Author: Don

Personal Baggage

In 2018, I bought the last EDC bag I’m sure I’ll ever need, the currently archived Filson 258 computer briefcase. It’s survived plane, bus, and car travel to say nothing of my daily grind. The only time I carry an alternative is when I’m making a conscious effort not to be like the guy in the Etgar Keret story “What Do We Have in Our Pockets”.

I’ve been told that I’m hard on bags, which I never really believed. And yet, here’s the evidence of what I’m able to do to a Filson bag in a mere 6 years.

Thanks to Filson’s famous guarantee, I’ve shipped it over on their dime for an evaluation and, hopefully, a free repair. Of course I’m obsessively tracking it, and I wasn’t happy to find that it ended up sitting in a UPS facility in Hodgeson, IL for a full 24 hours before moving on to its next destination on its way to Filson HQ. But it finally moved on this morning toward Filson HQ. Needless to say, being without it has not been any kind of load off.

I’ve Got NxWorries

I’ve waited years for this follow-up, and now I’ve gotten to marinate in it for the past month. Totally worth the wait!

Anderson .Paak is a monster and his Malibu is easily in my top 5 favorite albums of the last 10 years. Also on that list is his work with NxWorries, his collaboration with Knxwledge which I keep coming back to. Yes Lawd! is also on heavy rotation for me.

Favorite track so far (and not just because of the retro sound and video)…

Take a listen to the rest of it. Hey, if it’s good enough for Variety, it’s good enough for you!

Scratched

Every family has its crucial sentences: things it loves saying about itself.

Elizabeth Tallent wrote one of my favorite short stories ever, “No One’s a Mystery” (paywalled pdf from HARPERS). I figured since I know Tallent’s work and am very familiar with the subject matter, this memoir would be right up my alley.

It’s kind of scary how right I was, which is why I can recommend this before I’m even halfway through it.

Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism by Elizabeth Tallent

Ghost Notes

Maybe I wouldn’t have detested smooth jazz in the 80s and 90s if the recordings had this depth of sound, or even the depth of sound it had circa 2000.

Don’t be mislead by the post, though. Check out the whole joint and the one previous. More often than not, Ghost-Note goes pretty hard.

Weeknotes S04 E07: TBR

It’s fall, and around these parts that means the October Friends of the Library Book Sale. It’s where I was last weekend instead of writing this. I always find a treasure there. Always. And it’s probably one of the few places I’ll buy a dead tree book–not because I have anything against dead tree books. We just don’t have the space, and ebooks are the only way I can practically read in the interstices of an otherwise busy life.

I usually focus on two sections before I start wandering around the place: the science-fiction/fantasy section and the literary short story section, which is where I scored what I discovered was the inaugural issue of the lit mag NOON, edited by Dianne Williams and Christine Schutt. Then, I’ll wander around the other sections and finish off at the CDs. The big score here was a recording from Return to Forever’s 2008 RETURNS tour, the first album from this classic jazz fusion band in over 30 years. I remember freaking out when I first saw the YouTube videos of the Montreux part of the tour. They didn’t lose a step, that’s for sure!

I picked up a copy of the HEAVY METAL soundtrack as a lark, and the interaction I had with the older volunteer who sold it to me made it totally worth the price. She goes, “Great soundtrack! Blue Öyster Cult… I was actually listening to them before I came here today.” Rock on, auntie!

There are two other conditions where I’ll buy a dead-tree book: (a) When I want something that’s only offered in that format and (b) I want it right the fuck now and don’t care if it’ll end up in an ebook later on. That doesn’t happen very often and when it does, I tend to forget when I pre-order them. So this week I got, not one, but two pleasant surprises from past me.

I guess if I go another month between Weeknotes, we’ll know why.

And If the Wind Is Right, You Can Sail Away

New school yacht rock meets old school yacht rock!

How could I not love Benny Sings’ vibe? Dutch guy putting a modern spin on Yacht Rock, singing like Barry Gibb on lo-fi tracks? Yes please. I got a couple of his albums, and that was before I knew he was hanging out with bands like Free Nationals. If he’s hip enough for them, he’s hip enough for me.

And to top it off, to get a hold of a Christopher Cross demo to put it on the B-side? :chef’s kiss:

velocity x dm/dt

Thrust exists in that blurry, liminal space between jazz, funk, soul, and R&B.

I finally pulled the trigger on the whole catalog of Wilbur Niles and the band Thrust. Much like the journal GAMUT, here’s another thing from my childhood that I didn’t know existed at the time.

I love the story here: In the late ’70s a musician from Akron and his girlfriend puts out an album that quickly goes out of print but gets continuously sampled over the years, becoming a white whale for collectors everywhere. Meanwhile, he and his band just keep putting out music. Music that’s really up my alley, at least in my adult life.

More than that though, I dig the obvious Northeast Ohio roots…

Wanna know more?

Running THE GAMUT

I was digging into my Rust Belt roots a bit and stumbled onto this absolute treasure trove!

The Gamut : A Journal of Ideas and Information was published from 1980 to 1992 by Cleveland State University in the fall, winter, and spring/summer of each year. It contains articles and creative works by writers and artists of Northern Ohio about topics of interest to readers of this region.

GAMUT was not on my radar in those days, even though it and my life co-existed in the 216 at the same time. But if something this eclectic came out these days, I’d be all over it. It’s topics really do run the–well, you know. There’s stuff on history, art, law, politics, urban infrastructure, psychology. Whole issues devoted to special topics like books and publishing, UFOs, even science-fiction analysis and reviews — this material, even from a historical perspective, has me thrilled!

Best of all: articles and comics from Harvey Pekar? C’mon!!

Still Flying

Much like Mac Miller, trumpeter jaimie branch was a musician whose name I’d heard but whose music I never got around to listening to until after her passing a little over a year ago.

Luckily, there seems to be a lot of stuff out there to go through. Keep flying, jaimie!

Theory and Conjecture

The other day, I mentioned that some time ago I found the complete series of IN SEARCH OF… featuring Leonard Nimoy on DVD at a reuse store for $5. Before the kung-fu movies on cable I enjoyed in my ‘tween years, these were the kinds of UHF weekend shows that caught my fancy.

I hear the background music of wah-wah guitars and Moog synths, see the washed out video quality, and I’m taken back in time to those grainy films shown on the best 8mm projectors my Catholic grade school could buy two decades prior, when John XXIII was the Pope.

Anyway, there was always a disclaimer that came after a brief teaser at the start of each episode…

This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. The producer’s purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones to the mysteries we will examine.

Of course, there are tons of shows in this vein these days, mostly on cable channels that purport to be all about History and Discovery. Only, they don’t seem to bother with the disclaimers much, at least not matter-of-fact disclaimers. When they do, they’re delivered with a wink and a nod. There’s something about it that seems, strangely, like innocence lost.

That’s my conjecture, anyway.