Part 2: John Scofield

2011-08-10T08:46:00.000+02:00

The first John Scofield album to listen to should be ”A Go Go” it’s a very Jazz-funk oriented album and simply magnificent, incredibly well played and with stunning solos!

”A Go Go” is a collaboration with the avant-garde jazz trio ”Medeski, Martin & Wood”, and on their own, these 3 produces excellent music, and with The Sco, well the results speak for themselves. On this record – especially the first track ”A Go Go” – John Scofield shows you a vocabulary which mere vastness, you would never have imagined in your wildest dreams! And John Medeski’s organ playing is out of this world, you should really check the youtube video of it, because it is quite extraordinary, Martin’s drum playing is funky and fantastic, and Wood’s bass playing is very solid.

If you don’t love this album, you’re not into jazz-funk at all.

”I Can See Your House From Here” is a collaboration with Pat Metheny who has won 15 grammies and is considered one of the best jazz guitarist of all time (check his work too if you feel like you haven’t got enough listen to already). Some Pat Metheny fans will tell you that Pat Metheny doesn’t play as well as he usually do, on that particular record, but I (and many other) will tell you that Pat Metheny plays some of the best he has ever done, his midi-guitar sounds great on this track, and his playing is something else. It’s a fusion jazz record and is like a big brother of the album ”Still warm”, which I will come to in a minute. The use of chorus effects is really noticable on this record (though not in a particularly bad way, but it can be a bit too much for some). Still this remains an incredibly succesful pair up with Scofield and Metheny (see ”The Red One” for incredible duet soloing).

Scofields 1986 album ”Still warm” is a pretty good album (and considering this is relative to other work of the living jazz legend, it is very good overall), it’s definitely not for a beginner jazz listener, but don’t let that scare you away (and don’t let the name of the first track scare you away either), it features great jazz-rock, it’s especially recommended to people who enjoy Mike Stern, since it reminds one of some of the work Mike Stern has put out, with Scofield’s heavy use of chorus effects, light-medium gain and

occasional reverse delay.

“This Meets That” is a very new album from The Sco, it’s actually for 2007, and it’s something else than the rest of the stuff he has put out, it’s mostly post-bob but there’s even some free jazz on the record (see “Pretty Out”). It’s such an interesting album, with fantastic jazz-rock like the piece “Low Road” and a surprisingly good rendition of “House of the Rising Sun” (and by “surprisingly good” I mean, who would’ve thought you could make the song into an instrumental post-bop jazz piece and it would still sound great?)

This is definitely not for beginners though, be warned! You need a good ear and plenty of time to be able to fully enjoy this record, the patience will payoff though.

Introduction

2011-08-09T14:04:00.001+02:00

To start the blog off I will post some Titles of albums by Frank Zappa and John Scofield respectively, and short descriptions of them, it will be relatively entry level (but considering it's FZ and the Sco, there's not going to be a lot for a beginner), but very good if you want to get into this sort of music (which will give you great experiences musically!!!), and they are also, simply just great albums.

Frank Zappa

"Overnight Sensation" and "Apostrophe" are the absolute must have albums of FZ, they combine almost all of the different aspects of FZ's music. There is the jazz, the fusion, rock, ballads, and fantastic story telling as well (see especially "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" and "Nanook Rubs It").

"Hot Rats" is absolutely fantastic (in fact my favorite Zappa album), and it is not particularly entry level, in fact you might have to listen to it 5-6 times before you really start to get it, and then it just gets fantastic, especially the instrumental extravaganza "Son Of Mr. Green Genes". It also features the Peaches En Regalia (first track) which is a great jazz fusion instrumental, in fact Dweezil Zappa (son of FZ) won a grammy for his rendition of it.

Pt. 2 coming up soon.

Scofield, Zappa and other great musicians

Part 2: John Scofield

Introduction