I am bound to follow up on the discussion of the music that made me, the albums that I obsessed over in my youth. There's just stuff that has to be said by me as a writer about music, so much of my life I had arguments in silence with Robert Hilburn of the LA Times, and now I'm out here not talking about it. What's wrong with me? Time to turn that boat around.
We start at the top with The Last Poets - This is Madness. Along with Moms Mabley, this is an album I found in Pops collection that I probably wasn't supposed to find because it was filled with cursing. It must have been one of those long summer days when I was bored to death and started poking around in the bookshelves, and I come across this album with a bright interior. And the words! The words just lept of the page searing my consciousness - I never saw them written down before. Imagine the nerve of such people, talking about revolution and here it all was. Now my father liked Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, The Four Freshmen and Nancy Wilson. Now that I think of it, I can probably recall a great number of his favorite records, including the transparent red vinyl of Peter and the Wolf he got for me. But seeing this in the bunch was too much. Of course I memorized the killer track Mean Machine and still remember snippets like 'automatic pushbutton remote control, synthetic genetics command your soul'. It was difficult for me to understand how this record could exist - it was pure uncut revolution on wax - who turned the other way at the record factory? And look at those black Africans on the cover. They were beautiful and powerful with big afros and fire. It was the coolest, most subversive, thrilling thing that could be. Just listening to it gave me thrills. I don't know if I ever let my father know that I knew that he had this album. It was that powerful.
All N All- Earth, Wind and Fire. I found All N All on the downstroke. The album had been out for years, I'm sure, before I actually purchased it. In fact, I lived a relatively impoverished life with music. It wasn't until I was around 19 with my first real fulltime job that I was anything more than a slave to the radio and the tape deck. I remember the cassette I owned with a piece of 'Be Ever Wonderful' that cut off suddenly and began to play backwards. I fell in love with half a song and played it for years not knowing the rest since it had fallen out of radio rotation. So when I finally got the album it captured me completely. One night at USC as a tender frosh, I got to dance the perfect slow dance to 'Would You Mind'. Ahh where did you go? How many hours have I spend staring at the artwork of this album? But the great personal triumph and impression was 'Runnin'. This was a completely new discovery, the kind of jazz I was just beginning to appreciate. I don't know what the term is for that transition they did with the horns and voices in the middle of the song, but it blew me away. Runnin' is probably the first song I knew that made me comfortable with multiple tempos in a single performance. If you don't understand me, it's your fault.
Dirty Mind - Prince. When Prince's first album 'For You' came out, I wanted to be Prince. When Prince's second album came out, I didn't want to be Prince any more, but I could see maybe how I might try something as crazy as riding naked on a horse. When Prince's third album Dirty Mind came out, I just stood there with my mouth open. See, I could handle the blistering guitar and screaming of Bambi. It was way cool to be into that - it was pushing the envelope. But Dirty Mind didn't only rip up the envelope, it burned down the post office. Yes, 1999 was a much richer and more rewarding album, and Controversy lived up to its name. But Dirty Mind was the album that had a much bigger impact. To say that you were a fan of Prince before he became the huge success that he was by Controversy was to take a serious risk. I took the risk.
Majesty of the Blues - Wynton Marsalis. Wynton came along right at the perfect time. As soon as I read up on him, I purchased Think of One. We were born in the same year and he spoke directly to that part of me that was respectful and arrogant at the same time. I dug him on that album, played it to death and then even more with Black Codes from the Underground. And then with Herbie Hancock's Quartet my favorite jazz ballad for a long time would become 'I Fall In Love Too Easily' featuring a melancholy Wynton that betrayed something I hadn't heard before. JMood, years later broke through but it wasn't until Majesty of the Blues that he connected with me on a gutbucket level. The astounding Death of Jazz just brought me low. I determined that this was going to be the song they played at my funeral. And then with Premature Autopsies, I had words that connected me emotionally to all the things that jazz and the black soul in America symbolized. It was an album which was a soundtrack to my pathos, and it put me on a road to a more robust feeling of something ancient flowing in my blood.
Tutu - Miles Davis. Nobody wants to say so, but Tutu is the greatest hiphop album ever recorded. It wrecked jazz for good by bankrolling Kenny G, 94.7 The Wave and every jazz artist desperate to escape for bebop. It may not seem like it but it's true - just nobody wants to say so. Miles went the length whereas with Youre Under Arrest, he was just playing. But in Tutu is a reinvention that showed everyone that the masters can work with the sixteen beat and that Herbie wasn't just out there freaked out. The nerve of Miles to do a Scritti Politti tune just completely solidified everything I had been out in the wilderness saying back in the days when I wanted to scratch Hey 19 and put some meaty beats under a jazz arrangement. I got a chance to see Miles around that time down in San Juan Capistrano. It was phenomenal.
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