Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording - John Coltrane

You might know Coltrane as one of the most prolific jazz artists to have lived on this world. His music went from hard bop, avant garde, and free jazz. Slowly, his albums got more experimental and the sound become louder. This is the album that contains his last live recordings and the surprise is that this is no ordinary album.

Although the record itself isn't in the best quality, I believe that's what helps bring this noisy aspect to life with the record. He plays only two songs on this, "Ogunde" and "My Favorite Things". What's really funny about this is that the two songs barely sound like the previous versions of the songs because of how destructive the sound is on this music. Each song being over twenty five minutes of pure violent free jazz like nothing else every created in music before.

John Coltrane plays his saxophone as if he was giving this music his last dying breath and trying to play out for the world one last time. In a way, that's sort of what he did. He was known to be a spiritual man who was able to play concerts that were over three hours because he felt like the music itself was some sort of holy figure making him play (So it as what I've heard about him). Maybe he tied up all of that energy from those three hour shows and compacted it into these two songs, which is a little over an hour.

Once you've actually listened to this album your view of jazz will change dramatically. Nobody could ever expect jazz to be so brutal, loud, and extreme, but here it is.

The madness begins seven minutes in. You'll know what I'm talking about when it begins.