September 24th
John Coltrane-Resolution-A Love Supreme
John
Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” is generally acknowledged as one of the greatest
jazz records ever made. More than that, it’s seen as one of the greatest
recordings of the 20th century.
It’s rated by jazz buffs, rock
bands, indie freaks, experimental, electronic and improv artists as a major
inspiration.
It’s loved all around the world from America to Japan, South
Africa to Brazil; Tunisia to Australia; from Egypt to England-you get my point.
There was a retrospective article about the album a few years ago that I read
somewhere-it was in some music magazine and it tied in with the release of the
album as a 2CD set-and there was a veritable queue of the great and the good
lined up singing its praises- Bono; Bob Dylan; Bill Laswell; Lou Reed; Steve
Albini; John McLaughlin; Steve Tyler; Jah Wobble-all the usual suspect were
there. This sort of puff-piece type thing usually makes me deeply suspicious.
There is always a tendency for these big stars to try to out-do each other with
ever increasing effusive praise and with one-upmanship about how they first
heard it at the age of 7 and that they had the original U.S. pressing as a box
of 78 shellac discs.
I remember a review of Dylan’s’ “Blood on the Tracks”
wherein some minor artist was rabbitting on about how the bootleg “Blood on the
Tapes” was better than “Blood on the Tracks”. It isn’t. It’s just different;
and the officially released album is by far the best version. Even more so in
respect of The Beach Boys; these rock stars were raving on about “Smile” and
how much better it was than “Pet Sounds”. As if they had some perfect copy of
the unreleased (and never actually completed) Smile album. They didn’t. All
they had were exactly the same bootlegs that nowadays we can all get off the
internet and all their bragging about how their celebrity status allowed them
to listen to music that was unavailable to us mere mortals, doesn’t ring true
anymore.
So alarm bells sound whenever a record gets praised to the hilt. The
sign of the Emperor’s New Clothes springs to mind.
But, for
some reason, I went ahead and actually bought the 2 CD copy of “A Love Supreme”
that attracted such incredible praise. Maybe I wanted to prove them all wrong-
or maybe I had bought into all the hype.
As I played it for the first time, I
had a vision of Bono and Lou Reed sitting on the couch in our front room, nodding
sagely and saying. “See, we told you it was good”. I would have quite liked to
have been able to retort that it was a crock of shit and that I couldn’t see
what all the fuss was about. But I couldn’t, I honestly couldn’t. It truly is a
magnificent record.
There’s a
lot about how Coltrane intended it to be a hymn of praise to God. Now I’m not
sure about all of that, but there’s something about it that I’ve never heard in
any other piece of music; something otherworldly, something inspired and inspiring.
Whether it was divine intervention or whether Coltrane had reached a point in
his musical development that made him produce music that was so special, I
can’t really tell and anyway, who’s to say? That it’s inspired is
unquestionable; no-one can make music that shimmers so much and is so beautiful
without a certain amount of inspiration. And all in one take as well.
The only
thing that I can think that it is close to is seeing something as simple as a
snowflake. It’s just a little, tiny flake of frozen snow, fluttering down to
earth from the sky. One amongst thousands and thousands. But we all know that
when looked at under a microscope they’re all unique and incredibly complex. What
seems so simple at first sight is mindbogglingly complicated and perfect, but
we don’t really know how or why or understand. But we do know that it is perfect.
That is “A
Love Supreme”.
This is an extract from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"
and what "Totally Shuffled" is all about:
One track per
day for 366 days on a broken iPod.
366 tracks out of a possible 9553.
From the
obvious (The Rolling Stones), to the obscure (Karen Cooper Complex).
From the
sublime (The Flaming Lips) to the risible (Muse).
From field recordings of Haitian Voodoo music
to The Monkees.
From Heavy Metal to Rap by way of 1930’s blues, jazz,
classical, punk, and every possible genre of music in between.
This is what I
listened to and wrote about for a whole year, to the point of never wanting to
hear any more music again. Some songs I listened to I loved, and some I hated. Some
artists ended up getting praised to the skies and others received a bit of
critical kicking.
There’s memories of spending too many hours in record shops,
prevaricating over the next big thing and surprising myself over tracks that
I’d completely forgotten about.
But with 40 years of listening to music, I
realised that I’ll never get sick of it.
I may have fallen out of love with some of the songs in this book, but
I’ll never fall out of love with music.
Get/read Totally Shuffled here
Kindle:
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