Egregious Reader

I am not sure all the reasons, but I hate this band. I have tried to listen to them at different times and just tried out their new album on the First Listen show on NPR, but I don't like them. I think its that too-cool-for-school feel they have coupled with their over-the-top sentimental ballads. I don't know anything about playing guitar (don't know how) but I find their pretty sound irritating. On one of the songs, he croons some sweet line and follows it by some bright harmonics and it makes me want to puke. Ok, so I am being a little dramatic. I have friends who like this band, whom I have a lot of respect for their musical selection. I just can't find my way to liking this one, at least not yet. The other song from an older album that really bugs me is "Brooklyn, Brooklyn Take Me In". Its such a lazy little story that simply repeats the age-old I HEART NY cosmopolitan world-weary traveler, blah, blah. Its just awful.

Something different this morning. My brother (my wife's brother) mailed us some records for my wife's birthday and this morning I put on Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan. I just love this music. Its been a while since I have listened to jazz, but I really enjoy it. Here is a sample -  Stardust

"If [a composer] has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances?" ( CI: A Life With Music 143) Ives made is money selling insurance. "God must get awfully tired of hearing the same thing over and over again, and in His all-embracing wisdom could certainly embrace a dissonance -- might even enjoy one now and again." " Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds that we are used to, do not bother us, and for that reason, we are inclined to call them beautiful. Frequently,—possibly almost invariably,—analytical and impersonal tests will show, we believe, that when a new or unfamiliar work is accepted as beautiful on its first hearing, its fundamental quality is one that tends to put the mind to sleep. A narcotic is not always unnecessary, but it is seldom a basis of progress ,—that is, wholesome evolution in any creative exp...

Has anyone really given him a listen? Holy Cow! Its good stuff. A friend of mine just sent me a package that included a record called "Complete and Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul" and I challenge you to find me a song as good as Sweet Lorene or Tennessee Waltz ... every song so far is amazing. Sittin' at the dock of the bay must have just been what made it on the radio with the Eagles and Alabama. But this is the good stuff.