There used to be a joke like this: Boss yells at worker, worker yells at wife, wife yells at kid, kid kicks dog, dog bites mailman, mailman returns to post office and massacres all his co-workers. Not as funny anymore as it was in the 80s...

The Swan River, in Bigfork, Montana, Sunday afternoon. #Montana

I once met Ornette Coleman walking down the street in Manhattan. He asked me if I played an instrument; I said I had given up the trumpet to focus on writing. He said, "You should have stuck with it, because you can make the same mistakes either way." Ornette Coleman would have been 93 today. Go listen to his music.

It's fundamentally dishonest to speak of having a favorite Merzbow record (no, I haven't heard them all, and neither have you), but Tauromachine is one of my favorite Merzbow records, and it's being reissued as a remastered 2CD set next month!
https://merzbow.bandcamp.com/album/tauromachine-remastered

Happy birthday to Bill Laswell — bassist, producer, catalyst, and the ultimate "six degrees" connective tissue between literally hundreds of musicians — who turns 68 today.

All Burning Ambulance Music releases are "name your price", today (Bandcamp Friday) and for the rest of the weekend. (Yes, this means you can get them for free, you cheap prick.) We have amazing albums by Matthew Shipp & Whit Dickey, Ivo Perelman & Nate Wooley, Graham Haynes & Submerged, Senyawa, José Lencastre, and Breath Of Air (Brandon Ross, Charles Burnham & Warren Benbow). If you haven't taken the plunge yet, DO IT.
http://burningambulancemusic.bandcamp.com

Morning music: Lefty Frizzell, Look What Thoughts Will Do. One of those perfect compilations — everything you need, and just a few extra tracks to serve as pleasant surprises.

Morning music: the Jazz Composer's Orchestra, s/t, from 1968. A series of large ensemble pieces (17-18 musicians) featuring soloists: Don Cherry, Larry Coryell, Roswell Rudd, Pharoah Sanders, and finally Cecil Taylor, who gets the entire second LP.

Wondering how many subscribers I'd lose if next week's BA newsletter was a 2000-word review of the new Uriah Heep album. In related news, the new Uriah Heep album is awesome.

Interesting (to me anyway) that the new Jose James album is a collection of Erykah Badu songs, but the cover is a nod to Alice Coltrane's Journey In Satchidananda.