Every November I get on some sort of musical kick. A couple years ago I was all about Death Cab for Cutie. Last year Elliott Smith provided my soundtrack for the month. And this year it’s jazz.
Of course, for the last three years I’ve also been doing that whole National Novel Writing Month project. That means I’m pretty much chained to my keyboard for the entire month. And since I’m being mono in my activity, I tend to be mono in my music as well. There’s a possibility that I’ve got issues with focusing, and since I’m applying focus in one aspect of my life, it carries over into others. But that’s pure conjecture.
Anyway, I basically stumbled onto jazz this month. I’d actually sorted out all of my instrumental albums into groups of five (my player’s capacity), and had intended to run through a group a day and then cycle though again as necessary. I had themes like “Wu-Tang”, “Classic Albums” and “Jay Dilla”.
But then I remembered that I had a few Dave Brubeck discs and some Coltrane and Miles stuff around too. So I popped it in and found it much more lively. Not that I’ve got anything against my hip-hop beats, but I needed something a bit more organic to provide the soundtrack to my writing.
And at that point I thought to myself, “Every time I go to The Sound Garden, I should probably just grab a couple used jazz CDs, to help flesh out my collection.” I’ve probably picked up one or two jazz albums a year since deciding that I actually like the music, which is pitiful. But this year, in particular, I’ve had much less disposable income, which makes me feel a bit better about neglecting my jazz habit.
A few days later when I was supposed to be writing, but didn’t feel like writing, I started messing around with my home theater system. I wanted to see if I could actually get some radio stations in the frequency black hole that is my basement dwelling. It worked, but there wasn’t anything on the radio that I wanted to hear.
Still not in a writing mood, I toyed around with iTunes—specifically the radio stations. Now, I never got into Internet radio because I have mounds of CDs that I’ve spent money on and it’d be a waste of an investment to venture beyond that, at least to me. But I really didn’t feel like writing and I wanted to see if I could find the AM station that my mom had introduced me to back in Tucson.
I didn’t find that station, but I did stumble upon DI FM Modern Jazz. I pretended like I was looking for something that would provide a good soundtrack to writing (few vocals, not annoying) and that’s exactly what I’ve found. Of course, listening to the station for a couple hours every night makes me feel much worse about now having money to spend on exploring jazz. For instance I’ve found that I sort of dig Sun Ra. “Space Is the Place” is such a dope song.
But this damn economy is killing my pockets. Oh well, I know that I’ll get to implement my plan one day. I’m sure that by next November I’ll be listening to my own jazz collection and Internet radio will be a thing in my past.
