Everyone's fav Trane album

[danasgoodstuff]

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/john-coltranes-free-jazz-classic-interstellar-space-at-50-w466815

[HutchFan]

Good article.  Thank you for sharing.  

[CJ Shearn]

Really nice article.

[optatio]

Agreed - inspired to hear again:

 

JOHN COLTRANE: INTERSTELLAR SPACE (+2)*. IMPULSE/MCA WMC5-118 [1990] 

* The additional tracks are 'Jupiter (Variation)' and 'Leo'! 

[Scott Dolan]

Not mine. It's one of the only Coltrane albums I still don't "get". 

My favorite would either be First Meditations or Sun Ship. 

Edited March 8, 2017 by Scott Dolan

[JSngry]

I don't know if it's my "favorite", that still might be Side 1 of Coltrane Plays The Blues...but it's the one I listen to most frequently for information.

[Scott Dolan]

That and Coltrane Jazz were his two best Atlantics, IMO. 

[brownie]

CRESCENT  is the one!

[StarThrower]

I've never listened to Interstellar Space. I like Crescent, the s/t Impulse and Prestige albums, and Coltrane's Sound. Not a big fan of his free playing.

[Guy Berger]

On some days it's my favorite.  In my top 5 for sure.

[Scott Dolan]

I'll gladly cast a third vote for Crescent! His best album from 1964...

Yeah, I said it.

Also, Stellar Regions > Interstellar Space

Edited March 8, 2017 by Scott Dolan

[Eric]

It's interesting, after listening to most of the catalog on a semi-regular basis for 35 years ... well beyond "need to give this one another listen because it's supposed to be a classic" 

So what do I really listen to, what do I pull when I just want to hear some Trane ... 

Plays The Blues

Coltrane's Sound

Crescent

sometimes My Favorite Things

Despite how it looks, not really an "Atlantic" guy per se and have no issues whatsoever with the free stuff.  All of the above just always sounds good, fresh.

 

[paul secor]

I couldn't choose one favorite.

When I saw the thread title, I thought it was going to be another lovefest for A Love Supreme. Glad that it was about Interstellar Space.

[soulpope]

Dear to my heart ....

[sonnyhill]

[xybert]

Interstellar Space is awesome, had a big impact on me when i first heard it. 

Said it before but my favourite is My Favorite Things. Just love that one so much. It makes me feel better, whatever the situation.

 

 

[JSngry]

I can tell you what my favorite three bars of Coltrane are, the intro to this solo (atarts @ 2:15)

But for sheer volume of information, I still go with Interstellar Space. It's not "free" playing, not really, it's cell-based developmental improvisation, overwhelmingly harmonic in its foundations. Nothing to do with "playing changes", but harmony goes far beyond that.

I'll say -and with full caveats of imo - that Interstellar Space is the apex of harmony in improvisation. Nowhere to go with it after this except to the "higher vibrational planes" (or whatever he called it) of ayler and beyond, and hell, song form done, cellular structures on their way to being done, the random/collage/etc. paradigms of various allegoric and electronic musics (popular, vernacular, and "formal") weren't "rebellions" as much as they were logical evolutionary steps. Regressive reactionaryism is inevitable, but so it's its eventual futility, until as it becomes time to do it all over again.

Hell, Coltrane himself was on the way by 1960...it took him another 5-6 years to catch up with himself!

 

[danasgoodstuff]

Not necessarily my fav either, just thought it was interesting the way the article talked about Interstellar Space as if it was just a given that everyone loved it. FWIW It was the one that made me get late period 'Trane (to the limited extent that I would claim to do so).

[Chuck Nessa]

Too many Trane eras to choose from. Interstellar Space is a wonderful capstone.

[JSngry]

38 minutes ago, danasgoodstuff said:

. FWIW It was the one that made me get late period 'Trane (to the limited extent that I would claim to do so).

The way I've always heard it was that it was the "mountaintop" of his "free" playing, the one moment where all the "experimenting" came into a really solid, coherent, vision of clarity. Don't know what triggered it, and you know, it's a record, so maybe a few days before or after it was even more focused, but on this day, anyway, there it was.

And not to dis Alice in any way (too many cheap and invalid shots taken at her, imo), but the simple duo of Trane & Rashid really flowed without disturbance or distraction...we always thing about "piano-less groups" in terms of trios or larger, but hey, here's one too. Same thing when Trane & Elvin did their duet moments.

All of which just to say that if something like Om or Kulu Se Mama has people scratching their giggling heads thinking that Trane went nuts off into some kind of Expressionistic Acid Trip, well, to the extent that there's any truth in that, here's proof that there was some goal, some end in sight.

[Scott Dolan]

I just can't get past Ali's playing during that era. Yeah, I get the whole "multi-directional" thing. A rhythmic carpet, fine. My ears were too tuned into Elvin. 

I did dig what he did later in his career, particularly The Rings Of Saturn. But his work in '66 and '67? I'll pass. 

As for Alice, while she was a step down from McCoy, I never thought she was bad in any way. It's really too bad that The Olatunji Concert is so horrid sonically, because she was really on fire there! I also thought she played some badass stuff on the VV date. That's the best post-quartet date, IMO. 

[JSngry]

Dude, I've heard some really vicious dissing of Alice from players who still get upset by post-Quartet Trane, up to and including that she really didn't know what she was doing and the variant of that that she "played wrong changes"...it's ridiculous, really. No, she was not McCoy, and no, she was not as "mathematical" in her approach to harmony as McCoy was, but she certainly knew what she was doing, and it's hard for me to believe that Trane would let her play "wrong changes" in his band for as long as she was there. I mean, c'mon, this was not John & Yoko, not even. And I don't hate Yoko, far from it, but this was not just "concept", if you know what I mean, this was science, fact-based music, no "fantasy" or such involved. The whole harp thing, that was for real, they were both hearing that. Blissed out on acid, god, math, whatever, yeah, some people reduce it to that because that's all that fits inside their heads, but these were not frivolous people. Not frivolous.

I'm not about to say that Alice was a "great artist of all time" or anything like that, but c'mon...

[Scott Dolan]

You're preaching to the choir, brother. 

It's all about the John/Yoko "where everything went wrong" blame game. 

[Mark Stryker]

For the record, in a one artist-one record challenge I'm taking " Transition." And for dessert: the five-minute tag from the 1962 "Bye Bye Blackbird" 

Edited March 9, 2017 by Mark Stryker

[Eric]

1 hour ago, Mark Stryker said:

For the record, in a one artist-one record challenge I'm taking " Transition." And for dessert: the the five-minute tag from the 1962 "Bye Bye Blackbird" 

Well if we are getting dessert, I'll take the three-minute tag at the end of I Want To Talk About You from Live at Birdland.

Edited March 9, 2017 by Eric