Record Recipes #44
The birth of cool.
A selection of analog recommendations for your listening pleasure. Pulled from my personal collection. Today’s issue: the untouchables.
Outkast - Stankonia. I don’t know what the future holds. I wouldn’t trade places with a Gen Z or Gen Alpha for all the gold you could offer. If I had one wish, after world peace and actionable reversal of the climate crisis, it’d be that young people could know the unbridled joy of the party that erupts when B.O.B. drops in the club. As Charmaine Neville put it so purely at French Quarter Fest last year, “Booty shaking music can unite the world, y’all.” So Fresh, So Clean
Fugees - The Score. When Norman gave me this album, I knew I’d made it into the inner sanctum. We made it past the iTunes playlists of his early 90’s East Vancouver essentials, a crash course in what shaped the Chinese-Canadian multi-disciplinary artist (get into the street art). He said Ready or Not, this is a library staple. Norman has never lied to me once. How Many Mics
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue. I believe in accountability, so I shan’t ignore the excellent pieces of writing1 that grapple with the difficult truth of Davis’ behavior alongside his brilliance as a musician. We have infinite examples of the coexistence of truths: visionary art and reprehensible behavior can and often do flow from the same source. One doesn’t ever justify the other, but if we bury it in the back of the bin we sure can’t learn anything. “Laws of silence don’t work,” says Maggie in Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. On his centennial, the music is as relevant as the appraisal of the man who made it. Freddie Freeloader
Keep listening.
Vanity Fair, 2026: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/story/miles-davis-centennial-100-years
LA Times, 2021: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-02-01/cicely-tyson-miles-davis-love-story-marriage
I personally know B.O.B. as the song that plays over the speakers right before my favorite band comes on stage. It’s happened enough times that I’ve been able to point it out.