‘Twas a busy day tutoring students, observing student teachers, and socializing with friends, but I did slip in some tunage. I was in Nicole’s car, for which I’ve prepared not one but TWO eight-gig mp3 players (I’m a sick man). Her old standby is packed with New Orleans and Memphis music, plus the purt-near complete recordings of Dead Moon and Pierced Arrows; the other I rotate new acquisitions in and out of to try to keep her up to date, and it happened to be plugged into the system yesterday. I rather casually whipped through the playlists and landed first on a neat compilation of recordings made for the Celluloid label. The highlights:

Lightnin’ Rod’s (really, Last Poet Jalal Nuriddin’s) jive tribute to the wiles of Miss “Doriella du Fontaine.” His rap is strong, but there’s somebody baaaaad compin’ and fillin’ on guitar…

A classic team-up of two individualists who’ve had sone questionable moments lately but were apocalyptically on-point on “World Destruction,” under the guise of Time Zone. Afrika Bambaataa: “Who wants to be a president or a king?” John Lydon: “Me!”

A stone jam by Material, featuring honorary Rolling Stone Bernard Fowler on vocals and another baaaad man riffin’ on guitar. Funny how all three of these recordings mask a legend or two!

I also squeezed in this terrific recent release from Analog Africa, with sharp guitar, great percussion and powerful vocals–one of my favorite records of 2017.

I achieved my goal: to write about what I listened to every day in January, and thereby get my writing in better shape. I hope that, at times, I’ve been interesting, pleasurable, and–especially–useful to read. I’m going to shoot for keeping it up until December 31.

Thanks for visiting!