Naima

Last night I was looking at Dissident Voice and learned that tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker had died. There was a link to a performance of Coltrane’s classic ballad, ‘Naima’, over nine minutes of tenor solo on YouTube. After I watched it, it occurred to me to search for Coltrane on YouTube, and came up with this classic 1965 performance, with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. Call me an old fogey, but I confess I still prefer Coltrane’s version. I’m not sure why. Maybe Brecker’s version is too busy for a ballad? It didn’t bring tears to my eyes.

Anyway, if you need a break from reading leftwrites or lenin’s tomb, there’s heaps of great video on YouTube, like this Coltrane Quartet performance of ‘Afro Blue’.

Every time someone tells me that they spent $80 going to a gig, I reckon, yeah, I’d pay $80 if Coltrane came back from the dead. That was a while ago. Eighty bucks is probably a cheap gig these days. Anyway, if you don’t mind the small screen and the lag between the video and the audio, you don’t have to wait for Coltrane to return from the grave, and it’s free!