Justified

I'm hip deep in a new Jazz post but struggling to find the time and energy to finish it.

In the mean-between, here's a plug for the best TV series I never knew about during its six seasons on cable, the coal-blooded, Kentucky-fried, hick-but-hip Harlan-County Western called Justified, starring lean, lanky, laconic Timothy Olyphant as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, riding herd and drawing down on modern-day do-badders hiding out in the hoots and hollers of mountain bluegrass country. This is the first and finest on-going film production ever truly to capture the sights and sounds and surreal mess-arounds of an Elmore Leonard reality. Oh, there've been superior versions of single novels (as well as crapulous misconceptions), but no regular series capable of recreating Leonard's irreverent characters mouthing his inimitable, pared-down, sly'n'wry dialogue.

Yeah, quick-draw Raylan's the real thang, and he ain't alone. There's boss marshal Art, brazen gift-of-gab villain Boyd Crowder, several sexy-yet-cerebral women (Ava, Winona, Rachel, Loretta, and maximally more), and two-bit bad guys caught up in cool mischief, coal mines, and cold-blooded murder. I binge-watched all fifty-plus hours one recent Netflixed week, and when the fine fun was over, I entered that storied, many-roomed mansion... justified.

Fairport, RT, and Me

It's been a weird Summer in the Pacific Northwest. After a mild Winter and a similarly drier Spring, we experienced very hot weather in June and July followed by a cool down in August. So all the growing came a month early, and now it looks like Fall will be early too. No climate change around here, of course... But I guess the Repugs have other Obama bones to pick over as the Elections "Season" heats up. (Can't we all just hibernate for the next 11 or 12 months?)

These Dog Days instead are a perfect time to check out the music, new or old, being offered at your local CD store, Download site, or Amazon supplier-subordinate. I've been especially song-conscious (see why below); here are five of my current favorites, lifted from five different albums:

Leading off--but dating from the fifteen-years-gone centenary, "Kurt Weill 2000," celebrated 'round the globe--is Karen Kohler and her version of "River Chanty," the

concluding track on Jam and Spice: The Songs of Kurt Weill. "River Chanty" is one of five songs Weill composed with Maxwell Anderson for a musical version of Huckleberry Finn, that died along with Weill in 1950. Ms. Kohler has a lovely voice (tending more to musical theater's stylings than to Opera's soprano screeching), employs idiomatic German, French, and English in the 16 songs offered, and evinces a general joie de vivre that makes the whole album a joy to live through and listen to. Plus she is backed by a crackerjack ensemble (including cello, clarinet, trumpet, banjo, and accordion) on all but one tune, arranged and conducted by Robert Rene Galvan; excellent versions of "Berlin im Licht," "My Ship," "Surabaya-Johnny," "Lonely House," "Youkali," et al, but none so sweet and simple, so alert but resigned, as "River Chanty" with its mixed-emotions refrain:

Where you been river, where you goin' today/ What you bringin' me river, river,/ What you takin' away?... Who you been stealin' from river,/ Who you been friendin' today?/ What you bringin' me river, river,/ What you takin' away?

The Weill piece sounds like a 19th century folk tune, while Martin Simpson's astringent new love song "Dark Swift and Bright Swallow" (from Topic TXCD591, Murmurs as by super folk trio Simpson-Cutting-Kerr) could have come from any alert Romantic poet, and been written down at any time in the past 300 years.

Preeminent songwriter, songcatcher, folk-and-blues guitarist Simpson (plus Andy Cutting on diatonic accordion and Nancy Kerr on fiddle), has shaped a lilting, loving melody hiding a much darker story from WWII (see Simpson's notes):

April sun on Slapton Ley, between the lagoon
and the haunted sea,
I was thinking of war and cruelty when
Spring's first Swallow split the sky

And I was lifted above all care as the Swallow
swung through the salted air,
Come from Savannah and desert and sea to
mark another year for me...
And for you my Love and Eternity.

