New Release - Complete Riverside Recordings - Thelonious Monk


Yes, yes, and more yes - I couldn't be happier to discover this today.

Notes:

Thelonious Monk (piano); John Coltrane (tenor saxophone); Gigi Gryce (alto saxophone); Coleman Hawkins (tenor saxophone); Wilbur Ware (upright bass); Art Blakey, Shadow Wilson (drums). Recording information: 04/1957 - 07/1957. This fine two-disc set brings together all the recordings Thelonious Monk made for the small, influential Riverside label in 1957. The piano eccentric cut excellent versions of some of his best compositions during that year, including "Off Minor," "Epistrophy," "Well, You Needn't," and the lovely "Ruby My Dear." The exhilarating saxophone work of John Coltrane makes these dates instant classics. Like most "complete sessions," the set features plenty of false starts and alternate takes that might seem extraneous to the casual fan, but Monk fanatics will be overjoyed at being provided with a glimpse into the brilliant artist's studio process.

Simon Says In Hell

I am a practitioner of Bikram Yoga. This is a practice that entails getting into and holding a series of yogic poses for 90 minutes in a room that's generally between 105-110 degrees farenheit. Yes, you read that correctly. It's bendy hour in a sweat lodge with a bunch of strangers. Only there's one other component ... the Bikram teacher. This is an animal I'd not previously encountered in other yoga practices. Sure I'd been pushed deeper into downward facing dog by the best of them in an Ashtanga class, gently encouraged to relax and breathe in Hatha, instructed with great precision for the sake of alignment in Iyengar but never before had I received the rapid fire verbal direction while sweat poured out of me that I receive in Bikram.

Last night I had class with Patrick. He's an ex-skater from New York and holds the record for most consecutive classes in one day. Motherf'er did 12 hours of bikram - that's 12 hours of yoga in a heated room sweating your nuts off in a 24 hour period. So let that serve as the basis for you to imagine what his teaching style might be like. Patrick is, as I told him one day, an ass-kicker. He assured me he does it with compassion, but didn't blink to deny my qualification of his instructional tenor.

Under Patrick's direction, or shall I say command, I doubled my flexibility in the half moon pose. Managed to make it down to the floor for toe stand and have learned just how cool my foot looks coming up over the top of my head in the standing splits via standing bow pose. In other words Patrick kicked my ass up into the next level.

During last night's sweat fest (the heat we incurred yesterday here in San Francisco only intensified the heat in the yoga studio) in between rattling off instructions for standing head to knee pose and issuing corrections for triangle he reminded us of what we were really doing proudly proclaiming his Bikram yoga class as 'Simon Says In Hell'. I'm not sure if Patrick called it Hell because of the intensity of the heat or if because twisting yourself up into knots while you sweat through your gym shorts while standing in little pools of your own bodily fluids is karmic payback for the vanity that drives so many of us to take exercise. Whatever the case I will never think of Bikram or Patrick the same.

Dabrye & Doom - 'Two/Three'



Listening to this now ...... it's really fresh and dizzying for sure.

blurb from the Dabrye website:

Taking the next logical step in his evolutionary hip-hop album cycle, Dabrye has rounded up a formidable crew of MCs (including MF Doom and J Dilla) to create Two/Three. A moody, propulsive take on the genre, the Blade Runner-esque beats help cage rhymes ranging from world events to the street, with little chance to catch your breath. The result is a dizzying narcotic rush stronger than a back alley glue hit. Five years after his meticulously sculpted debut One/Three, Tadd Mullinix is back to make an indelible mark with his new hip-hop sound.

Good News!

Dabrye in San Francisco:

7.21 San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill

Paul Oakenfold - A Lively Mind

Paul Oakenfold's new release has been totally working for me over the last couple of days.

I've never been a big Trance fan but there are some really fun tracks on this record; just the type of stuff a developer can throw on in the midst of deadlines, politics, bullshit distractions and lack of sleep filled days when unit testing and debugging is right up on the list with slitting your wrists while drinking your own vomit.

Graphic I realize but it's been one of those weeks.

The thing opens with 'Faster Kill Pussycat' featuring Brittany Murphy. Yes, Brittany Murphy and it's fucking good - sexy, sultry, pumping steadly enough for me to grab a stride and finish a bunch of html form validation for flight load manifests required by the FAA. I'm sure neither Oakenfold nor Murphy ever imagined churning out a groove to serve that end but I bless them just the same.

Check out 'Sex 'N Money (Featuring Pharrell Williams', 'Save The Last Trance For Me', 'Not Over (Featuring Ryan Tedder)' and 'Set It Off (Featuring Grandmaster Flash)' (not super terrific but fun to hear GF) - that'll get you started.

Finding Solitude From Chatter

Something is shifting; I think I know what it is. I've known what it will be for a long time.

It's funny how issues that you think you've dealt with, case closed, door shut, game over rear their heads time after time in your life. It's enough to make me think that nothing ever really changes. But I'm too much of an optimist to believe that.

I think that as our positions and perceptions of and in life shift the impact of our past and the effect of the people and events that shape us come to light in different ways. The web of life never disintegrates; it is our relationship to it that changes.

In and amongst all of this I want so much to find peace and quite from the chatter of my current reality. All of the analyzing, poking, prying, laughing, speculating - all of it - I want to hear and contribute to no longer. I am ready to let go of the person I am within all of that. And the person I identify with more wholly is one who is quiet, less speculative and more certain in a very simple way.

Advice For The Terminally Scattered And Distracted

I had an ear training teacher in college, I wish I could remember his name. It was something like Bob Johnson or Bill Jefferson something pretty run of the mill; the man himself was a towering, trim, dark skinned black man who occasionally sounded like he'd just strolled in off a beach in Jamaica.

Bill, we'll call him, would sit down at the piano rub his eyes with the side of his hands and with a tinge of that island twang call us to order 'focus people, focus'.

To this day, when I'm scattered hither and yan (and just where the hell is yan anyway) I say to myself 'focus people, focus'.

Seems I've been 'focus people, focus'-ing myself a lot lately and I can't seem to figure out why. It's summer time certainly. I haven't had a vacation in awhile; but then again I don't really believe in them. For some reason in my head when I think about taking vacation the question emerges, 'why, you're just going to have to come back to work? save it for when you're ready to leave.'

In a way, I welcome being distracted. It's letting me know that something is missing and that some kind of change is required. What this is; I could venture a guess. But how it's going to play out and manifest .... that's another story that I can only tell in the past tense. For now I reckon I'll have to enjoy being scattered - (did I mention that a week ago I locked my keys in the car while it was running? Yes, I did. Fortunately I was out to lunch literally and otherwise with a friend who had AAA and we got it sorted in about 5 minutes) and let 'focus people, focus' carry me through.