Lest we forget Henry Steele Commager!!  I used to ponder the idea of trying to become the next Commager, and sometimes wish I had chosen that path instead of law.

Is it better to be a bullfighter than a bullshitter?  Hemmingway knew, and so did Burroughs.  I was compelled to write, but could never get the subconcious and conscious mind in unison.  Unless you can achieve that, all that will be left is stilted dialogue and wooden words. Hemmingway said you needed to write a passage and take the 'I' out of it. 

Can books save you? Quite possibly, yes. But so can music. And you can spend a lifetime researching all the so called great poets and come up with nothing but lame, timid, anaemically academic spunk sodden verse. Effete poesy, that cannot transcend your filthy, humdrum existence.  Art Blakey is quicker.

Bukowski, Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg and Whitman saved me, where Larkin, Auden, Shakespeare and Wordsworth failed. Later Blake, Coleridge, Shelley and Everson came. Still, for many years, Paul Weller's Saturday Kids, spoke to me, had more meaning and resonance to my life than all the high brow poetry in the world.

As Bruce Springsteen once sang, "We learned more from a three minute record, than we ever did in school."

Last edited by The Ace Face (2009-10-22 13:22:13)

^^^Last night, after having a major row with the missis, I sought refuge in the essential rhythms of Japanese Toshiba 24bit Blue Note remasters, and in the exact order:
Orgy in Rhythm - Art Blakey
Holiday for Skins vol.1 - Art Blakey
Holdiay for Skins vol.2 - Art Blakey

To complete the gig, I took an extra large two fingers of 1982 Port Ellen and dug this:
Modern Art - Art Pepper Quartet

That was around the tonight at noon hour. Earlier I had been in the local jazz record shop, Mosaic and Blue Note not releasing stuff. All the Norah Jones money has dried up, no more Rudy van Gelder reeditions. The owner has sold out, a new cat is making a go of it. In the age of downloads, compressed sounds, no more browsing through records, I hope he makes a go of it.  At least I will be in there once a week, to chat, dig the sounds and spend my alloted 80 euros. I wish him well, but he had the aura of someone leaving on the Titanic. I may yet jump ship, join him when that great ship goes down, at least we will have the best ragtime piano playing until the end. Not to mention some extra fine single malts, we won't man the lifeboats, ours was the 20th Century and all the good bits of it.

And that's what the argument with the missis was about. I returned with the above CD's and she started on about wasting money on frivolous music, whilst we still need to save 120 thousand euros to put the kids through university.  Such is married life, mundane, drowning, like work, but only worse.

A beat guru? Sadly no, I'm just a geezer fighting for every bit of space and jazz I've got. As old Bruce sang, I'm a long gone daddy in the USA(Den Haag) now....

Port Ellen is widely available here in Holland.  Well, at least I know of two wine merchants in the Hague and Delt who have 1979 and 1982 distillations in abundance, including the superlative Provenance Spring 1982 distillation. 180 euros a pop, it's among the best whiskies in the world.  I've been reducing my whisky intake lately and returned to beer.  I was doing two bottles of really good stuff a week and putting on weight.  Since I've returned to beer, I'm back in size 34" pants and 85kgs, down from 94kgs. 

I recommend this American microbrewery, superb IPA's and the Gemini, will give you new perspectives on the space race from Sun Ra's perspective:
www.southerntierbrewery.com

I will be giving the oak aged un-earthly pale ale an audition tonight.

Big Tony: Indeed, there's always a plethora of Eastern European chicks, who have some how, by a strange quirk of fate, landed themselves a staff position, in a role ill fitted to their oral skills, background, academic and vocational experience.  Still, they have their own offices, whilst we slave away in open plan hangers.  They wonder why we never win anymore projects and our hourly rate is too high to be competitive. Well, when you factor in all the hangers on, and those employed solely on their breast, legs and under sheet skills, it all becomes too apparent.

I only mixed work and pleasure once, got a Russkie girl a job, she ran off with the Italian HR manager.  He later resigned under suspicious circumstances relating to Swiss manpower agencies that were being used, with no known owner or directors.

Ah yes, Colin MacInnes, as I've said before the English Kerouac. Except he's nothing like Kerouac, but you know what I mean.

Have you ever noticed how a lot of men give up their interest in music when they get married?  You arrive for an extremely tedious dinner date and you're quaffing cheap and nasty Merlot, mostly sulphates with that kind of alcohol that just dulls the brain and gives you a bad head. And there's no beer, or whisky in sight.  Midway between the dry lettuce garbage they serve either before the starters, or after, can never be bothered to remember which, you realise all the music is gone and there's some shitty laptop with a minute collection of down loaded compressed MP3's sitting around churning out some Verve or Radiohead.  We never fought the bebop wars for this.  Won't happen in my house, not on my watch.

John Le Mesurier use to say you can judge a man by his library and music collection.  Still true today, when the odd few aficonados, hip cats and hep cats come around to my house to be plied with the best single malt whisky and bottle conditioned real ale, whilst their wives and girlfriends look on in fear and helplessness, they may notice the fine collection of Beat and literature of the Romantics, the first editions of Black Sparrow Press and a cool collection of Blue Note, Contemporary and Pacific Jazz CD's, mainly Rudy van Gelder and Toshiba 20bit and 24bit remasters, and think, yes, this is where its at.

And never met a woman yet who has a record collection worth shit.

Last edited by The Ace Face (2009-10-27 12:40:45)

Great post Ace. Do you want a lodger?