Satchmo's Jive Essence 42

The Abominable Homan · 06-16-2009, 10:45 AM

I'm watching this list, and planning on getting most of the albums.

Thank you for this.

SATCHMO · 06-16-2009, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Abominable Homan

I'm watching this list, and planning on getting most of the albums.

Thank you for this.

That's the best I could hope for from this thread.

You're very welcome.

333 · 06-16-2009, 12:19 PM

Very nice review, mister. You certainly do have a way with words. I've not heard this album, but I'm sure I will soon.

SATCHMO · 06-16-2009, 12:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 333

Very nice review, mister. You certainly do have a way with words. I've not heard this album, but I'm sure I will soon.

I'm sure you will too.

6underground · 06-16-2009, 01:19 PM

Great picks. Solid reviews. One of the best threads I've come across. Keep it up. Please.

Bulldog · 06-16-2009, 03:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SATCHMO

#35 Marvin Gaye - What's Goin' On

Fucking A

Top-drawer album that. I just love how most of it sounds like a medley, particularly towards the start of the album (to me at least). Great review there.

SATCHMO · 06-16-2009, 10:30 PM

#34 - (a preface)

I have fond memories of the summer of 92'. 21 years after the release of the previously reviewed Marvin Gaye album What's Going On I spent the majority of my time tooling around the city of Rochester NY in a beat up black 87' AMC Renault 4 door coupe with my non-racist skinhead friend Pete and a mutual but mysterious acquaintance of ours, a young scrawny deaf kid that we knew simply as "Deaf Jessie". He may have stood only 5'6", but with his candy apple red liberty spikes he more than compensated for the height advantage that Pete and I had on him. With me piloting the whole operation and Pete in the passenger seat most of the time we would roll past a local 24 hr. diner looking for him, and at any hour of any day Jessie would almost always be standing outside waiting pensively for us.

He would climb into the backseat while guardedly clutching a crumpled paper sack that seemed to be on his person at all times. we would drive off and Jesse would then proceed to pull out a pack of double wide EZ-Wider rolling papers from his pocket and piggyback them together upon which time he would then delve into the paper bag to remove the most gorgeous fluffy freshly picked buds of what was then a very new and intense strain of marijuana called Northern Lights. After rolling a joint roughly the size and shape of a shotgun shell Jessie would pound on the back of the passenger seat handing the joint to Pete who would light it and start the counter clock-wise ritual which would ultimately lead to us reaching an unparalleled plateau of lifted consciousness. This process would repeat itself 3-4 times until it became sufficiently obvious that we needed to find a place to dock our spaceship, upon which we would drop Jessie off at the exact spot where we had picked him up and pete and I would find a place to allow our sizzling brain cells to cool off.

On a particularly overcast and sweltering July afternoon Pete and I were riding around with Jesse in the Renault performing our regular ritual. It was so hot that day and while the car had excellent A/C we were forced to keep the windows rolled down due to the terrible smell emanating from the back seat.

A few days prior to this Pete and I had stolen a tank of nitrous oxide from his uncle's dental office and we successfully made off with it straight to a huge music festival about 50 miles away where we sold balloons of nitrous out of the backseat of my car for $5 a pop. We made a significant amount of money, but did end up getting high off our own supply as they say; too high to realize that we had left the release valve of the tank partially open while we were passed out. The result of this faux pas was that my back seat smelled like what I imagine the lobby of hell must smell like. Although we did our best to remove the smell from the upholstery. it became a waning but permanent fixture of my automobile and a large part of the reason why I eventually sold it.

So there we were Pete, Deaf Jessie, and I hot as hell, baked, sweaty and slightly perturbed driving around the scorched city trying our best to take our minds off of our own discomfort. While at a red light Jessie began punching my back seat repeatedly and grunting. This was standard communication between us and Jessie. Neither Pete nor I understood sign language and Jessie's feeble attempts at communicating verbally were hard enough for us to understand sober let alone as high as we were. So pete and I took it upon ourselves to decipher Jessie's request. Jessie was repeatedly punching the palm of his hand and pointing to the dashboard al the while making a anguished wincing face. for a moment Pete and I were quite confused and had to move it along to the next red light before we could continue trying to solve this perplexing mystery. Jessie's signals continued much the same at the next intersection except he then reached into his brown paper bag and pulled out a CD that would forever change the way that I thought about music. It was also at that moment that I understood exactly what Jessie was trying to communicate, so I reached for the parametric EQ beneath my car stereo's CD player, dialed up a region between 150 and 300 HZ, put the CD in and ensured that the two 10" subwoofers in the trunk would pound hard enough to defribulate a whale's heart.

