Arm’s Reach CD’s

These are the SOME of the cd’s piled on my desk that I can reach from where I sit. The complete list is limited by time constraints and my poor eyesight.

Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited /  Cafe Accordion Orchestra – On Holiday / Shithook – When a Boyscout Gets the Blues / Red Hod Chili Peppers – Mother’s Milk / Buddy Miller – Midnight and Lonesome / Louis Armstrong – On the Road /  Memphis Jug Band / Compay Segundo – Hasta Seimpre Compay / Steve Earle – Copperhead Road – Train A’ Comin – Guitar Town – The Revolution starts NOW – I Feel Alright – The Mountain – Transcendental Blues – El Corazon / Los Lobos – Colossal Head – The Town and the City – One Time, One Night – The Neighborhood / The Best of Richard & Linda Thompson / The Best of the Nat King Cole Trio/ The Best of Freddie King / Neko Case -The Tigers Have Spoken/ The Carter Family – Decca Sessions Volume One / Sublime / Rage against the Machine / Sly and the Family Stone – Greatest Hits / John Doe – Forever Hasn’t Happened Yet/ Kaiser and Lindley – The Sweet Sunny North/ John Martyn – Sweet Little Mysteries/ Joseph Spence and the Pinder Family – The Spring of 65 / Medeski, Scofield, Martin, & Wood / Louis Armstrong – On the Road / Keb Mo / Geoff Muldaur – The Secret Handshake / Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington – The Complete Sessions / Fleetwood Mac – Summer 69′ / Peter Green and the Splinter Group / Viva Cuba Libre! / The Red Hot Chili Peppers – Blood Sugar Sex Magik / Bob Dylan – Blonde on Blonde.

Starting and ending with the two essential Dylan Albums. (Yes, Blood on the Tracks is probably just as good, but it didn’t change the world). There’s more, but that’s all the time and vision I have to list them. Almost everything I listen to is actually loaded in my computer anyway, either from actual cd’s I’ve downloaded, or bought on line

Quote for the Day 11/9

I don’t care who likes it or buys it. Because if you use that criterion, Mozart would have never written Don Giovanni, Charlie Parker would never have played anything but swing music. There comes a point at which you have to stand up and say, this is what I have to do.

Branford Marsalis

If This, Then That?

It is a well established fact that Miller High Life is The Champagne of Beers. I firmly hold to this opinion and will brook no contrarian postulations. I am constantly re-testing my hypothesis, in fact I am testing it at this moment, and I have never found reason to consider any other position. But that is this. This is proven. But if This, then That? That being, does it follow that Andre’s is the beer of Champagnes?  I have spent considerably less time (since my childhood) testing this theory, since Champagne seems to be something that one should not skimp on. (While it seems the proletarian dictate to buy the cheapest beer possible) So I ask you this dear reader, if one, then the other?

I must admit I was once a beer snob, buying only the trendiest new imports. At some point I began to consume beer at a point that made the trendy imports financially implausible for me. (Ah, the recession cuts deep.) And then! One magical day. At our local store of alcoholic delights, I saw the sign, as if in a dream, as if sent by God, it may as well have been in lights;  Miller Highlife – 30 cans for $14.99.  Well, my friend, I changed my opinion on beer at that very moment and I haven’t looked back once with regret. Well, to be truthful, there have been a few regretful mornings, but those have been a result of the quantity of beer consumed rather than the brand of beer consumed.

If there is a parallel universe consumer out there, someone who sits out back by their chicken coop by the fire playing slide guitar and drinking Andre’s Champagne, I’d like to hear from you. Inexpensive though it may be, it is still champagne, is it not?  How many champagne drinkers have been forced to reassess their tastes and priorities in these hard economic times? And of those, how many have come to the conclusion that it’s not so bad?  The good thing about cheap things is that while they may be of a lower quality, one can afford to consume copious amounts of them. Would you rather have your evening’s imbibement consist of one bottle of Dom Perignon, or fifteen bottle of Andre’s. (I have done extensive lack of research on the subject, and have arbitrarily decided that that is the exchange rate.)

I guess it all depends on why we drink, doesn’t it? To have one priceless treat to our palate, or to get one hellacious buzz on. On some romantic special occasions it may be more appropriate to….no, who am I kidding, it’s always better to get a hellacious buzz on.

Buzz well, buzz often, gentle readers. Whatever thy buzz of choice.

URGENT UPDATE!!!

There is absolutely nothing going on.

Quote for the Day 10/16/09

I don’t think you can ever do your best. Doing your best is a process of trying to do your best.

Townes Van Zandt

My Little Horse Must Think Me Queer

I’m tired and on prescription drugs and I’m having trouble seeing the screen, perhaps because of the prescription drugs (thats’ certainly why I’m having trouble controlling my fingers), but I really think it’s my glasses. I have an elaborate system of three different pairs, and it works perfectly because they are each good for no part of my vision whatsoever . So I thought I’d try my hand at writing a blog entry instead of a more coherent cut and paste from a writer who’s more zen tune. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. I spent the evening doing mock drafts for the all-important b-ball fantasy league that will soon be upon us. Thats a rough time of year, because , in able to remain up to the minute, I have to stay up late and take prescription drugs. Whatever it’s like now, it’s gonna get worse…. I’m just saying. But the bitter and the sweet of the start of exhibition basketball is that is impends the oh so sad slow and grudging end of  baseball season (even if the hated Yanquis should win), but on the other hand it is the first harbinger, the veritable first swallow (get your mind out of the gutter) to arrive back to Capistrano , signalling the beginning of the end of the bludgenous (so what, it’s a word NOW) college and pro football season. Oh, but there’s the snow. Tom doesn’t like snow. No, Tom does not. Not at all. And I saw a friend today who just got out of jail yesterday after getting so drunk he set his couch on fire and tried to put it out with his hands, while he was already under house arrest for his third dui.  He and his friend had beers in their laps when they stopped the truck to talk to me. He was thinking of going in to apply for his old job but decided that perhaps this wasn’t the right day for him to do it. Strange thing is, he’s better than the guy we got to replace him. Gee, it was good to see ol’ what’s -his -name again. We were so close.  Upon further reflection, I’ve decided that neither may this be the correct day for me to personally write a blog. I’ll probably just dig a poem out of my old college textbooks again, like always. Chicks dig that. So, unless I hit the wrong button shutting this down, you will be reading, “My Little Horse Must Think Me Queer, To Stop Without a Farmhouse near” in the morning, instead of this directionless, addle-brained rambling. Boy, that was close.

Self-Improvement

I’ve decided to start reading Roget’s Thesaurus, because I want to learn new words, but I don’t want to learn any new meanings.

Baby, Please Don’t Go

Shake Your Moneymaker

Rumi – Say I Am You

I am dust particles in sunlight.

I am the round sun

—-

I am morning mist,

and the breathing of evening

—-

I am wind in the top of a grove,

and surf on the cliff.

—-

Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,

I am also the coral reef they founder on.

—-

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.

Silence, thought, and voice.

—-

The musical air coming through a flute,

a spark off a stone, a flickering in metal.

—-

Both candle and the moth crazy around it.

Rose and nightingale lost in the fragrance.

—-

I am all orders of being,

the circling galaxy,

—-

the evolutionary intelligence,

the lift and the falling away.

—-

What is and what isn’t. You

who know Jelaluddin, You

—-

the One in all, say who

I am. Say I am You.