Yesterday, a massively eclectic list of every album I’ve bought and accrued over the last decade-and-a-half.

Today, as to give you a better idea of ‘where I am’ in the vast expanse of the percussive, chordal and tonal universe, I’ll give you a brief run-down of what I’m currently listening to on a daily basis. In fact, I’m going to listen to all three of these albums as I write this entry so that you get a nice dose of my raw, unfiltered emotions.

Prince – Purple Rain

This, apart from a secret love for Spandau Ballet (all my mother’s fault), is the only album from the 80s that I’ve ever listened to more than once. I’m serious. I hate the 80s. Abi, my 52 Weeks partner in crime, made me listen to it a few months ago. I’ve been listening to it almost day since. Purple Rain is a monumentally awesome album. Sure, it has some synths but it’s OK — they’re actual, honest-to-God good synths. Prince apparently crafted this album with the single intention of catapulting himself — his vast, world-encompassing ego — to stardom. And it worked. There’s something so incredibly sensual about his songs; I think he puts so much of himself into the writing process that it shows

I’ve listened through his entire discography now — and it’s hard work, let me tell you… there’s some real shit in there! — but the first 5 or 10 years of his career were truly awesome. It’s well worth listening to For You, Prince, Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999 and Purple Rain — his first 5 albums. If you can make it all the way to Sign of the Times, you’ll be duly rewarded too.

Maria Schneider Orchestra – Sky Blue

Ah, now this one’s meaty. Something to stick your teeth in to. Contemporary ‘avant garde’ jazz is a very, very small genre — in fact, Maria Schneider is really the only active and successful ‘modern classical’ music arranger. Funny, considering jazz used to rule the clubs and airwaves for some 30 or 40 years, but I guess we have the pop industry to thank for that. Maria Schneider is widely considered the protégé and spiritual successor of Gil Evans (she studied under him for a few years) and her music is really the ‘end of the line’ for the entire chain of  jazz orchestrations since their humble beginnings as ragtime and radio big bands. As such, some people might not appreciate Schneider’s ‘impure’ arrangements; they’re really a lot closer to classical than the jazz you might know and love from your childhood. We’re talking really damn epic pieces here — some are 25-minutes long! — but they are nowhere near as eclectic or random or jarring as ‘proper’ jazz, which will suit some people (such as myselF).

Her music is incredibly complicated, but magical and rewarding and uplifting if you stick with it. Her tunes are grandiose and wildly-sweeping, delving you into the shadowy pit of her childhood despair and then later propelling you up high with wings of cerulean clarity (I’m not just word-wanking, honest. One of her songs is called Cerulean Skies…!)

After cutting my teeth on Gil Evans, Mel Lewis and Miles Davis earlier in the year, Schneider’s compositions hit just the right spot when I’m in desperate need of something complicated and sticky.

Leonard Bernstein & Stephen Sondheim – West Side Story

Where to begin…? Should I start with its stand-out and steadfast brilliance as one of the greatest film — and musical theatre — scores of all time? Or perhaps I should celebrate it as the musical that launched Sondheim’s stellar and unmatched career as a composer, arranger and lyricist? (And a Jew!!) What about the fact that it’s based on the greatest love story of all time?

West Side Story is a modern day remake of Romeo and Juliet, just as Kiss Me, Kate retold The Taming of the Shrew and My Fair Lady was a musical rendition of Shaw’s Pygmalion. They’re all as good as each other — all as fantastic as each other at introducing new audiences to classic stories that might otherwise have gone unnoticed by younger generations. Only what you have here isn’t merely an adaptation of Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy — no, West Side Story is a towering masterpiece of stupendous, dazzlingly protean music and lyrics. And don’t forget the choreography: when you watch it you have to remember that it was produced in 1957! This thing basically invented and popularised the Latin and Jazz dance-and-music sequences that you see on stage and film today.

It also happens to feature my favourite ‘musical triplet’ of all time: Something’s Coming/Maria/Tonight.  ’Musical triplet’ is a phrase I coined, so don’t go Googling it — I did warn you I was a music nerd… (most good musicals have stand-out triplets… go find some!)

