There will be no computers, and there will be very limited cell phone service. There will be lots of rum, and lots of beer, and lots of time spent in the ocean.
I’m also hoping to…
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I’ll be up by 3am tomorrow morning, on my way to JFK International Airport to board an early flight to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. Once in Aguadilla, we will rent a small car and drive a few miles to my aunt’s guest house, which is situated atop a lovely little hill in the great beach town of Rincon. I will spend the next five days there, drinking rum and thinking about nothing in particular.
I’ve never been crazy about Ahmad Jamal. His piano style has struck me as patio-cocktails jazz—nice harmonies and rhythm, but soft-spoken, too precious, de-sensualized.
But Mosaic Records’ new 9-CD boxed set, The Complete Ahmad Jamal Trio Argo Sessions, 1956-1962, has set me reeling. It’s a mind-changer.
I still have my reservations, which the collection has only confirmed. Some of the ballads are jejune beyond measure; he treats even a sex-soaked number like “You Go to My Head” as just another tasty, bouncy tune; one of the discs (#5), which features a backup of strings (…
Never Stop (on the E1 label) is the album from The Bad Plus that many of us have been waiting for—the first of their albums to consist entirely of original material.
Don’t get me wrong. I like their arch covers of Pink Floyd, Nirvana, and Burt Bacharach as much as the next postmodernist. And I believe them when they said that they’re not spoofing those pop tunes, that they truly love this music. (In my interview with him long ago, the group’s pianist, Ethan Iverson, extolled "Mr. Cobain’s Stravinskyite open-fifths.")
Still, these guys—Iverson, Reid Anderson on bass, and Dave King…