Music Music Music Music Music

(With apologies to Mingus...)

I used to listen to music all the time. I'm not sure why that stopped. I remember years ago when my then-wife's sister visited us and she asked me one morning, "Do you listen to music every morning?" My answer, "Yes", was honest, but failed to engage with what she was really trying to say. It didn't occur to me that other people didn't put on an album the minute they got out of bed.

Responsibilities (i.e., a job) must have played some role in changing that. So too, I think, did the terrible thing that was digital audio in the early 1990s. My two brothers were kind enough to buy me a CD player for Christmas one year, and I loved it, but eventually I realized I didn't love it, or any digital medium, really, the way I'd loved analog.

Now, I'll concede that hi-rez digital can compete. But only just.

Anyway, the point of this post is to mention that, over the last couple weeks, I've been listening to TONS of music. Especially the last week, since there are no sports, etc. Maybe that's a good thing, in a way, as I'm sure I've gotten more out of music than I would have gotten from the Celtics or Bruins.

I intend to use this blog as a kind of listening journal (among other things). I'll have more detailed things to say before long, but here are some of the albums I've sat down and really listened to over the last few days.

• Miles Davis, Kind of Blue
• McCoy Tyner, Reaching Fourth
  Of course, McCoy died just recently (as of this posting)
  
• Keith Jarrett, Fort Yawuh
• Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um
• Oregon, Distant Lands and Winter Light
• Duke Ellington, Blues in Orbit
• John Coltrane and Duke Ellington (so titled)
• John Coltrane, The John Coltrane Quartet Plays
• Ralph Towner, Solo Concert
• Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
• Yes, Close to the Edge

I've listened to tons of random stuff off the music server, too, but those are the albums I've actually sat down and listened to all the way through. I'll post some thoughts about each of them, hopefully, before long.