I wish I could give you links to the albums in MP3-format without getting into trouble, damnit. Just buy it, it’s easier. And buy Purple Rain too, if you don’t already own it — but I imagine most people are a lot more into the 80s than I… and you probably already own it. I’m such a late bloomer. Soon I’ll be listening to Duran Duran and Mötley Crüe… God help me.

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Tomorrow… some kind of photogasm. More of the kid that featured in yesterday’s 8 of 52.

I’ve had a disgustingly busy and social weekend. I haven’t had a chance to write much for today’s blog.

However, I do have some goodies — mostly in the form of photos taken with my new 50mm lens (that you will see later today, over at 52 Weeks) — and my music library is now online for your perusal.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it’s pretty darn complete. Most of it is digitised as MP3 or FLAC. I’m an audiophile, see (something else you may not have known about me). I love music. I have an expensive hi-fi with digital interconnections. I’ve only written about it a couple of times in the past which is totally pathetic of me — I will try to write more about my various loves and passions and pastimes, I promise.

You really don’t want to know how long it took for me to compile this list. There isn’t a single damn website/social network that reads my hard disk to find out what albums I have. There’s crap like Last.fm that scans what I listen to, but unless I want to listen through my entire collection — which is something like 650 albums… — then it’s not very useful. I feel inspired to write a social music network that lets users include their own digital music libraries.

So after many hours… I have a list. It’s too big to fit on this page, so you’ll have to follow the link below:

Seb’s Mighty Music Collection

People think you can discover a lot about a person by investigating what they listen to or read: You are what you eat, be it food or otherwise. Everything that you consume has an effect on you — and you can tell a lot from what tickles someone’s senses. The problem is, my collection spans about 15 years of hunting rare albums, finding re-mastered classics and trawling through bins of old vinyl records… so you’ll probably find it quite hard to differentiate between albums I listen to now and those I listened to back at school.

It’s a mighty collection spanning just about every genre; don’t judge me on the merit (or lack thereof) of my music choices — there’s classical and emo, rock and pop, a cappella and musical theatre — really, if you can work out what makes me tick, from looking at my music collection, you are doing well! (Other than the fact that I like musical theatre — about a third of the albums are musicals…)

I’ll let you have a look through the list, and then tell you what music I’m currently ‘into’ tomorrow. You can have a few guesses if you like!

Oh, I’m aware there are no Beatles albums on the list…

There’s something about black musicians; especially those from the 70s. It’s as if their songs and music are sermons; instructional, spiritual guidance for the traversal and enjoyment of life. With Motown stripping away centuries of oppression, these pent-up feelings suddenly found an outlet. Be it Stevie Wonder, Maurice White or Marvin Gaye, when we listen to their seminal albums, their finest opuses, it’s as if we are looking straight into their soul. And of course that’s the whole point: they have a story to tell, and they want us to hear it. Be it war, politics, God or, in the case of Let’s Get It On: pure, unbridled, shameless love.

The album begins with a beat, not a bang. The title track is a slow, seedy-pleady, seductive introduction designed to reel you into Marvin’s world, his vision (I did say it was sermon-like!) It’s as if we’ve been on the outside for all these years — outside in the chaste, teeth-chatteringly cold, sexless world — and now, finally, with a deep, lustful sigh of relief we’re being invited to the party. If you thought the first track was seductive, the second, Please Stay, is pure, lip-dribble/wibble pillow talk. Please Stay feels like a slowed-down, muddied Motown classic; gone are the trite, treble sounds of Motown drums and vocals. In their stead, a sexy, repetitive, bassy rhythm illustrates Gaye’s soulful sexuality.

Let’s Get It On tells a story, from lust to love making; young, wide-eyed and sappy (If I Should Die Tonight) through to the unrequited (Distant Lover). The album is about love and every blissful emotion that true love entails. There are hints of hedonism, both in the title track and the Keep Gettin’ It On intermission — but unlike other sex music that followed, Let’s Get It On somehow remains pure, religious, spiritual.

