Azul – Johannes LinsteadAzul, the latest release from World Fusion guitarist Johannes Linstead. It has also been in my music rotation for a month or two. I believe I like more and more every time I listen to it. And the New Age music world appears to agree. The album is now number two on the Zone Music Repoter’s Top 100 Radio AirPlay Chart.
So last week after I made the John Gorka playlist I visited the Roots Music Report’’s Blues Chart. I scanned down the list. There were new releases from a few artists I know and like and several new artists. I decided to make a playlist to see which albums I would like to explore in more detail, I.e. listen to the full album. Here are the albums and artists, the playlist and my thoughts on the albums.
The other day Assassin’s Code by Ward Larsen became the 59th book I have read this year. That leaves only one more book to read before the end of the year to reach my goal of 60 books read! It is also the third David Slaton novel I have read this year. Previously, I read Assassin’s Game and Assassin’s Silence in February and March respectively. All three have been terrific reads.
One of my goals, when I first started to blog, was to present the music that I have listened to over the last fifty years! Wow! Has it really been that long? Anyway, over the course of my blogging I have written many about my favorite musicians like John Prine, Phil Ochs and Tim Paxton But there are so many more that I want to write about. The problem has been that I took the blog in a totally different direction. I started to write more and more about discovering new music and new genres. Those explorations have been great and have led me to some fantastic bands and musicians. However, there is only so much time in the day to listen to music so, as I listened to more new music, I listened to less old music.
I may never be able to catch up writing about the various albums I have been listening to over the last three to four months. So I have decided to make a few playlists that will group the tracks roughly by genre. Here;’s what’s on the first one….
Yesterday I posted that two albums have stood out in my music rotation over the last few weeks. The first one was Hard Times the latest release from jazz saxophonist Vincent Herring. The second one is Spirit to the Sea from the Colorado Indie-Americana string band Trout Steak Revival. I first encountered the music of Trout Steak Revival back in 2012 , when I listened to their album Flight. After listening to that album I knew that this was a band that was going places. And they did!
I do believe, two of the albums that have been in my music rotation for a few weeks. Now highlight my eclectic taste in music. One is the latest from jazz saxophonist Vincent Herring, while the other is from a bluegrass band Trout Steak Revival. While I don’t think I am alone with my live for both these genres of music, I would think I am in the minority.
Anyway here is my take on the first of these two albums.
So last week was basically a week without exercising. The reason is that sometime during the previous week I reinjured my knee.
It all began about a month ago, when I fell near the end of a four-mile run. I scraped my knee and a finger or two. Both of the scrapes healed over the next few weeks, but there was still some discomfort in the knee, particularly, when I put pressure on it. Then on Thursday night November 9th, my knee really hurt, when I climbed into bed. I worked the following morning at Target, but my knee hurt really bad. I even complained about it to one of my co-workers.
Dion Leonard’s Finding Gobi is the typical boy finds dog, boy loses dog, boy searches for dog, ultimately finds him and brings him home. Only the boy is an ultra- marathoner who races in some of the most grueling races around the globe. And it was at one of those races that Leonard found Gobi. The race was a grueling seven-day 155 mile run that crosses the China’s Gobi Desert.
