Song X

Artist: Pat Metheny & Ornette Coleman
Label: Geffen Records
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 720642409626
EAN: 0720642409626
ASIN: B000000OPX

Release Date: 1990-10-25

Related Categories:

Avant Garde & Free Jazz

| Jazz | Styles | Music

Bebop General

| Bebop | Jazz | Styles | Music

General

| Jazz | Styles | Music

Jazz Fusion

| Jazz | Styles | Music

Modern Postbebop

| Jazz | Styles | Music

General

| Pop | Styles | Music

General

| Miscellaneous | Styles | Music

Bebop & Post-Bop

| Compilations | Jazz | Styles | Music

General

| Funk | R&B | Styles | Music

Smooth Jazz

| Jazz | Styles | Music

Listmania:

More and more things I have enjoyed recently
My Favorite Pat Metheny CDs (in no particular order)
All that you can FREE....Ornette
*Essential Pat Metheny Group*
My Top 10 Favorite Guitarist
Charlie Haden meets Jack DeJohnette!!!
This is NOT Easy Listening Music
My Top 15 Pat Metheny Albums (in order)
The 25 Best Albums from 1986
Worst Examples of Reviews on Amazon (work in progress)

Tracks:

Song X
Mob Job
Endangered Species
Video Games
Kathelin Gay
Trigonometry
Song X Duo
Long Time No See

Similar Items:

Pat Metheny Group
Watercolors
Quartet
At the "Golden Circle" in Stockholm, Vol. 1
We Live Here

Customer Reviews:

My my we are all so opinionated........2005-10-13

An album by a lot of very very good musicians but certainly NOT one that many people will enjoy.

Ornette of course has his own ideas about what music should be. There is no denying that he's a thinker. On the other hand Miles Davis said "Anyone who listens to this can see he's all f*****d up." Miles was no slouch when it came to making 'outside' music. I think you have to take his comments into consideration. In addition Ornette imitated Miles in that he started working with an electric band with two basses and two drummers after Miles had a similar arrangement.

And Metheny is a better musician than given credit. It's worth listening to just for that. He's one of those guys who seems to be progressing at least instead of stagnating.

The really experimental stuff is intense, while the less experimental is surprisingly straight forward.

Suffice it to say it's not for very many people. It's highly intellectual music. It's not my cup of tea. I think Duke Ellington was correct in saying "It don't mean a thing if it don't swing." I do see the need for this type of, what I would call over intellectual music, and it's definitely worth a listen just to get your ears stretched, but it's not what I listen to very often.

If you think about it Ornette didn't really change music very much. Very few musicians have been influenced by his ideas. They respect his ideas but don't use them where as John Cage, or Varese's ideas are now totally a part of rock music. There are some good reasons for that. I'm waiting for the microtonalists myself. That's where I see the future.

File Under "C" for Coleman.......2005-08-26

I was given this CD a few years ago by my brother who was given it by his brother-in-law. They're both Metheny fans but couldn't listen to this CD. I couldn't stop playing it when I first got it, and still listen to it regularly, but this is coming from an Ornette fan much more than Metheny.

It's obvious that this is an Ornette album with Metheny just another cog in the wheel. I'm not convinced that Metheny was even the right choice for guitarist on this album and would be interested to hear what Bill Frisell or Marc Ribot would have sounded like in his place. The only songs where Metheny sounds like Metheny is on the two songs he co-wrote with Ornette; Kathelin Gray and Trigonometry. They're both beautifully written and played, with very tasteful interplay between the players. That being said, I like this album better than any other Metheny album that I've heard and better than the three times I saw Metheny in concert.

If you appreciate great ensemble playing with a supergroup of musicians, playing challenging compositions than this CD is for you. If you're familiar with Coleman's previous stuff, you won't be surprised at all but if you're only familiar with Pat Metheny's relatively laid back compositional style than be prepared for a shock.

Great album all in all.

I finally get it . . ........2005-06-27

. . . after ten years. I don't know why it took me so long, but I'm finally enjoying this wonderful, if slightly off-kilter, session. I think this is at least the third disc of this music that I've bought--not all, thankfully, at full price. And I'm keeping this one.

