The thing about soul is that it’s hard to pin down. It’s not as simple as identifying a sound or working off lyrics, it is actually a question of soul and that’s a hard quality to define. It is a quality that Blue Velvet Soul, the latest album by Baltimore native Maysa, has in spades however.
This album serves mostly as a showcase for Maysa’s voice, which is nothing short of gorgeous. She has a very powerful voice that works wonderfully over some very nice smooth jazz arrangements. Cuts like Quiet Fire are simultaneously soothing and uplifting. This album is the aural equivalent of a warm bath.
She does manage a very diverse set of songs with strains of jazz, disco, funk and even a little rap interlaced in the R&B. However, the album as a whole lacks challenge. This is pleasant, but not particularly stimulating. The lyrics also tend toward cliche when not meaningless. The intention was probably never to send you into innovative thought spirals, but the fact that this music is so easily digested makes it very hard for it to create a lasting impression.
This is a very fine album, just not a classic. For soul fans, this album will see regular rotation and it is worth a listen even if you don’t normally follow R&B, but it lacks the inspiration to take it from quiet to fire.
There’s a word for a band that decides to name itself after Speedy Ortiz, a tragic, minor character from the cult alternative comic Love and Rockets. That alone tells you most of what you should expect from their debut album, Major Arcana. There are songs about disturbing personal relationships, self-loathing and high school loneliness. There is also an exceptional degree of quality. This is one of the finest albums to come out in a year of great albums. So, there is a word for a band that names itself after one of the strongest moments of alternative comics. That word is apt.
To start with, the music is incredibly listenable. Speedy Ortiz have no problem showing you their influences. Pavement, Dinosaur Jr. and Slint spring instantly to mind and there are far worse bands that you could draw from. Every song is meticulously crafted and flows from section to section perfectly. The guitar work is solid throughout, providing a well-defined sketch for lead singer Sadie Dupuis to color in with her dark and personal lyrics. The music itself is intricately layered, with muscular, repetitive riffs throughout over which distortions, solos and voice work cavort. This is a strong, powerful work capable of holding your attention in its own right.
The lyrics however are astounding. Personal, deep and exquisitely written, the only problem I have with them is how easily they slip below the ever-exceptional music. The songs manage to slip below the skin, but no matter what snippet you sing along to, once you vocalize the words and the shock of what you are saying forces you to pay attention to the rest of the lyrics, you find yourself more and more drawn to the stories Ms. Dupuis is telling you. Just listen to No Below, listen to it right now, and tell me that these are not the words of someone who has thought hard and long about how best to express the truths of her life.
Major Arcana is not just an album, it is what the alternative rock albums of the nineties so often promised, and what only the best managed to deliver, a masterpiece that could be your entire life.
AlterEgoz call themselves a “purely classic rock band”.
They started off in 2001 in Hyderabad – citing an all-encompassing list of influences ranging from the Beatles, through to the Police via Rush – and in their decade long career, they’ve played hither and thither around the country; at times sharing the stage with biggies like Parikrama and Mrigya.
Not surprisingly, they’ve done quite a few gigs at the Hard Rock Cafe in Hyderabad, and August 29th was probably just another one in their list. For the writer however, it was his first taste of the famous HRC, and when he left the place after the gig was over, he was – to put it bluntly – far from satisfied.
The gig was dubbed “a tribute to Pink Floyd”, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with the band’s performance, or their execution of the songs. They had the energy, the talent and the required eye candy to keep every classic rock lover hooked till the end – but the main reason we remained till the end, as I realised later was that – everyone was waiting to hear and sing along to – some songs that actually come to your mind when you hear the name Pink Floyd.
Thus, what was missing was a proper setlist. I can only wonder how insane the evening would have been, had the band put their talent to cover songs like “Wish you were here”, “Coming back to life”, “High Hopes”, “Time”, “Money”, “A Great Gig in the Sky”, “Brain Damage”, “Shine on you Crazy Diamond” and an infinite other songs which actually made Pink Floyd the milestone in rock music that they were.
Instead, what we were treated to, was Pink Floyd’s most exhausting and … must I say… dull double album in their entire discography – the Wall.
