please don’t tl;dr
Two finnish albums in a row? It happened.

This time I’m telling you about Don Johnson Big Band (Like I promsed in my ‘Let’s talk about Herbie Hancock‘). Despite it’s name DJBB has nothing to do with Miami Vice and consists of only four regular members and a couple of visitors during live performances. And his nicely leads us to the moment when I finally started liking them.

I was a wee lad (12 is young, alright?) and I still played football (Soccer) and we were in a tournament. We won ticets to a football game Brazil vs Portugal (there was some amateur adult tournament also in Finland - they weren’t the world cup players) and at the stadium a song started to play. It was One MC, one delay, from their 2003 album breaking daylight. I had never heard of it before but my friends were all very excited. I thought it was alright. Not a huge step towards me liking them, but now I had heard of them and I had an opinion if I liked them or not.

Then a couple years forward. I had just heard that Kanye West was coming to Finland. Oh my GOD! Me and my friend rushed to get the tickets. Friday, 21st of July, 2006 became the day that changed my life. When I say Herbie Hancock changed my taste in music, I mean Herbie Hancock and Pori Jazz 2006 changed my taste in music. At 2pm the gates open and we’re let in to the Kirjurinluoto Arena where “Kanye and buncha other guy’s will be playing.” Carla Bley Big Band is on first. Okay, when’s Kanye coming on? Then Raul Midon. Okay, when’s kanye coming on? Then Don Johnson big band. So far it had been a rainy day but the vocalist, Tommy Lindgren, promised that they’ll make the clouds go away with their music. And goshdarnit, that’s exactly what they did.

There’s six men on stage plus Emma Salokoski from Quintessence (how convenient - I’m going to write about them later) giving us all they can. Clock is about 7:30 pm right now and the sun is slowly starting to set. Tommy says “This has been a great evening… but… we all know you didn’t come here to see us…” and then they perform One MC, one delay and leave the stage. I would say that DJBB is the wors warm-up act you can get, because they make anyone performing after them look like shit. Kanye’s performace was good but far away from being memorable, where DJBB’s crazy rhythms and smooth melodies were just stuck in my head. I bought this particular album from the Pori Jazz giftshop and listened to it the entire long ride home. It always makes me a little bit teary when reminice the moments of that cool summer night. Truly the best day of my life.

When compared to DJBB’s previous albums this one is more solid and easier to listen to. The previous two were more angry, dark and culturally aware, pure hip hop albums with a dash of jazz, where Don Johnson Big Band is still culturally aware and angry but at the same time it’s beatifully melodic and it feels like every note is played with a huge passion. And the vocals. Oh my god. I’m not really that interested in lyrics. The vocalist can sing about anything from toothpaste to weather, as long as it doesn’t sound completely retarded. In Big Band the topics vary from personal love songs to religion to graffiti, and for the first time ever I actually pay attention to the lyrics and the way Tommy Lindgren performs them is just perfect. I have no idea how you define a ‘good flow‘ but I would imagine that this could be described as good flow.

As you can see; everything about this album makes me happy. It could make you happy too (Click the cover). And please, go see them live if you’re able to. You won’t regret it.

“Absolutely sublime from start to finish and I will jam forks into my eyes if I ever use those words to describe anything else ever again”

-Ben Croshaw

Favorite tracks: Cocoa Cacao, Private Intentions, Jack, Island Girl, Last Things.