Friday, January 04, 2008

Lyrad's Random 10

When I first got into college and first got heavily into jazz, Charlie Hunter was more accessible to me than anybody. Between the Charlie Hunter Trio and T.J. Kirk, his guitar work skirted closely enough to rock for me to understand some of what he was doing but was unique to me and helped to expand my horizons greatly on what the guitar was capable of. While the trio primarily played original songs, T.J. Kirk was the namesake of the three artists they played: Thelonius Monk, James Brown, and Roland Rashaan Kirk, all of whom I'd also become interested in at the same time (the original name, which made more sense, was James T. Kirk, but a lawsuit from the Roddenberry family ended that quick). I don't know what Charlie Hunter's been up to for the past ten years or so, but I was always extremely impressed with his play style and the 8-string guitar he used to play melodies and, at the same time, pluck out bass lines. He emulated Joe Pass in a lot of ways, but used the ideas from Pass and made them his own.

1. T.J. Kirk--Four in One
2. Nico Fidenco--Eternal Anguish (from the soundtrack to Emmanuelle in a Women's Prison)
3. Entropia--Mara's Theme
4. Chipper Thomas--Wars of High Germany
5. Charlie Barnet--You're Looking for Romance
6. Jesper Thilo--Strike up the Band
7. Scratch Acid--Holes
8. Sergei Rachmaninov--Symphonic Dances (3) for Orchestra (or 2 Pianos), Op.45, 3.Lento assai [Royal Liverpool PO; Sir Charles MacKerras, cond.]
9. Naked City--Victims of Torture
10. Chris Knight--Bring the Harvest Home