I was thinking that I wanted to put some content on here once a week, even if it has nothing to do with me or my projects. This is where my site really becomes a blog and less of a “hey, check out what Vito’s got coming into stores now!”
So, as you can tell by the title of this post, this is about John Coltrane. Many of you who know me well know that I’m a huge Coltrane fan. I personally discovered Trane in college, as a Freshman (SPOILER ALERT: this anecdote might show up in a later volume of FCHS, actually). I was in a band, so to speak…it was more like 5 of us meeting in the lounge on the 9th Floor and just jamming. I was supposed to sing, but we ended up just playing, so I was playing percussion (on whatever I could get my hands on). Our bassist was this phenom by the name of Ian. He was unstoppable…a real force of nature. Anyway, Ian introduced me to Coltrane. I had an affinity for Jazz, having listened to Big Band with my grandfather and then catching Branford Marsalis in Sting’s first two solo albums. A friend made some David Sanborn tapes for me, and I enjoyed them and at that point, yeah, just like everyone else in America, I liked Kenny G. But when I got to college (University of Pittsburgh), I discovered Miles Davis and it kind of opened my eyes to what Jazz really was. Ian and I listened to Kind of Blue and he pointed out Coltrane and then he dug out Blue Train, one of the greatest Jazz albums of all time. It was at that point that I realized what Kenny G and David Sanborn lacked and it was soul. They might have had heart, but they didn’t have that extra ingredient that made Jazz transcendent. So, after this, Ian and I bonded on music. We would go over to a Jazz club at Carnegie-Mellon and he’d sit in with the band (I wasn’t much of an instrumentalist, so I just hung out and listened). The one area where Ian and I disagreed was on drugs; he felt that using heroin made him a better musician and sited that Charlie Parker, Miles and yes, even Coltrane, all experimented with it. I hope that he’s out there somewhere, still playing, but cleaned up…just like Coltrane did.
Anyway, as your Friday (Weekend) Distraction, here are a few Coltrane videos from when he was at his peak. For more on John Coltrane, visit the following links:
By the way, the image above was painted by my good friend, Mark Chiarello.