Like CAAF, I am and have always been a compulsive list-maker. Aesthetic listmaking is only a game, but a good one, because when it’s done right, it helps to focus the mind and sharpen your sense of discrimination. To be sure, I think the postmodern journalistic fad for reducing all aesthetic experience to a series of lists has gotten way out of hand, but even so, I rarely resist the temptation to draw up another one whenever asked.
Carrie’s first “About Last Night” list is a good one, in part because I would have unhesitatingly chosen two of the items on it myself, Jeremy Thrane and (naturally) The Dud Avocado. Not surprisingly, it makes me feel the itch to get in the game again. I am, alas, too damn busy to put together a Really Reflective List, so instead I’ll offer you a quick and dirty one. Here are five CDs I recently acquired and plan to play at the earliest opportunity:
• Ornette Coleman Quintet, Complete Live at the Hillcrest Club
• Giovanni de Chiaro, Scott Joplin on Guitar
• The Best of the Fairfield Four
• Morton Gould, Showcase
• Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony, Beethoven Complete Symphonies and Selected Overtures (a newly remastered reissue of the 1939 broadcast cycle)