If there’s one problem with this album it’s that it doesn’t let you climax. The dewy sweat, the shudders, the belaboured breathing — it’s all there, spread thickly, generously, beautifully layered strings and saxophones teasing at your ears throughout; but it’s just that: teasing. Gaye holds you in a dreamy euphoric state, unable to finish, to turn off. The end of the album is a climax of sorts, but not a happy one. It feels as if Marvin Gaye had both religious and sexual epiphanies in the creation of this album, the last two tracks finally bringing him — and us — back down to earth. You Sure Love To Ball, the most daring song on the album and whose whispered whimpers and moans inspired both Michael Jackson and Prince, is ultimately a sad song about desperation going unanswered, unrequited. Just To Keep You Satisfied, the most poignant track and fitting, though not explosive, climax feels like a eulogy.  It feels as if the entire album is dedicated to the love and loss of a very special woman. Whether he is singing this album to her, or as a warning to all prospective lovers out there, we’ll never know.

Let’s Get It On is the pinnacle of Marvin Gaye’s vast body of work. Many would cite the more important significance of What’s Going On? — but they would be wrong, misguided. What we have, with Let’s Get It On, is a monumental and risque release that heralds a new musical epoch and champions a genre of music: the steamily sensual quiet storm of slow-jam. Smashing the watershed of the popular music and Motown juggernauts, Gaye brings us music to make love to. Politics might be the global media’s raison d’être — and certainly why What’s Going On? received more critical attention — but when it comes to our heart, our passion and satisfaction; when it comes to the things that really matter… Let’s Get It On pulls all the right strings and leaves us very much yearning, throbbing, lusting for more.

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Now you need to listen to it. Fortunately it’s very cheap (about $7!)

Buy via Amazon USA:

Buy via Amazon UK:

It’s been a while since I last wrote about music. Listening to music, like the appreciation of all art forms, is a very personal and subjective thing. You might like rock and I might like soul, but as long as we both get what we’re looking for, who cares? Well, I care! I listen to contemporary pop and sigh. It saddens me to think that, for some people, this is as good as it gets.

If we’re not careful the King of Pop will be nothing more than an honourific title thrown around by future generations in the playground: ‘Dad says the King of Pop died recently.’ ‘Yeah, sucks. Did you hear the latest Britney Spears song? It rocks!’ Unless someone — you or I — steps in and reminds children of what real music once sounded like and where their music originally came from, we can forget all hope of there ever being another King of Pop, Soul or Rock ‘n’ Roll.

* * *

The King of Pop, Michael Jackson. Not the Baron or Prince or Godfather — the King; the top dog upon which all comparisons are made and will be for years to come. I’m not going to talk about the last 20 years of his life but instead I will focus on the first 30, the three decades that revitalised a flagging music industry. In those thirty years, Michael Jackson became the greatest and most influential musician of our time. To those amongst us that appreciate music and its power; to those of us that are prone to bouts of aural sex: we have a lot to be grateful for! I just hope I can do Michael justice and nail the most important aspects of his influential and protean career.

While certainly successful, the first ten years of his life as the lead singer of The Jackson 5 were hardly monumental. The Jackson family were recognised as a musically-gifted family and Michael was nothing more than a charismatic and spectacular performer. But he could only grow so much, restricted by Motown’s draconian production rules and an oppressive father. The Jacksons were destined, unless something changed, to be a flash in the pan — certainly one of Motown’s biggest success stories (four successive number ones is nothing to be ashamed of!), but minuscule compared to what the Jackson family in general and Michael in particular were capable of. Perhaps the most important role of the Jacksons would be to become the first black teen idols. Breaking down barriers would be a recurring aspect of Michael Jackson’s life at the forefront of the music industry.

Stifled by Motown, The Jacksons jumped ship to CBS in 1975, a move that would finally grant the band the creative freedom it required. The Jacksons produced lots of albums in the following decade, but none of them approaching the success of their early Motown hits. But for Michael, it would be a different story indeed: in 1978 he met Quincy Jones on the set of The Wiz — “I hated doing The Wiz… I did not want to do it,” Quincy said later — they didn’t know it then but Quincy’s involvement with the film would soon change musical history and forge the greatest, most influential and successful collaboration in music history. Quincy Jones is a musician and conductor whose career and incredible influence spans five decades. With 27 Grammys and countless other awards, Quincy, like the Jacksons, broke down barriers that would allow future African-Americans to succeed in the culturally-biased media industry. The scope of Quincy Jones’ work is so varied and vast that it’s hard to comprehend: we’re talking about a legend that played alongisde Miles Davis during the creation of modern jazz and bebop, but then later produced the largest-selling album of all time (Thriller). He’s worked with Sinatra, Spielberg and even Bill Cosby. However, after Bad, his production and arrangement days were over — perhaps, after five decades of musicianship, the impresario had finally set down on paper the notes and themes that had run through his head for fifty years. Perhaps it was time to make way for future generations?