Love, death, war, two birds of Britain, and a birthday ditty too; at awards time this one should win song and performance of the year.

One remarkable sidebar of the British invasion of 1964 or so was the "trad arr": out-of-the-distant-past discoveries rendered 20th century-friendly by real green-fields, Blessed Isles Folk/Rock groups like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span. Fairport will soon celebrate 50 years together; only Simon Nicol remains from the original group whose list of important ex-Fairporters includes Richard Thompson,

Sandy Denny, and Dave Swarbrick). Simon, who writes rarely and sings reluctantly, functions as interpreter rather than creator most of the time, which forces the group to rely on current member Chris Leslie (often too "twee" or spiritual for me) or "friends of Fairport" like Ralph McTell, Rob Beattie, and P.J. Wright, for the latest song advancements. Still, their brand-new album Myths and Heroes (Matty Grooves MGCD053) is a corker--mixing jigs and ballads, rocks and reels, plus one beauty from the proud British tradition of songs shredding WWI. Credited to the unidentified Irish trio of Laird/Starrett/McRory, "John Condon" is a quiet, haunted, harrowing account of all that useless death:

Just a day another day, beneath a Belgian sun
Past grave on grave, row upon row, until I see the name John Condon...
And all around the harp and crown, the crosses in the ground
Stand up in proof, the bitter truth, the waste of youth that lies forgotten...
Heroes that don't come home
Sing out for all their souls
Here they lie in Belgian fields and Picardy.

Bitter, resigned, Simon quietly nails the coffin lid shut.

No lack of originality and brilliance on any album by the great Richard Thompson ("RT" to his fans); and his new one, Still (Proper PRPCDX131), offers solo guitar

moments, stinging electric excursions, solid trio rockers, and expanded-group elaborations, brought to fruition by producer Jeff Tweedy. Richard has several albums on various magazines' lists of all-time greatest (Unhalfbricking, Liege and Leif, and Full House with Fairport; I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, Shoot Out the Lights, Hand of Kindness, and several more from his solo career--kind of listener's choice among 30 or 40 candidates). He has seen many of his songs covered by other artists, has received degrees and honors from academia and pop culture alike, eclipsed most other guitarists in both skill and originality, not to mention listenability, and somehow has managed to age, within Rock music, with dignity and distinction both.

I don't blindly love the new album yet, but here's one folk-related gem, its opening track, "She Never Could Resist a Winding Road," which has the melodic familiarity and Scottish "drone" that anchor his finest songs in the patented RT "doom and gloom":

In the old cold embers of the year
When joy and comfort disappear
I search around to find her
I'm a hundred miles behind her
The open road whispered in her ear

She never could resist a winding road

She never could resist a winding road
Maybe just around the bend
The rainbow waiting at the end
She never could resist a winding road.

The last song that's been tugging on my aural sleeve is, I confess, a ringer. Over the course of 40 years, I've written a handful of songs (the lyrics, that is) with Bruce Lofgren, my guitarist/big bandleader friend living in L.A., and Bruce has just released the latest album, Wind and Sand (Night Bird NB-4), featuring his terrific Jazz Pirates band, playing six originals, two covers (a great version of Bronislaw Kaper's

"Invitation"), and three tunes with lyrics by... me. The vocalist is Karen Mitchell, niece of Jazz bassist Red Mitchell, and she does a fine job overcoming the limitations of the lyrics.

Still, I can't get them out of my head, so here's a sample of the words to the frisky, some would say racy "Sheet Music":

My daddy's a master musician,
He rocks and rolls me right,
Composin' me
With close harmony,
Sweet sheet music every night...

Jazz me, Papa, that bed time song,
Rhythm followed by blues.
Write me some inner chorus
I can put vocals to.
Dot my sweet half-note, baby,
I'm treble and bass for you.

And further deponent sayeth not.