SATCHMO · 06-16-2009, 10:30 PM

#34 A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory

....And what I immediately heard was this:

There have been a few attempts in the early history of hip hop that have attempted to reconcile and blend the genre with its Jazz ancestry. Many if not most of these attempts have been abject failures. a couple of more memorable attempts that come to mind are the abysmal Guru's Jazzmataz and Us3's Hand on the Torch.

Its not that neither of these albums, or the various other attempts at fusing jazz with hip hop weren't noble efforts, its just that it seems there's a sort of alchemy involved in the process of mixing the two, and if all the elements aren't in the right place the whole thing blows up in your face like a failed lab experiment.

Here we have A Tribe Called Quest from Queens New York. Composed of MCs Q-Tip and Phife Dawg, as well as DJ/producer Ali Shaheed Muhammed, Tribe's sophomore LP A Low End Theory from the beginning upright Bass note From legendary jazz bassist Ron Carter on Excursions to the frazzled and amped anthem Scenario featuring one of the first public appearances of Bustah Rhymes, swings and shows a very balanced blend of Hip- hop and Jazz elements all tastefully executed throughout.

There is much use of wonderful jazz samples throughout the album (see the itemized list below), predominately they can be noticed in the rock bottom acoustic bass lines that hold this album together as well as the horn sections and solos that punctuate and accent nearly every song. Also present are musical interludes, I hesitate to say "solos", that actually allow the music to resemble in structure that of actual jazz albums.

Musically this album has aged well, but because of the degree to which hip-hop has evolved in the past 18 years their are some lyrical spots that beg you to keep this album within the context of the time in which it was produced.

Sample List:

* "Excursions"

The Last Poets - "Time"
The Last Poets - "Tribute to Obabi"
Shades of Brown - "The Soil I Tilled For You"
Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers - "A Chant for Bu"

* "Buggin' Out"

Jack DeJohnette - "Minya's the Mooch"
Lonnie Smith - "Spinning Wheel"
Michael Urbaniak - "Ekim"

* "Rap Promoter"

Eric Mercury - "Long Way Down"
New Birth - "Keep On Doin' It"
Sly & the Family Stone - "Stand"
Jimi Hendrix - "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)"

* "Butter"

Eighties Ladies - "Turned On To You"
Chuck Jackson - "I Like Everything About You"
Gary Bartz - "Gentle Smiles"
Weather Report - "Young and Fine"

* "Verses from The Abstract"

Joe Farrell - "Upon This Rock"
Heatwave - "Star Of A Story"

* "Show Business"

James Brown - "Funky President"
Fatback Band - "Wicky-Wacky"
Martin Denny - "Midnight Cowboy"
Ferrante and Teicher - "Midnight Cowboy"

* "Vibes and Stuff"

Grant Green - "Down Here on the Ground"

* "The Infamous Date Rape"

Jackie Jackson - "Is It Him Or Me?"
Cannonball Adderley - "The Steam Drill"
Les McCann - "North Carolina"

* "Check the Rhime"

Average White Band - "Love Your Life"
Minnie Riperton - "Baby, This Love I Have"
Grover Washington, Jr. - "Hydra"
Steve Miller Band - "Fly Like An Eagle"

* "Everything is Fair"

Bobby Byrd - "Hot Pants... I'm Coming, I'm Coming, I'm Coming"
Funkadelic - "Let's Take It To The People"
Harlem Underground Band - "Ain't No Sunshine"
Willis Jackson - "Ain't No Sunshine"

* "Jazz (We've Got)"

Five Stairsteps - "Don't Change Your Love"
Sly & the Family Stone - "Sing a Simple Song"
Freddie Hubbard - "Red Clay"
Lucky Thompson - "Green Dolphin Street"
Mountain - "Long Red"

* "What?"

