a little singe on my gristle

Breaking Bad
Prince Jazzbo, Get Tonight Brother
Staff Benda Belili, Tres Tres Fort
Cargoe, Cargoe (Live in Memphis)
The Orb, Baghdad Batteries (Orbsessions Volume 3)

• Cargoe is/was a psychedelic wonder and a labelmate of Big Star on Ardent but managed to be even less appreciated in their time, and no. First heard of it through this excellent interview by Robert Pally in the new Perfect Sound Forever. I found the live Cargoe album of which they speak on the Rhapsody iPhone app but not the web player, which is weird and tedious to report. Anyway, shake off that Monday malaise and feel alright, or give into it (the AC is out in my building) and feel poorly. Cargoe will see you through either.
  
  
  Cargoe, "Feel Alright"
  
  
  Cargoe, "Feelin' Mighty Poorly"
  
  
• Like a superfool, I left the above leftovers in the fridge this morning instead of bringing it for lunch. Seriously, that dinner was so good I was expecting a guard to come escort me to the electric chair afterward. Instead it was just the TV to the couch.
  
  
• Last night's Breaking Bad seemed rather workaday, setting dominoes up to fall episodes later and I was all, C'mon! We accept degeneration and fate! Get on with it! and then Jesse got back to his apartment and I was all, Oh.
  
  
• I was at the bookstore kids section with Maya, myself reading in the Wire about a collection of reggae DJ toasters, people like Prince Jazzbo who just spill forth over the records they play, so I pulled it up on my phone and wondered, why do these stores even exist anymore? I'm glad they do and all, I guess, but really, why? The big Barnes & Noble here in town has played a substantial minor character role in my life since it opened, good and bad, but I never buy anything there because why would I? Why would anyone? Then a woman popped up at the section of kids' bibles next to where I was sitting publicly announcing to herself, "Oh look at this whole section they have here!" jabbering the obvious just like Prince Jazzbo, driving me from my seat. Seems I only like glossolalia through a mediated layer anymore, my psyche sealed up like a sous vide steak getting evenly cooked but never touching the fire. That's why I need a bookstore and a record store and a post office and whatever other place low-simmer public lunacy abuts the quotidian of my process. Gets a little singe on my gristle.
  
  
• In this month's Country Roads you might find my story about Floyd's Morley Marina: lost towns, Henry Ford, party barges, & old people drinkin' all converge in the backest part of Back Brusly. Here is a dog fetching a stick in the water out there
  
  
  
  You might also find my editor Dale's story about a Voodou healing center in New Orleans, my friend Anne's visit to the home of the couple that runs it and my friend Frank rhapsodizing the overlooked oxbow communities in the northern part of the state. If your the finding sort.