Seasick Sailors On A Ship Of Noise

clothes on the line, drying in the sunwind of Saturday afternoon

get the Grasshopper/Twistycat split tape from Abandon Ship Records

incredible music, great label

sometimes like "He Loved Him Madly" by Miles

Sudden Oak, Radiant Husk from Bezoar Formations

dudes on the parking lot level in the Bay Area

improvising, stretching...

Id M Theftable & Jay-Z from Mangdisc

one of the best drone/ambient tapes I've ever heard, Endless Caverns

these folks record, make, & sell their own music

please be cool, check 'em out

some o' my own elastic trackin'

Smaken der Kraken (rubber band & electronics)

Kulu Se Mamas are Way Cool

there was a record fair in Portland today

best thing I picked up was a copy of Coltrane's Kulu Se Mama

(makes sense, Mother's Day & all)

made me think of another 'Trane tune that seems appropriate

for celebrating all that my Mom does/has done/is doing

selflessness

the architecture I'm taking in with my mind

Greil Marcus has an incredible new book about Van Morrison out now

's called When That Rough God Goes Riding

it ain't really about facts or even "criticism"

more like a shared sense of wonder, the mysticism of music

my friend Willie says Astral Weeks is his desert island disc

I suppose that's true for many people, in fact, most who've ever really

heard it...

first time I did, I was working in a library

it still kills me every time

& its near equal, Veedon Fleece, is another Van Morrison album

I just can't do without

had to wait years for it to become available on CD

I remember the day I got a copy, I'd been up for almost 24 hours

soon as I heard it, I was totally AWAKE!

spent many nights out at sea listening to both of 'em in rapt detail

one day, after hiking through San Francisco, years behind me

finally found Veedon Fleece on vinyl

the maguffin waiting for me to find

my Astral Weeks LP not so lucky in the backseat of a California car in the afternoon

warped, it still plays and I guess if I were stuck on a desert island

I'd hear it anytime I wanted even if I didn't have a thing

'cause I carry that music in me, with me

thank you Greil, and thank you Van Morrison

here's a few of my humble sketches, studies of masterpieces-

Astral Weeks

Who Was That Masked Man

Slim Slo Slider

If You Find Earth Boring...

this post is a little homage to my buddy Mike

a dude who shares my mania for all things Ra

thing is, as I wrote this, Diane Sawyer was talking about aliens

are they out there?

I don't really care, I just dig me some space jazz

for the inquisitive, that flute-ish stuff is an ocarina I bought in Santa Fe

also, I admit to being inspired by Eugene Chadbourne's practice of taking

free jazz oddities & making 'em folk tunes from the other side of the galaxy

space, it's the place

It's After The End Of The World

Outerspaceways Incorporated

John Sinclair, the blues

had an "it" moment this weekend

standing outside the space gallery, saturday evening

listening to John Sinclair wax rhapsodic 'bout one of my favorites,

the incomparable Jimmy Giuffre

maybe you've heard John Lennon's song 'bout freein' John Sinclair

's a cool tune

nowadays, John does a blues radio show in Amsterdam

one of the last beat survivors, still extolling the greatness of Monk

made me wanna play the blues

You Gonna Bake Me A Pie

all day

same thoughts

PBR, Borbetomagus

these dudes were in Houston a few months back

go figure

also, here's a nothing tune

's a shame

Crash On The Levee

so I decided, on a whim, to stumble into this beer joint in Portland called

Novare Res Bier Cafe

& to prove I had made a fatefully inevitable decision,

they were playing Lightnin' Hopkins

what else could a fella ask for?

good Belgian beer & some perfect blues

recently had the good fortune of checking out this downtempo doom jazz group

from Germany called

Bohren & der Club of Gore

their best album is called Dolores and if you ever see it on vinyl, steal it, send it to me

and I'll be sure to get you a Christmas card...forever

best I could say about their music - it seems to capture the essence of comfortable melancholy

also, when I've been nostalgic for the crazies on the streets of San Francisco, I find the crash'n thrash of the Bay's own Pink & Brown to be a welcome whiff of drunko stink...

ahh, just like the BART

finally, time well spent digging Bob Dylan & The Band's Basement Tapes, Blood Ulmer, & Earth's "The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull"

helped give me some ideas for a rendition of Dylan's

Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood)