So, I was thinking about A Love Supreme tonight. It was actually my first exposure to jazz, when I was fifteen or sixteen years old. It occurs to me that jazz has been present during three very separate periods in my life, and with each new incarnation it grew exponentially in both scale and depth.

The first period was A Love Supreme. That was it. Just one recording. I have no idea how I decided on that particular CD, or even how I decided on a jazz recording in the first place. It could have been that I had known something of the album, but I doubt it; my music buying habits back then were slapdash, at best. This is evidenced by the fact that the CD I bought wasn't the Impulse! masterpiece, but instead a minor-label offering called the John Coltrane Gold Collection: A Love Supreme. It was a live recording, complete with smatterings of applause at the appropriate moments, and the saxophone would frequently fade away as the man stepped away from the microphone.

I had no idea what I was hearing. I hadn't had any exposure to jazz in any form until that point, and my ears weren't ready for it. Apparently, however, some other part of my anatomy was ready, because after a while, it grew on me. I didn't understand it, but I certainly enjoyed it. There was a happy accident involved in the purchase of this crappy budget-bin disc, in the form of a fifth track, not present on the major-label release. It was Spiritual! Though a long, ten or eleven minute track, it was more concise and much more accessible to me, and though I would go away and come back to the genre over the next several years, I believe that Spiritual built a solid connection between me and jazz. To this day, it is one of my favorite three or four jazz compositions.

For me, A Love Supreme is something of a paradox. Looking at its individual sections, there are parts that I could do without. As much as I love jazz percussion, the drum solo at the beginning of the third part, Pursuance, seems like a bunch of wasted time. And as long as I have become a heretic for having said that, I might as well also admit that I've never been too interested in any of the fourth part, Psalm. That being said, I simultaneously believe that as a complete work, A Love Supreme may have been the absolute pinnacle of jazz itself, such a behemoth of American musical history as to be, more than any other jazz recording, absolutely essential.

Could A Love Supreme be called synergistic? Greater than the sum of its parts, and all that? I'm not sure that "synergistic" can be used in that way. I could draw a parallel to Dark Side of the Moon. If I had to pick one Pink Floyd album to be played at, say, my funeral, my inauguration as President of the United States, or any equally important event, I would pick Animals every time. But if I had to pick one album to offer to recently-arrived aliens from another galaxy to represent psychedelic rock, or even the wider sub-genre of classic rock, of course it's going to be Dark Side of the Moon.

It occurs to me that this is where my conclusion should appear. Although I received my high school diploma nearly ten years ago, it is still difficult for me to compose a written piece of any length without subconsciously getting locked into AP Comp essay mode. So, I am leaving off a conclusion in an attempt to break that tendency. And, because I'm tired. Goodnight, Minneapolis.