Paul Humphrey - "Uncle Willie's Dream"

* "Scenario"

Emotions - "Blind Alley"
Kool and the Gang - "Give It Up"
Kool and the Gang - "Soul Vibrations"
Ohio Players - "Ecstasy"
Brother Jack McDuff - "Oblighetto"
Jimi Hendrix - "Little Miss Lover"

The Abominable Homan · 06-17-2009, 09:35 AM

One of the few albums on your list that I already have, and what a great one it is.

Good choice and write up.

333 · 06-17-2009, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SATCHMO

#34 - (a preface)

I have fond memories of the summer of 92'. 21 years after the release of the previously reviewed Marvin Gaye album What's Going On I spent the majority of my time tooling around the city of Rochester NY in a beat up black 87' AMC Renault 4 door coupe with my non-racist skinhead friend Pete and a mutual but mysterious acquaintance of ours, a young scrawny deaf kid that we knew simply as "Deaf Jessie". He may have stood only 5'6", but with his candy apple red liberty spikes he more than compensated for the height advantage that Pete and I had on him. With me piloting the whole operation and Pete in the passenger seat most of the time we would roll past a local 24 hr. diner looking for him, and at any hour of any day Jessie would almost always be standing outside waiting pensively for us.

He would climb into the backseat while guardedly clutching a crumpled paper sack that seemed to be on his person at all times. we would drive off and Jesse would then proceed to pull out a pack of double wide EZ-Wider rolling papers from his pocket and piggyback them together upon which time he would then delve into the paper bag to remove the most gorgeous fluffy freshly picked buds of what was then a very new and intense strain of marijuana called Northern Lights. After rolling a joint roughly the size and shape of a shotgun shell Jessie would pound on the back of the passenger seat handing the joint to Pete who would light it and start the counter clock-wise ritual which would ultimately lead to us reaching an unparalleled plateau of lifted consciousness. This process would repeat itself 3-4 times until it became sufficiently obvious that we needed to find a place to dock our spaceship, upon which we would drop Jessie off at the exact spot where we had picked him up and pete and I would find a place to allow our sizzling brain cells to cool off.

On a particularly overcast and sweltering July afternoon Pete and I were riding around with Jesse in the Renault performing our regular ritual. It was so hot that day and while the car had excellent A/C we were forced to keep the windows rolled down due to the terrible smell emanating from the back seat.

A few days prior to this Pete and I had stolen a tank of nitrous oxide from his uncle's dental office and we successfully made off with it straight to a huge music festival about 50 miles away where we sold balloons of nitrous out of the backseat of my car for $5 a pop. We made a significant amount of money, but did end up getting high off our own supply as they say; too high to realize that we had left the release valve of the tank partially open while we were passed out. The result of this faux pas was that my back seat smelled like what I imagine the lobby of hell must smell like. Although we did our best to remove the smell from the upholstery. it became a waning but permanent fixture of my automobile and a large part of the reason why I eventually sold it.

So there we were Pete, Deaf Jessie, and I hot as hell, baked, sweaty and slightly perturbed driving around the scorched city trying our best to take our minds off of our own discomfort. While at a red light Jessie began punching my back seat repeatedly and grunting. This was standard communication between us and Jessie. Neither Pete nor I understood sign language and Jessie's feeble attempts at communicating verbally were hard enough for us to understand sober let alone as high as we were. So pete and I took it upon ourselves to decipher Jessie's request. Jessie was repeatedly punching the palm of his hand and pointing to the dashboard al the while making a anguished wincing face. for a moment Pete and I were quite confused and had to move it along to the next red light before we could continue trying to solve this perplexing mystery. Jessie's signals continued much the same at the next intersection except he then reached into his brown paper bag and pulled out a CD that would forever change the way that I thought about music. It was also at that moment that I understood exactly what Jessie was trying to communicate, so I reached for the parametric EQ beneath my car stereo's CD player, dialed up a region between 150 and 300 HZ, put the CD in and ensured that the two 10" subwoofers in the trunk would pound hard enough to defribulate a whale's heart.

I dug this more than the actual review itself. It reminds me of how old you really are. :P

No, really, though - if anything, it is this story that will influence me to grab the album. In fact, any album that a frantic deaf guy hands me will at least deserve 3 listens. I'm a sucker for words and even weaker in the knees for a good story teller. Well played, sir.

