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Post by dottorjazz on Jul 7, 2015 17:07:09 GMT
that was a nice story, except for the mediocre music part.  perhaps i will share mine. but it is long and mostly silly. I would like to hear your story, the longer, the better. let's add some of mine now. in the beginning post I wrote which were my first two jazz records. here is how I got into them. I used to go to record shops almost every day at the time. one day I got out of home with this will: I'll buy a Jazz record. I had NO info about jazz at all, I was 15 and was shy enough not to wanna ask for help. so I was in front of the shop window: italian pop artists, Beatles, Stones, some classical and some unknown artists. one record attracted my attention. the cover showed a black guy surrounding two white boys with his cloak. never heard anything about them. what was this? I decided it was Jazz. I got in and brought it home without having it played for me. at last I had my first jazz record, I thought. put on the turntable and the first sound of a distorted guitar filled my room. mmmmh,"I don't think it's Jazz, but it's nice, I like it". in my extreme ignorance I had bought Are You Experienced, by Jimi Hendrix, his first record. the next day I got back to the same shop and this time I asked help to the lady inside. she, who knew about my interest towards anything new, told me: I think you'll like this musician: take these two records home, listen and come back. I was a good customer. the lady gave me Trane's live at Birdland and New Thing at Newport. I was strucked to death! my love for Jazz had just begun.    |
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Post by alunsevern on Jul 7, 2015 19:29:54 GMT
When was that, Dott? My maths, but based on my own age (61) would have you as 15 in 1969, but I rather think you are a few years younger then me, yes?
Anyway, the point I wanted to make is how hard it was in the pre-Internet age to find out about things like music and books and perhaps culture more generally, especially if you were young and lacked the money to be able experiment. You had to ask someone - there weren't even that many books, certainly not readily to hand. I remember when I first became interested in photography. This was largely due to my Dad who was a lifelong amateur photographer but sadly very badly informed about photography, its development, movements, history. How could he be? Anyway, I became obsessed with the war photographer Don McCullin, largely because his extraordinary work was appearing in the broadsheet colour supplements which were then just becoming fashionable. I looked at every picture of his I could find. I tore them out and kept them. And yet I knew virtually nothing about the man - I didn't even know how old he was. But now, the internet is awash with print and video interviews with him, galleries of pictures, detailed biographies, more information almost than one can absorb.
I think for us of a certain age this why we cling so tightly to our earliest enthusiasm - because of the labour involved in developing them, the feeling that we were discovering something which but for our own efforts would have remained hidden to us, possibly for ever... That's how I feel about it, anyway. I'm not saying that this makes the opinions of older people special or more likely to be right, just that they were arrived at in a profoundly different way and perhaps go deeper as a consequence...
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Post by dottorjazz on Jul 7, 2015 19:36:33 GMT
1968, I was born 1953.
I agree it took a lot of time and energy and passion to reach only a few infos in the 60's. now it's a lot easier as you say, almost no difficulties. then EVERYTHING was difficult to find out but I've always dedicated most of my time (and money) to music, reading, listening, getting infos. it's been a very hard task, but I'm glad I succeeded.
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Post by alunsevern on Jul 8, 2015 8:35:19 GMT
Dott, so, you're a year *older*! I like it when people are older than me. It seems increasingly rare  Last night, partly as a result of our exchange regarding classical music, I was listening to Scarlatti keyboard sonatas in the excellent Naxos series which will eventually cover all 555 sonatas Domenico Scarlatti wrote (or rather, those that have come down to us). I think Naxos is up to volume 14 at the moment, of which i have 1-7. Each is a different pianist, predominantly young, up and coming pianists (although some I imagine are now as well-established as they will ever be -- the first recordings in the series are now twenty years old). Anyway, it isn't jazz but there is listening there for a lifetime. |
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Post by gregorythefish on Jul 8, 2015 16:38:30 GMT
i will perhaps post my decidedly later experience getting into jazz soon. i wrote down more of it today. but i like to tell stories. by contrast, i was born in 1988 so i was 15 in 2003. yikes!
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Post by alunsevern on Jul 8, 2015 18:45:31 GMT
Jesus, Greg, you're a year older than my younger daughter. Are you sure you've counted correctly? Are you sure I've counted correctly?
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Post by gregorythefish on Jul 9, 2015 18:01:10 GMT
Haha, fairly sure, Alun. My girlfriend is always saying "isn't jazz the exclusive province of white men two times your age?" and I always say "yes, and also me." haha.
i don't really know how i ended up like this to be honest, but i'm happy i did!
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Post by alunsevern on Jul 9, 2015 21:19:25 GMT
It's strange, when you think about - historically, jazz has been the preserve of 'older' listeners since about the late 1960s, I guess. But prior to that, jazz was younger people's pop music, outside music, even underground music, I suppose. Look at how old some of those in the Blue Note stable were when they were making their greatest recordings - they were in their twenties, some of them.
And then pop music itself came along. There's a very interesting book called MUSIC OUTSIDE by the late Ian Carr, biographer of Miles, leader of jazz fusion band Nucleus , and trumpet player, which consists of interviews with jazz luminaries conducted in the early 70s - there's a great one with Evan Parker, I recall. Interstingly, these people, while youngish, are all in their 30s and 40s - and even they were even as swimming against the tide, or perhaps more aptly were seen as swimming outside the mainstream....
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