I had a bad 6 months… really bad… really, really bad.
I stopped caring, I stopped functioning voluntarily, every moment was just rote repetition and going though the motions…lots of whiskey to numb the daily outrage and despair. the only things that I really kept actively doing was cooking (one of my loves) and listening to music.
as this post’s title says, the light is filtering in, and I’m hopeful my world will continue to brighten.
One thing I had wanted to do when the world turned black and the lights went out was put together my top 5 list for 2025. So maybe start here??
Norah Jones – Visions MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood The Cure – Songs of a Lost World Kacey Musgraves – Deeper Well
There’s no order to this list, and they’re all vastly different from each other and a bit all over the place except for MJ & Waxahatchee. But they all hit chord in my musical funny bones that vibrated with my life frequency. Hoping to deliver a long overdue post on these five sometime soon.
I discovered some interesting stuff in these last 6 months though… I don’t remember some of it however, but I’m trying to piece parts of it together from my Apple Music recently played and recently added lists… Just to offer a truncated and abridged list, here goes.
Dave Brubeck – the Time Out releases XTC Nick Drake – Pink Moon Jars of Clay – Christmas Songs A Charlie Brown Christmas (each and every year, need I say more) some Grateful Dead – Anthem, Aoxomoxoa, Blues, Wake David Bowie – Station to Station (maybe my fav David) and the Berlin stuff Jeff Parker – The Way Out Of Easy Prince – the Dream Factory project Neil Young – explored more archival releases David Crosby – If I could only remember my name… Maren Morris – Dreamsicle Khruangbin – Con Todo El Mundo / thanks Taron 😉 Sofi Tukker – butter LP Giobbi – Dotr Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Welcome to the Pleasuredome Beach Boys – various stuff from Pet Sounds and on
Well…. it’s been a week. Well… I’m starting to come out my hole Well… I’m starting to feel again
I was numb.
Numb for days Unable to really feel anything. Feel anything but resignation or at least some form of resignation. I have officially lost my give a darn, and I ain’t looking for it. I’m one hundred percent happy to just live out my life without caring.
I’ve done the best I could to help make a good planet, a good country, a better one then I inherited but obviously people don’t want that, they want to swaddled in security and ignorance
oh my will they be gifted with ignorance ignorance to the nth degree…
I’m done, I’m just living my own life now, and everyone can just go f’off
I went from approaching a birthday milestone that should have seen me retiring in some past version of america, to death spiraling towards an unknown future. then to dread the week of our American Waterloo, before acceptance…
And acceptance is the easy one here! He one by 5 million demented votes. its not a losing by 7 mil to Hill and them winning the rigged game of electoral roulette its that he got 5 Million more votes and just bewilders me.
If I were younger I’d try, try to make an impact try to foster change…
but not now, not after a life of trying to make this place better to have it all torn down by some evil pumpkin.
I am fighting an anxiety attach!!! I’m better at lunch, having tea and messing with my journal organization… but, I’ve been lightheaded and dizzy at the office.
I can’t bare to think of what this country will be like if he wins…
So what have I been listening to since my last post??
Alan Parsons Project – Eye in the Sky Duran Duran – Danse Macabre Jacques Loussier Trio – Four Seasons & Water Music Yussef Dayes Experiment Vince Guaraldi – Afternoon With, Jazz Impressions & Black Orpheus LP Giobbi – Dotr Smiths – Louder than Bombs Cure – Wish Miles – Kind of Blue Bauhaus – In the Flat Field (w/ Bella added in) Depeche Mode – Some Great Reward John McLaughlin – Thieves and Poets A whole bunch of accoustic autumn and lofi jazz playlists Lots of laid back shit for the fall, accoustic, jazzy, relaxing.
Lots of other stuff too, to keep the energy up sometimes.
Danse Macabre is perfect Halloween fun, made for a party and great rendering of some classics by the Stones, ELO, Talking Heads and Duran themselves.
Alan Parsons and Depeche Mode were both vinyl listens and felt like the vinyl playback added so much in the way of definition, separation and surroundings.
But most of this list is really laid back stuff, just digging the fall air, fall colors and quality of the lower angle light that this the earth’s tilted axis gives us this time of year…. such warm tones and hues in reds, oranges and golds,
It’s my favorite time of year My favorite smells Colors Weather Sounds…
I’d be in heaven (if there really was such a place).
