Midnight, the stars and you

So I decided to immediately jump into the Big Band Jazz/Swing bit. I think I might have written this somewhere in the past, but as a kid, my house always had plenty of music, and books, and movies. What with my mother working for a TV station, she had access to plenty of cultural stuff that made its way into our home. My parents had a vinyl record collection - it wasn't huge, really, just maybe like a shelf full of records. It was very varied, in terms of genres, everything from Dire Straits and Pink Floyd, to Santana and some classical music, as well as a few Jazz records - including one by Glenn Miller, so I guess this type of music has orbited me for a long time. More recently - meaning in the last decade or thereabouts -  the soundtrack to the videogame 'Cuphead' brought this music back to the forefront of my consciousness again. Let's see how this one turns out, hmm?

Day 264 - Benny Goodman - 'The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert'

Well, this is a hard one. On the one hand, this is very, very enjoyable. On the other hand, it's over two hours long, which - unfortunately for me - means that a lot of the songs became fairly indistinguishable from one another. By the time disc 2 started, I was already praying for this to end, and I wasn't even halfway through. That said, the very same disc 2 has a few very pleasant vocal numbers, which helped ease the struggle. This recording seems to sourced directly from a vinyl record from the exact time period, seeing as you can hear - very audibly so - a lot of surface noise and crackles and pops. But for me that only adds to a certain charm the record has.

I fear that some - if not most of these records - may fall to these lengths, and that's not going to help me one bit. If this had been a lot, lot shorter - say, around the hour mark - I'd've given this a higher score. As it is - and though enjoy it I did - all it gets is a 6/10

Day 265 - Erroll Garner - 'Concert by the Sea'

One of the great issues that arise when you don't really know a music genre that well, is that when you do a research of it on the internet, and the same records crop up in a various different best of lists, then you take that information at face value. I saw this record being described as 'Big Band', and while it might very well be true, it didn't really feel like one to me. More like upbeat piano Jazz, which, unfortunately, I didn't very much enjoy. And to my great annoyance, there's a sort of background mumbling - something the previous record had in spades - that just takes the immersion away from me. Some people, I'd wager, will find this extremely charming - I didn't. I can't give it more than a 4/10

Day 266 - Count Basie - 'April in Paris'

If, on the one hand, I think that this album was everything the others weren't - shorter and to the point, livelier, and with none of that annoying mumbling anywhere to be heard - on the other it's still not exactly what I think I was looking for in terms of Big Band sounds. Maybe I feel that it was actually swing or ragtime kind of music that I was hoping for, but that's on me, really. I enjoyed this one quite a bit - much more than both previous records combined. I'll award it a 7/10

Day 267 - Duke Ellington - '...And His Mother Called Him Bill'

Just like the Count Basie record, I enjoyed this one quite a bit, and in parts it almost was what I was looking for, but not quite. It got me to thinking just what it might be I would be looking for, and then I remembered that fairly recently I'd watched 'The Shining' again, and then I reasoned that it might well have been half a decade ago or more, but be that as it may, it's that jazzy bit that plays whenever Jack Torrance enters the Overlook Hotel's bar that I'm really angling for. That may or may not lead to another entry in this challenge, but maybe not soon. Still, I found this one pretty enjoyable, sometimes even evoking somewhat a languorous feeling in me, and I mean that in the best way possible. I'll give it a 7/10

Day 268 - Dizzy Gillespie - 'Dizzy Gillespie at Newport'

While I can't technically fault this for any single thing, I find the fault itself lies with me and my expectations. I keep expecting for something I don't entirely get, except for bits and pieces scattered among the (for me) mostly forgettable music. Muzak, even. Again, not bad by any means, just not that enjoyable for me. It gets a 5/10

Day 269 - Ben Webster - 'King of the Tenors'

Maybe there's a technical difference between this kind of Big Band Jazz and the one I think I was looking for, but I don't know what it is, I can maybe see the differences stylistically, and certainly I can understand that different eras generate different meanings for things that are called the same. But this one just wasn't it at all, and I'm not even sure that I liked it that much, even. It did have a fairly decent interpretation of 'Danny Boy' but it was too little, too late. I'll give it a very generous 4/10

Day 270 - Woody Herman And His Orchestra - 'Giant Steps'

Two things I'll admit here : first, this was not the record from this artist I'd picked for my listen, but Apple Music didn't have it. Second, I'd given up on this being what I was looking for, I'd decided to just take the loss and deal with it. And yet, I'll say that this one surprised the holy hell out of me. Because if in the one hand you can certainly feel the 'Big Band' here, on the other hand it's nothing like that swinging sound I was hoping for. And yeah, something that really makes a difference is that this is a record that came out in the 70s and not in the 30s/40s, so it's very, very modern - I'd wager that maybe even by today's standards - and it's just so dynamic, so lively, so entertaining. This one feels like it could very well have been the soundtrack of some heist movie, right down to the tender moments. Not gonna lie, this is this week's absolute winner. I'll give it a great 8/10.

I was going through my list of challenges, and I really need to get some out of the way. As it happens, the year is winding down fast and I need to make sure that I do some of the ones that will have a deeper meaning with me. And next week we get electronic.