(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 60: Hitting the Medicated Wall

Not gonna lie: I think I’m hitting a bit of a wall. And I don’t know if that’s because of the constant churning out posts, struggling to decide in a day what album I want to cover in addition to the stress of writing for my other sites and covering work/family stuff, or if it’s the fact that I’m now on anxiety medication and my body is having some issues adjusting. It took me years to get to the point where I could finally talk to my doctor (it helped that during the appointment I had a full-blown shaking attack), and so rather than just abandon it I’m trying to get used to it until the “good” benefits take effect in a few weeks. So I don’t know how consistent I’ll be for a while, and this playlist is more of a hodgepodge of music I’m either listening to or interested in listening to.

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archie shepp - four for trane

Archie Shepp: Four For Trane (1964)

Much as I enjoy a good cover song, I don’t own a lot of cover albums. Usually it’s a little too much of a good thing, but Day 6 of the #mayvinylchallenge demanded either a cover or a sample, so I dug around until I realized that from a covers perspective jazz really fits the bill: artists are constantly covering each other’s material, re-interpreting, extending and improvising off of melodies and chordal/modal progressions. All of which led me to the work of Archie Shepp, whose debut as a solo leader (he had a few co-lead records with Bill Dixon and Lars Gullin) for Impulse! was his homage to the saxophone king, Four For Trane.

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