I underwent part two of my latest root canal yesterday. The office is in a Northridge strip mall. I stared out the window at a dry cleaners, rental car store, Lebanese shwarma restaurant, mobile phone retailer, and hookah lounge. Young bearded men with baseball caps loitered about below, shaking hands with each other. Occasionally they looked up at me while smiling and walking between their cars.
The procedure lasted an hour and a half. The endodontist is very skilled. Towards the end I started falling asleep. Not a good idea when there are drills in one’s mouth. I had waking dreams. In one, a voice told me Jesus’ father was a Mason.
Music blog RetroFuturista published an interview with me yesterday. I talked about the 30th anniversary of The Blue Moods Of Spain. It was a very in depth interview: he asked few questions and I talked and talked. Read it here.
Music magazines Uncut and MOJO wrote about the 30th anniversary of The Blue Moods Of Spain in their most recent (November 2025) issues as well. Uncut includes a brief interview. Headline: “The entire band was smoking weed every day!” MOJO devoted a page to me, under the category “Cult Heroes”.
I’d like to say a few words about the new album from a Big Sur singer and songwriter named Fletcher Tucker. The album is entitled Kin. It’s the best album of the year, if not the entire decade, in my opinion. It’s the modern musical equivilent of Thoreau’s Walden. The album jacket feels like it emerged from the dirt of a forest. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It comes with a lyric booklet: the paper looks like it was stolen from a 1930s roll of newspaper from the Herald Tribune. The vinyl color is what vinyl looks like before being dyed. The music is astonishingly beautiful. I recommend it. Will you go out and purchase a copy? It’s available in a limited pressing of 550 copies. Don’t just download the digital version. Don’t just listen on YouTube or Spotify, then forget about him. I’ve never met the man. But I will buy a second copy. I already know I’ll wear out the first.
I pre-ordered the most recent reissue of Charles Mingus’ Mingus At Monterey. It’s important to support jazz reissues. Mingus used to call my father “Bass”. “Bass!” he’d say. I try to set aside a little money each month to support artists I love by purchasing their vinyl releases. It helps them, and makes me feel good about myself.
A little scrub jay has been hanging around outside my office window. He’s black with a white chest. I started noticing him about two weeks ago, when he tried to fly inside and bumped into the glass window. He sits on top of the wooden fence and poops. He stares at me, flies away, then comes back and stares at me some more. I put walnuts out for him, but he doesn’t know what to do with them. He hovers excitedly, but refuses to touch them. I don’t even know if scrub jays like walnuts.
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