Swinging on delicate hinges, the autumn leaf almost off the stem
Body scans and meditation and breathing making sure I’m in the moment making sure I’m aware
seeing the forrest for the trees pulling back and not just looking but seeing the nose on your face
when you wash the rice…. wash the rice when you chop the carrots… chop the carrots do what you are doing, not what you are doing next
…or what you just did
I sit and I breathe and it has such a profound affect I come back to the present, not what I am thinking about but what I am actually doing
I get a rush from a five minute mediation I see the world from a pulled back perspective not from a focused point of view
I feel like I’m a child again, before I learned to concentrate of visions I see the world from a different perspective that I’ve only experienced a very few times since I started driving
I experienced this on the couple of times when I dropped acid, a refreshing change. not needing a point to focus on, just experience and taking in the world without judgment
Arlo Parks – Hope Cigarettes after Sex Jeff Kashiwa – Luminosa Janet Jackson – The Velvet Rope Getz Gilberto Antonio Carlos Jobim – Wave Samba Summer MJ Lenderman – Joker Lips Jacques Loussier Trio LP Giobbi Miley Cyrus – Psycho Killer Melody’s Echo Chamber St Vincent All Born Screaming Kim Gordon – The Collective Norah Jones – Visions Kacey Musgraves The WHO Life House Taylor Stuff – but not Tortured Poets (yet) Robert Glasper Let Go Kamari Washington Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Pleasure Dome Joe Jackson – Night and Day Black Keys – Ohio Players Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us Meat Puppets – Up on the Sun Boygenius – the record Miley Cyrus and her dead petz The National Parks – Xmas Magic Fitz and the Tantrums – Perfect Holiday Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft Lauren Watkins – The Heartbroken Record Hot Buttered SOUL ❤️
(Preface: I’ve taken a little time off from my 100 albums project I’ve not stopped listening to music, just my project, needed to put a little effort into myself for a time…)
What does it mean to be aroused? can you be aroused without being sexually stimulated? Being intellectually aroused is also a thing…
not a question, a statement
to yearn with desire about a topic or thought or inference or Person!
not sexual, but intriguing and stimulating
I have always thrown myself into things that interest me with a passion
music biking tech writing academics therapy tao, zen, atheism reltionships books…
I obsess with things that interest me especially in the beginning like a love affair that burns brightly as easily combustible fuel is ignited and burns out of control
I love ❤️ looking inward, I always have but never had a good outlet. I never learned an instrument (that I regret now) I have very little artistic ability other than possibly a photographic eye but I can write!!
write about love write about passion write about angst write about complacency (oxymoronic I know) write about cooking!! write about music, maybe my first love even before sports and physical activity, certainly before loving anyone else
I’ve tried writing stories, but that’s not me I can write about things I love and I can write about myself, its what I know and I have a tale to tell…
no one needs to hear it, but I need to tell it my writing is for me, it allows me to organize my head and work things out
I don’t care if others read it, I don’t care it’ss for me but if you want to read go ahead, whatever…
…or this is my, I’m old man but don’t count me out, I’m still hip, I won’t be a boomer, remember what it’s like to be young soapbox.
I’m an old(er) man. I’m not denying it. I’m not the oldest of old, but I’m not young… or middle aged. I’d be what is described in TC Boyle’s Friend of the Earth as the Young Old. Old farts that modern medicine and young living have allowed to live like they are younger than previous generations did at our ages. But its not just physical age we’re talking about, its psychological or mental age also.
I have a neighbor, who is a scant 3 years older than I am, but is literally a generation older than me. Lives an old life, thinking old thoughts, scared of the new things and envious of the old ways, and in all ways is Grandpa Simpson yelling at clouds…
Every stereotype and caricature you can think of when you hear the word Boomer fits and is appropriate. He lives a reactionary life, fears technology and is scared of the future while longing for the ‘good old days’ when it was safe to be a bigot, an Islamophobic and gender hostile. A great story to this end is how he told me about a horrible experience where he couldn’t find a parking spot downtown to go to the a local home show. Now background, there is tons of parking in my city, oodles and oodles of it, but his issue was no one would take cash! Yup he refused to use a card, ramps were card only, the parking meters all require an app, he spent an hour trying to find a spot and left without going… Dude!
Anyway this column isn’t about rippin’ on boomers after all. It’s about Garcia par deux. Ok let’s do this again I guess. What’s Garcia??
Is it a name? Is it a person? Is it an album?
Jerome John Garcia, guitarist extraordinaire and creative force. Bluegrass, spacey explorations…
WAIT… No No No we’ve been here before skip ahead, fast forward.
Garcia is not only an album by Jerry Garcia, it’s a remix album by DJ LP Giobbi.
