Jan Johansson

Have you ever heard of “Jazz på Svenska”, “Jazz på Ryska, “Musik genom Fyra Sekler”, “Spelar Musik På Sitt Eget Vis”, or maybe “Den Korta Fristen”?

No? Well, join the club of several million other people who haven’t either.

Jan Johansson, that elusive musician from Sweden who recorded these and many other LPs before his death in November of 1968 at the age of 37, has not been forgotten, but he’s still largely unknown in most parts of the world and if one didn’t know better, one could call him one of the world’s best-kept secrets. Looking at a site like “Last.FM” though, you don’t need long to see that he’s around, more so than ever perhaps.

I do have to admit that I have no recollection of when Johansson entered my music collection. I have absolutely no idea if I bought the first of his recording myself or if someone gave it to me as a present. All I do know is that it took me some years to actually discover the sheer beauty of the music. For reasons unknown, the music slumbered in my collection, somewhere in the back of some long shelf, and for years I don’t think I heard any of it. With some degree of certainty I can say though that I probably got the first LP and put it away without listening to it (no idea why). That’s the only explanation. Got it, put it away. Had it been different, I would have remembered the first time I heard it. Continue Reading →

Organissimo

To be quite honest, I used to hate the organ. When I was a kid, we had this neighbour who liked to open up his windows in the summer and blast out this insanely irritating organ muzak for hours, scaring away just about any approaching summer breeze that had managed to survive its journey across the German-French border. It was one of those German guys, 150 kilos and all, who played one of those entertainment organ thingies, noodling through a trillion standards that he managed to reduce to the most nerve-wrecking basics. The only thing missing – and he got none of that in our neighborhood – were a large number of sufficiently drunk Germans in “Lederhosen”, clapping along as offbeat(edly) as possible. If you’ve ever been to the Oktoberfest, you know what kind of people I mean. Continue Reading →

A Love Supreme

I don’t know about you, but I’m a stubborn listener. If you have as much music as I have, you sometimes buy a recording because someone you trust or many other people have recommended it … and, upon listening to it for the first time, you actually wonder about some people’s sanity. You sit in front of your speakers, dumbfounded, trying to figure out why anyone on this planet would rave about this particular recording. You hate the singer’s voice, you think whatever is pouring from your speakers sounds like industrial noise pollution or, worse, it just doesn’t touch you at all. Nada. Zip. No emotional response.

This happens to me again and again and my reaction is usually the simplest of all: I file the recording away for later perusal. Usually, recordings I just dislike upon first hearing them get about half a year of shelf life before they see the light of day again. Continue Reading →

It’s Snowing on My Piano

A Christmas album. Of all the CDs and LPs I have, the grand total certainly having passed the 5000 items mark, it just had to be a Christmas album that has stayed at #1 of my all-time best list, ever since it came out. You have to read this properly, so you get the importance of that statement. I have close to 44 meters of neatly arranged music, I have downright eclectic taste, I’ve been known to switch my listening habits on a whim, radically, and everyone who’s ever been to my place knows how freakishly broad the musical range they’ll be subjected to can be. “It’s Snowing on My Piano” is still in the top spot. After 8 years of its existence.

A Christmas album of all things.
Embarrassing, really.
And, it gets worse. Continue Reading →

Jarle Vespestad: Musician

It has become far too rare a thing nowadays to be able to study three outstanding, highly-trained and eminently soulful musicians practicing their craft in front of an appreciative (but small) live audience. I treasure these moments, of which I had many these past twenty-five or thirty years, and tonight I was given the opportunity to add a special highlight to these experiences.

I have written about the Tord Gustavsen Trio several times before, although only a shorter piece survived the many reincarnations of this site, but today – and I warned the other musicians of the trio before posting this – I’m not going to write about the wonderful concert experience as a whole, but about Jarle Vespestad. It seemed like the other two didn’t mind. Continue Reading →

Status Quo

Most people outside of Europe don’t get it and now that I think of it, most people in Europe don’t get it either, but those who do probably feel like members of some sort of secret society or cult, forced into the underground by ignoramuses that jump at every chance to trash one of my favorite bands, Status Quo.

I’ve learned not to excuse my loyality towards a band that’s definitely had its ups and downs, I’ve stopped trying to explain the merits of their no-nonsense heads down 12-bar boogie to people who just don’t know how to boogie, and I’ve given up entirely on Americans who don’t even understand the concept of status quo … not to speak of the one in music. Continue Reading →

Guilty Pleasures: I

Being a frequent visitor of various music forums, especially those of the jazz kind, I know it’s best to keep one’s mouth shut when it comes to guilty pleasures. It won’t take long until people virtually leap at you once you have admitted to liking one or t’other band that does not fit the forum’s guidelines for good taste, human decency or simple emotive intelligence.

I have mouthed off, telling the people who did leap to take one themselves, at the moon, but after a while I learned to just keep my mouth shut and get on with it, not disturbing the atmosphere or the equilibrium that is jazz or music boards. Continue Reading →

Herman Leonard’s Jazz Memories

There are those moments in life in which a consumer like myself just wishes he hadn’t blown his money on other goodies. One just stumbles across something which has been around for a while, hidden deep within the dark recesses of the Internet, in places one just didn’t think of looking before, only for it to jump out and slam into you like an 18-wheeler speeding down the highway. Boom.

Here’s how it happened: I was actually surfing around looking for something to slap up onto my living room wall and thought of Herman Leonard, the world-famous photographer who is primarilay known for his wonderful jazz portraits. I had been looking for his work before, mostly in poster shops and art galleries around the globe, but somehow (double-duh) I never thought of checking if the man had a website. Well, he does, and that’s where I found IT. All 495 dollars worth of IT. Continue Reading →