đˇ
For music I mean⌠music's so hard. I love music so much. I was looking at this picture called A Great Day in Harlem and it's a collection of jazz artists taking a picture on a stoop in Harlem. It's a very iconic photograph. Sonny Rollins is in the picture and he's still aliveâ I think he just turned 90. He's been around a long time. Sonny Rollins is my favorite player of all time and that's a hard thing to say because there's a lot of sax players I love.
He's got a record called East Broadway Rundown that is just one of the most astonishing recordings I've ever heard in my life. There's a song on there called East Broadway Rundown and it's quite long, almost 20 minutes long I think. That's one of my favorite songs to listen to. The places it goes to, you just don't hear very often.
There's a big component of the jazz or genre of jazz, I guess called free jazz that can get pretty out there, and a lot of people hear it are like, âoh, that just sounds like cats in pain or somethingâ and they're not really into it, and I can understand that sometimes. It's not for everybody. Sonny, on this song, gets to a place that's even beyond free jazz. It's some world that exists only in this song. I've never heard it in any other song.
Sonny Rollins in general, his devotion to playing, the fact that he was already successful in his field and yet took time off to to practice on the bridge because he wasn't satisfied with where he was at and he wanted to push himself even further. I just always admired the heck out of him.Â
Feb 12, 2025
Related Recs
THIS ISNâT JAZZâŚTHIS IS PURE METROPOLITAN SOUND MATTER.
SONNY ROLLINS ON IMPULSE WITH FREDDIE HUBBARD, ELVIN JONES AND JIMMY GARRISON BEHIND AND BESIDE HIM.
IS THIS THE FURTHEST âOUTâ SONNY ROLLINS EVER WENT?
MAYBE.
BUT THOSE QUESTIONS ARE FOR GUYS WITH SOUL PATCHES AND KNIT âWORLD MUSICâ STYLE CAPS.
NOT ME.
ELVIN JONES PLAYS HIS DRUMS LIKE GOD PLAYS WATERâŚ
STRAIGHT LIQUIDâŚTOTAL FLOW.
LATE 2010s. I LIVED ON MOTT STREET. I WALKED TO EAST BROADWAY. I NOTICED THE YOUTH. THEY TURNED 18 AND EITHER CHOSE âKIDSâ (1995) OR âTRAINSPOTTINGâ (1996) AS THEIR IDENTITY.
SONNY ROLLINS WOULD EXIT THE SCENE AFTER THIS RECORD FOR 6 YEARS.
I WONDER IF HE WILL BE PRACTICING ON THE WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE TOMORROW MORNING WHILE SOME DRUNKEN CANAL TYPE KID PASSES HIM, PHONE IN HAND, EN ROUTE TO DROP $12.99 FOR A COFFEE WITH RARE NUT MILK. WILL THEY LEAVE THE CUSTOMARY 25% TIP FOR THE MISERABLE BARISTA? WILL THAT PORCHES CHAP BE THERE? HE IS EVERYWHERE.
IâM NEVER TIPPING AGAIN.
Jan 30, 2024
đş
My first time ever visiting New York, I was 10 years old and had the pleasure of going to Dizzyâs at Lincoln Center with my father. I donât remember how it happened but we somehow randomly met a photographer (?) who brought us backstage (everyone loves 10 year old girls) and directly to Mr. Marsalis. I had listened to jazz growing up, but this experience deepend my love for it. I had been keeping a *New York Journal* (pink with gold edged pages) and started writing a song (used to want to be a pop-star) called âNew York is magnifasent.â Magnificent spelled horribly wrong. I brought the journal with me everywhere that weekend, so it was under my arm while meeting him. He ended up signing his autograph on the following page to which he wrote âGrace, New York is magnifasentâ spelled wrong just like I had. 15 years later, he is not only one of the greats, but one of my favorites. I listen to his album Standard Time Vol. 2: Intimacy Calling all the time, I hope you will too.
Oct 7, 2021
đˇ
My dad is one of the biggest jazz heads in the world. He used to pick me up from the mall in eighth grade blasting Pharaoh Sanders or Maynard Ferguson, and when I got in, instead of turning it down, he would turn it up and say, âLISTEN TO THIS, MOUSE!!! JEEZ!!â Anyways: I first fell in love with Albert Ayler when I saw the 2013 Whitney exhibition Blues for Smoke, and on the ground floor--this is when the museum was still in the Breuer--they were playing this beautiful film of Ayler performing âSpirits Rejoiceâ--I think on French television. Itâs very bizarre, very classic Ayler--it starts and stops multiple times, it mocks its source material, it discharges it into ecstasy. Heâs like...the Herodotus of jazz. You can hear Louis Armstrong as much as you can hear Pharaoh Sanders. Ayler had one of the most fascinating lives. It was far too short: he died at 34, and there were rumors for decades that the mafia murdered him by tying him to a jukebox and throwing it into the East River. Where to start? Well, his version of âOn Green Dolphin Streetâ is one of the craziest things youâll ever hear. Same goes with âSummertime.â And his live recordings are W-I-L-D: try âLive At Greenwich Village.â You can practically hear the paint peeling off the walls during âTruth Is Marching In.âI think thereâs this idea that free jazz was somehow inevitable, the same way that Abstract Expressionism was--that it was simply the logical endpoint of the art form. I donât think thatâs quite right. Thereâs an album called The Albert Ayler Story, which is like an audio documentary and which I also recommend a lot, in which there are lots of interviews with Ayler and friends, plus formative recordings. And his drummer Milford Graves talks how there was a movement in the 1960s to stop jazz music--specifically Pharaoh and Sun-Ra and Ayler--because the musicians were too involved in political activism. Critics said it had nothing to do with the music. But to Graves, this free or avant-garde jazz was always about political progress, because it allows you to have âabstract thoughtsâ that you later âcondenseâ into something âmore logical.â He says of the work he was making and would have continued to make with Ayler, who died in 1970: âI think the music was going to direct people into another area of consciousness.â Thatâs what was lost when Ayler died. Whereas in something like pop music, âyouâre constantly moving around in a circle, where thereâs no kind of opening out. Youâre caught.â Isnât that fascinating?
Mar 30, 2021
Top Recs from @michael-shannon
I like to take long walks, typically in the park. I live in Brooklyn, New York and I like to walk around Prospect Park. At the south end of the park there's a little area with a couple of benches in it, like a little sanctuary and I like to go over there to sit on the bench and watch all the different birds out in the pond. I like to go there in all different kinds of weather and see how it changes throughout the year. I just really get a kick out of nature and it actually can be pretty quiet there sometimes, which is hard to find in New York City.Â
Feb 12, 2025
Oh my God, this guy Henry Taylor, I saw that exhibit at the Whitney. I took everyone I knew to go see the exhibit. I must have seen it seven or eight times. This guy is the most brilliant painter I have seen in a long, long time. I actually got the coffee table book. I never get the coffee table book. He just moved me to tears. He did a painting of Philando Castile getting shot that's one of the most powerful works of visual art I've ever seen in my life from many time period ever. So I recommend Henry Taylor and The Whitney Museum and general because I think you'll always find something interesting there.Â
Feb 12, 2025
I'm a big fan of quiet. I like quiet and silence. I saw a movie once a long time ago. It's called Into Great Silence and it's a documentary about monks in this monastery and it's quite long actually but there's no dialogue in it. The whole movie is watching these monks and it made a huge impression on me.Â
Feb 12, 2025