Five jazz albums that are a gateway to not liking jazz 20th August 2023 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. We can tell when it's Viagra, say women 19th August 2023 WOMEN have confirmed they are under no illusions as to whether a sexual partner has taken erection-enhancing medication or not, thank you. Wives, girlfriends and Tinder dates stated they are fully cognisant of the difference between normal, friendly arousal and an artifically engorged penis, no matter how discreet its owner believes himself to have been. Grace Wood-Morris said: “It’s insulting that you think you can get away with it. You think we’re not sensitive down there? “Yes, there is a difference between a cock gradually and sensually brought to full hardness by acts of loving foreplay and a pumped-up fly-popping blue diamond gutstick straining from the off. And you’re much keener on the latter than we are. “What happened to being so turned on by how sexy we are? How about getting your boner that way? What about giving the lady the sense of pride and achievement and co-ownership that means she’s excited to get the erection in her? “Instead, after a discreet trip to the bathroom for a glass of water 20 minutes earlier, you’ve got a dick like tempered steel and heart palpitations and expect us to be thrilled. No. Though to be fair it means it lasts longer than two minutes.” Habitual Viagra user Steve Malley said: “They think it’s for them? Nah. It’s for me.”