Best Of Lists and a Jazz Offering

A Five Year Crash Course in Music

Recently, I discovered a great idea while searching for musical ideas and news on line. A young British woman named Ang (short for Angela) is compiling lists of the 52 best pop music albums of every decade starting with the 60s. She proposes to listen to one album each week and post video and written reviews when she has digested the music by listening to the album at least five times. Here is a link to her blog in the section where she explains how she selected her album candidates. You can click through to see her lists for the 60s and 70s and the reviews she has posted so far. You can also follow her on Facebook.

So far Ang has posted her 60s and 70s list. Rather than her reviews, I am most interested in her selections. I am very tempted to follow her idea and listen to all of the top albums. In fact I started the process by listening to the first selection on Ang's 60s list: Aretha Franklin's I Never Loved a Man The Way I Love You, her first album on the Atlantic label.

In hearing Aretha at her best, I got interested in the definition and evolution of R&B and Soul music, a genre that I know little about except for what everyone hears on the radio. I am toying with idea of going through Ang's selections in this genre and perhaps researching some selections of my own. In any case, you will be hearing more about Aretha Franklin and this seminal album that began her rise to become Queen of Soul and one of the biggest music stars of all time.

Jazz on a Summer's Day

Meanwhile, join us in the large meeting room on the first floor of the library for a unique experience. On Saturday, November 21 at 2:00 PM we will be showing Jazz on a Summer's Day, a day in the life of the Newport Jazz festival of 1958. This is a true work of visual and musical art which mixes scenes of an idyllic summer on the water with jazz performances from the festival. This film captures a lost America and presents classic performers like Anita O'Day and Louis Armstrong in their prime. This ends our jazz offerings for a while (Fall is for jazz), so don't miss this large screen showing.