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Five jazz albums that are a gateway to not liking jazz

EVER feel like you should grow out of shit chart music and try to get into jazz? These albums will put you off very quickly:

Charles Mingus: Mingus Ah Um (1959)

This album came out three years before most people believe music officially began with The Beatles’ Love Me Do, so liking it would make you very cool. However, you don’t even manage the first track, as the ‘clever’ title, an impenetrable Latin play on words you have to look up, immediately puts you off by demonstrating how the genre couldn’t be any more up its own jazzy arse.

Dave Brubeck Quartet: Time Out (1959)

Dave Brubeck is apparently the master of ‘cool jazz’, but as far as you’re concerned he’s the master of loads of people deliberately playing in completely mad time signatures, presumably just to piss you off. Take Five has frequented TV adverts so often it’s annoying, even making Cadbury’s Twirls painful to think about. And that’s the album’s best song, so Christ knows what the rest of it’s like.

John Coltrane: Giant Steps (1960)

‘Hard bop’ is a very literal name for a genre of music that sounds like being hit over the head with a trombone. Coltrane is a legend of ‘free jazz’, which is the most unlistenable type as it seems like everyone is playing their instruments backwards and with no regard for what the rest of the band is doing. Maybe that is what’s happening. It’s the kind of irritating ‘experimental’ thing jazz musicians would do.

Miles Davis: Bitches Brew (1970)

You’ve heard of Miles Davis, so this one must be at least slightly accessible for new listeners, right? Wrong. The first two ‘songs’ add up to 47 horrible minutes and sound mainly like someone having a seizure with a trumpet in their gob. However much you listen, you can’t get the hang of the time signatures so even tapping your foot along is impossible. It’s chaos, and not in a good way.

Best of Smooth Jazz (2020)

Right, this compilation is better. The rhythms make sense. The songs are a sensible length. Some of them have even got singing! However, you quickly realise that ‘smooth jazz’ appears to mean ‘f**king long saxaphone solos’, so you sack it off in favour of Taylor Swift. She might be trite but at least she’s tuneful.

'Mummy had a wee on the road': Things your kids will remember about their incredibly expensive holiday

WHETHER you splashed out on a Caribbean cruise or spaffed thousands on Center Parcs, these are the only holiday memories your children will take with them into adulthood.

We banged heads jumping into the pool

A fortnight’s all-inclusive holiday in Majorca will be remembered only for a single moment of trauma. What was a generally relaxing break full of sun, swimming, sandcastles and sorbet will be transformed over time into a hazy nightmare of screaming, panic, blood and tears. Just be grateful they don’t remember walking in on Mum giving Dad his holiday blowie.

Dad wouldn’t let us have ice cream

Yes, because they’d had an ice cream literally 20 minutes ago. In fact, the staff in the local gelateria were sick of the sight of you. But that will be forgotten by your children who’ll firmly believe they went on holiday to a Charles Dickens novel where all they got was gruel. In years to come, as they watch your coffin being lowered into the ground, they’ll turn to each other and say: ‘He was such a mean man.’

The arcade had a really cool Minecraft game

Despite being taken to some of the world’s most fascinating heritage sites, your kids will remember just one thing: the arcade opposite the hotel had an awesome Minecraft game. To be fair, your only memory of ten childhood days in a resort near Venice is playing Mortal Kombat for the first time, so what were you expecting?

Mummy had a wee on the road

Ah, a road trip through the Loire Valley. The beautiful vineyards, the historic chateaux, the quaint little towns… and Mum squatting at the side of the road, trying not to piss all over her new sandals. This memory will be so powerful that your kids won’t recall the interminably long car journeys, or Mum and Dad yelling bad words at each other after getting lost, just the weeing. She’ll never live it down.

Nothing

When your 25-year-old daughter excitedly tells you she’s going to the States for the very first time, you’ll gently remind her about the three weeks she spent with you in Florida when she was eight. Oh, she thought that was Disneyland Paris. Just let it go: she doesn’t need to know that you remortgaged your house to give her what you thought would be an unforgettable experience.

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