Book Report #76 - The Black Box by Michael Connelly

Out of respect for Michael Connelly I'm writing this post while listening to Sonny Clark's Dial "S" For Sonny originally recorded in 1957 on Blue Note records.

The latest installment of the Harry Bosch series finds Harry pursuing a 20 year old murder that occurred during the 1992 LA riots.  A Danish journalist was found dead in an alley a victim of an apparent execution.

While Harry reviews the information in the file he notices a small anomaly; a phone call logged 10 years after the murder inquiring about it.  By pulling on this thin thread Harry starts to uncover a much larger conspiracy that dates back to Operation Desert Storm of 1990.

At first I was caught off guard from the Desert Storm twist but leave it to Connelly to develop a gripping and believable plot.  I found this book to be quite the page-turner.  There were a couple little leaps in faith that I had to take; actions that I was surprised Harry took.

Unfortunately I found the climax to be a bit too "cinematic" for my tastes.  Like a bad TV episode, a surprising character comes to help Harry and the final chase to capture the Bad Guy made me groan in disappointment.

The novel was very good but the ending was botched, in my opinion.  The best part of the book was the musical suggestions I lifted from it. I always like tracing down the music that Connelly mentions.

Check out:
Art Pepper - http://straightlife.info/
Michael Formanek - http://www.amibotheringyou.com/index.html
Danny Grissett - http://www.dannygrissett.com/

Book Report #75.5 - The Cover Art of Blue Note Records by Graham Marshand Glyn Callingham

As a companion to the Blue Note biography I was also leafing through a gorgeous coffee table book that collected the cover art of so many iconic Blue Note LPs.

The book was not about the music but about the striking imagery of Reid Miles who did much to create the look and feel of a Blue Note album.  Through his work and the photography of Francis Wolff Blue Note records had a unique look that just spoke of cool.

I found this book endlessly fascinating. Given that the work of Alfred Lion and Rudy Van Gelder was of such a high standard you can actually judge a CD by its cover.  Blue Note was the standard bearer of Hard Bop and you can pick up just about any disc and enjoy it.

I've discovered artists I have never heard of just from the images from this book.

It's a fun way to look a little deeper into the jazz of the 50's and 60's.

Book Report #75 - Blue Note Records, the biography by Richard Cook

For the past few months I've been thick in discovering the Hard Bop era of jazz from the 1950's and 1960's.

I've been buying dozens of CDs mostly from Blue Note.  I've also been listening to loads of jazz radio programs, through the DAR.FM cloud-based recoding service and listening to them on my iPhone while delivering the mail. 

It didn't take long before I started to search out books on the subject of jazz.  I picked up this copy at a used record store in Nanaimo while visiting my parents last spring.

I finally dusted it off and tore through it at a pretty steady pace.

I found the book very informative, I made a few CD purchases just from reading it.

Ironically I found the book bogged down at times when long passages were devoted to describing specific recording sessions.  Of course the book would delve into this; that's what Blue Note did - produced records.  But I was more interested in how Blue Note fit into the history of jazz records and how it coped with the advent of R&B, free jazz and rock.

Every time my eyes started to glaze over Cook would switch gears from describing sessions to deals Blue Note made, industry milestones and stories of the lives of various artists.  Cook's ability to keep the story moving on all these fronts kept me turning pages.

This was an important book to me and I will keep it on the shelf along with my tiny vinyl collection and growing CD collection.

Recommended.

Book Report #63 - Miles - the Autobiography by Mies Davis and Quincy Troupe

Part of the reason I've not posted in months is that I made a plunge back into music.

When I was in my teens and 20's my stereo was my pride and joy and it really was the best equipment I ever owned.  I made up my mind that I wanted to rebuild that stereo.  I won't go into the details of that quest but I've cobbled together a vintage stereo from eBay, friends and family.

What I really liked about the book was the journey from jazz being the popular music of the day to the birth of rock, funk and soul.

You see, I was born in 1965, just when the world was coming apart at the seams, with race riots, assassinations, an out of control Cold War and the birth of FM Radio.

It was in the 60's that music really exploded into the genres we know to day.  It was 1975 when I started listening music for my own enjoyment - Rock was the default music style that I grew up with.

I started buying music in 1978.  I was never a 'record guy' but I loved listening to them and would do so for hours.  In my later years I've moved from Rock into Jazz back to Rock back to Jazz to the Blues to Rock, again to Jazz and recently Blues plus a bit of 70's Soul.

Miles Davis has always been a touchstone for me when I've been in a Jazz phase.  One of the things that perplexed me was at just how varied his music was; I didn't really understand him.

I loved his old stuff from the 40's and 50's but his later stuff confused me.

What first struck me was how the narrative sounded like conversations were transcribed, verbatim, from taped interviews.  I also had to get over his continuous use of the word motherfucker, but it really didn't take long go get over it and to understand his tone.

Although I was most interested in reading about Miles Davis, who was both a musical genius and drug addicted fuck-up, I was also learning about the birth of the styles of music I've come to take for granted.

While reading I was also buying music; as Davis was explaining certain recording session, I'd buy the album and listen to it.  It's not often you get a sound track with a book, what fun it is when you do!