Red Garland, Bill Evans: Miles Apart

I sometimes ponder Miles Davis's place in the popular history of Jazz. Leaving his music aside for the moment, first he battled heroin, that scourge of the Beboppers, going cold turkey back in the early Fifties. Then he survived beatings by white cops, and just got surlier, taking up boxing as his voice went from a scream to a whisper. And of course, every decade or so, he reinvented the sound of the Jazz he played, at least as recorded by various Davis quintets and groups larger yet, morphing from Parker acolyte to hard-Bop balladeer, from jigsaw gingerbread-man to hot-and-cold fusionista, from hip-hop funkster to late-Seventies master of silence--and the fans (white or black, in the U.S. and around the world) seemed to follow along every step of the way.

I guess you could say he was Jazz's first superstar (post-War anyway, ignoring the popularity versus cash sales of Satch and Bing, Benny and Glenn and the Duke). Did anyone ever actually count the number of copies of Kind of Blue and Workin' and Sketches of Spain that echoed from the dorm rooms of college kids in the late Fifties and throughout the Sixties?

At the very least he knew a top side-man (and potential leader) when he heard one, whether Paul Chambers or John McLaughlin, Wayne Shorter or John Coltrane, Tony Williams or Jack DeJohnette. Just think of his main men at the keyboards: Wynton Kelly, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Joe Zavinul, and the two I'm about to celebrate here, Red Garland and Bill Evans.

A pair of recent 2CD sets (recorded live in 1972 and 1977, respectively) remind us of the post-Miles stature of Bill and Red. Listening to Evans' Momentum (Limetree MCD 0043) and Garland's Swingin' On the Korner (Elemental 5990426) both

reinforces one's conviction that the two are keyboard greats and then leaves one confused as to what Miles heard or saw that told him the time had come to move on from the locked-hands punch of pugnacious Red to the airy, impressionist modes of gentle Bill. Garland was clearly a cornerstone of the so-called first quintet, the five who recorded three-quarters of all the tracks Miles cut for Prestige (and earliest Columbia); he was versatile enough to sound like Ahmad Jamal when asked to by the boss, but his own approach tended more to the Blue Note/Prestige collective (Horace Silver, Hank Jones, Cedar Walton, Wynton Kelly, Horace Parlan, et al) than to the chordal explorations of Evans.

Check out the long first track here, "Love for Sale," to hear the essence of Red. An

Errol Garner-styled a tiempo mystery-ballad opening suddenly springs into action, African-American soulful/earthy rather than European classical-attenuated, with Red's piano as an instrument more percussive than stringed. Philly Joe Jones and Leroy Vinnegar are his cohorts throughout this generous 150-minute selection of tunes (including fine versions of "It's Impossible," "On Green Dolphin Street," "Dear Old Stockholm," "On a Clear Day," "Autumn Leaves," and the inevitable "Billy Boy"), the East Coast drummer as un-shy and un-retiring as ever and the big West Coast bassman doing more "running" then "walking."

And that's the truth of Garland's solid set. It's energetic and exciting, the sound of three Jazz pros working together almost as one, sparring minimally, any solos pretty much played singly... and thus with most of the possibilities for piano-trio subtlety checked at Keystone Korner's front door. (I'm trying not to sound pejorative as I write this, because Red's lively set really is a welcome addition to his discography.) Evans' support, in contrast, came from Eddie Gomez on bass and Marty Morell on drums... singular Jazzmen who happened to be white and who played with a more Eurocentric approach.

After the stellar success of Bill's short-lived trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motion, he wanted all of his sidemen/partners to sound that convincingly complex and freely independent, every threesome blessed with big ears and greater understanding, the players somehow going their separate ways but still communicating with one another and moving the melody or changes forward.

There's plenty of that three-in-one going on here; follow whichever player you choose and hear an amazing "argument" sounded, point and point and not exactly counterpoint, more like deliberation and interpretation, concentration and inspiration. Eddie Gomez is especially aggressive (in rehearsal for the Eddie Gomez Trio perhaps?), but Bill and Marty insist on playing front and center as well. And the recorded sound lets each go his own way--brilliant, crisp and clear and undistortedly loud.

