“A lot of music will forever remain on “Vinyl Only”… I never really thought about it because that’s just the way things happened for me. Now the paradox is that I don’t feel subject to nostalgia at all. I really can’t stop to be amazed by our actual world jukebox, allowing you to dig through all styles, moments, trends and genres permanently. Like never before (legal and less). I never liked CD’s though and I’m really excited to see what the next “Albums” will look like. I fully can understand people looking for LP’s and other original releases, but I absolutely could never buy a new print vinyl today, it feels such an anachronism. Anyway, here are five albums that belongs to those vinyl days for me…”
Johnny Guitar Watson
Jet Plane
« You probably saw me pulling this one out on every listing I get asked for since, but that’s a fact. This 7” really is the very first time music talked to me so intimately, so deeply, so guitaristically too. I still had a “Mange Disque” (Slot In Rec Players), I can still see this single going inside and playing with the same type of sound you had on AM Radios back then. It was full Disco years, “Saturday Night Fever” had hit all heads couple years before only, Michael’s ‘Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough’ was a major break too, ‘Rapper’s Delight’ by Sugarhill Gang, Anita Award’s ‘Ring My Bell’, so much more that would more or less stop with Hancock’s ‘Rock It’ for me. Before that Johnny Guitar sound I use to play a lot of Swing or Cool jazz from my father which I loved them, but this was Jazz for me now too, though it was hard to understand why. »
Naná Vasconcelos
Dida
« As I said above, Vinyl often means to me music that I haven’t heard since, nor in many cases, that has been really reissued for long since. This is a typical LP effect that could strike me back then. I bought this one because i was so intrigued by its cover, the object looked very mysterious, almost Voodoo like. I Loved this music, it sounded very obscure to me and somewhere totally isolated, hardly related to any else I knew (and I knew a lot of Brazilian music by that time). Writing those notes now I also realize that I actually bought most of these albums just as they came out. »
Pat Martino
Sunny
« This is a classic Modern Jazz Guitar Memorabilia, the type of solos all wishing to become jazz guitarist have played over a 1000 times, learned, transcribed and will always do. Yet another pretty obscure sound, location, situation and even cover. When I started to play the guitar and be interested by jazz music, the production situation was such that on one side you the famous well established labels such as Blue Note, Impulse, CBS etc with rather classic albums from the past, and next to was a constant flow of contemporary releases that felt less historical, more session-like, labels like Concord Jazz, Muse, Steeplechase etc. had a lot of those one off guitar albums. »
Chet Baker/Steve Houben
This Is Always
« I had no idea of Bill Frisell really by then (I must have got this LP in 1981 or so, very soon after it came out). I was soon to meet Philip Catherine who played with Chet Baker mostly at this time, and whom would become my forever hero, whom I would follow with Chet everywhere I could, listening to all their shows, traveling along with. But on this album Bill plays very straight still, and this only shows even more his so unique difference since. Its only 5,6 years after that I would see him play live for the first time, with Paul Motian’s Quintet and he was already far advanced in more distorded sounds, using echo pedals and other effects. »
The Monty Alexander 7
Week-end In L.A.
« Caribbean music as I first heard it, rather white and clean, pretty jazz still. It took me a long time to link it later with Reggae Dub and all the 1000 other sounds from the bay. I use to listen a lot to Monty Alexander back then, he would play live regularly in Paris too. I loved Ernest Ranglin guitars, but had no idea about his reggae contribution. I knew of Jackie Mittoo because he played Organ and I was really into Organ combos but it was still a bit too rough for me by those years. I still have a solo LP on Black & Blue signed by Monty. »
