Winchester Cathedral
You're bringin' me down....

I got my Xmas present from my jazzbo bro -- he sent me the Thelonious Monk Quartet w/Coltrane at Carnegie Hall. It is so, so, SO good.

I got this for my brother. With every intention of putting it on our iPod before we leave his vicinity.

Has anybody been playing with the Music Search feature on Google?

If you put in "Tom Waits" you get his albums ordered by title or release date and reviews off them, plus songs about him, etc.

Interesting.

erinaceous, did you know there's a song titled "(I Feel Like a) Dictionary"?

Lego Morrissey: [link]

That whole minifig lego series is great!

I am Lego and I need to be loved...

The Thermos mic is a nice touch. Set starts to flag a bit, open it up, little blast of coffee, & you're ready to go.

You'll get many hours of enjoyment from that Monk CD, Steph. Listen to Monk's comping behind Trane on... it's either "Nutty" or "Epistrophy" from the first set -- just fabulous. Coltrane's gifts were prodigious no doubt, but he rarely (ever?) displays a sense of humor in his playing. Monk, on the other hand, makes me giggle all the time. How is he funny?, my wife asked the other day. I don't have the musical knowhow or vocab to describe it, but I think anyone with open ears can hear it in Monk. He's fundamentally serious, but he's very playful (notewise and especially timewise) and he sounds like he had a blast that night at Carnegie Hall. So treat yourself and ignore the virtuoso in the foreground to listen to the weird guy behind him.

Also, Tep, I've been meaning to recommend this to you and your Mingus-loving brother. It's not the notorious Mingus-didn't-have-the-music-ready-and-the-showcase-flopped Town Hall show from 1962. It was a small group (sextet, I think) recorded a few weeks before Dolphy's too, too early demise. The second track, here called "Praying With Eric," is my favorite recording of "Meditations on Integration." Dolphy's killer on alto, flute, & bass clarinet. The duet section with Mingus and Dolphy on bass clarinet, both playing really high in their instruments' registers, is very beautiful. Pianist Jaki Byard was on top of his game, too. Anyway, it's one track on emusic. Half an hour of great music for one download. Can't beat that. (Although you do need a fast connection cuz it's a bigass file.

Also, Tep, I've been meaning to recommend this to you and your Mingus-loving brother.

Oooh, nice! Thanks, Joe! Will hit up emusic.

Also, how's your back? I have much back-pain empathy.

I have much back-pain empathy.

Thanks. Current diagnosis is brachial plexopathy, which is some kind of irritation to/inflammation of the cluster of nerves coming out of the spine that controls the shoulder and arm (right arm in this case.) Just had an EMG, which is a test where I got zapped up and down both arms for about an hour. It wasn't as painful as I had been warned it would be, but I don't belong to the population subset who find it pleasurable to get zapped by electrodes and juiced needles. Kinda vanilla that way. The upshot was that the neurologist is more confident in her diagnosis & wants to continue the drugs/rest/physical therapy route. She doesn't think disk surgery is warranted at this point but she wants the neurosurgeon to make the call. Back to him next week after he sees the results. Last time I saw him he wasn't anxious to cut, though he was "not impressed with these disks." I was in a whole lotta pain during that conversation so I didn't get clarification on what he meant.

Anyway, I'm still on disability with no clear idea when I'll be back at work. Pain is much less than what it was unless I do something that I know will aggravate it, which I'm sorry to say includes walking more than a couple blocks. (Misha was "lucky" enough to see me in full overdoing mode the other day.) Sitting is still out. Less painful - strictly a relative judgment - now than it was but my hand goes numb. I can stand for a couple hours as long as I start pain-free, by which I mean I was either lying down or walking a short distance (e.g., from the couch to the kitchen) before I began. So I've been cooking a lot, much to the delight of my wife and my tastebuds and to the chagrin of my waistline.

If I'm lucky I'm halfway through the typical cycle of this (about 7 weeks), per the neurologist, but she says she's seen this four or five times in her career and my variant is a little odd, so the sample size makes that "typical" designation, how shall I say... suspect? Questionable? Useless? But hope springs eternal even if my brachial plexus doesn't. A week ago typing this post would have had me on my back and writhing; maybe it still will, but the fact that there's at the least a lag time is progress.