When Bill Evans draped himself around keyboard and bench, an evening would typically be filled with single notes and silences; but when he took a deeper breath and sat up marginally straighter, the chords and substitute chords and sideman-chasing harmonies would fly fast and furious. The list of tunes here ("Emily," "Quiet Now," "My Romance," "Turn Out the Stars," "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your

Life") sounds ballad-oriented--romantic, heartfelt, tender--but someone has fed Bill his Quaker Oats; like Eddie he tears into these tunes, shakes them every whichaway, and takes no limpid prisoners. To hear the two (or three) of them at their blended best, the opening original, "Re: Person I Knew," does more than nicely, with grace and balance and three-part invention all to the fore; but tune two ("Elsa") then comes surging at you like a battering ram. Morell lays down a continuous barrage that Bill takes up with both hands, while Eddie rips out an unstoppable solo that sounds more like a bajo sexto across his lap than a double bass under his fingers. On this particular night in the Netherlands, Eddie Gomez revised the sound of Mexico's "DeGuello," and the Bill Evans Trio took no prisoners.

Maybe, to return to the initial question about Miles' pianists, it was as simple as that. The rhythm section of his first quintet had become too familiar, too

predictable. Miles suspected (or "knew") that the Kind of Blue tunes, buttressed by Evans' chord changes and hovering modalities, would be mysterious and distinctive and open-ended, allowing for a new approach to soloing.

But if that's the case, why was there no further development, no second act, no encore? Because Miles chose not to follow up on it, Kind of Blue remains a miraculous one-off. Instead Miles went listening for a new quintet while, on their own, Red Garland just kept swinging and Bill Evans too kept on, exploring, reshaping the sound of Jazz piano, each man enjoying his own certain momentum.

Encore for Ozzie Bailey

When I wrote tentatively about little-known Jazz vocalist Ozzie Bailey (revisit it Here), somehow I touched a nerve. Both the Bailey essay and its sequel several months later (that one archived Also, Here) proved to be among the most-read pieces I've written in over a decade of blogging. (The Duke still makes a difference, it seems.)

Prior to that I wrote about another Ellington curiosity, his valiant attempt at composing in long-form, that odd

mix of Jazz, song-and-dance, and symphony known mostly as Black, Brown and Beige. Ellington's tone-parallel--as he defined it--to the American Negro, BB&B began as the music for a night at Carnegie Hall, rose and fell and reformed at various lengths and with select motifs, and finally limped over the line as a source theme ("Come Sunday") for the Duke's late quasi-religious "sacred concerts."

No version much pleased the Jazz critics and popular culture reviewers. Read about the Duke's long and painful experience Here As Well.

Kurt Weill and Gil Evans

As a new email from the Kurt Weill Foundation reminds us, that 65-years-dead composer's music still has surprises in store and even premieres awaiting performance... and so... the American premiere of The Road of Promise, a concert adaptation of his lengthy, unappreciated theatrical pageant (from 1937 or so) The Eternal Road, will occur early in May. Meanwhile, Weill's greatest champion among Jazz musicians--that would be Gil Evans--continues to have his say, three decades after Evans closed the keyboard and relinquished his baton. To put it another way, young arranger/conductor Ryan Truesdell is back with a new (second) CD of previously unknown/unrecorded big band arrangements by Gil; titled Lines of Color, this one was taped live in New York City last year and is co-issued now by ArtistShare and Blue Note.

I wrote extensively about both Weill and Evans and their remarkable, long and

winding careers a few years ago--an eclectic five parts dividing, sort of, as three for Weill and then two more for Evans, and each part set up as an independent essay. Since the five appeared piecemeal and separately but do have some significance in the annals of Modern Music, I'm re-calling them all now for an encore; I hope some other readers will enjoy discovering their convoluted stories.