AlterEgoz live at HRC, Hyderabad
They started out the evening with their cover of the opening track from The Wall (Disc 1) – In the Flesh – and what struck me at first, was their style of play. It was brilliant: the guitars, the vocals, the drums – oozing with technical proficiency. I’ve heard Dream Theater cover In the Flesh in one of their albums. so my expectations were set high. But AlterEgoz reached that bar, and maybe even bettered it. After all, DT’s Pink Floyd covers lack the inherent “soul” – mostly because they really cannot do justice to the vocals. This was, however, spot on.
After this initial peak however, it was downhill all the way. Yes, The Wall is a brilliant album; In fact, it is one of the most critically acclaimed progressive albums of all time – but it isn’t something you do at an evening gig. Pink Floyd did do several Wall concerts in their career, but those were concerts which involved elaborate theatrics, animations and pyro effects – which is how a true progressive music concert is generally supposed to be. The moment you take the “grandeur” and associated magnificence out of a “prog” music concert, a concept album doesn’t fit the bill at all. With this limitation, and given that the crowd in a cafe at 10 PM aren’t really in a mood to understand the subtleties of such an album, they should have used their talent better to choose more relevant songs. Instead what continued was the rest of the Wall – the Thin Ice, Another Brick in the Wall, The Happiest Days of our Lives, Mother and so on. Technically and execution wise, there was nothing wrong. But it still resulted in the crowd getting more and more jittery for songs that everybody could sing to. Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 was one such rare instance that got the entire cafe singing along, and later, Hey You and Comfortably Numb (from The Wall Disc 2) elicited a lot of cheering. (Comfortably Numb, in fact was done so exquisitely well that it’d probably have made David Gilmour shed a tear of joy, in the extreme case that he had heard this.)
To be honest, it was a good gig. If you are one of those, who worship Pink Floyd and bow down in front of an effigy of Roger Waters before going to bed, you’d have loved it. They even had an old guy who played the harmonica, and a young girl who played the oboe to get as close to Floyd as possible.
But then, when I hear “Pink Floyd”, I’m looking for certain songs. Unfortunately enough, none of those were heard that evening.
– Subhayan Mukerjee
Subhayan is the quintessential Bengali who likes maach-bhaat and porashona. He has a big thing for cars, and an acquired and somewhat esoteric taste in many things – including, but not limited to music.
Rapper. Fashion designer. Songwriter. Producer. Skateboarder. Singer. In the twenty years that the world has known him, Pharrell Williams has worn many a hat – some of them his own design, and all of them at the jauntiest of angles. As part of the Neptunes, Pharrell has produced remarkable music for a remarkable roster of artists: everyone from Daft Punk to Kelis to Britney Spears to Jay-Z owe a part of their success to Skateboard P. The man has gone on to write, sing, produce and collaborate with music’s most talented artists – the list is truly mindboggling.
But never fear. As always, Top Five Records gives you a good place to start. Here’s our list of the top five songs with those moneymaker words in the title: “ft. Pharrell”.
5. “Celebrate”, Mika ft. Pharrell
A stylish duo
Since his debut with the aptly-titled Life in Cartoon Motion, Brit singer/songwriter Mika has been well-known for his larger-than-life pop songs with delectable happy-go-lucky vibes. Last year’s album The Origin of Love featured one such gem, “Celebrate”, a disco-dance-synthpop anthem that’s just ridiculously upbeat. Pharrell co-wrote the song with Mika and contributed a verse, too. His intuitive sense of arrangement and design, paired with Mika’s joyous, talented voice, makes for a laudable combination. Here’s hoping to more collaborations between the two.
4. “Change Clothes”, Jay Z ft. Pharrell
Hova and Pharrell have quite a history. Mr Williams has had a hand in every Jay Z album (with the exception of The Blueprint) since 2000’s The Dynasty: Roc La Familia, including this year’s Magna Carta… Holy Grail. Our favorite collab between the two geniuses (genii?) is 2003’s “Change Clothes”, off of theiconic Black Album. Everything on the track just works: from that indubitable Neptunes bounce to Jay’s unmistakable cool. We find it only fitting that the refrain in the video shows Pharrell flanked by fawning models at a fashion show: it’s just that slick.
