whole thing being a massive control freak and not letting anyone else do anything? Whereas jazz is all about spontaneity and collaboration! But indeed--listening this album, and yeah, he's letting other people play instruments and everything.
And it's good! This is basically regarded as a minor oddity in the Prince discography, but approach it on its own terms and it's actually quite nice. It's definitely a bit antiseptic, and more than a bit indebted to new age music, but that's never bothered me. My fav bits are the soft soul ballad intro to "West" and the industrial-noise (!) middle section of "East". What're yours?
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Overall Ranking & Final Thoughts
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All these albums are good, but the really good ones are both from the late 70s/early 80s, lending further credence to my theory that that was the best era for music.
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