DOGGY BAG.......

There were some fairly absurd and alarming sightings at the Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade today, but for my money, this one took the biscuit...

JAZZ AGES

My father was pretty much wholly responsible for my love of jazz. When I was a child, our family was very much divided into two - my sister and mother, and myself and my father. To cut a long story short, this meant that my sister ended up in dance classes and youth theatres most of the time - acting out (literally) our mother's (desired but unfulfilled) career as an actress, and I took on my father's jazz obsession, which we both used as an 'escape hatch' from my mother - there was nothing more guaranteed to get her to leave a room than to put on a recording of Gene Krupa or Stan Kenton.

In spite of, or more probably, because of, the dubious psychology and family politics behind this, my sister ended up becoming a dancer and myself a jazz promoter. Neither of us were ever forgiven for this - we were meant to be teachers or bankers or doctors. And the 'Arts' were meant to be hobbies, not careers. My sister was persistently told to 'get a proper job', and even though I sort of had one, my father never saw a single one of the 4,000 or so jazz concerts I programmed, because my mother simply wouldn't let him....
Perhaps we both did it to rebel, or perhaps we did it in some way to fulfil the unfulfilled dreams of our parents. Either way, it resulted in us being geographically too far away for them and psychologically a bit too close to home.

If I have a single regret in life, and I'm not one for regrets, it's that I didn't 'kidnap' (parentnap?) my father and take him to London to Ronnie Scott's and a myriad of other venues he'd never been to, to actually SEE all the artists he spent his whole life listening to on record.

But back to being a nine/ten yr old, and the highlight of my week was a trip to Birmingham Record Library every Saturday morning with my father, where we would borrow four jazz albums, then devour them for the whole of Saturday afternoon (or as long as we could get away with) when we got home. They were inevitably big band albums, as this was my father's real passion, and I grew up loving that awesome and powerful sound (and still do). The crunch came when we brought back 'There Comes a Time' by the Gil Evans Orchestra. I think I was 13, and I was SO excited by this music - it was the most profound and beautiful noise I had ever heard. My father absolutely hated it. From that day our tastes went in different directions, and I took out my own library membership and brought home all kinds of new and wonderful off-shoots from this initial discovery, whilst my father continued to perfect his ability to recognise every soloist and sidesman from every big band in the 30's, 40's & 50's without the aid of sleeve notes. I know - I used to test him.

All of which brings me to today. And I'm now only a couple of years younger than my father was when we were playing those records together every Saturday. And partly because I'm filling in all kinds of gaps in my jazz knowledge on the jazz course I'm currently doing, and partly because I have toothache and now a cold as well and am resigned to spending a few days indoors, I have hauled out my father's 78 rpm jazz collection. My sister and I found boxes and boxes of these 78's in the attic when our parents died, along with a rather beautiful wind-up Columbia Grafonola - in perfect working order. The records are in varying states of health, but most need lots of TLC, and I so wish my father had 'talked me through' these when he was alive - but I rather think they'd been in the attic since before I was even born. So now it is my task to clean them all, catalogue them in some way, try to find out the line-up on each record via internet searches (out of sheer curiosity), then find some way of transferring the ones I like onto disc. There is not much information on the net surprisingly. I've spent the entire morning (unsuccessfully) trying to find reference to the Brunswick UK releases of a dozen Lionel Hampton Orchestra recordings, and impatient with that task, I randomly picked out another record to look into, a Tommy Dorsey recording, only to find a mysterious orange stamp in the middle of the label. What, if anything, does that mean?



It would have been my father's birthday tomorrow. So somehow fitting that I am sitting on the floor, in the birthplace of jazz, surrounded by shellac, trying to make sense of his jazz age in relation to mine.

OVERRULED

Since hanging out with the lovesick one a few weeks back, I've become much more aware of the ludicrous number of rules in existence in this city.
For instance, this long list outside 'Groove' - a small bar in the village, where we went to see a gig by Oli Rockberger a couple of evenings ago. It's amazing to me that 50 people managed to get in, given the criteria.
Has the hitherto harmles flip-flop now become some kind of gang-affiliated attire? (Parents note well - if your child absolutely refuses to part with their flip-flops, then the chances are they want to be recognised as a gang member.) And what, pray, is a head warp?

Oli has a very good voice and lots of potential. He also writes pretty good songs, give or take a few mini drivers gear changes (not nearly as bad as the truck driver's gear change). The end result is kind of the soul of Jamiroquai meets '80's pop (in a good way.....) with some jazz thrown into the mix. We were therefore convinced that Oli must have had a mis-spent youth at the Wag Club, until we realised that it had probably closed down before he was even born.
All in all, he's talented and I think he'll do well. And it's always good to hear the lovely Janek Gwizdala on bass, who is never anything less than totally committed and brilliant at what he's playing, even when only depping, as he was for this gig.

The whole gig was marred for me though on account of the following, which I felt moved to present as a list of rules.
1. If a bar is the size of my living room, the drummer should not need to be put behind a perspex sound screen, unless it is to dampen his volume rather than amplify it even more.
2. If the sound engineer has his fingers in his ears for the majority of the gig, then the gig is TOO LOUD.
3. If the audience have earplugs in and are still uncomfortable with the volume, then the gig is TOO LOUD and can cause head warp.......

THE WHOLE TOOTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH

I will never ever forgive Bayer Plc for changing the feminax recipe.
I am being a wimp, but I feel justified, having just taken the last serious pain killers in the whole apartment (ie. the last two proper 'old' feminax tablets).

