Notes and Tones: Organissimo Readers' Edition

[BFrank]

Cool that at least a couple others have long-running lists. Like I said, when I look back through it there are LOTS of shows I don't remember at ALL, and wish I did.

I have about 800 individual shows in the list, but that doesn't include festivals I've been to annually since 2008 (SXSW, Big Ears and a handful of others). I have those on separate sheets - probably another 500-600 acts

[dicky]

In retrospect I dearly wish I had done something like this for shows/performances I attended. 40 years of hearing live jazz and all I have is my memory of which I'm less distrustful with each passing year.

[medjuck]

I wish I had kept a record of the concerts, club dates and festivals  I've seen over the last 62 years, but I think I remember almost everyone I've seen even if I can't always remember sidemen or my reaction. 

Edited July 30, 2024 by medjuck

[BFrank]

23 hours ago, medjuck said:

I wish I had kept a record of the concerts, club dates and festivals  I've seen over the last 62 years, but I think I remember almost everyone I've seen even if I can't always remember sidemen or my reaction. 

I'm amazed at all the shows on the list that I DON'T remember. Maybe I'm just getting old and forgetful 😆

[Rabshakeh]

During the pandemic, I had a quiet period when I was confined to my home, and I started to make a list of notes on the jazz records that I listened to whilst working (a new experience for me in those days).

To begin with it was just free jazz. And the original aim was to better understand how free jazz and free improv developed chronologically. 

i put together a file setting out the artist, title, date of recording, musicians, label, whether I liked it or not (a simple / dumb star or no star system), some narrative notes, and roughly the genre. 

With time the list got a bit mad. As I say, it started with just avantgarde genres and just classic records. I gradually added non avant garde genres like bop, cool and hard bop, moving beyond just the classics to a much wider approach.  Then I added more traditional genres like swing and classic jazz. Then fusion. Then gradually vocal jazz (which I'd never formerly paid attention to); jazz rap and jazztronica; top 40 horn bands; Latin jazz and jazz samba, then pure afro Cuban music and samba / MPB with no real jazz connection; big band non jazz records and studio era concoctions; minimalist composer like Terry Riley; jazz poetry; ambient and electronic music; traditional big band pop singers like Sinatra; ambient or jazzy krautrock and Canterbury prog; jazz-adjacent library music and sound tracks; jazz dance and britfunk and stuff like Sade; easy listening and exotica; pure avantgarde stuff like Throbbing Gristle; sound recordings; smooth jazz and later fusion; tango and flamenco; and pop stars doing great American songbook records.

In the last five years I have logged around 23,000 records. It has all become a little obsessional but as obsessions go it is fun, and I find that in some ways it helps to save redeem lost time. 

I refer to the notes surprisingly frequently. Rarely for this forum but often in day to day life. It is interesting how useful it is, and how much fun there is to be had in spotting trends or looking back over favourites. 

[John L]

I haven't done it, but sort of regret not doing it.  

I have amassed a large collection of live recordings made by a number of artists.  But I often have little to go on in choosing what to listen to.  It would be nice to have a least of few comments on the qualities of each recording when deciding what to put on.   In particular, I tend to forget about fabulous special live performances that can get lost in my large collection.   

[andybleaden]

Never did but would have liked to use it to compare a few regular favourites to see what new stuff I here relistening to old favourites - like that piano solo 0R that recording technique OR with these speakers or those headphones etc as I hear new stuff all the time - even on the very oldest favourites (either that or I forget that I heard it the first time around)

[Alexander Hawkins]

Sviatoslav Richter's listening notes, (some of?) which are collected here, are totally fascinating!

[mikeweil]

I have lists of the live performances I attended or the programme notes. I keep a notebook for my reading activities. But as far as the music  I listen to is concerned I only noted favourite tracks.

[Peter Friedman]

When I play a recording (almost always an album), I write the leader and title of the album on a list. That allows me to check back as to what I have listened to by an artist. I started making those lists about 5 years ago.

For example, if I want to check if I had played an album by (say) Jimmy Heath recently I can refer to my lists.

[Brad]

On 5/26/2024 at 5:43 AM, mjazzg said:

Nope, never have

Ditto. 

[Big Beat Steve]

An interesting discussion. I am among those who sometimes feel they ought to have made notes of details to remember about the records they spun less frequently through the years. Sometimes it might have helped to target future listening the next time around. 
But the only notes I ever made were those I made with my DJing in mind (which happened not extremely often, but relatively regularly from the late 90s to about 2018). So whenever I came upon a track that I found danceable enough I put a small circular sticker next to the track on the back cover and made a small note on the sticker to indicate what the track would be suitable for (jivers, lindy hop, boppers, etc.). And I made similar indications with a felt tip pen on the CD jewel cases. But of course this concerned only a very small part of my records - and not nearly all I listened to through the years.

What I liked less (but have come to live with it if the price was right and the record otherwise clean) are those who could not refrain from scribbling this kind of notes directly on the back cover with inerasable pen - marking the tracks with crosses or stars to indicate their subjective quality or liking, or words like "fast", "soft", "weak" or whatever. 

And then there is something else that seems to have been not all that rare:
I've come across and bought quite a few LPs through the years that had dates scribbed in a corner of their inner sleeves. Clearly the dates that the previous owner played that record. Which sometimes struck me like something the pea-counting bureaucrats among the collectors would do. As if you arrange your listening habits so you work off all your records in regular turns. 
A trait that has died out or no one admitting to this kind of habit today anymore, I wonder?