Tuesday, September 30, 2008

So What

I've been working from home and when I'm not being distracted by "Spooks" boxsets and eating, I'm usually listening to Radio 4 rather than watching daytime TV.

Which is why I got to listen to the series "Soul Music" which collects together testimony from fans about how a particular piece of music "changed their life". Yes, it was a bit corny, but that didn't matter - today's piece was "So what" by Miles Davis.

The piece is half a century old now, and by all rights it should be Grandad Music, fit only to be played on TV drama soundtracks. It's also Jazz, which means it occupies a filing cabinet that is widely mistaken for a urinal these days.
(( Insert the usual Stan ravings here during which Stan will beg you to spend a tiny amount of your life listening to the piece that's got him excited. He's even likely to provide a link to YouTube to make it really easy for you. Stan will go on to deny he is a Jazzer, despite having posted on Humphrey Lyttleton and Nina Simone recently. He'll then change the subject to avoid alienating his long-suffering readership. ))
If Jazz isn't your thing, you might at least check out Elbow - one of the few worthy winners of the Mercury prize in recent memory. I saw them on "Later ... with Jools Holland" here and they blew the walls down. Big, noisy, daft Rock from some big, noisy, daft lads from Bury, Lancashire.

3 comments:

Kenny said...

Nothing wrong with Spooks. Even less wrong with Jazz, and more particularly Miles Davies.

And if there's anything wrong with putting links in to pieces of music you love, I should have been hung years ago. Good music should be shared, and if your audience don't like it, they can not click the link again -- it's not like you've locked them in your car on a long journey and cranked up Eminem. ;)

Anonymous said...

A friend of mine makes a living doing audio/visual stuff for big corporate marketing events, especially product launches.. he takes great pleasure in playing 'So What' as (almost subliminal) background music at these events whenever possible.

Definitely a classic track, whether you're a jazz fan or not..

D.

Stan said...

I'm not sure I'd even be able to hold the horn knowing that once I've finished my riff, John Coltrane is up next. No pressure ...

On the recording I linked to, they were actually under-strength - missing Cannonball Adderley (migraine - yeah right) on alto and their first-choice pianist, Bill Evans.

Oh, and DrummerDave will never speak to me again if I didn't mention Jimmy Cobb, who is the only survivor of the group - still drumming at age 79.