3. “Give It Up”, Twista ft. Pharrell
Twista is one of the most underrated rappers in the game today. There haven’t been as many bright spots in his career as there should have been, but one of the brightest and most colourful is definitely his collaboration with Pharrell on 2007’s “Give It Up”. The video is somewhere between 1950s airline commercial and a Tetris game, full of solid colors and candy boxes and pin-up girls: classic Hype Williams. Pharrell and Twista seem to have a lot of fun in the song, listing out all the kinds of girls who “wanna give it up” for them – black, white, Spanish, Middle Eastern, you name it. We have a slinky feeling that the song just wouldn’t have been as great without Pharrell’s presence.
2. “Get Lucky”, Daft Punk ft. Pharrell
All around the world this year, for the entire summer, critics and fans have been fawning over this phenomenal song. Music this groovy has not been made since the disco fever; it’s funny that it took a couple of French robots to bring it all back. Between Nile Rodgers’ shimmery fretting and Pharrell’s infectious chorus, it’s no wonder that “Get Lucky” is THE song of the summer. The song’s rabid success is anything but luck, though – Pharrell and Rodgers collaborating with Daft Punk is just that electric a combination.
1. “Drop It Like It’s Hot”, Snoop Dogg ft. Pharrell
cool cats
“I got the Rolly on my arm and I’m pouring Chandon/ I got the best weed ‘cause I got it going on,” claims Snoop in the opening lines of this track, and you know he isn’t lying. Big boasts populate the track that coasts atop one of the slickest Neptunes beats ever – composed entirely of tongue clicks. The track really showcases why there will never be anyone as stylish in the game as Snoop Dogg. The black and white composition of the track’s brilliant video perfectly suits the Neptunes’ minimalistic style. “Think before you fuck with lil Skateboard P,” warns Pharrell in one verse, and he’s right. There’s really no one quite like him.
Honorable mention:
“Blurred Lines”, Robin Thicke ft. Pharrell and TI
In 2013, Pharrell Williams became only the 12th artist in the history to hold both the #1 and #2 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 chart at the same time, pairing the ubiquitous “Get Lucky” with the equally omnipresent “Blurred Lines”. In the well-received music video, Robin Thicke, Pharrell, TI and three young models flirt in front of a simple peach-coloured wall, soundtracked to a Marvin Gaye-meets-Prince romp that will definitely get you dancing. It’s suave, swaggering, and an absolute riot. What’s not to love?
Agree with our list? Disagree? Let us know in the comments below!
Top Five Records is no stranger to the Chennai Music Scene; we’ve done our best to highlight the polished, challenging, unique indie sound that comes out of a city that normally has a less-than-stellar reputation for indie music. Bands like Little Babooshka’s Grind, Junkyard Groove, Adam & the Fish Eyed Poets and the Shakey Rays have challenged that notion time and again over the past year or two, and now it’s the F16s’ turn to challenge India’s perception of what the southern city’s young musicians can come up with.
The F16s’ debut album, Kaleidoscope, is a mix-and-match of styles, genres, sounds, stories and inspirations (although somewhat skewed towards a mix of Arctic Monkeys and the Strokes) that comes together in a burst of colour and shapes, and ideally beer. It’s almost overwhelming. Heady, carnival-inspired post-break-up indie? Check. Guitar-fuzzed, anthemic garage rock? Check. Smokey-back-room-inspired depressing alt rock? Check. Kaleidoscope works as the perfect showcase for one of the few Indian bands who can rightly claim the tag “genre defying.”
It also doesn’t hurt that the EP is accompanied by absolutely gorgeous album and single art.
So, on to the album, then. “Prelude” first tiptoes and then charges onto the scene armed with a driving guitar riff, pressing drum beat and tinged with acid techno. A little over a minute later, however, “Light Bulbs”strolls in: a swinging, off-centre electric piano groove, with drawling guitars and drawling vocals. Full of a painful, morose sort of ennui, it’s almost impossible not to imagine a depressed 20-something in a Delhi restrobar with her friends, trying to stay afloat in the gloomy bar-hopping culture of young corporate India. Appropriately enough, the song ends with a vocal harmonization that rivals that heard in Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida”. It does have way more cowbell though, so I suppose in some respects it’s even better.
The depression doesn’t abate as the EP slides into “Avalanche”. We love the original acoustic version, but it’s great to hear it fully realized in electric: subtle organ shifts and a catchy syncopated guitar rhythm (anyone else hearing A Certain Romance?) strengthen a song that’s about trying to run away from your troubles.