But I digress: it was on the set of The Wiz that this partnership of mentor and young prodigy begun. Off The Wall was born from the marriage of orchestral jazz, soul and 70s disco. Off The Wall fused sounds and melodies and dazzlingly energetic themes that had been building up for decades but never fully exemplified until this album was mastered and distributed. It’s worth noting, though their influences were not particularly significant, that both Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney wrote tracks for Off The Wall — perhaps this shows just how much confidence these musical geniuses had in Michael?

If Quincy and Jackson’s first collaboration hadn’t quite cemented things — Off The Wall only sold 20 million copies! — their next album would prove beyond doubt that they’d hit the spot. Thriller would be the first and only album to become something more than just a finely-crafted collection of songs. The astronomical number of sales — 109 million — would thrust Thriller into the category of ‘household staple’ rather than ‘commodity’ — families would go to the supermarket to buy bread, milk and a copy of Thriller. To this day, Thriller has more than doubled the next-largest album (45 million — Dark Side of the Moon) and its universally popular appeal will no doubt continue its reign of supremacy.

The bone of contention that one usually comes across when examining Jackson’s career is thus: how much of the success was actually due to him? Did Michael’s career begin as a vehicle for Motown’s music machine and end as nothing more than the pop industry’s poster child? Is it important? If we can learn one thing from history it’s one thing: for better or worse, the outcome is what counts, not the minutia, not those that fall by the wayside. If you discount his later work and simply focus on his early-adult albums — Off The Wall, Thriller, Bad and Dangerous – you have a body of work that was not only phenomenally successful but also more influential than the creations of any other artist in the last 40 years. It’s because of Jackson that we have hip-hop and rap music. Jackson revitalised a pop industry that was suffocating under the burgeoning force of uncreative, uninspired electronica. The phenomenon of Michael Jackson caused a rebirth of popular music that inspired and influenced almost every modern R&B, funk and pop musician.

I haven’t even begun to touch on the immortal influence that Michael Jackson had on both the youth and adults of the world with his music videos and live performances. Jackson created the music video that we know today; he single-handedly launched MTV to stardom with Thriller. Jackson, through sheer artistic brilliance, destroyed the last vestiges of African-American inequality in the media. Michael Jackson’s choreographic style — oh, that white trilby, those hip-thrusts and those gloves — had an effect more profound than anything since Fosse’s jazz or Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story.

I hope that the world, the media-consuming public, can in the next few years put aside any moral objections they have to the man himself and simply focus on what he created. It is irrelevant to wonder whether he is solely to thank for his wondrous advances in music or if he was merely the focus of myriad prodigious input from Quincy Jones. The matter of the fact is thus: Michael Jackson pioneered and sat atop the pinnacle of a musical, a rich cadence that had been bubbling and building up for decades. It finally exploded with Michael Jackson’s solo albums and the world is a richer place for it. From Miles Davis to Stevie Wonder and the entire R&B, jazz and soul libraries that flutter and reside in between, Michael Jackson created, embraced and become the very embodiment of modern pop music.

* * *

The two best albums you could buy a child or musical neophyte are Davis’ Kind Of Blue and Jackson’s Off The Wall. There is no better way to be quickly brought up to speed on the roots and direction of modern music. And if you haven’t heard either of them, you are doing yourself and rest of the world an injustice!

RIP, Michael Jackson. Surely one of your sons must be reaching the age where he might show an interest in singing or dancing…

[Updated album list, 28th June 2009 -S]

That’s actually a misquotation from Casablanca, but it’s so ingrained in our contemporary ethos that no one really cares (she actually says “Play it, Sam, play ‘As Time Goes By‘, one of the most sappy songs of all time). Bogart’s ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’ wasn’t in the original screenplay either — it was something said from Bogart to Bergman while he was trying to teach her poker in between takes.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about music. A wide, all-encompassing love for every kind of music. Except for death metal, which just doesn’t count as ‘music’. Maybe if they turn their amps down, they might be able to hear the shit they’re pumping out.

