I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come face to face with an album that I think is perfect, that I know I need in my collection, that I think everybody needs in their collection, but just wasn’t motivated to buy it even though it was right there in front of me—most likely because some new, shiny distraction caught my attention. Just yesterday I was writing about how slow I was to start picking up items in the Radiohead catalog on vinyl, and I didn’t even get to OK Computer until 2017! (Which means I haven’t done an entry on it.) I also never managed to pick up a copy of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. At least not yet. I have a lot of his other albums, but that one—the universally acclaimed canonical classic—isn’t on my shelf. I have it on CD still, even though I don’t have any CD players left in my house. But not on vinyl.
There’s a reason why I generally end up taking my time with albums like these: They’ll always be in print. Maybe that sounds somewhat naive, but it’s almost certainly true. At least as long as people are buying records, and given that they just surpassed CD sales for the first time in decades, I think it’s pretty safe to say I’ll be able to find a copy when I think I need to bring one home.
The other reason is that albums like these become something more than a consumer good in time. They’re part of the fabric of the culture. Q-Tip once said of Kind of Blue that it’s like the Bible, and everyone just has a copy in their house. I could probably make a similar argument for A Love Supreme, though that one’s a bit less laid-back and appropriate for all situations. It’s an intense, passionate, emotional jazz album in which Coltrane pours everything he has into his playing. Some listeners tend to find his playing a bit on the abrasive side, and I can’t fault them for that. He also had plenty of albums of ballads and standards that you could put on in mixed company, but at his best, John Coltrane challenged his listeners, himself, the whole idea of what jazz music is.
But A Love Supreme is one of the most famous jazz albums of all time, let’s not make any mistake about that. Which is perhaps why I put it off for so long—it will probably always be in print! Probably…but for some reason at this specific moment in summer of 2016, I was compelled to buy this very album (along with another classic jazz album you’ll read about tomorrow). The moment arrived, and it came home with me.
And I’m glad it did, you know? Because I should have a copy of this. It’s a masterpiece—the hypnotic chanting of the album’s title in “Acknowledgement,” the passionate performance in “Resolution,” the whole transcendent spiritual experience. I’ll just go ahead and say it: A Love Supreme belongs in your home.
Rating: 10.0
Sound Quality: Great
1000 Times Jeff 