Maybe it's just that my ears have, over the past decade, opened up a little. That's part of it, I think. And I do remember listening to it this time around with no particular expectations. A few observations. I'm entirely taken by Coleman's violin playing on "Mob Job," so much so that I'd like to have heard more of it represented here. I don't think I'd like a whole disc of it, and I know he doesn't play the violin "correctly," but he has a unique way of approaching it, achieves some delicious sonorities, and interacts with Metheny and bandmates very interestingly. I was also surprised by the quieter, more lyrical selection, "Kathelin Gray" (a mournful, elegiac ballad), and parts of "Mob Job."

I also think the inclusion of Denardo is more than nepotism. He adds a kind of percussive thrust and coloration--granted, a little dated--that Coleman pere and Metheny obviously wanted, and to these ears, at least, he admirably acquits himself. Haden and DeJohnette are at the absolute top of their game and come across as absolutely comfortable in this, for the most part, free-jazz setting.

There is much to recommend this music to anyone used to more outrý jazz--the sly blues/field holler/gospel sensibility, the unique aural signature, snatches of beauty emerging from what initially sounds like aural chaos, the last half of "Endangered Species" with its train motif, weirdo Denardo contributions, and sheer high energy, and some of Coleman's most inspired playing. One should also acknowledge the adventurous spirit demonstrated by Metheny, who risked alienating his fan base (mission accomplished, if the reviews posted at this site are typical) by setting aside his hugely popular regular jazz gig to play with one of his heroes. And it's not as if Metheny has never done this kind of thing before; the title cut to Off Ramp shares a similar approach to what's going on here.

Certainly not for everybody, but he who has an ear, let him hear.

X-out Song X.......2005-05-19

What are you people thinking? Has the world gone mad? This is NOT jazz. I can play better than this and I don't even play saxaphone. Someone came up to me the other day and said "Hey this is great stuff!" When I told him that they weren't even playing music whatsoever, he said "No way man, they are CHOOSING those notes!" I slapped him in the face.

I thought that the birth of Kenny G. as a jazz icon was the lowest point in jazz's history...I was wrong... Song X is rock bottom.What happens when a drummer, guitarist, and saxophonist all solo at once? Song X a.k.a. crap.

Not for THIS Methany fan..........2005-02-10

I got into Pat Methany in 1987 when Still Life (Talking) was released. I just happen to be in Tower Records on 67th street in Manhattan and they were playing it and I asked the guy "What is this awesome music" I bought it and the Methany love affair began. At the time of this release(Song X) I was still in catchup mode...that is, buying all the Methany I could find. Up to this point I had NEVER been disappointed. I saw this relase get 5 stars in downbeat and rushed out to buy it as well.

I can still recall what I felt when I hit the play button on my old CD player back then. YIKES! WTF is going on? I thought something was wrong with the disk...no REALLY...I DID! In the back of my mind I was thinking...O.K. this thing does have Ornette Coleman on it and I know he is a space cadet when it comes to music but I never thought I hear Methany going down this path.

I am not a musician and perhaps it takes a musicians ear to appreciate the abstractness of these musical phrasings. But I knows what I hate....and I hate this. As sophisticated as it may be to the musically astute this sounds like white noise to me. I love the music on "As Falls Wichita..." perhaps that's as sophisticated as my musical palate will allow for me to delve.

For all of you who can appreciate this...bully for you! I sold mine for $3 at the used CD shop the next day...hopefully one of you picked it up from there for $6 and got a good deal.

Music CD:

Music CD

Music CD

Music CD

Theme + Echo = Kill ~ Legion

Any Day Now ~ Jones Gang

Anthology

The Very Best of Simply Red ~ Simply Red

Avanti ~ The Ramblin' Ambassadors

Stories Untold ~ Peggy Le Keuler

Commonplace ~ Every Little Thing

Season of da Siccness ~ Brotha Lynch Hung

Various ~ Hip Hop Heritag

Life Goes On ~ 2Pac