Of Jazz And Memory

For a variety of reasons, recently I’ve been thinking about jazz.

Reason Number One: I’ve acquired a new habit recently. I realized that I needed to get off my rapidly expanding ass and start moving again. Not necessarily lifting weights, not necessarily running my fool head off, but just moving in general. For me, one of my big passions is walking.
Not that silly looking race walking stuff, where you swivel your hips and gyrate your shoulders and elbows.
Just walking.
Dickens was another great walker; known to go for miles or hours on end, while trying to figure out a plot line for his latest novel.
I figure if it’s good enough for Dickens, it’s good enough for me.

Except I give my walks that special Mize touch.
First, I get up at 4am.
Yes, 4am.
I wake to the smell of fresh brewed coffee. I get up, get dressed, lace my sneakers and pour a mug of coffee and put on my cheap, neon yellow radio Walkman, and I’m out the door by 4:15am.
I walk outside.
It still dark. The moon is high above me, the hum of sporadic traffic from I-275 like cicadas in the distance.
The air is crisp, clear and usually a bit humid.
I turn on the radio and jazz fills my ears.

My local NPR station (89.7, WUSF) has jazz every night from 10pm until 5am. No commercials. Just enough disc jockey to teach you a bit about what you’re listening to.

Jazz.
Coffee.
A good brisk two mile walk.

A half hour later, I’m ready for my day to start.
It’s a magnificent way to begin.

Reason Number Two: Which is kind of related to Reason Number One.
Sometimes, in the morning, I’ll hear some John Coltrane.
Which always makes me think of San Francisco.
Which always makes me think of The Orbit Room.
When I lived in San Francisco, I lived in a triangle shaped building full of cheap apartments at 2059 Market Street. It was at the intersection of Market Street, 14th Street and Church Street.
No, I’m not hallucinating. Go ahead and Google Map it, I’ll wait.

A few blocks away was The Orbit Room.
It’s hard to describe the decor of the Orbit Room, but I’m pretty sure that if a UFO crash landed in a martini bar, the aftermath would look like the Orbit Room.
The Orbit Room had two things going for it: the ability to make a great snakebite (with German Spaten beer) and a CD jukebox.
During my eight years in San Francisco, many was the night I would walk to the Orbit Room, my copy of The Portable Emerson or The Portable Steinbeck under my leather jacketed arm, enter, and order my snakebite mit spaten, sit down and sip my cold beer and read.
After a bit of “Self-Reliance” or “The Grapes of Wrath”, I would decide to take a break and listen to some music on the CD jukebox.
I think the price was 50 cents per song.
Now when quarters are a necessity to be saved for laundry day at the coin laundromat, you spend them sparingly.
I always wanted to get the most bang for my buck.
Or half a buck.
Now granted, five times out of ten, I wanted some Sinatra, and the juke was packed full.
But the other five times out of ten, I wanted some jazz.
Which brings me to John Coltrane.
If I picked any Sinatra tune, my fifty cents would get me about three to five minutes (six at the best) of musical enjoyment.
But if I picked Coltrane, especially the title cut from his “Lush Life” album, I would get thirteen minutes and fifty four seconds of jazz genius for my four bits.

Talk about value for the money. Just listen to the cut one time, and I’m sure you will be hooked.
If you can’t get a girl to smooch on you while listening to “Lush Life” or Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”, then she will never, ever smooch you.
If you can find a girl who will both smooch you and show knowing appreciation for your fine, fine, musical taste and prowess for having the above two albums in your CD collection, then you better marry her quick and make an honest woman out of her.
Or give her my address.

In other news, I walked the AIDS Walk this last Saturday. (Yay!)
With a bronchial cough, a fever of 100, and sinus pressure that made me feel like my eyes were going to pop out of my head any second. (Boo!)

But it was worth every step, every minute.
Again, I thank all of you who donated a total of $285 towards AIDS programs here in the Tampa Bay area.

Sunday and Monday was spent curled up in the fetal position on the couch, whining like a baby, and watching dumb ass daytime television, taking special care not to land too long on any of the 9/11 tributes, for fear of either bursting into tears due to the geniune emotion and heartbreak or throwing something hard at my television due to the extreme hypocracy and breaking it. Oh, and shoveling various flavors and brands of ice cream down my gullet to slake the fire in my sore throat.

But in other news, my abs look great from all the coughing.