If you don’t know what DJs do, they take existing music, add tracks, other background and mix it all together for an audience that are typically in a party atmosphere where they are dancing and partying and having a good time. Hmmm… Can you say dead concert???
It’s just new, and different, and young, and did I say new??
So I don’t ever want to judge blindly, I want to be open. Is it good? Do I like it? Does someone else like it? Cool then, it’s fine. If you like it, it’s good music (to paraphrase a whole bunch of people).
So LP Giobbi grew up with a pair of deadhead parents, went out to musicology school, got a degree in jazz piano, she got chops! She’s young and creative so what does she want to do? Create! And with her background in hippiedom what does she do, she gets permission and does a remix of Garcia and you know what? I like it!
Better than the original? No… not to me… all the time at least, maybe sometimes? Yeah?
I like it though, and it doesn’t mean it’s not a better version to someone else, someone with younger (young young) ears, and young young mind and body, and man I would love to be 18 again, because I’m young old but I’m not old old and will never be that, I’ll be dead first, but damn I would so want to be young young again…
And wow, give the young young their due, let them have fun, and value what they create because when it comes down to it, value is what it’s worth to the individual. Just because a boomer says it sucks doesn’t mean it sucks. Maybe that boomer needs to go jump in the cold lake and wake up. I mean as Grace slick once sang “the human name, doesn’t mean shit to a tree”.
LP Giobbi got the blessing of the Garcia trust to create this project. If this helps spread Jerry’s work and creative output to more persons, a new generation, wow that’s freaking awesome! Yeah with a capital Y. I’m not going to cling to the old simply because it’s what I know and its old. I want to be the young old.
I’ve included some links, please check out some of the background on this project as well as the remix itself. If you think you may be old old, then with an open mind you can aspire be young old too…
Sorry if this post was a bit long in coming, this is maybe the 10th draft and a lot of the earlier ones came off judgy and I needed to let it sit and marinate for a bit…
Jerome John Garcia, guitarist extraordinaire and creative force. Bluegrass, spacey explorations and improvisations, alternate tunings, eclectic goodness and lifeforce of that crazy phenomenon known as the Grateful Dead.
Jerry never really wanted to be the center of attention, a reluctant leader and singer, but never a reluctant performer. The show is what he did and lived for no matter how much it took and drained from him. From the beginings as Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, the Warlocks, the Grateful Dead and so many of his side projects, Jerry Garcia Band, works with Merle Saunders, Old and in the Way, Dave Grissman, the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra. So much creative work, he just really didn’t stop. Even when the Dead took a break, the members still had creative juices to work off.
Folling the release of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, the Dead took a creative break to explore some solo work. Bobby Weir’s Ace, Phil Lesh’s Seastones, Micky Hart’s Rolling Thunder and Jerry Garcia’s Garcia. Rolling Thunder, Ace and Garcia would supply many tracks that would become staples of the Grateful Dead repertoire. Garcia however stands out in my mind, each of the tracks here are treasures I came know from live performances when I discovered and was introduced to the Grateful Dead in the late 70’s. By that time Garica was out of print, as were the four Grateful Dead Records releases (Wake of the Flood, Mars Hotel, Blues for Allah and Steal Your Face), so I only had live shows, tapes and fellow deadhead’s memories to fill in the blanks. I came across and scored a copy of Garica in the mid 80’s and it was such a revelation, such wonderful renditions of these songs that I grew to love in their fully grown adult versions.
Side 1 contains 4 straight classics, Deal, Bird Song, Sugaree and Loser. One of my all time ever Grateful Dead moments is when Bradford Marsalis joined the Dead at Nassau Coliseum in 1990 to give a jazzed out rendition of Bird Song with the band. That one is soooo special, it will live forever in my soul. That said I had never been a huge Sugaree fan because most of the performances I had heard were plodding and unenergetic. The first time I heard the studio version it was truly transformative and I fell in love with it.
Side 2 is the master work though, two more absolute classic Dead songs linked together in a suite of spacey and sonic splendor through some little instrumental forays journeying its way into To Lay Me Down and then finding itself approaching The Wheel. A composition through many parts and phases, it meanders from it source before finally emptying into completeness, all the while asking you to admire the sonic scenery as you travel along with the music.
This album was truly a unexpected surprise and a gift. Like the first person to every see the grand canyon, how could you describe it? Most likely you wouldn’t, you would just sit there and stare at its majesty in a state of immense awe, speechless…
So with the knowledge that some things must be experienced, I implore you go ahead and listen to this album, not once but a few times. Take your time and savor the notes, the chords, the words. They are made to seep into your ears and heart, to be felt. Come back to your breathe…
jamnjazzz 