06-16-2009, 10:30 PM	#57 (permalink)
SATCHMO Al Dente Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Texas Posts: 4,708	#34 - (a preface) I have fond memories of the summer of 92'. 21 years after the release of the previously reviewed Marvin Gaye album What's Going On I spent the majority of my time tooling around the city of Rochester NY in a beat up black 87' AMC Renault 4 door coupe with my non-racist skinhead friend Pete and a mutual but mysterious acquaintance of ours, a young scrawny deaf kid that we knew simply as "Deaf Jessie". He may have stood only 5'6", but with his candy apple red liberty spikes he more than compensated for the height advantage that Pete and I had on him. With me piloting the whole operation and Pete in the passenger seat most of the time we would roll past a local 24 hr. diner looking for him, and at any hour of any day Jessie would almost always be standing outside waiting pensively for us. He would climb into the backseat while guardedly clutching a crumpled paper sack that seemed to be on his person at all times. we would drive off and Jesse would then proceed to pull out a pack of double wide EZ-Wider rolling papers from his pocket and piggyback them together upon which time he would then delve into the paper bag to remove the most gorgeous fluffy freshly picked buds of what was then a very new and intense strain of marijuana called Northern Lights. After rolling a joint roughly the size and shape of a shotgun shell Jessie would pound on the back of the passenger seat handing the joint to Pete who would light it and start the counter clock-wise ritual which would ultimately lead to us reaching an unparalleled plateau of lifted consciousness. This process would repeat itself 3-4 times until it became sufficiently obvious that we needed to find a place to dock our spaceship, upon which we would drop Jessie off at the exact spot where we had picked him up and pete and I would find a place to allow our sizzling brain cells to cool off. On a particularly overcast and sweltering July afternoon Pete and I were riding around with Jesse in the Renault performing our regular ritual. It was so hot that day and while the car had excellent A/C we were forced to keep the windows rolled down due to the terrible smell emanating from the back seat. A few days prior to this Pete and I had stolen a tank of nitrous oxide from his uncle's dental office and we successfully made off with it straight to a huge music festival about 50 miles away where we sold balloons of nitrous out of the backseat of my car for $5 a pop. We made a significant amount of money, but did end up getting high off our own supply as they say; too high to realize that we had left the release valve of the tank partially open while we were passed out. The result of this faux pas was that my back seat smelled like what I imagine the lobby of hell must smell like. Although we did our best to remove the smell from the upholstery. it became a waning but permanent fixture of my automobile and a large part of the reason why I eventually sold it. So there we were Pete, Deaf Jessie, and I hot as hell, baked, sweaty and slightly perturbed driving around the scorched city trying our best to take our minds off of our own discomfort. While at a red light Jessie began punching my back seat repeatedly and grunting. This was standard communication between us and Jessie. Neither Pete nor I understood sign language and Jessie's feeble attempts at communicating verbally were hard enough for us to understand sober let alone as high as we were. So pete and I took it upon ourselves to decipher Jessie's request. Jessie was repeatedly punching the palm of his hand and pointing to the dashboard al the while making a anguished wincing face. for a moment Pete and I were quite confused and had to move it along to the next red light before we could continue trying to solve this perplexing mystery. Jessie's signals continued much the same at the next intersection except he then reached into his brown paper bag and pulled out a CD that would forever change the way that I thought about music. It was also at that moment that I understood exactly what Jessie was trying to communicate, so I reached for the parametric EQ beneath my car stereo's CD player, dialed up a region between 150 and 300 HZ, put the CD in and ensured that the two 10" subwoofers in the trunk would pound hard enough to defribulate a whale's heart. Last edited by SATCHMO; 06-16-2009 at 11:55 PM.

