Nathan Andrew Seifert lists 10 albums he considers "brilliant." What strikes me is that I can endorse some of his choices, that I really don't like David Byrne's music, and that I have major gaps in my listening as I haven't heard the specific albums he mentions by Everclear, Cocteau Twins, Sonic Youth, and My Bloody Valentine although I have heard other albums by each of them. Probably, those albums came out during my "marketing years."
On Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians:
This is a piece of neoclassical brilliance that, quite possibly, changed my musical tastes more than anything else I've ever listened to. The micromanagement of every little tone and every instrument is perfect. Minimalism, as 1970's it is, still rules, to put it oh so eloquently.
Reich acknowledges the influence of Coltrane and talks about how he would go see Coltrane play in San Francisco. Reich apparently also saw Davis:
By which I mean this: when I was 14 I used to go down to Birdland, which was the reigning jazz club of the 1950s and early '60s, and see Miles Davis and drummer Kenny Clarke, who really turned me on, and later I went to hear John Coltrane, both here in New York and when I was a student out in San Francisco, as often as I possibly could.
Just to nitpick, the album is called "Everclear" but it's by American Music Club, not to be confused with the Portland band Everclear.
Minimalism Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Posted by: Jim | May 28, 2005 at 05:53 PM
Nitpick acknowledged. I have a cassette tape of American Music Club somewhere but it apparently made no impression...
Posted by: Robert Gable | May 28, 2005 at 06:15 PM