"now's the time"

What happens when you ask a  fortune teller for the time.

Lou Reed, New York
Jimmy Reed, Rockin' With Reed
Various Artists, The USA Records Blues Story
Charlie Parker, Cosmic Rays and Now's the Time
The East Village Other, Electronic Newspaper

• The USA Records Blues Story is like accidentally landing on the greatest AM radio station, one of those moments where you are how have I never heard this song with every song, which is how I want my every art reaction to be.
  
  
  A.C. Reed, "I'd Rather Fight than Switch"
  
  I'll take the oh wow over the ah, yes any day. Incidentally I feel oh wow every time I hear the line "Caught between the twisted stars/the faulty line the twisted map/that brought Columbus to New York" all blurted out in a breath. Like I just got there and that line was waiting for me.
  
  
  Lou Reed, "Romeo Had Juliette"
     
• It makes me wonder what other stories USA Records has. Is there a Disco story? There are always more stories. I never think to listen to bebop, particularly Charlie Parker, because where do you start? I feel I am slightly more well-versed in jazz than the average rhythmless yahoo, yet I never know where to go with the classic artists. There's so much stuff. I tend to throw darts, or in the case of this record, pick the one with the funny title and the cool cover.
      
• Charlie Parker, thought about more than listened to, makes me think of Jean-Michel Basquiat, particularly
  
  
  
  I love that compulsion to list out the already listed. The zeal of the index. It's all there, but here, it's really there.
     
• I read a story somewhere about a woman that worked for one of the big publishing houses as their genius index-maker. She set her own hours in an office in the basement,  enacting her magic with boxes of index cards (that is what they are for) in a manner that the then up-and-coming computers could not do. She revealed her process to no one. Once she passed away, or left, or whatever happened to her, the publisher gave up on the art and gave into the machines.
   
• I would listen to this very Charlie Parker record and let Spotify and Facebook relist the overlisted, but I'm not sure this record even exists anymore. It doesn't in the aforementioned digital sphere, itself not-wholly existent but still omni-present.
  
  I've had visions of apps and eBooks and "the people" and the failings of the Human Microphone and "tomorrow's community newspaper" careening around my head all morning, all very "now's the time" thoughts and it sounds not unlike this
  
  
  Charlie Parker, "Now's The Time"
  
  and a little like
  
  
  The East Village Other, Electric Newspaper "Hiroshima Day USA vs Underground"
  
  and a little like this Tuxedomoon clip featuring Basquiat that @joegarden put up the other day.
  
  
  
  Just for good measure, here is something from Basquiat's band Gray.
  
  
  Gray, "Eight Hour Religion"