It’s All Jazz

Your city is is percolating recently and you’ve been hearing about all the great live events, sports, big name jazz musicians and Broadway shows coming through your town. You might be wondering to yourself why you haven’t gone out anything, and maybe it’s time to buy some tickets.

If you’re not quite sure what you want to see, consider that the main categories of live events are sports, theatre, concerts and comedy events. Ask yourself what you like best. After you’ve made a decision, you’ll want to poke around to see which venues handle this type of event in your city.

Now that you’re on the hunt for event information, you’re probably wondering where to start. Using Google is usually everyone’s first choice because of their search engine’s effective method of locating and listing information.

To find information on a jazz venue or artist, you might consider using social media websites. Facebook is a good place to converse with your friends about which venues/artists are good and which are not. Twitter is also quite useful for retrieving large amounts of information quickly.

So you’ve been browsing around on different sites and have gotten a few opinions and some basic ticket information. Now it’s time to narrow your search and hit up some of the best deals around.

So you’ve looked around on a couple of different ticketing sites, and you’re looking for jazz events in your area. What next? Well, pin down the exact event you’d like to attend and do your best to find one that has enough tickets left over for you and your friends.

If there are tickets to your desired event, check the price. If the website is selling sold out events, they will likely be a little more expensive than their face value. However, as they are sold out you won’t have much choice, other than to pay a little bit more for tickets to the great event.

Now that you’ve followed through on finding jazz tickets that are both exciting, and that fit your budget you are ready to make a purchase. Most retailers will offer you with three delivery options. You can pick up at will call, have the tickets delivered to your house, or have them emailed to you. You’re now ready to enjoy yourself at the event. Have fun.

OK, the first topic for the day is Jazz Reviews.

The second topic is a new Miles Davis EP I bought entitled Evolution of the Groove. It features 5 tracks, the first of which is a previously unreleased outtake of Freddie the Freeloader back when it had no title. The outtake has some great dialogue between Miles and Teo Macero and the tune itself has some killer 16th note basslines and vocals from Miles. Totally nuts.

Next you have two guest artist remixes. The rapper Nas appears on a remix of Freedom Jazz Dance, and Santana performs on It’s About That Time. Believe it or not, Nas is the better pick. Santana’s lines sounds forced and more of a marketing scheme then a musical choice.

Finally there are two short remixes of Honky Tonk and Black Satin. If any songs ever, these don’t need remixing. They’re pure groove. Honky Tonk of course comes from Get Up With It and Black Satin from the legendary On The Corner. The Honky Tonk remix adds a new drum beat and some atmospheric whole notes on bass. Also added is a long distorted guitar solo. Black Satin starts with the same intro and moves to a more rock-ish version with plenty of synthesizer and distortion.

All in all, it’s not a bad album, but it certainly could use work. Luckily it only cost me $2 at the Princeton Record Exchange (PREX, an amazing place btw). So for the price, it wasn’t a bad buy.

Finally on my list is Kid Koala. Koala is a turntablist signed with Ninja Tune records. He frequently incorporates jazz into his work, notably covering Basin Street Blues. So take a listen. Anyways, the reason I put him on here is because he does an absolutely beautiful version of Moon River that puts me in tears. Have a listen: (editor’s note: Video down. Feel free to search on YouTube)