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just got back from a work trip to nyc, where i got to reconnect w/my bud jay hardesty, who's been working for the past 15 yrs or so on a sci-fi piece of music software that allows users to overlay parts of different pre-recorded toons on top of each other, then modify the riddimic / harmonic / melodic structures -- real lifehouse-type stuff.

while there, i realized that the two musics that best evoke that city for me are the velvet underground and thelonious monk. we listened to monk over beers at jay's pad down by washington square, and earlier, i heard the velvets' "here she comes now" (along with clash "julie's on the drug squad," replacements "i will dare," r.e.m. "radio free europe," and other noise i dig) in the gleaming bar where i went for din-din with the work folks that kinda reminded me more of someplace in dallas than the city i 'member from the '70s. randy antin aka bluestninja, a painter cat from el lay via ann arbor and san francisco whom i met thru the j-o-b, assures me that said city still exists -- mainly down on the lower east side and across the brooklyn bridge in williamsburg. next time in the apple i gotta make time to visit those quarters, as well as eric "roscoe" ambel's joint the lakeside lounge down in alphabet city.

haven't been this happy to be home since i got back from the second tour i did with nathan brown, who, as it happens, is playing at the li'l wreck room thursday along with opening act the underground railroad, just returned from a week-long jaunt up the eastern seaboard. i won't be there, tho, 'cos stoogeaphilia will be holding forth at the black dog after the poets, and i'm a stoogeaphiliac. so there.