Part One is a disguised Introduction to the European years, but including 40 or so photos of Weill LPs. Parts Two and Three take up Weill's career in America (on Broadway and off) together with his burgeoning impact on Jazz. Then Evans assumes the lead in the Fourth and Fifth sections. Finally, as a bonus and sort-of Sixth Part, comes a follow-up essay/review of 2012's "new" (but also old) Evans album, which of course also featured Weill--and which later won the Big Band Grammy award.

Centennial was a suitable conceptual name for that release, but for some unexplained reason this new one is called Lines of Color, its exterior offering an abstract pretty picture on the front cover, tiny print obscuring Evans' name, and no identifying photo of the man. Commercial this packaging isn't--Blue Note was just asleep at the switch--which is really too bad because the music is terrific, another excellent selection of previously unrecorded charts dating from the Thornhill Orchestra days up to Gil's more experimental bands of the 1960s. Centennial had

top session players and the thrill of important historical discovery; this one has the sound of a crackerjack Jazz orchestra working live, its creative engines firing on all cylinders.

Some long numbers revive and/or revise previous Evans tracks; "Time of the Barracudas" and "Davenport Blues" crackle authoritatively with dramatic solo work from trombonist Marshall Gilkes, tenor saxman Donny McCaslin, and trumpeter Mat Jodrell, while "Concorde" and the medley ("Easy Living/Everything Happens to Me/Moon Dreams") play the master's measures either more lightly, or layered more intricately. That last is certainly one of the album's highlights, with pianist Frank Kimbrough and tenorist Scott Robinson quietly leading the charts.

Other tracks sound like what they are, Claude Thornhill specialties from the early Forties ("Gypsy Jump") to the post-Bop Fifties ten years later ("How High the Moon"), two of them yet meriting special mention--"Greensleeves" for its one-take trombone solo by Gilkes, eradicating memories of Kenny Burrell's feature (on his 1965 album with Evans, Guitar Forms), and a chipper little ditty called "Sunday

Drivin'," dating from 1947 but featuring current band vocalist Wendy Gilles, which could have been a hit back then, and sounds like a radio-ready theme song right now.

One last note: conductor-visionary Ryan Truesdell once again provides exceptional annotation, and on "Moon Dreams" he writes convincingly about the Impressionist classical influences on Evans (Ravel, Prokofiev, et al), some of whom found a spot in Weill's wheelhouse as well... or at least that's still my Impression.

10 Ways of Losing Track of a Rock 'n' Roll Song

This is a book review of sorts. I don't know Latin any more than I know German. Caveat lector.


1. "It's only as important as your life." So claimed Van Morrison quoting James Brown, the hardest working man in show business--never caught with his pants down or even split, a becaped crusader of grit 'n' soul always on his toes and maybe yours too, sucking every cubic centimeter of air from any room he occupied. If you still can't breathe, recite "It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World" 13 times and then mutter, "Uncle."

2. Walt Whitman was a nurse. Emily Dickinson was a recluse. They met serendipitously in Ralph Waldo Emerson's daylight basement. "I need some Transcendental work," she said. "Where's Waldo?" responded Walt.

3. Inspired by ein sonnen haus of Son House,
the Viennese Secessionists chose to paint
with schadenfreude, but also Freud
in shades, filling every inch of canvas
with 33-and-a-third degrees of die blauen.

4. I ate the big bowl of borscht. Forgive me, but the gruel was not only good, it was Beat.

5. In the still of the guitar drag, she was crying, waiting, hoping to shake some action. "To know him is to love his transmission," she said. All I could do was cry out, "This magic money changes everything! That's momentarily what I want."

6. "Anthemic" as a term in rock criticism had no meaning until Jimi Hendrix digested his Wheaties on July 4, 1969. Sadly, he still thought six was nine and so missed his golden opportunity. Ninety-nine and a half wouldn't do.