06-16-2009, 10:30 PM	#58 (permalink)
SATCHMO Al Dente Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Texas Posts: 4,708	#34 A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory ....And what I immediately heard was this: There have been a few attempts in the early history of hip hop that have attempted to reconcile and blend the genre with its Jazz ancestry. Many if not most of these attempts have been abject failures. a couple of more memorable attempts that come to mind are the abysmal Guru's Jazzmataz and Us3's Hand on the Torch. Its not that neither of these albums, or the various other attempts at fusing jazz with hip hop weren't noble efforts, its just that it seems there's a sort of alchemy involved in the process of mixing the two, and if all the elements aren't in the right place the whole thing blows up in your face like a failed lab experiment. Here we have A Tribe Called Quest from Queens New York. Composed of MCs Q-Tip and Phife Dawg, as well as DJ/producer Ali Shaheed Muhammed, Tribe's sophomore LP A Low End Theory from the beginning upright Bass note From legendary jazz bassist Ron Carter on Excursions to the frazzled and amped anthem Scenario featuring one of the first public appearances of Bustah Rhymes, swings and shows a very balanced blend of Hip- hop and Jazz elements all tastefully executed throughout. There is much use of wonderful jazz samples throughout the album (see the itemized list below), predominately they can be noticed in the rock bottom acoustic bass lines that hold this album together as well as the horn sections and solos that punctuate and accent nearly every song. Also present are musical interludes, I hesitate to say "solos", that actually allow the music to resemble in structure that of actual jazz albums. Musically this album has aged well, but because of the degree to which hip-hop has evolved in the past 18 years their are some lyrical spots that beg you to keep this album within the context of the time in which it was produced. Sample List: * "Excursions" The Last Poets - "Time" The Last Poets - "Tribute to Obabi" Shades of Brown - "The Soil I Tilled For You" Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers - "A Chant for Bu" * "Buggin' Out" Jack DeJohnette - "Minya's the Mooch" Lonnie Smith - "Spinning Wheel" Michael Urbaniak - "Ekim" * "Rap Promoter" Eric Mercury - "Long Way Down" New Birth - "Keep On Doin' It" Sly & the Family Stone - "Stand" Jimi Hendrix - "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" * "Butter" Eighties Ladies - "Turned On To You" Chuck Jackson - "I Like Everything About You" Gary Bartz - "Gentle Smiles" Weather Report - "Young and Fine" * "Verses from The Abstract" Joe Farrell - "Upon This Rock" Heatwave - "Star Of A Story" * "Show Business" James Brown - "Funky President" Fatback Band - "Wicky-Wacky" Martin Denny - "Midnight Cowboy" Ferrante and Teicher - "Midnight Cowboy" * "Vibes and Stuff" Grant Green - "Down Here on the Ground" * "The Infamous Date Rape" Jackie Jackson - "Is It Him Or Me?" Cannonball Adderley - "The Steam Drill" Les McCann - "North Carolina" * "Check the Rhime" Average White Band - "Love Your Life" Minnie Riperton - "Baby, This Love I Have" Grover Washington, Jr. - "Hydra" Steve Miller Band - "Fly Like An Eagle" * "Everything is Fair" Bobby Byrd - "Hot Pants... I'm Coming, I'm Coming, I'm Coming" Funkadelic - "Let's Take It To The People" Harlem Underground Band - "Ain't No Sunshine" Willis Jackson - "Ain't No Sunshine" * "Jazz (We've Got)" Five Stairsteps - "Don't Change Your Love" Sly & the Family Stone - "Sing a Simple Song" Freddie Hubbard - "Red Clay" Lucky Thompson - "Green Dolphin Street" Mountain - "Long Red" * "What?" Paul Humphrey - "Uncle Willie's Dream" * "Scenario" Emotions - "Blind Alley" Kool and the Gang - "Give It Up" Kool and the Gang - "Soul Vibrations" Ohio Players - "Ecstasy" Brother Jack McDuff - "Oblighetto" Jimi Hendrix - "Little Miss Lover" Last edited by SATCHMO; 06-17-2009 at 11:41 AM.

06-17-2009, 09:35 AM	#59 (permalink)
The Abominable Homan Music Addict Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Indiana Posts: 281	One of the few albums on your list that I already have, and what a great one it is. Good choice and write up. __________________ Rate Your Musics

06-16-2009, 10:45 AM	#51 (permalink)
The Abominable Homan Music Addict Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Indiana Posts: 281	I'm watching this list, and planning on getting most of the albums. Thank you for this.

06-16-2009, 12:19 PM	#53 (permalink)
333 Music Addict Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 965	Very nice review, mister. You certainly do have a way with words. I've not heard this album, but I'm sure I will soon.

06-16-2009, 01:19 PM	#55 (permalink)
6underground Prozac Princess Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 198	Great picks. Solid reviews. One of the best threads I've come across. Keep it up. Please.