Lazy Sunday Afternoon – Blue Sunday, Part 1

This week, some melodies in the key of blue….

I assume you all own Kind of Blue, yes? Surely the biggest jazz album ever, and perhaps the sound most people would immediately associate with the word ‘jazz’? Here’s Miles Davis, John Coltrane et al with a 1959 live version of So What.

So powerful in its weird horror is David Lynch’s move Blue Velvet, that Bobby Vinton’s perfectly pleasant 1963 hit song of the same name now seems imbued with sinister undertones. The opening scene is Lynch at his most Lynchian, under immaculate suburban lawns lurk writhing beasties…

Tom Waits is a dab hand at imbuing things with undertones, overtones and any other kind of tones you care to mention. Blue Valentines (1978) is the title track from one of his finest albums of the Asylum years, before he met Kathleen Brennan and went (brilliantly) loco for Island Records….

New Order’s 1983 (and 1988 and 1995) hit Blue Monday is supposedly the bestselling 12” single of all time (and at seven and half minutes, one of the longest), but the band’s financially disastrous investment in Manchester’s Hacienda nightclub meant they saw little profit from it. Interestingly, the distinctive sound apparently came from a happy accident: after the drum machine intro Gillian Gilbert faded in her sequencer melody at the wrong time, so that the song’s melody is out of sync with the beat. It worked, but spotting the potential of bodges and flukes is always a big part of artistic success…

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7 thoughts on “Lazy Sunday Afternoon – Blue Sunday, Part 1

  1. russellworks@gmail.com'
    ian russell
    January 30, 2011 at 10:46

    Surely, the greatest album ever. To think there are millions who haven’t even heard it and possibly never will – sheesh! – we are blessed.

    yeah, you can keep the other three, heh, heh.

  2. johngjobling@googlemail.com'
    malty
    January 30, 2011 at 12:10

    Jazz, that iconic cul-de-sac of modern music, we kept telling ourselves ‘if we pretend it’s good then we won’t be thought of as uncool’. Trad jazz, music’s equivalent to home brewed beer, unfathomable except to a few of the cognoscenti and pipe smokers. They prefer things called stomps.
    Try Rex Stewart & Cootie Williams, atmospheric, reeking of Harlem. or some place. Or even Kai Winding, the musician, not the weaver.
    And yes, like everyone else our copy of flugelhorn Fred’s CD languishes amongst dusty shelves.
    Best of the tradders..Woody Allen.

  3. tobyash@hotmail.com'
    Toby Ash
    January 30, 2011 at 12:22

    Nice selection. Feeling a little blue myself this morning after the tennis (oh yes and the cricket, not that ODIs matter). New Order was the first 12″ I ever bought. Still have it somewhere. Not that I have got anything to play it on though.

  4. finalcurtain@gmail.com'
    mahlerman
    January 30, 2011 at 14:08

    Yes, Miles had the good sense to include the pianistic sensitivity of Bill Evans on that piece of modal chamber music perfection; still sounds paint-fresh 50 years on. The dazzling opening of Blue Velvet led me to believe, wrongly, that Lynch would push on from this great movie, and become a central figure in art-movies Stateside, but it didn’t really happen – unlike Tom who, as you suggest Brit, has hardly ever stayed in one place for long. What an auteur he is.

  5. mcrean@snowpetrel.net'
    Mark
    January 30, 2011 at 21:23

    Thanks for reminding me of Kind of Blue, Brit. Time to get back to it (I’ve been listening to Sketches of Spain lately). And lol, Malty, but jazz strikes me as capacious as a Gladstone bag and you don’t have to open the compartment marked “Trad”. To me the slow, smoky notes of a sax are well nigh resistible, speaking of plenty bourbon and raspers, crazy broads and Lord knows what follows on the wild side of town. An ace local shop specializes in selling saxes, what a pleasuredome that place is.

  6. mcrean@snowpetrel.net'
    Mark
    January 30, 2011 at 22:52

    Cripes, spelling up the spout. I mean irresistible. Apologies.

  7. Brit
    January 31, 2011 at 09:34

    Good comments, all. When putting this together I found I’ve got enough top notch material for at least a month of Blue Sundays….

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