I know this is a touchy subject. Everyone has their own taste in music, which they are often irrationally proud of. ‘Yeah, I listen almost exclusively to Norwegian Death Metal, nothing else is even worth listening to.’ Most people firmly believe that their taste in music is approaching some kind of divinity, and anyone that doesn’t like their music (Impossible!!) can go stick it where the sun don’t shine.

The thing is, in general, ‘good music’ can be quite easily defined. There are a few bands and a few genres that are widely accepted as ‘good’. You won’t often find the Norwegian Death Metal lover saying that ‘Ah yeah, that Bacharach song was shit’ — some music is just so perfect. Some songs hit all the right spots, in all the right places, at just the right times. It’s this wide-scoped genre of music that I like to think I am an aficionado of. I’ve spent the last 10 years or so trying to locate, listen and identify all of the greatest albums ever made. I think I’m completely spoilt, being able to listen to some of the best music ever made, at any time. The power of digitising your CD collection!

So what makes music ‘good’? What can turn a piece of mediocre music into something truly ‘awesome’?

• An element of excellence. Be it vocal excellence like Whitney Houston, or an instrument like Ben Folds’ piano antics, or even excellent lyrics (though this is often a subjective measure, so I’m not really going to use it as a metric for measuring ‘good music’)
• Major tonality. This is slightly harder to get your head around, but generally this dictates ‘happy sounding’ music. Most of the anthems that you know will be in a major tonality, with some key-change later in that drives you up to the ‘next plane’ of the song. Pandora actually enlightened me to the fact that almost every song it chose for me was of ‘major tonality’ — sadly it’s a USA-only service due to licensing restrictions. Blah.
• Does the music take you places? Do you feel positively stimulated by listening to the music? More energy? More relaxed? Often a good album (not necessarily a song) will take you on some kind of ride through the thoughts and emotions of the artist. The music needs to appeal on enough levels that it gets you involved — it needs to be intellectual, emotional or spiritual (or all 3!) . I’m not talking about just the lyric here either — the music itself can take you to all of these places too.
• Most importantly, the music has to be so well made and so well engineered that you can listen to it time and time again, each listen-through granting you a new facet of the music, a new understanding and thus more appreciation. I’m still amazed that I can listen to a song by Marvin Gaye for the 100th time and pick out an instrument that I’ve never heard before. The quality of the recording is important here — the mixing and mastering has to be very well done so that it never detracts from your enjoyment of the music. All too often music is mastered for playing in cars — it’s heavily compressed so that you can still hear it over the driving noises, which means you’re probably never hearing what the artist wanted you to hear.

So, given the above attributes, you can start to pick out good albums (I’m not going to pick out ‘good songs’, as it’s pretty easy to make a good tune — look at Burt Bacharach and Hal David, or the Elvis Presley — it’s making a good album that’s the tricky bit).

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I can almost guarantee you will enjoy each of these albums. You’ll even want to listen to them again and again… and again. It is no surprise that they are are also some of the best-selling albums of all time.

In no particular order:

• Marvin Gaye – 1971 – What’s Goin’ On
• Miles Davis – 1959 – Kind Of Blue
• Miles Davis & Gil Evans – 1958 – Porgy and Bess
• Elton John – 2008 – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Remastered)
• Paul McCartney & Wings – 1973 – Band on the Run
• Fleetwood Mac – 1977 – Rumours
• Bruce Springsteen – 1975 – Born to Run
• Ben Folds Five – 1997 – Whatever & Ever Amen
• Michael Jackson – 1979 – Off The Wall
• Michael Jackson – 1982 – Thriller

There are a few other albums which I feel could make the list, but they would most likely be very controversial. My inclusion of Ben Folds Five into a list of ‘historic greats’ is no doubt a bit dangerous, and it’s certainly a lot more ‘eclectic’ than the others in the list. Though, any album which I can listen to once a day, for 3 years, without being bored has to be a prime example of ‘good music’.

And now… I am going to slide my Grado headphones gently over my ears, press ‘play’ on my iPod, and dance around in the rapidly descending snow like a lunatic. It doesn’t get much better.