It’s not all doom and gloom, however. Martin Luther King Jr.’sI Have a Dream speech allows for a bizarre but fun segue into “The King’s Dream”, a song that starts off sounding like Jet and ends up sounding like The Fratellis. Fuzzy guitars and a very danceable beat make for the kind of music that’s perfect for non-IDM-saturated hipster parties; their groove just won’t let you stay still. Don’t worry, though: the Reverend’s spirit lives on in the song through its lyrics full of rebellion (although admittedly from an upper-middle-class youth perspective).
“Who Robbed the Rogue” moves The F16s’ sound into new territory yet again, flying through the Strokes’galaxy with a minor stopover in MGMT’s world. The song’s outro is a universe apart entirely, and builds up into a crescendo of what we can only describe as Wagnerian rock (think early-2000s Muse).
“My Shallow Lover” is a great follow-up song after “The Rogue”. Ostensibly a song of discovered adultery with none of the tears and all of the middle fingers, “My Shallow Lover” doesn’t beat about the bush:
“I don’t give a fuck about who you love and who you want and who you are, because I’m more important than you.”
High on cheek, sugar, and rotary organ keyboards, what sets this song apart from all the others in the EP is its super-awesome carnival descent at the end of the track: A heady mix of shoe-gaze and dream-pop that sounds exactly how I imagine dropping acid and riding a merry-go-round would feel.
Wrap your head around that for a second.
“Nuke” slows things down a bit, for a second, before turning up the fuzz slowly. First comes another Arctic Monkeys-esque drum groove (revisiting “Whatever People Say I AM” territory), before Josh opens his pipes again to belt: “Can you take control?” The song’s outro returns us back to Kaleidoscope’s initial techno-ish feel, albeit with a heavier, more industrial sound, before we’re left to our own devices surrounded by a fading hiss of static.
Kaleidoscope does have its rough parts: not all songs are for everyone, and it takes a rather unique listener to be able to appreciate each and every song. We’re talking about a release that jumps from genre to genre, from inspiration to inspiration, and from story to story almost every other minute. Still, each jump brings you to newer territory and more awesome sounds, so the aural exercise is definitely worth it.
Go listen to the F16s on their SoundCloud account and buy their EP over at OK Listen. And check out the band’sFacebook Page for lyrics and absolutely gorgeous album/single art!
Also, a huge shout-out to Harshan Radhakrishnan for making keyboards sound cool!
My Bloody Valentine was one of the bands to define shoegaze back in the late 1980s and 1991’s Loveless is still probably the greatest example of that alternative rock subgenre ever to be created. They broke up for quite a while, but 2013 marked their first album in 12 years, m b v and a worldwide tour that took them to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco.
Their performance was exactly what one would expect from one of the bands that defined shoegaze. It was very loud, rather repetitive and had almost no talking. There was one intelligible piece of crowd interaction in the concert and that was to tell us that the next song was to be the last. When playing to a crowd, you have to deal with both the luxury and tyranny of the crowd’s undivided attention. It is your chance to really engage with your crowd, and during the concert I spent more time thinking about work than the music itself.
These complaints may seem unavoidable when dealing with shoegaze, but even if they artists refuse to interact with the crowd, their music should. It is their job to create a journey for you to travel through over their concert, and it was not only difficult, but also unrewarding to fall into the flow of this performance. There were some great moments over the three and a half hours of the concert and three songs, including my personal favorite Soon, were excellent. Taken as a whole, it was a good concert, but I expected better from alternative rock royalty like My Bloody Valentine.
There are bands who are better in the studio than on the stage and sadly My Bloody Valentine has proven to be one of them. This was a fine concert, just not a great one.
In the late 90s, two Frenchmen released a landmark debut album that forced the world to reconsider its current taste in dance music. This album was followed in 2001 by an even more historic album that, once again, forced the world to reconsider. Ensconced invariably in metallic helmets and a coolness that doesn’t quit, Daft Punk have made it their job to redefine things for a world that is far behind the curve. What happens, then, when they choose to delve in the past rather than look towards the future?
Brilliance.
