I recently saw a late-night re-run of "A Different World," that spin-off from the Cosby Show circa 1987 or 1988 about the historically black college. I was surprised that it wasn't totally awful. It had its heart in the right place, a good message (tolerance, self-respect, compassion), and say what you will about him, turns out Sinbad isn't that bad an actor. All the same, I couldn't help but feel that the characters were really cardboard cut-outs. (I met a sax player who worked in DC in the 80s and met the presidents then. He said Bush had evil in his eyes, but at least you could tell there was some thinking going on there, however evil it was. Shaking hands with Reagan, though, was like shaking hands with a carboard cut-out.) You can't disregard it as if things were so much better now, it was just part of the zeitgeist of the times, a wish for a different world. Not that people really wanted to go back to 1962, they just wanted cardboard that made them feel like they were back to the future from 1962. There's not a single dropped note on this Wynton album, the entire band is spot-on perfect. The lines are all as clean as the ones on Wynton's suit on the cover. All the same, I can't shake the feeling that this is a museum of jazz LPs meticulously protected in glass cases. You've preserved the actual album, but all you get to do is a look at the cover, a very pretty cardboard cut-out. The liner notes by Crouch don't help.
Suggested Wine Pairing: Dude, I'm sorry to say this, because Wynton is not to be trifled with. But it's a bottle of Lancer's Rose (probably doesn't taste all that bad (maybe it does), but a relic of marketing campaigns from bygone era nonetheless.)
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