No garlic, no regrets

Thursday is John Coltrane’s birthday, so this week’s show featured some of his music; both some mainstream appearances as well as some of his more experimental stuff, including a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King. In addition there was some South African jazz and Nigerian Afro-beat coming from the station’s new shelf, and music from Latin America, from Colombia to Argentina. As always you can listen to this week’s show streaming online here until the next show goes up, or you can download it here by right clicking the 56k link.

Last week in addition to Electronica and Jewish Jazz, the show featured local musicians Carlos Jones and Blue Lunch, off of a set of recordings from the Crooked River Groove record label, a label run out of Cleveland’s own Tri-C. The two I played on the show are longtime favorites of mine, groups I’ve gone out to see more than once.

Carlos Jones along with a number of other area musicians played the garlic festival at Shaker Square a couple weeks ago. Although the event sounded great, and was really close to where I live I hadn’t intended to go to the show, because I was busy that day. Along with my siblings I’d planned to help my mom clean out the basement with the ultimate goal of making the house marketable in case she ever wants to sell it. I was taking a break to make dinner and had to stop at Dave’s Market to pick up some ground beef and I heard the festival music on the way there. I’m not sure which of the groups it was, but I really liked it. I called back home, while I was shopping to see if anyone wanted to go see the show, but there wasn’t any great interest, so I just went home and made dinner.

I should say, by way of explanation that it’s a rather unique living arrangement I currently find myself in. I live with my siblings and my mother in the same house I grew up in. I’m doing a service year through AmeriCorps and I use part of my salary to defray some household expenses. I also cook most of the meals and organize weekly meetings so that our little clan can get together to discuss ways we can contribute to the success of the household.

So basically, the reason I couldn’t go to the concert at the square was my own doing. I couldn’t very well be resentful about it because it was my own idea. It’s a very different position than I was able to have during the summer when I was filling my days looking for work, and trying to be productive. At that time I felt lousy about not going out and being social the way I had in college. Not being able to go to the concert at the square though was entirely the result of deliberate choices I had made to try to help my family and my widowed mother get through a hard time.

It’s incredible what a difference it can make in your outlook if you view the things you do as the result of your choices and the things you don’t do as sacrifices that you choose to make for a worthy cause. For me, it’s the difference between feeling resentful at being “stuck” with my family and appreciating them while being grateful that I can make a difference.

world electronic and jewish jazz

(This is my first attempt to blog about music as a companion to the show. Bear with me and let me know what you think)

This week's show (audio available here with the complete playlist here) featured a lot of new music. We have a shelf in the on-air studio with all of the music the station has acquired in the past month or so--it's fun to check out new music and it's great to have stuff to play within arm's reach. On the online playlist you can tell which songs came from that shelf because they have a little asterisk next to the artist's name. The entire first half hour I played from a single CD, an album put out periodically by Fabric, a london nightclub that also has their own record label where they release live mixes by the guest DJs. The rest of the hour was taken up by other electronica ranging from Thievery Corporation to a compilation of South African house music. Some interesting stuff.

This week I also played a number of artists from the Tzadik record label, in particular the "Radical Jewish Culture" recordings. The label, started by experimental musician and jazz saxophonist John Zorn, seeks to advance experimental and avant garde music, and with "Radical Jewish Culture" to advance a kind of new Jewish music. You can read more about what he means by that on his website, but the results are definitely some interesting stuff.

Last week I played music by Balkan Beat Box, a group recommended to me by my brother's girlfriend during a long drive home from a renaissance festival (other, long story). I checked them out and found out that the group, formed by New Yorkers with pretty extensive ties to Israel, now has their own record label: JDub, where they put out records by Jewish artists spanning a whole range of genres, from reggae to indie-rock. In that same conversation I'd mentioned John Zorn so I decided I'd look more into all the new Jewish music he was putting out on Tzadik. I wasn't dissapointed.

If you're interested in hearing the show you can listen in live from 5 to 7am Wednesdays and can catch anything you've missed online here for one week after the show airs (or save the mp3 and listen whenever you want).

I'm a hypocrite

Every time I start writing again (which seems to happen with embarrassing frequency for me) I feel this strange compulsion to write first about writing itself, something I both enjoy and philosophically oppose. Writing written about writing, always seems to present the danger of becoming just naval gazing form of expression possible. Writing, I believe, ought to be a way of getting out of yourself and connecting with others

And yet here I am.

Part of it is an act of justification. I feel I must justify that writing a post is more than just satisfying a strange kind of vanity. Ultimately wanting to speak has to be matched with people receptive to being spoken to. Like the poet Billy Collins, I don't believe in writing "just for yourself" being sufficiently worthwhile, though it can be therapeutic. Like doing a radio show, if there's no listeners, there's no point. The problem is that, as with radio, you don't always know who your listeners are and you just have to hope that the stuff you dig might matter to other people too.

Presumably it's the possibility for connection that propels writing in the first place and helps take it from being self-indulgent to being useful in some way. Just as no one starts a band in their basement expecting it will stay there I don't go to the radio station each week with the expectation that I'm the only one listening. If I'm gonna bother writing something I want real people to read it, not just imaginary future publishers.

That's why blogs are great. You can do it without the pretension that can come with harboring dreams of literary fame that I might have had taking creative writing classes in school.

Several months ago, a friend wrote me about how she had been touched by something I had written about my late dad. I sometimes question the merit of writing about deeply personal subjects, this blog having started as a travel journal, it wasn't something I was prepared for. When I started writing about it, I wasn't sure if anyone would care. But the way I figure it, if even one person is touched by something I write, then that is sufficient justification to sit down every week to do something I love.

The radio show that shares this blogs' name Late Night Hobo Blues (which doesn't really make sense for either one at this point...) started as a jazz and blues show and ended up somewhere very different. I've finally abandoned sticking to a theme or direction to dictate its content. And that's what I plan to do here as well.

Normally that sort of lack of direction bothers me, but I think for now it's good. I'll just keep looking around and seeing what I can find and then on Wednesdays I'll show you what I've found.