Thank Q

Quincy Jones & Friends - Ai No Corrida

We'll use the holiday designed to most emphasize gratitude -- one of the highest of human emotions -- to celebrate the life-n-legacy of someone whose repertoire contains very few turkeys.

There are plenty of iconic, groundshifting figures in The Arts who are so recognizable and singular, we recognize them by one name alone, no other appellation needed.

There's a whole universe of 'em, from Charo to Sting to Prince to Adele. And Cher. How can I forget Cher? They'll revoke my Gay Card if I exclude Cher, and accuse me of not believing in love or some other scurrilous lie.

Unless we're counting former ballplayer Harold Reynolds -- who often goes by "H," but as far as I know has never played the Rose Bowl, scored a film or organized any globally-charting charity singles -- there is only one whom we recognize by a single letter.

He finally left this terrorplane a few days into November, so I thought -- a few days before the month ends and on the appropriate day -- we should see the man they called Q on his way off the always-limiting 3D grid.

There is nothing I can add -- in terms of what he did in, around and to popular music in our lifetimes -- to the galaxies of tributes that have already appeared across all media in the wake of his departure.

You just go down the list of moments and records and movies and whatnot, and it may as well be a living history of the trend trajectories and tributary territories of the sounds of the last gosh, what? 65 years?

For me, the roads he paved others will forever drive upon begin with that life changing night way back in the early 1990s when, at a friend of a friend's house, I had my eyeballs and earlobes obliterated to ecstasy by the Ray Charles album Genius+Soul = Jazz.

Of course I had been well exposed to Quincy Jones long before I moved to San Francisco and heard that record and those charts and the utterly balls-deep, Rock-n-Roll energy Q's (and Ralph Burns') arrangements contribute to the music.

I think I was allowed to watch Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice at an age they'd call CPS about today, and I had been taken to see The Wiz -- the Broadway show and movie first-runs! thank you culturally Communist parents!!!! -- only slightly less younger than that.

Only time I ever saw Michael Jackson live, and I was all of 11 years old. And of course I was really, really into the credit sequences of Sanford & Son and that 1970s Bill Cosby Show as a child, so much so that I think they considered me for Harmonica Funk Rehab briefly... until I moved on, to their eternal relief, to more adolescent-appropriate ephemera like Dynomite! magazine and Kiss.

But I've Got News For You: that first night with that (still) unbelievable album kind of changed my life around music and it's a moment I somehow have never forgotten, even though it was not any sort of spectacular or special occasion, and we were just hanging out in this guy's apartment across from Barney Burger in Noe Valley, losing our cannabis stash in a series of small fires.

Anyway I think I was discovered in the doorway of Streetlight Records the next morning, camped out and waiting. I don't know that I've ever run out and purchased an album faster than that one that time, and a whole lotta that had and still has to do with Q.

So yeah, not to change the subject but this here concert was masterfully remastered and denoised, from the original pre-broadcast vinyl, by 1bgsky, yet it circulated all choppy and gappy between tunes so I fixed that. I changed almost nothing else, but now it plays like a flowing version of itself that's more worthy of the attention the music -- which features all sorts of luminaries from "Thunderthumbs" Louis Johnson to Patti Austin to James Ingram, as well as that MJ guy -- deserves.

Quincy Jones & Friends

Budweiser Superfest

Rose Bowl

Pasadena, CA

8.1.1982

01 introduction

02 The Dude

03 Love Is In Control

04 Razzamatazz (feat. Patti Austin)

05 One Hundred Ways (feat. James Ingram)

06 Hold On

07 Just Once (feat. James Ingram)

08 Do You Love Me (feat. Patti Austin)

09 Ai No Corrida

10 Stuff Like That (feat. Ashford & Simpson and Michael Jackson)

11 FM outro

Total time: 53:38

Quincy Jones - keyboards & musical direction

Greg Phillinganes - keyboards & vocals

Rod Temperton - keyboards & vocals

Carlos Rios – guitar

Louis Johnson – bass

John Robinson – drums

Ollie Brown – percussion

Jerry Hey - trumpet & flugelhorn

Jerome Richardson - tenor saxophone

George Bohanon – trombone

Vivian Cherry – vocals

Peggy Lipton Jones – vocals

Charles May – vocals

with

James Ingram - vocals, Tracks 04 & 06

Patti Austin - vocals, Tracks 03 & 07

Nick Ashford - vocals, Track 10

Valerie Simpson - vocals, Track 10

Michael Jackson - vocals, Track 10

1bgsky remaster of the Westwood One "Budweiser Concert Hour" pre-broadcast transcription LPs

declipped & retracked -- with all tracks crossfaded and joined properly to be seamless -- by EN, November 2024
387 MB FLAC/direct link

One more thing before we close out November: I spent a few days last week messing around with the roughly 45 trillion film & TV soundtracks associated with the Q-verse, and -- focusing on the funkiest and even several of the less obvious ones -- constructed two hourlong queues of Q's cues. A concoction which may or not be with the concert in the folder for today... I don't dare comment on the grounds it may incinerate me. Or invigorate me. Or something.

And thusly concludes a November to remember. I'm buying a house next week and moving base of operations in December, so I have no idea what I'm gonna be able to post, but before that chaos ensues I wanted to use what I hope is a happy Thanksgiving for all to honor the transformative existence of the late Quincy Jones, and to express a heartfelt thank Q.--J.

3.14.1933 - 11.3.2024