In May 2013, Daft Punk built a futuristic discotheque in space called Random Access Memories, and they’re inviting everyone to their party – not just the cool kids. Old-time artists sessions (Paul Jackson Jr., JR Robinson et al) form an intoxicating mesh of disco-jazz, while dreadlocked funk icon Nile Rodgers frets his way through the fabric of their material. Hip-hop/R&B superstar Pharell Williams croons in the foreground and Panda Bear is at the back selling acid tabs. And at the very middle of all this commotion are two robots, trying their very best to make music like they’re humans from the 70s.
Before RAM released, Daft Punk recorded disco king Giorgio Moroder talking them through his rise to fame. Eventually, they chose to include one snippet, heard on “Giorgio by Moroder”, about his involvement in the birth of disco music. “I wanted to make a record with the sounds of the 50s, the 60s, the 70s,” explains Giorgio in his clipped German accent, “And then have a sound of the future.” This is the defining sentence, the centerpiece and the crux of Daft Punk’s effort in this album. What Daft Punk tries to do on this album is what Giorgio tried to do all those years ago.
Giorgio Morodor on the cover of his ’77 album From Here to Eternity
But an ideological centerpiece is not all that RAM has. EDM (which, by the way, Giorgio Moroder basically invented in ‘77) in its modern form caters to humankind’s strange desire to sound more machine-like. But Daft Punk has, as usual, taken this idea one step forward. Random Access Memories is a story about humans that became robots and are trying to remember what it’s like to be human again. The robots try to access their half-forgotten human side through their random access memories. Get it?
The story starts off, in my opinion, right before Giorgio Moroder gives Daft Punk his clue of combining the past with the future. On “Lose Yourself to Dance” (a directive that really does result in full-body grooving) , we meet Pharell Williams at his absolute soul-funk best, in a jam with Nile Rodgers, who’s belting out the tightest disco riffs this side of the 70s. They create magic again on the spectacular first single “Get Lucky” which would be an honest-to-God hit in disco’s heyday. On both tracks, the Parisian androids are tinkering quietly in the background.
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After Giorgio’s monologue, a few things change in the story. Album opener “Give Life Back to Music” is their distilled learning from Mr. Moroder: in order to create the future, revive the past. Pharell leaves, the vocoder enters, and Nile Rodgers continues to provide the funkadelic backbone. “Let the music of your life/ Give life back to music,” they implore, and you’re inclined to agree.
Pretty soon, though, the robot takes over the human. “The Game of Love” is about a robot emoting, almost like a human, about heartbreak and eventual acceptance, and on “Within”, the robot is slowly starting to lose touch with its human side completely. “There are so many things that I don’t understand/ There’s a world within me that I cannot explain,” laments a vocoder-edged automaton, amidst slinky piano and theatrical flourishes.
Thomas Bangalter (L), Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (R)
The storyline (and album) finds dead center on “Touch”, a magnificent magnum opus featuring the old-world folk voice of Paul Williams. The robot, expressing itself through Williams, asks how to relate its computerized memory of touch to the human feeling of touch; and after a full-blown blissful horn and gospel section, the robot realizes the answer is (of course) love. After this life-altering moment (“Sweet touch/ you’ve almost convinced me I’m real”), Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories comes full circle: about humans that slowly became robots, and are slowly turning back into humans. It will send shivers down your spine, I promise you.
Why aren’t the songs in chronological order? Because that’s not how our (human) brains work. Memories are distorted, rearranged and accessed (yes, randomly) by our brain; Daft Punk is trying to mimic that very phenomenon. The album title is really very clever, non?
Daft Punk makes music that foils critical analysis. They want to play 70s disco in their spaceship from the year 4000, because they think it would be a fun thing to do: and that’s their only reason. They are able to distill their playfulness and whimsy into a structured, inspired album – without becoming self-indulgent – and therein exists their greatness. Towards the end of “Giorgio by Moroder”, Giorgio leaves one final observation in the listener’s mind. “Once you free your mind about a concept of harmony and music being correct, you can do whatever you want,” he notes. Daft Punk understand this very well, and on this album, you will, too.
Best Tracks:Get Lucky, Giorgio by Moroder, Lose Yourself to Dance
I’m sure no one doubts just how awesome Jay-Z’s life is. He’s married to Beyonce, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, undoubtedly one of the greatest rappers of all time, and married to Beyonce. Besides, he’s never been shy about telling us all of this. You can’t have a Jay-Z album without some self-congratulation in every song, and we love him for it. No, I don’t doubt that his life his awesome, just that his latest album is.
