There was a certain symmetry to the opening and closing of my now-concluded vacation. A five-hour dangle in the Hong Kong airport (thanks to a delayed connecting flight from Chicago!) had me arriving at my hotel in Ho Chi Minh City at around 2 a.m. on September 27. And a three-hour delay at LAX this afternoon (what, it's Tuesday again?) found me arriving home around 1 a.m. on October 10.
You'll therefore pardon me, I hope, for not diving straight into the recap, much as I'm tempted to do so. I came home from my jaunt to Vietnam and Thailand with memories to last a lifetime... not to mention some 23 new CDs: traditional folk music and pop discs from Vietnam chosen largely on the basis of interesting cover art (though a helpful student pointed me toward what was new and hot), and all kinds of underground music from Thailand -- electroclash, psych-rock, mainstream nu-metal and so on, selected with the help of the rather useful Time Out guide to Bangkok, as well as a young bystander and a savvy hipster clerk at New DJ Siam (Bangkok's version of Other Music).
Details of Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta, Bangkok and Phuket are all to come, along with copious photos. But for now... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Wait, one plug before I hit the sack: My flight to Vietnam was largely consumed with reading Ben Ratliff's new book Coltrane: The Story of a Sound. Instead of offering yet another retread of the now-familiar Coltrane biography, Ratliff digs into what the saxophonist was actually playing throughout his short-but-storied career, analyzing the music with a technical specificity I hadn't encountered in most of his previous writing. In this -- much like Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise -- Ratliff's writing achieves a sublime balance perfectly pitched to cognoscenti and newcomers alike. In the latter half of the book, Ratliff examines the repercussions of Coltrane's explorations and intentions, both in the saxophonist's time and up to the present.
Ratliff's prose throughout is clear, compelling and infused with a wry, affectionate wit. And, again like Alex's book, the descriptions of the music make you want to hear it for yourself immediately -- which is why I crammed The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings, Meditations, Live in Seattle and The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording into my iPod for the flight.
I've been a fan of Ben's writing for ages, long before I became a New York Times colleague. And I eagerly recommend Coltrane: The Story of a Sound to anyone interested not just in jazz, but in the greater implications of an artist who developed a style initially scorned but eventually ubiquitous (and commercially profitable), then pushed onward, driven by personal concerns, into a territory of free expression that remains controversial and divisive to this day.
Speaking anecdotally, I can still recall the thrill of scoring a clean vinyl copy of Coltrane's Ascension at the Record Exchange in Houston during my college radio days in the late '80s, well before CD reissues became widely available. Back in San Antonio, I played the entire record during my portentously named Sunday-night avant-garde show, "Jazz for the Third Ear" (on KRTU-FM). Mindful of the sonic terror I was committing, I cravenly took the studio phone off the hook for the duration.
I was literally sweating by the time the record ended, and opened my back-announce by saying, "For those of you who are still with me..." I restored the phone a few moments later: it rang instantly. I picked it up with some trepidation. The mellow voice at the other end had words of admonishment, but not the ones I expected.
"Never apologize for playing late Coltrane, man," the caller said. "It's like Mahler symphonies -- you never get to hear that stuff enough."
Words to live by.
Playlist:
Various artists - Cung Thuong Hoa Dieu 4 & 5 (Saigon Audio)
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