McSweeney’s publishes Miles Davis’s Container Gardening Tips by Ryan Abbott:
In my experience, annuals tend to appreciate the complexity of classical piano concertos, like those by Ravel or Rachmaninoff. I play records by those two over and over again, my speakers aimed out to the backyard, blaring through a hole in the screen door torn by a high John Coltrane one morning when he thought he was a rabid polar bear, which he was not.
My vegetables—tomatoes and pole beans and eggplants—like to be sung to. I think it helps the fruit ripen—sweetly sung melodies that rise and fall like crooked branches, scales that float on the warm humidity of the July sky. Like my sister Dorothy says, “Soak their roots in song and they will grow, my brother. They will grow.”
Also: “3. Don’t throw your plants down the stairs.” Solid advice. Words to live by.
Or how moldy is that fig anyway?
So it was like this: I was sitting around the Ten Cat in Chicago with the Glorious Noise posse when someone asked for a little background on a few jazz figures he had heard about. After several pints, they requested a top ten list of essential jazz albums (rock fans love lists), and I agreed to make one. But in the haze of a hangover I realized it just isn’t that simple.
Jazz is America’s classical music, with more genres and sub-groupings than anyone can ever possibly absorb. At about 100 years old, jazz has transitioned through every aspect of modern American music, with each genre being cast off by the fans of the next, while the musicians themselves never lose sight of the originators and the seminal figures that made it what it is.
Continue reading A History of Jazz for Rock Fans →
Rock and roll can change your life.
