JIM O'ROURKE The Visitor (DRAG CITY)
HIGH PLACES s/t (THRILL JOCKEY)
SOFT MACHINE Third (COLUMBIA)
KEITH JARRETT Shostakovich: 24 Preludes and Fugues op. 87 (ECM)
FRIPP & ENO (No Pussyfooting) (ISLAND)
FRIPP & ENO Evening Star (EG RECORDS)
SCRIBBLER My Old Lady 7" (STUMPARUMPER)
GHOST HOSPITAL D+ 7" (TEEN APE)
GONE TO CROATOAN They 7" (EOLIAN)
ANCIENT SKY s/t LP (PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE)

O'Rourke and High Places albums spun while frying up some potatoes and veggies with 4-year old daughter, cozy inside with window half-open on a cold and sunny fall day. Drag City and Thrill Jockey, pretty sweet, can't complain. Another sweet memory is this time like 19 years ago, during my sophomore year in college, when I had to go move my car late at night and I turned on the radio right in the middle of the most blasted free-form rock organ playing I had ever heard up to that point. (I guess Stevie Winwood's work on Hendrix's "Voodoo Child" was the previous champion... or no, Live in Japan, duh.) It was the local Lincoln, Nebraska community radio station, KZUM 89.3 FM, and I sat in the car and listened for a while until, realizing the song wasn't gonna be a short one, running back to my dorm and calling the DJ. He told me it was Soft Machine, from the album Third. When I picked up the album used a year or two later, I learned that the track was "Facelift" and the organist was Mike Ratledge, but my favorite side turned out to be Robert Wyatt's majestic and serpentine "Moon in June" composition. Also loved the band photo in the gatefold and would spend minutes at a time peering at it, assuming I would eventually find drug paraphenalia. I don't believe I ever have... see if you have any luck (click for a nice larger view):



No pussyfooting: (No Pussyfooting) is kinda boring. Cool as an experiment/provocation album, but the follow-up Evening Star refines and improves on the ideas, and so does the Fripp & Eno-worshipping career of Heldon, whose debut came one year after No P.

Also listened to a few unknown-to-me new releases, hoping to write reviews which may appear sooner or later...