It seems that my joyful anticipation of solid food (as opposed to the soups I have been living on for a week now,) was premature. The return visit to Mr Endodontist this morning didn't go quite as planned. This tooth is 'complicated' and hence a 'problem' (no, really?). I have a history of this kind of thing, which is why I try to stay away from the medical profession. Like the time they found I had an 'extra' rib and the blood disease I had as a child which was so rare it took 7 months of weekly blood tests to diagnose. And don't get me started on my current blood test results, which have been declared a 'mystery'. Anyway, Mr E today only managed to clear out (hack out) two of the three 'complicated meandering' tooth roots in the one and a half hours of sheer butchery I was subjected to (my roots clearly follow a British roadmap layout, as opposed to a grid system). I now look, and feel, as if somebody has repeatedly punched me in the face, and Oh Joy, I get to go through it all again in a weeks time for 'Root 3, The Sequel' (which looks on the X-ray like a dirt track in Norfolk). He has 'left something' in this root to pave the way next week. I am fairly sure it is one of those big olympic pole vaults. And what's more, apparently the tooth is fractured. Quel surpris! After this morning, my brain feels fractured. So depending how far down the fracture goes, I may still have to have the tooth extracted and all these weeks of soup frenzy will have been in vain. Much more of this and I'll pull the wretched thing out myself.....

LAYING DOWN ROOTS

My endodontist called this morning. I never thought I'd write a sentence like that. Hell, I didn't even know what an endodontist was until yesterday. The worst thing about moving to another country is that you no longer have access to the whole string of professionals you have carefully sifted through, chosen and cultivated throughout your entire life. For example, my dentist of 20 years in Charing Cross Road, who would see me, I know, within seconds, should I turn up on his doorstep or call him at anytime. He knows my whole life story as intimately as the contents of my mouth. He offered to come and 'hold my hand' when I had to have my wisdom teeth extracted by someone else. I hate to get all sentimental about dentists but then you move to another country and suddenly you're back to the yellow pages (only they're white here........)

Then of course it's not at all simple, because, having found a 'dentist', you find you've gone to the wrong person and suddenly you're being flung across town to something called an 'endodontist', with the dollars clocking up by the second. This is not how I run my relationships - I'm in debt to a stranger for $$$ dollars and he has my home phone number and is using it, before I've even had time to google him! Some weeks are just like that - by Monday you know you've totally lost control and the week is just going to do whatever it likes.

Having said all that, I was in horrible pain at the weekend and ms dentist did do a good job in sending me to mr endodontist who managed to root-canal it all away yesterday, which frankly, was worth any amount of dollars. Incidentally, he added this morning that I can't eat on the tooth till I see him again next Tuesday, (which is a bit much coming from a man who didn't even give me any decent drugs as a food substitute.) As this tooth is right at the front, it's pretty much impossible to eat at all therefore, so I am now officially inventing the 'root canal diet', and as this is America, I am planning on making a fortune out of this diet by next Tuesday. And hence will be able to pay the endodontist.

LIVING SPACE - THE FINAL FRONTIER.

The living room looks like the first Cylon war has taken place there overnight. I left the TH watching Battlestar Galactica in there at 11pm to go and read about Sidney Bechet in the bedroom (because opposites clearly attract), and for the second night running he didn't appear and I find him yet again working on the computer calling the UK office at 5/6am surrounded by bachelor detritus - empty bottles of rum, takeaway cartons, three full ashtrays and the tail ends of a couple of hours of snatched sofa sleep (opposites clearly don't attract that much). It's at times like this I want to get all my single girlfriends around who spend hours complaining about not having a partner, so as I can remind them what it's really like being the last freedom fighter in an episode entitled 'living space - the final frontier'.

When we move to a cupboard there are going to have to be an awful lot of rules - no smoking, no working from home, definitely no sci-fi (which I am sure must be to blame for most marriage break-ups - did anybody ever survey that?) And in return I'll stop reading about Sidney Bechet. If that's a problem.

But today, the vexed problem of surgically removing the TH from his keyboard, because there are those in here who believe that there is a life out there and would quite like to do something with the weekend.
'Can we go out and find a lost civilisation darling?' (read 'Can we go and do the weekly shop at Wholefoods').

Frankly there's quite a lot we have to go and do, and according to Al Gore in 'An Inconvenient Truth' , which I saw yesterday, it seems like we've only got about ten years left in which to do it. Very scary stuff. So I need to reawaken my mankind to a higher purpose.

And whilst we're on the subject, I bet all those intergalactic space ships aren't helping global warming one bit.....

13th St (between 2nd and 3rd Ave) 

WANTED - ROOM TO SWING A CAT

Catster has gone, taking the lovesick one with her. I kind of miss her ragged self, hogging my laptop writing desperate love notes with her sad little rule-abiding ways. That's Tina, not the Catster. Of course I miss the Catster too, only it's probably a good thing she's gone as she was breaking me with an excess of everything - day, night, killer cocktails, Wholefoods' Spanish nut mix etc. (One has to question the point of a painkiller delivery if they are all used up by the time said mule has departed, due to the mule's presence ....)
But hey, we had fun!

Now to the vexed question of finding another apartment, as our rent has increased overnight by $400 per month just as the Tactile Helpdesk's housing allowance from his company has decreased by considerably more than that. To all of you who haven't been to stay yet - too late. We will almost certainly be moving to something resembling a wendy house, or a 'one bedroom alcove apartment', which is estate agent code for a cupboard in somebody else's flat.

Meanwhile, I am living on the sort of pocket money I used to get to spend on Dundee biscuits (now missing, presumed dead) in the tuck shop at school when I was 11. Luckily I have a 10 book reading list for the jazz course I've recently started, so that should keep me out of harmful spending ways for a while.....