Know What I Mean?
On Wednesday the postman brought a second-hand CD copy of Know What I Mean?, a 2011 re-issue of the 1961 album by Cannonball Adderley (featuring Bill Evans). It's not the first time I've owned this recording. Previously there’d been a '90s copy (also on CD) on which the music sounded just as good, but where there were extra bonus tracks interpolated with the original running order. For example, track 3 was 'Who Cares? (Take 5)' — i.e. the version that ended up on the original release — and track 4 was 'Who Cares? (Take 4)'. This I found irksome, as almost never has it occurred to me, having listened to a piece of music, that I want to hear a slightly different variant of it immediately afterwards. I concede that bonus tracks of this kind can be interesting & worthwhile, but only as footnotes, so to speak, at the end of the running-order, not in the midst of it. Fortunately for me, sanity prevailed in the 2011 version I now have.
Another jazz album recorded in 1961 came my way on Saturday, spotted on a charity shop shelf priced at £1.99: Free Form by Donald Byrd et al., notable as the first time Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock recorded together. This one I hadn't heard before. On first listen it struck me as mostly straight-ahead hard bop with some more adventurous flourishes — notably in the title track. I have it in a CD re-issue from 2004, a time when illegal file-sharing was rife, hence the packaging alerting the buyer to the disk being copy-protected, and stating that it's compatible with “MS Windows 95, Pentium 2 233 MHz, 64MB+ RAM“. My provisional favourite track: ‘Pentacostal Feelin’”,
After a sudden & much belated realisation earlier this year that I do actually enjoy blue cheese, I have been exploring this new flavour terrain with enthusiasm. The latest example to come my way was Môn Las from the opposite corner of Wales up in Anglesey. Unluckily, I think the piece I bought must have been encased in plastic wrap a little too long as it was discernibly ammoniated. It wasn't inedibly far gone, but I don't feel I've enjoyed a true sense of its virtues.
I'm back at work after a week off, which isn't a joy.
As a middle-aged man living alone in a shabby-looking house, this is a port of call which evidently isn't the kind of scary that appeals to the local trick-or-treaters. Some years I'll get an intrepid caller or two; but this year there were no claimants at all for the chocolates I'd bought. Hence I took a full tub of 'Celebrations' into the office today to share with my colleagues.