I like Stan Getz. I love his tone, his ’smoothness’, his way of improvising and his general musicability. He’s one of my favorite tenor players …or rather most listened to for whatever that’s worth coming from me. I picked up the West Coast Live CD from the library many months ago where he’s playing with Chet Baker and accompanied with only drums and bass. I ripped it (bad me) and never really got around to listening to it until these past few nights. I think I’m done with it now.
He (Stan) is FREAKING ANNOYING! It’s brutal. Almost every time Chet got an opportunity to solo, Stan would come in and play these distracting background figures. He’d be playing down through guide tones and rattling off little melodic snippets that at times completely chocked off any musical direction Chet might want to take. Was he drunk? High? Lol …whatever he was on, most of the time it was not good. When he soloed by himself he was great. When Chet soloed by himself he was great. But when almost every Chet solo had its ‘holes filled’ by these low, whispering tenor liks …it was painful. So yeah, I didn’t like it …and I couldn’t get to sleep.
Sure, the heads were great and there where a few songs that ‘together’ they would hit things off really well – but those ‘together’ moments were dwarfed by just plain awful tenor sax budding in/wankery. My spell check is telling me that ‘wankery’ is not a word!? Maybe it never got the chance to listen to the CD? I’ll play it for it now …and move the other programs to the background so as not to annoy the rest of the computer.
Image from mp3bluster.com
