BEWARE: DON'T COME IN HERE!

Stainless Gamelan: Inside The Dream Syndicate Vol. Iii by John Cale

What are you doing here? Are you crazy or something? I told you NOT to come in here.  You're just asking for trouble, you unlucky blog reader.  Naive, innocent, unlucky blog reader—just go away, okay?

You're still here.  Okay.  Maybe you don't understand.  This page is haunted.  There's a scary ghost over there.  And whoa did you see that?—it's a man with no face eating copper wire!—This page is so haunted and spooky.  It makes me nervous just thinking about this cursed page, which was posted on top of a page about an Indian burial ground, by the way!

Oh, you're still here.  You're so brave.  Don't say I didn't warn you, okay? Fine, you can listen to the first song—but just the first song, okay! BUT DO NOT—I REPEAT—DO NOT LISTEN TO TRACK NUMBER TWO! Don't even go near it.  I can't overstate how cursed it is.  
 

Wow, you're even braver than I thought.  I underestimated you. Hey, if you make it through the entire album will you write to me —just to let me know that you're okay?

Stainless Gamelan: Inside The Dream Syndicate Vol. Iii by John Cale

BAGS MEETS WES! BY MILT JACKSON AND WES MONTGOMERY

Bags Meets Wes! by Milt Jackson and Wes Montgomery

It's pretty much guaranteed that whenever vibraphonist Milt "Bags" Jackson guests on a session there will be—no pun intended—good vibes all around.  You see what I did there? Seriously, he's kind of a genius.  His tasteful accompaniment complements much of Hard Bop Jazz in perfect and often quite surprising ways.  As a bandleader, however, he's always been sort of underappreciated.  Then again, the vibraphone is a very underappreciated instrument to begin with.  If you could only choose one jazz instrument to hear for the rest of your life, I'm sure most of us would go for the piano, trumpet or sax.  

No, as a leader, Bags doesn't have a Kind Of Blue like Miles Davis.  Nor does he have that Somethin' Else factor like Julian "Cannonball" Adderley does.  Rather, Milt Jackson's most famous albums are those in which he shares equal billing with another artist.  One notable example is Bags & Trane, which features—you guessed it—John Coltrane.  

Another great example is this one: Bags Meets Wes! 

One thing I have yet to mention is that Milt "Bags" Jackson is not just a good vibraphonist.  He's possibly the best in Jazz history.   What makes this session so excellent is that his collaborator Wes Montgomery is possibly the best guitarist in Jazz history.  But we're not finished.  Bags Meets Wes! also features Wynton Kelly, a pianist from the aforementioned Kind Of Blue, drummer Philly Joe Jones who was in Miles Davis's first quintet and bassist Sam Jones, who appears on Cannonball Adderley's Somethin' Else.  This is one hell of a lineup!

That this is one hell of a lineup shouldn't surprise anybody.  It's so typical to see amazing lineups like this in Jazz music.  But the players on Bags Meets Wes! all deliver.  In its own sweet way, this is a classic.  

Bags Meets Wes! by Milt Jackson and Wes Montgomery

And for your convenience:

Bags & Trane by Milt Jackson and John Coltrane

Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis

Somethin' Else by Cannonball Adderley

SINGLES GOING STEADY: "NICE GIRLS" BY EYE TO EYE

Eye To Eye

Imagine an early 80s New Wave song written by Todd Rundgren for Nicolette Larson or Rickie Lee Jones.  That pretty much describes "Nice Girls," a single by a duo called Eye To Eye.  The song actually did okay, reaching #37 on the Billboard Top 40.  Personally, I think it should have hit the Top 20 or possibly even the Top 10.    I can't stop listening to this song.   Keyboardist Julian Marshall sounds like a Donald Fagan clone—Fagan actually appears on the corresponding record, by the way.  Meanwhile, Deborah Berg's voice can make any man melt.  Beautiful.  

"Nice Girls" by Eye To Eye