7. So much depends
upon his readers
possessing the full
complement of kunst
und kultur too
arcane to be obscure

8. Joe Strummer channeled Robert Johnson to write "Train in Vein," but Sid Vicious couldn't remember which needle to insert in the tone-arm.

9. The day the music died, eight-and-a-half-year-old Billy Jim Murray bounced his bicycle through frozen flower gardens around Willamette. He was dispirited... seeking earthly confirmation of that infamous airplane crash. He wished he lived in suburban Lubbock, or Shreveport, or Cincinnati, anywhere but the northwest environs of Chicago. That'll be the day, he thought, the dark day I light out for the territory ahead...

But you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Except maybe in this case. Because 34 years and 9 days later, Bill as "Phil""--brother under the fur to stuck-in-his-rut groundhog "Punxsutawney Phil"--did that time warp again for the first time.

How could any fan of rock 'n' roll not feel the chill that touched their heartbeat that day (and everyday one re-views the music of film)? Yes, unseen but present in fraternal dispensation, and sharing the stage with both of the on-air Phils, were the

high harmonies of Graham Nash, the lyrical tenor solos of Stan Getz, and the émigré exhilaration and despair of ex-patriate James Joyce--but couched in the elegant twists and repeats of Homeric prose slimmed down to the scale of a groundhog. It took Bill/Phil another 8 years, 8 months and 16 days to get life, love, and his weather forecast exactly right.

And if that don't change your way of seeing and hearing, buddy, you ain't got that mood indigo.

10. Ike Zimmerman is to Robert Zimmermann as Bob Dylan is to Dylan Thomas as Thomas Aquinas is to Greil Marcus Aurelius.

Of Mice and Music

Readers of this blog may recall that I venerate the venerable Roots Music label Arhoolie (see posts Here and There); owner/producer Chris Strachwitz has been one of my culture heroes for over 50 years. So you can imagine my delight when This Ain't No Mouse Music!, the 2013 documentary about Chris and Arhoolie Records showed up this month on Netflix. I immediately downloaded and watched the 90-minute film (loved every frame!) but postponed a repeat screening for a few days until my less-biased friend Marv Newland--who is both animator/owner of International Rocketship Animation Studio and a voting member of the Motion Picture Academy--came for a visit last weekend.

We feasted on Thai food, then settled in the TV room... with Mouse Music for our just desserts. Nor were we disappointed, rewarded instead by a host of artists ranging from Mance Lipscomb and Mississippi

Fred McDowell to the Savoy Family and Clifton Chenier, from Lydia Mendoza and Big Mama Thornton to (Mountain Bluegrass group) No Speed Limit and the Treme Brass Band--well over fifty years of what you might call Ruckus Juice and Rootin's, a rowdy musical history of Americana encompassing Blues and R&B, Cajun and Norteno, Bluegrass and German Polka, Zydeco and Jazz, recorded and issued every step of the way by Mister Chris.

Granted that most of the performances are truncated by circumstance (no cameras available when the tape decks were rolling, for example), still the joy and enthusiasm are undeniable, buttressed beautifully by artist interviews, unbuttoned reminiscences (by Ry Cooder, Santiago Jimenez, Jr., Wilson Savoy, and Whosit--sorry--an ex-drummer for Lightnin' Hopkins and Clifton Chenier), and the happily biased comments of the Man himself. A same-title 2CD set exists as well, offering a prime 38 songs and instrumentals complete--with nary a sliver of stale cheese nor disposable music mouse to be found 'round the hallowed halls of Arhoolie.

* * * * *

Among the near-dozen great Westerns starring John Wayne--which would include Stagecoach, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and

The Searchers, all directed by John Ford--two had Ford's sometime rival Howard Hawks at the helm: Red River and Rio Bravo. Until his late performance as Rooster Cogburn, only Rio Bravo afforded the Duke a partially comic Western role. Wayne as Sheriff John T. Chance just doesn't know what to make of "Feathers," the sassy saloon girl (the debut of gorgeous Angie Dickinson) who rides in on a stagecoach and stays on to tongue-tie and hog-tie him, every which way but loose.

