Thursday, November 5, 2015

Songs About People # 138 Cecil Taylor

'Cecil Taylor's on The White House lawn tonight...'

This blog is most of all about my relationship with music and its relationship with me. And though I don't generally want to be too explicit about how I might be feeling as this is not supposed to be a bloodletting exercise, sometimes it serves its purpose to bring me back from an emotional edge.

The specifics don't matter, but I was on one twenty five minutes ago and now I'm not, thanks to chancing upon Jonathon Wilson. He's a contemporary singer songwriter, though you wouldn't know it from cupping an ear to virtually any one of his songs, even for a cursory fifteen seconds.


He's floating in a cosmic space and it's one where we're all transported back to Laurel Canyon in California in the early seventies with him. His most recent album, Fanfare, from two years back has quite the most ludicrous cover you've ever seen in your life, (see above). On the songs contained therein he doesn't seem sure whether he's David Crosby or Neil Young. In fact he seems to change his mind from one song to another.

If you listen to too  many tracks it has to cross your mind why a guy with such obvious talent would bother. But one song at a time it's highly effective. This one for example. It introduced me to Cecil Taylor, jazz man. Another trail to follow,


No comments:

Post a Comment