Contemplazione

"YOGURT! YOGURT!! I hate it...even strawberry..."

No, because you must know dear Alfredo, that I just got my hands on several freshly reissued Blue Note records that I've been looking for a long time, including: "The Soothsayer" by Wayne Shorter (featuring: James Spaulding, Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams!!), "Blue & Sentimental" by Ike Quebek, "Time For Tyner" by... guess what?, "Music From The Connection" by Freddie Redd! And as if that weren't enough (I mean, not satisfied, because I definitely pay, damn it!), I also picked up a beautiful photography book: "Blue Note-Jazz Photography Of Francis Wolff"... I don’t know if I convey how much all of this excites me ;-))) of course, my wallet is crying...

JUST DO IT

Exceptional. The third contains one of the most moving moments in all of music, about halfway through the first movement, those syncopated, sobbing chords... something that breaks inside.

"You do not know the power of the Dark Side, my young Apprentice!" ;-)

So I don't agree that, as you say, "the saturated sound enhances the essence of the music." On the contrary, it seems obvious to me that it penalizes it. For example, take Coltrane's complete live performance at the Village Vanguard in '61, which is recorded excellently, and try to imagine it blurred instead of vivid, booming instead of balanced... it would be like looking at a beautiful painting through frosted glass, all distorted! Sure, the notes are the same, the drive is there, but you would miss the dynamics (macro and micro), the beauty of the pure and real sound of the instruments; you would lose, in short, the feeling of BEING THERE! If there’s no alternative, one tolerates the technical flaws in virtue of the intrinsic value (historical, artistic, aesthetic) of the music in question.

I see it this way: first of all, the musical quality! Staying within the realm of jazz, there are sublime recordings made even eighty years ago, when recording techniques were still quite crude. To this, we should also consider the deterioration of the physical medium that occurred before the master tapes were remastered for CD versions... sometimes the crackles and hisses, as well as the lack of richness in frequencies and instrument timbres, significantly impoverish the final acoustic outcome. But if the music is Music, who cares! And sometimes true miracles of restoration are carried out when figures of the caliber of John R. T. Davies are in charge; just listen to the JSP box sets of the complete recordings of Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives & Sevens. It seems incredible that these are pieces recorded in the 1920s!! The same goes for the JSP collections of Jelly Roll Morton or Django Reinhardt. Of course, audio quality also matters, especially if you have a high fidelity system (like yours truly, eh eh). Let’s say, for example, that if the record is already good musically, and it is also well recorded, it can score at least an extra half star!

How nice to open the site and see at the top of the list one of the classics of Blue Note, and perhaps McLean's best alongside "Destination Out"! The titles tell a lot about the search for freedom from formal structures, but Jackie never completely crossed the line into free. And this makes his music dangerously and fascinatingly borderline, walking a tightrope. An acidic and abrasive tone that represents the perfect complement, also borderline! If I were Dr. Adder I would say "4.7 recurring per disc, so 5". Great reception!

"irony with an animalistic undertone about Leopardi"... of course, unusual, how could I not realize it before? And to think I used to pick up on animalistic undertones immediately!

It wasn't to say that Ghostbusters is worth as much as the 883; in that example, they only had "sentimental value" in common.