**** Review of School Days by Stanley Clarke - A Good Album that Changed the Evolution of Music

This album was made in 1976, so it is before my time.  It was made back when jazz musicians where trying to figure out how to fuse rock n’ roll and jazz without losing any musical sophistication.  I can appreciate this one today as a 4 star album, but at its time it was pioneering though it has been all but forgotten in the shuffle of seemingly countless albums that may be purchased.

Stanley Clarke was never really a household name and really it was only commonly known among those that loved bands like Return to Forever and Weather Report, which have also been practically forgotten in musical history.

Unfortunately, for most people their knowledge of fusion doesn’t go much beyond this time period, and there is tons of great new fusion that never achieved the popularity of Stanley Clarke, but for many young kids getting into fusion their knowledge of music doesn’t go this far back extensively.  Those that have heard of him are probably either jazz musicians or bassists that can count themselves among the elite of any genre.  Those that probably love him today are kids that are musically talented and love jam bands, because really there is no difference between a jam band and the genre of jazz known as jazz fusion.

Though this one is relatively unimportant as far as being known to the consciousness of modern music, it is deeply imbedded in the subconscious of modern music.  In fact, if Stanley Clarke came out today, then he probably would have achieved greater popularity than he ever did with this album, and School Days is possibly his most important effort.  My guess is that though people did not know much about what Stanley Clarke was doing at the time he released this album, that he would have been very successful among the Millennial Generation as a jam band.  That is, Stanley Clarke is one of the founding fathers of bands that made good music that would later enable bands like Phish to fill stadiums, and though I often criticize popular bands, I have to admit that Phish is quite talented.  However, Phish does not hold a candle to the musical skill of Stanley Clarke.

Like most good jam bands, Stanley Clarke’s music is capable of inducing a peaceful state of mind comparable to hypnosis.  However, most of the rhythms of music are capable of inducing a hypnotic effect, it is just that Stanley Clarke does it in a way that I would estimate that more people would find pleasant than say heavy metal, and in some ways that makes me a minority.

Stanley Clarke has been called a virtuoso by many musicians, and I won’t subtract that from him.  So, you might wonder why I subtracted a 5^th star in my review.  The album lost the 5^th star is that it suffers a little bit from being artsy fartsy, where this particular style of artsy fartsy is not my favorite, and I tend to like music that sounds heavier, more than music that seeming tranquilizes me into a pretzel of rhythmic thought.  That is, what this music album is any hooks.  It is ultra complicated jazz, and though it does have its regressions, they just don’t seem all that great.  Thus, it is not on complexity that this album loses a star, but in its failure to have any catchy simple parts, such that there never seems to be any building of a foundation, and playing off of that foundation, and when there is a simple foundation given, it is not stupendous enough for the 5^th star to be given.

As the Victor Wooten album says, “Yo!  Victor, you can’t hold no groove unless you have a pocket.”  I don’t seem to be able to find enough pockets on School Days, and when I search for them, and in this way the album seems to put me in a daze.  Thus, it would seem that “Days” in the title is an attempt to play on the word, “Daze,” of which I generally prefer music that makes me feel stone cold sober, if not aggressive.  I would imagine that someone who loves Phish or the Grateful Dead would possibly better be able to progress onto this style, and likewise listen to it with more enthusiasm than I do.  Thus, for a person that may prefer a legal high, as opposed to doing drugs, this album is possibly a cheap high that might put one in a stupor.  As for me, I don’t feel like a free man when I am in a stupor, but rather I feel that stupors are enslaving.  Perhaps, that means I should listen to the album some more, and thus it will probably be the next one to go in my 100 disc changer mix.

The rhythms of this album are comparable to the rhythms of the wind, just a few steps below.  When it comes down to it, though sometimes I like to listen to the rain, and sometimes I like to listen to the wind, buying an album for me that is so artsy fartsy that it might be comparable to these things is beyond me.   That is, why put School Days in the player when you might be able to open your window and listen to the way the wind blows and get the same quality.  Or if it is cold outside, why not just turn on a fan or a microwave and listen to the patterns of their humming instead of listening to School Days?  Thus, this is really just a matter of preference, an opinion only, and that opinion is that I prefer music that has a pocket, or at least seems like it has a pocket, especially as a way for me to enter into the rhythms of the song for the purpose of grooving to it, as opposed to flopping to it.