What a cast Hawks assembled around them... Dean Martin (as besotted "Duke"), Ward Bond, Walter Huston (one-legged "Stumpy"), Rick Nelson (young-gun "Colorado"), John Russell, and the rest were just as stolid and stubborn, drunken and dramatic, gun-fast and gal-foolish, as Hawks had hoped for; and the resulting

blend of brashness and rio-bravado proved so potent that the aging director recycled the plot and characters twice more (El Dorado, Rio Lobo) as his own originality flagged.

Just as potent a "character" as Wayne or Martin was the mesmerizing film score composed by Dimitri Tiomkin, with Spanish guitar, Mexican trumpet, and suspenseful Latin percussion as lead instruments, regularly repeating the ominous folk tune known as "The De Guella" (supposedly dating from Santa Ana's military band marching outside the walls of the Alamo). Tiomkin's spare score must have resonated with Ennio Morricone, gleefully reinventing the "sound" of Westerns about then... (or did any influence flow the other way around?)

Anyway, the splendid Rio Bravo soundtrack, available now for the first time ever--on 2CD set Intrada Special Collections ISC 300--also made room for a couple of songs; with both Dean Martin and Rick Nelson in the cast, what's a poor composer gonna do? The guys manage to sneak in a snippet or two during their long hours barricaded in the jailhouse. The official numbers are titled "Rio Bravo" and "My Rifle, My Pony and Me," and Dino recorded them as a tie-in single (included here), but Rick actually had the best song, "Restless Wind," written by Johnny Cash but dropped from the film and available only on an early Nelson LP.

Cash's "no quarter" lyrics go in part like this:

I came in like a restless wind

On a wagon train
I'm gonna go like a July snow
Back to where I came from
Gonna leave this humdrum
It's too slow and tame

None of your business where I been
Don't ask me what I've done
Run your ranch and punch your cows
And stay behind my gun, man
Colorado's right hand
Will put you on the run...

So pay heed, pard. Here's a linchpin of Western film scores, never before available, and yours for a mere fistful of dollars.

Stall, Y'all

I've not resumed general posting here for one overriding reason: the shakes are creeping back. The level of R & R (that's Repair and Regenerate in this instance) stays high, but it seems that perfection was not in the cards after all. I'm much improved in many ways, but I've decided to wait and live with these changes before limping on.

For now, I'm walking a lot, reading more, reducing Netflix some, and reluctantly submitting to a class in Yoga for Parkinson's patients.

There is no cure. There is only resistance.

Calling Lee Majors!

Well, I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own bloodshot eyes... It took a few hours of testing frequencies, but by noon on the 3rd, my hands had stopped vibrating. They went perfectly still and have not fluctuated or shaken in the slightest since then. If I weren't superstitious, I'd be invoking the Bionic Man...

Stitches removed from skull, I now resemble a car-crash survivor rather than Frankenstein's antenna'ed piece-goods or a crushed home run ball hit out of the park(insons). Sandie has big plans for me--long walks with my little-used walker, yoga exercises to limber up the frozen bod, a return to successful selling on-line, etc. My inclination is to take things more slowly, but I imagine we'll find a compromise we can both embrace.

Thanks to all well-wishers, and to whoever deserves the credit for d.b.s. surgery. I may even get back to blogging something more than these soap-operaish medical reports--once I start feeling the old confidence again.

Now What?

Christmas, New Year's, Martin Luther King day... three weeks farther along with little or no change. New holes in my skull, ugly stitches in my sparse head flesh (I look a bit like a flattened baseball), hands shaking worse than ever. I got through the surgery on December 30 and January 6, but found this boring anticlimax. Still waiting for the hookup now coming on February 3, one day after the Super Bowl, one day after my 72nd birthday.

Should be good luck, right? Stay tuned.