Temptation - Part 2

[rhythmaning]

So where was I?

• Maybe this doesn’t count, but I remember buying my first jazz LP at Garon’s Records in the covered market in Oxford.  I already had a few jazz LPs, given to me by my father, but the first one I bought myself was the Birth of the Cool (Miles Davis, or more precisely the Miles Davis – Gerry Mulligan Nonet).  I still have the LP; just recently I got the remastered CD, too.  It was pure fluke that my first jazz LP was such an auspicious purchase: I simply recognised Davis’ name.

 

• Dancing manically at C’s twenty first birthday party to Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart.

 

• On a trip to see friends in Cambridge and staying up all night playing Echo & the Bunnymen’s Over the Wall.

 

• Splitting up from C, I played Closer (Joy Division) obsessively; such cheerful music.  Thank god I didn’t have any Leonard Cohen.

 

• Shipbuilding (either version – Costello’s, or the original by Robert Wyatt) has me sitting in A and A's flat in Kingston Road with its pockmarked kitchen wall, watching TV news reports come back from the Falklands war; grateful the UK no longer had conscription.  How things have changed in the last twenty years.

 

• Temptation (New Order) takes me back to eights week in 1982; I bought it as a present for the girl with electric blue eyes.  I think I still have it, somewhere, so I guess I never gave it to her.  (There was no romance here.  Honest.)

Comments

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I didn't realise that was Chet Baker - wasn't he part of the composite character played by Dexter Gordon in "Round Midnight"?

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Most of Dexter Gordons character was based on Lester Young and Bud Powell, perhaps with a bit of Thelonious Monk thrown in (Bud Powell was remembered by Monk in "In Walked Bud" - from the Genius of Modern Music album, which also was had original "Round Midnight").

Not sure about Chet Baker - he wasn't a very sympathetic character: he was drug-riven and driven, being thoroughly unpleasant in the process. But he played beautifully. (Ronnie Scott said that the better they sounded, the nastier they were - though I think he was talking about Stan Getz.)

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

The character in Round Midnight was definitely a cuddly addict...