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June 26, 2005

Music & Books Meme

There are a couple memes floating around about books and music. I'll bite.

I'm reading Julio Cortazar, and that's about all.
His collection of short stories are fairly interesting but leave me a bit cooler than I thought they might. He has a sense of existential irony which is something like that of Borges. It's been a while since Borges has intrigued me so seeing it in Cortazar makes me wonder if I might still be the same me who was so intrigued with Borges or has Borges changed me into someone who is disturbed by the sad insight that self is not self? See, I can do this stuff too, with smaller less sophisticated words. In my realm these are strengths.

I own probably only 400 books which is something of a shock, because I thought surely I had double that. I just talked to Pops the other day and he's trying to get his library up to 1000 from 750.

I have about 13000 mp3s but they're not all scanned. I lost half of my collection to hard drive failure and now have to re-rip. However I gave a couple crates of CDs to my sister after my last ripathon before the crash. Having survived the wake of that disaster I find myself in the zone of Not Wanting. So I get along with less.

I find myself attracted to Jay-Z and Linkin Park's Collision Course CD which is the latest thing I purchased. Before that I bought four CDs by guitarist Paco de Lucia.

I'm kinda into soloists these days, so I'm listening to a lot of:

  • Vladimir Horowitz
  • Marcus Roberts
  • Bill Frissell

    • I've got a feeling that I'm going to be looking for some contemporary Jazz soon. Something like Lounge Lizards, Bad Plus... Either that of Klezmeric jazz of some sort. Also for some reason I'm just stuck on Cibo Matto's 'Moonchild'.

    Oh yeah this: Last week at the Proud Bird, for Father's Day, we had a jazz quintet that had a Mexican dude on trumpet. I have now heard a new possibility in Jazz that I've never heard before, and I'm looking for anyone who knows what I'm talking about - I'm talking about a ripping stentorian trumpet leadership with the kind of blisteringly fast staccatto reminescent of Mexican troubadour bands in the cast of jazz improvization.

    Posted by mbowen at June 26, 2005 12:09 PM

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    Comments

    [karnakthemagnificent]

    Your next contemporary jazz albums (and my last three jazz buys) will be Lizz Wright's "Dreaming Wide Awake," Me'Shell N'dege'Ocello's "Spirit Music Jamia" and Jason Moran's "Same Mother."

    [/karnakthemagnificent]

    Posted by: George Kelly [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 28, 2005 07:34 PM

    Have you yet read Cortazar's story based on the last days of Charlie Parker? It's called "The Pursuer" and is dedicated to "Ch P."

    Posted by: bill benzon at June 29, 2005 11:36 PM