I've decided this year that buying presents that my family are perfectly capable of buying for themselves if they actually want the thing isn't what I want to do. Instead, I'm trying to do something a bit more personal.
We're a very musical family, so doing something with music was my immediate idea. I've decided to compile a music collection for both my mother and my brother.
My mother is very well-versed in everything classical, but she's pretty much missed all music later than Louis Armstrong. What I'd like to do is make a collection of all the must-know pieces of the last 80 years that still bear any resemblance of the things she likes (ie. not metal, hip hop, trance).
My brother already plays the piano and the guitar, but he's been wanting to start with either the trumpet or the saxophone for a while. I know my mother's going to give him trumpet/saxophone lessons as a present and I'd like to help him make a choice between the two by compiling trumpet and saxophone music I like.
Now, I would really appreciate suggestions of what to include for either of them.
For my mother I'm thinking Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Queen, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Nirvana and probably a lot of others I'm forgetting right now.
For my brother I'm thinking Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Dizzie Gillespie and Miles Davis. However these are all quite old (I really don't know any contemporary jazz trumpeters/saxophonists) and I don't know them that well.
Any suggestions are welcome, especially for specific pieces, as I don't know all of those artists that well.
Thanks 7mk! Yeah, Led Zeppelin definitely has to be on there. St. Germain would be a great pick, but unfortunately he already knows the band well. More in that style would definitely be great though.
I'm not sure about your brother, I'm not well-versed in jazz beyond what you've listed.
But for your mom, I've noticed that you've pretty much left off anything after the early nineties. I'd say that the must-listen artists since then would probably be Radiohead (OK Computer and Kid A), Arcade Fire (Funeral), Neutral Milk Hotel (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea), Sigur Ros (Ágætis byrjun), The White Stripes (White Blood Cells), Sufjan Stevens (Illinois), Animal Collective (Merriweather Post Pavilion), and maaaaybe The Knife (Silent Shout, possibly too "electronic" for what you're going for). I know it sounds like a lot, but it provides a pretty good picture of everything music has accomplished since that point. Since the internet came about, there's far less stuff that everybody and their mother has heard at some point -- everything branched out, so it's a lot harder to come up with a small definitive list of great music.
For music before then, I'd probably throw in some Talking Heads, David Bowie, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, The Clash, something funky (Parliament/Funkadelic, Sly & the Family Stone, James Brown), something bluesy (BB King, Muddy Waters), and something proggy (King Crimson, Yes).
For more ideas, check out this list of 1001 albums you must hear before you die. Everything in there is worth listening to at least once, but since you obviously can't get all of them for your mom, it's a good reference to look for something you've missed or to get new ideas.
EPT
