At least twice a week I walk to the village. On Wednesdays I pick up my order of bread and a newspaper. On Saturdays I get a newspaper again and a large bottle of whole milk. I generally buy other stuff as well. Eggs. Matches. Maltesers.
It’s a good village shop. Non-profit, run by volunteers. It’s very small but it has a lot of stuff. In summer my sister needed a protractor. They had one.
Some days it’s raining and I delay my visit. Some days I go and it rains. It can be pretty miserable.
Most photographers are pretty precious about their photos of Jazz musicians. They won’t let anyone use them because they’re saving them for a coffee table book to retire on. The problem with that is that the world of the internet needs pictures of Jazz musicians. Tom Marcello is one of the few people with excellent photos of great musicians who is happy to put them up on flickr with a creative commons license, so anyone can use them. He has some superb pictures.
A bunch of great African LPs came in the shop this week, so you know I had to take half of them home with me. Sir Shina Peters, Super 5 International, Sonora Gentil, Tony Grey and the Black Kings etc.
Many of the LPs are end-to-end listeners, top quality duelling guitar and grooving polyrhythms but the highlight of the whole pile is this two minute drum break in the middle of an eighteen minute medley. It appears on Sweet Talks‘ ‘Spiritual Ghana’ LP and its everything that is good in percussion. All at once.
The credits list the hitters as J.Y. Thorty (Drums), Yaw Samuel (Conga), Max Cozy (Percussion) and Pope Flynn (Percussion). I salute them.
Caedmon’s Ernest Hemingway Reading LP sounds an awful lot like Colonel Walter E. Kurtz’ recordings in Apocalypse Now. The gatefold sleeve contains extensive notes on the recordings, written by Mary Hemingway and Hemingway’s biographer A.E. Hotchner (subject of the film King Of The Hill). Unlike almost all Caedmon records which are of superb sound quality, this LP contains home recordings. A.E. Hotchner writes:
One of Ernest Hemingway’s deadliest enemies was The Microphone. The Camera ran it a close second, but The Microphone was the blackest villain that stalked his life, and despite the persistent blandishments of radio stations, television producers and record companies, he successfully fended off all efforts to put him in the grips of The Demon Mike.
But Over the years, under special circumstances, Ernest did record a few things for me on an old Webster wire recorder the he kept in his finca in Cuba, and on a transistorized pocket recorder called a Midgetape which we took on our travels. These wires and tapes, imperfect though they are, are virtually the only record we have of his voice. (The one exception is his acceptance of the Nobel Prize which was recorded by a Havana radio station.) This album contains, in addition to the Nobel acceptance, five recordings made during 1948-1961, which was the span of time I knew him.
The homemade feeling of the record carries over to the sleeve, with cover photo taken by Mary Hemingway and the candid picture of the couple attending a bullfight in Pamploma. This record is strangely personal and a bit disturbing but I guess that fits the profile we have of Hemingway. Regardless of his opposition to microphones he has a real character and presence when reading his work, something many authors that record profusely lack entirely. If he hadn’t terminated himself (with extreme prejudice) at 61 we might have heard more from him.
It doesn’t seem to be available on CD at all, the tapes belonging to Hotchner rather than Caedmon’s now parent company Harper Audio, but copies do pop up on Musicstack and Amazon sellers from time to time.
Recommended.
A week or so sunburning near the equator and then a couple of weeks of meltdown back down in the big smoke had left me too fried to cook any blog patties. The cold snap brings respite in spite of it not being all that hot before? Oh snap.
Random heat/cool stuff:
My favourite Lord, Hurk, is reinternetted and dropping burners on brown paper “every day, daily”. The above mugshot of TKONY is merely the biggie small tip of the drored iceberg (not slim). Looksee.
DJ Jazzy Jeff + The Prince Of The Roc = Fresh
Can we have some Peedi and Freeway albums instead of another Hov album? Nowplease!
That “Blue Magic” is nice though, in a “Hey Pharrel, that Clipse album was well recieved, you think you could…..?” kind of way.
Percee P vs. Lord Finesse Live @ The Patterson Projects, 1989 Youtubed at last. Perc’s album is out now btw and it’s really not a let down. Madlib produced (more Madvillain than Lord Quas) and full of highly skilled rapping uninterrupted by ice cream mans. Highly recommended for the trad-rap crew.
While I were sleeping the ha-funny Hiphop magazine Fat Lace is back as a blog. It seems to be funded by RawkusCorp but don’t hold that against Drew Huge & Dan Large as they’re uploading ancient Tim Westwood show rips. Gotta’ catch em all.
Maaaaaaaaan seeing Hurk’s Biggie (Copyright Lord Hurk 2007) makes me think how we were gonna do Fat Lace but better but never got round to it. It would have been the shit though right?
Maybe we can do at least a T-shirt one day.
Maybe.
So anyways I’ll get back to the regular stuff tomorrow. Pez!