Magna Carta … Holy Grail is far from a terrible album. The beats are fine, there is plenty of classic Hov lyrics and flow and some truly exceptional moments. For instance, Jay Z Blue and Nickels and Dimes are both excellent by any standard and F.U.T.W. is quite good. However, these stand-out moments are the exception to the mediocrity that defines this album. Even worse, they are often balanced by moments best forgotten. Letting Justin Timberlake take the first 80 seconds of your album takes quite some effort to forgive.
At 43, maybe we should expect an album that is more business than rap, and certainly the strongest songs are only about topics Jay could address at this stage in his life – fatherhood and philanthropy. Whatever the reasons may be, the result is album best forgotten. This is promising to be a very strong year for rap, but Magna Carta … Holy Grail doesn’t hold a place in it.
Deltron 3030 is a supergroup consisting of producer Dan the Automator, rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and Kid Koala. Their first and only album Deltron 3030 is a space rap opera that laid the seeds from which the Gorillaz were to grow. Their second album, Event II is set to be released this fall and they have started touring again. Today, they played the Stern Grove festival and they were incredible.
The set started with half an hour of Kid Koala all by himself. With no laptop and no headphones, he took us all to school in the art of turntabling. He started with a homage to Louie Armstrong that could have slipped into Future Shock with no questions asked. From there he dropped an eclectic set featuring a Jay-Z beat, his four-year-old child’s favorite song and “a song for the 50-year old women out there”. In case you couldn’t tell, it was great fun.
From there we had a lengthy break for set-up and then Deltron 3030 came out to 3030 from their eponymous album. This is my personal favorite Deltron song and it was excellent live. The song is marked by the soundscapes it presents and the backing symphony did a great job in setting the atmosphere. It was the trio though that owned the stage. With Del rocking a Star Trek shirt, Dan’s conductor guise and Kid Koala’s infinite charisma, they were by far the stars of their own show, as well they should be.
The set was a pretty equal mix of Deltron 3030 and Event II songs, which was an interesting mix of familiar and brand new. Dan the Automator had to teach us the chorus of one of the songs before it started and then cued us in so that we could sing along. Of course, for Deltron songs, the crowd came in knowing the words. 3030, Virus, Mastermind, Positive Contact and Memory Loss all had the crowd pumped from the opening bars. The new songs gave this concert a freshness I have rarely experienced. If the purpose of this tour is to hype Event II, then it worked for me. I am definitely stoked for its upcoming release. Having said that though, the standout moment of the concert came with the encore when they dropped Clint Eastwood, a song both Del and Dan played pretty large parts in.
Deltron 3030 was a landmark album and sounds as innovative now as it did nearly fifteen years ago. All three of the artists are rulers of the underworld in their own right and together they are unmatched. Their live show only bolstered my respect for them and I am very excited to see what will come next. This is the standard to which rap concerts should be held.
Bags and Trane features, as the name may suggest, vibraphonist Milt Jackson and saxophonist John Coltrane in their only collaborative record. Together with Hank Jones on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Connie Kay on drums, this is a classic hard bop album and showcases both leading musicians to great effect.
One of the defining characteristics of this album is the great respect Bags and Trane show each other. Their solos flow smoothly into each other and their conversations, especially the one in the composition Bags and Trane, are perfect. Despite the quality of their rhythm section, their solos are the thankfully omnipresent highlight of the album. Take for instance the beginning of Late, Late Blues. The bass perfectly sets the base of the song which Milt Jackson then follows and quickly expands into a full blown solo played over the backing of the rhythm. That passage is jazz in its purest form.
The name aside, the album was done with Milt Jackson as session leader and all of the original compositions are his. The result is more relaxed than much of the music John Coltrane was putting out at the time, but that is no way takes away from the quality. This is very clean bebop and though it may be unhurried, it is brilliant.
This is an album that justifies the reputation of the artists who made it and deserves much more notice than it gets. This is an immaculate album, and while it may not be quite the masterpiece that its contemporaries Giant Steps or My Favorite Things are, it is a classic that any jazz fan should be proud to own.
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