Simpsonian

You're a drooling, mindless zombie, and deep down you know it.

My, my, where has the time gone?

Oh, dear reader: we've arrived at the ultimate entry in our jazzventure—and posted several weeks late, no less.

Thelonious Monk has already had two at-bats during Fifty Weeks of Jazz, neither of which (I'm sorry to say) terribly excited me.

The more time I spend with the two box sets guiding our journey, the more structural similarities I notice between them.

For hundreds of thousands of years, the human musical experience was quite straightforward: if you wanted to listen to music, you needed someone to perform it for you.

I'm beginning to think that as composers, jazz bassists may simply be built different.

Ho, brave traveller!

One thing I've learned this year about jazz is that her inspirations are multifold.

Indulge me in a little experiment: conjure up some "world music" in your mind's ear.

Last week, we heard a 1974 Chet Baker album that featured a prominent saxophonist (namely, Paul Desmond).

They say that no man ever steps in the same river twice.

The title of this week's album—The Beginning and the End—suggests some division into two pieces, and after a first listen it isn't difficult to spot the seam joining the two.

Mahavishnu Orchestra?

We first heard George Benson as a fresh-faced youth; he was barely 23 years old when recording his second album, It's Uptown.

Confession time: much as I try to maintain an air of aloof sophistication in all things I do, I have a particular fondness for anything that can be remotely described as "prog."

When it comes to how I listen to music, I'm decidedly unsentimental: keep your art piece turntable and $50,000 cables, thanks—a pile of FLACs on my home media server is more than enough for me; have fun flipping your records every 20 minutes.

Last week, I declared that in terms of pure vocal prowess, Aretha Franklin surpasses any other female singer we've heard thus far.

I won't fault you for forgetting, but the early weeks of this project were graced with many a diva strutting by—namely Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Helen Merrill, and Nina Simone.

Always read the album notes, kids.

I am a total sucker for the format of "famous musical group plus full orchestral backing".

After 31 weeks of jazz research, I've finally hit upon a foolproof signal to identify the true crème de la crème among jazz albums.

Why is nearly every mass-market, commercially-produced creative work so universally crap?

We first heard Davis on his best-known album, Kind of Blue; this week, with ’Round About Midnight, we wind back the clock just a few years before that landmark release.

Well, it's week 28 and we've officially come full circle: ol' Pops was the one to kick this whole thing off, and this week he's back once again.

Jazz Goes to College‽ As a card-carrying pseudo-intellectual, this title has me salivating: I can't credibly claim to have jazz in my soul, but perhaps Brubeck and his quartet have distilled jazz's inscrutable mystique into pure mathematical equations; at…

In an attempt to remedy last week's bebop perversion of young minds, this week brings a double helping of wholesome jazz—straight from one of America's most beloved band leaders, Duke Ellington.

Two weeks ago, we were listening to "Birdland" by Weather Report, and this week we come full circle: that song took its name from a New York jazz club, which was itself named after Charlie "Yardbird" Parker—better known as just "Bird."

Ill winds abound—the tax season begins to rear its ugly head, compounded with the looming spectre of a trade war.

Editor's note: for reasons beyond my current comprehension, I wrote this back in 2023 in response to a book recommendation from a friend.

Over the past several weeks, we've seen a certain correlation: the more recent an album is, the more it seems to depart from "traditional" jazz, in favour of pushing the boundaries or incorporating other genres.

True story: my vacuum cleaner killed my home WiFi network.

You're crushing it: we were impressed by your beautiful LaTeX résumé (that was totally not from a common template), you aced our technical screen, and you charmed our Talent team, but now it's time for your biggest test yet—the live coding interview.

We're back in jazz fusion land, with a fun chain of connections leading to this week's album: we first started getting funky with Herbie Hancock, who was also instrumental in Jaco Pastorius's debut album.

I expected to like Jaco Pastorius—both the bassist as well as his self-titled debut album—from the start.

Ah, we've arrived at bossa nova: Spanish for "the new boss," because when João Gilberto and Stan Getz popularized the genre with their 1964 album Getz/Gilberto, everyone took notice of the new boss in town.

What the funk is this‽ Right from the first listen, this has jumped into my personal top five albums from this project, and probably the top three.

Wow, what a contrast with last week.

Editor's note: we sincerely apologize for the disruption in our usual weekly publication schedule.

Perhaps more than any other artist we've heard thus far, Nina Simone defies categorization.

Inside George Benson there are two wolves: the coolest cat you've ever seen, and the softest, most wholesome guy you've ever met.

Going into middle school, I needed to pick an instrument for music class.

After last week's saxophone detox, this week the jazz gods smiled upon me with a double helping.

Enough of this American jazz hegemony!

Ah, the saxophone: I'm sure we can all agree, objectively one of the best instruments.

Moms didn't dig [jazz], she just didn't go for it Bird, Miles, and Max… she couldn't see it Morning, afternoon, night, or anytime That is, until I played her some Monk one night, late 'Round about Midnight time I played her some Monk!

Ooh, this sounds pretty different to me than what we've heard so far.

Charles Mingus was another one of those "big names" from the jazz world that I recognized, but had never actually listened to until this week.

Eight weeks in, and we've arrived at a dubious honour: this is the first album where the top-billed performer (Helen Merrill in this case) is still alive—as I write this in February 2025, she's a sprightly 95 years old according to Wikipedia.

As previously mentioned, I had listened to a grand total of three jazz albums before setting out on this expedition.