September 8, 2006
New MP3s: The Rapture, Ted Leo
My apologies to anyone who tried to download the Keith Jarrett MP3 that sat on this site for the last thirty-six hours. Apparently the file doesn't work, and caused some people's browsers to freeze or crash. I've substitutued the first track off the new Rapture album, mentioned yesterday, and a song off of Ted Leo's fantastic 2001 album The Tyranny of Distance.
Below is the post I'd written to accompany the Jarrett track:
I've uploaded a thirty-eight-minute long performance by Keith Jarrett as the newest MP3 of the moment. It was recorded in Paris on October 17, 1988, and it is my favorite of his live recordings. He has himself suggested that a concert at La Scala is his greatest work of improvisation, and by consensus his fans have anointed the Köln Concert as their favorite. Yet there is something about the Paris recording, more classical (Baroque, specifically) in its orientation, that grabs at me, especially the quieter passage that begins at about 17:15 and runs until about the 21:30 mark. It also contains some of the longest single-note, drone-like passages of any of his concert recordings, many of which I've been able to borrow from the New York Public Library, import to my computer, and spend excessive amounts of time listening to.Seeing Jarrett live last September at Carnegie Hall (New York Times review here), which was his first solo performance in New York in a decade and perhaps the best birthday gift I have ever received, was absolutely fantastic; each of the five encores was entirely earned.
I'm relatively new to Jarrett fandom, having only come across his music in Ellen B.'s apartment in Berlin in early 2005. One night, while alone, I slipped in five of the six discs documenting Jarrett's 1976 "Sun Bear" concerts in Japan and was mesmerized. I'd consider some of the music from those sessions to be my favorite, but I know that I'm letting the ideal situation of my first listening experience color my opinion of the music.
Anyway, the files linked at the bottom of the middle column are big, so I ask (as always) that you please right-click, "Save As," and play it from your computer rather than stream it directly from my web server.