Jazzing it up

I was doing a little of the old clean up clean out again, a direct result of acquiring a near complete set of Evelyn Waugh paperbacks (I already had two of them, and now have two copies of Brideshead in the same edition).  You know the old saying, "Out with the old, In with the new,"although I can't say I have ever subscribed to it myself.  I'm more of the Out with the new, In with the old variety, as can be evidenced by my many interests in this, that and the other.

To round off the night, I started thinking of which records I am no longer interested in and was going to either sell or donate, and started playing through some of them- many, many, many which I have not listened to in over ten years.  This ran the gamut from reggae (there was an all too short phase when I was an aficionado of the genre), hip-hop when it was still called rap (Rakim in particular), and what was once my favorite genre- Jazz (which has been displaced for a long time now by Classical).

I started spinning one record in particular, which I am listening to right now, and it made me think of what seems a long and ago time- when I was in London for a year, sharing a quite nice flat in a quiet (and rather dull) area called Golders Green with my old pal Y.  He used to listen to jazz a lot as well, and Jimmy Smith was one of his favorites, I remember that very well.  I was in my Coltrane phase at the time (I loved the orange spines more than the music)- and probably paying the then rent of Tower Records with my almost daily visits and almost daily purchases.  Music was always on in the house and there always seemed the energy and excitement of days and nights.

play it, baby, play