Re-discoveries from my move.

During this latest move across the country I have discovered stuff that I have had in boxes almost my whole married life. A few years back I got into the habit of collecting vinyl, and I got into this when a friend of mine gave me a Technics turntable as payment for helping him with designing his portfolio. I am proud to say that I was able to get a lot of great, rare jazz recordings for next to nothing. I also collected a good amount of more kitschy stuff like “Smooth and Rocky-Rocky Cole sings with the Al Cohn orchestra”. I tried to find information on Rocky Cole this morning online, but didn’t find much. It seems that Rocky only did one recording for Roulette records in 1960. Even though he is a bit kitschy, he does have a great voice.

Well, the turntable broke; I sold it on e-bay, boxed the records up, and bought an i-pod. But the other day I bought a USB turntable that connects directly to my computer, and I have begun the process of converting my LP tracks into MP3s. It is made by Ion, and I found it at Urban Outfitters. It isn’t a turntable that a serious audiophile would want, but it isn’t the worst turntable I have had.

Last night I converted an album titled “Diz and Bird”, a selection of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker performances when they hit the road together in the late fifties- early sixties. Good stuff. I have “Little Jimmy Rushing and his orchestra”, the cover illustrated by the great late Tom Allen. Another gem.

Another thing that I found that I thought was lost to time was a pamphlet from an exhibit I saw in Kyiv (Kiev. Kyiv is the Ukrainian spelling…) in the early 90’s. It was an exhibit of N.S. Syadristy’s work. Syadristy created these microscopic sculptures, and hollowed out human strands of hair and would place carved roses in them. He could momentarily stop the beating of his heart to create these sculptures. It sounds crazy, but I saw the exhibit myself. You view these sculptures using a microscope. One of my favorites from the exhibit is a portrait of Hemingway done in watercolor on a pear seed. Another favorite was a chessboard with pieces on the head of a pin.  Maybe I was duped by Soviet propaganda, but if so, they did a convincingly great job of it!

If you are ever in Kyiv, check it out!