...things…must…end…and Then You Go Fishin’…
I’ll bet that I was the only person on my street Sunday morning listening to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here (Harvest/Columbia) and cornetist Don Cherry’s Compete Communion (Blue Note). I needed a brain cleanse, so I just reached into a pile of newly acquired music and pulled out those two recordings. I listened to both completely, uninterrupted. The lyrical and daring execution of Cherry and saxophonist Gato Barbieri throughout both four-movement suites is awesome. I consider “Complete Communion” the apéritif to le plat principal “Elephantasy”. Wish You Were Here I felt obligated to listen to and read the lyrics because it’s a classic work of Rock. I remember hearing it on the “new thing” back then, FM radio (by that point, FM had been around for over thirty-five years.) This release was part of the soundtrack of my oh-so-better-half’s teenage years. I was Pop and Steely Dan (don’t even start with me…) Finding out that violinist Stephane Grapelli serenaded Pink Floyd on the title tune…it’s one of those occasions where I said to myself “I’m glad I lived this long to find this out.” Listening to music is one of the great gifts that we give to ourselves. Even when I am out of aural storage capacity, I can always dig into more music.
Another gift is the one of choice. Any choice that you make is gonna leave you with a feeling. Your reaction to that feeling can sometimes push you off your axis. Last week, this did not happen to me. After twelve years, I left WXC 90.7 FM and felt nothing. Y’see, those feelings and I had had a clandestine meeting a while ago and decided to forgo any strong emotions that would wreck my day. My choice was to continue to move towards the next goalpost – helmet on, shoulders squared, arms tucked tightly to my body. When I add up all of the time lost to regret, guilt, and anger, it angers me. But now the focus is on the last third of my life and making some good ol’ peace with myself.
And it will be with music.
Jazz/Fluxus - The Jazz Disturbance, Situation Fluxus, et al – is taking a few weeks off, but here, for now, is where you’ll find my work. Please continue to support those independent rebels behind the mic and those scribblers by candlelight writing their next album review. It’s an interminable dependency that breathes heavily between us and you: we journalists are forever dangerously intoxicated by your veneration of our talents and performances, and you wait for us to poke and prod your emotions and your intellect until you scream “Oh, my God! It sounded so much better in analog!”
Let the torture never stop.