2:02 a.m. and the jukebox of my soul

I love jazz music. Love it more and more as I get older. It sets a pace to my life that I enjoy, quietly catastrophic and all over the place, yet coherent in some overall sixth-sense kinda way. I used to know this crazy fucking Vietnam vet. Drove a cab for a living, played real stand up bass, hated and feared women and children, found Jesus later in his life but before that possessed the most impressive collection of jazz albums I have ever seen. A whole Capitol Hill apartment wall shelf full of Mingus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Nina Simone, Coleman Hawkins, Django Reinhardt. He nearly hit me in the face when I compared Rickie Lee Jones to Billie Holiday. I think it took a week before he'd talk to me again, but when he did he said, "Listen man, I want to teach you about music. Come over to my place around 7 and I'll make chili and we'll listen to some tunes."

What ensued was an all night whiskey soaked tutorial in the history of Jazz Proper. Now listen, I'm from Chicago, south side raised, and thought my roots in music ran pretty deep, and not just limited to Styx, Cheap Trick and our godforsaken namesake. So, I thought, this guy is just gonna show me stuff I already know........well, no.

See, I was primarily a blues lover, not jazz, but the two can often get confused, sometimes the same artists crossing over to different forms. What Dan the Man showed me was that blues was to pure jazz as Marvel comics was to Picasso. 3 bar chord structures gave way to complex change ups that had you mid-way out of your chair asking the fucking atmosphere what was just allowed to take place. During some of the Mingus stuff, I asked him to replay whole pieces to try and wrap my mind around what I was hearing. I'm really not giving the evening credit at this point. He planned it well, from the early sounds of Coleman Hawkins and Django to contemporaries like Wynton Marsalis, Nina Simone and Frank Sinatra ( couldn't get this dude past 19-fucking-63, except for Wynton). It was a grand lesson, one I will never forget and has since informed my selection of music.

You will be a better person after listening to jazz, because it is a musical form that challenges you to get your finger out of your fucking nostril and contemplate why even though the world is such a godless place, it still contains beauty of epic proportions. So, here is the New Yorker list of the top 100 essential jazz albums of all time.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/05/19/080519on_onlineonly_remnick?currentPage=all