Happy IBD! (Should be Independent BookWriters day)?

"I hear so many conventional musicians playing conventional scales. Okay if I riff off them?"

​- Benny Hambush

A revolutionary bookshop lives in Ermita.

I only really enjoy second-hand bookstores these days. First, there are no good new bookstores that I have found in the Philippines. The chain National seems to have a monopoly and I cannot find anything there that makes me sweat.....* 

Second, I found a great "random books in stacks" second hand bookshop next to Naturally Negros (home of amazing deaf made Guihuingan honey and spicy atchara). I picked up a 190? copy of Thackeray's Pendennis for 150 pesos––inscribed in beautiful, India ink cursive: "Dorothy Davison, Spingholme, Stockton-on-Jees 24/12/08."

I did not purchase this $3 find on impulse, but after a week carefully scouting out whether I had it in my heart to separate it from its bookseller.**

The best thing about the book (have yet to get to the words beyond a slightly well-worn Chapter One) is tucked in the back. A full color thick-stock portrait of a woman sexier than any early 2000s hipster starlet, accompanied by a poem teaser by P.T.O. "It Might Have Been" (Her Joy was Duty, And Love was Law). 

This is the beautiful thing about having no camera. I cannot post a picture, I must find words for this interesting find.

​Paradise Regained, balance restored, just around #independentbookstoreday.

Before the fall... Hendrix' feline best.***

Some people want to know what I am listening to that makes me write so creative like. It is a new Hendrix ballad progression I discovered––a 12 minute Winterland October 11, 1968 (Late Show) rendition of Like A Rolling Stone . It begins with a minor key San Francisco-influenced jam that I can only compare with the March 1968 version of Little Wing at the Cafe au Go with Mike Bloomfield, Buddy Miles, and company.* 

Lacking the interplay of other ace musicians, the beginning noodle it is only a quarter as interesting, but striking nonetheless. What really strikes me is Hendrix playing little slow blues progressions and Curtis Mayfield trills to the template that "a cat named Dylan" set down. Beautiful.

Now, Jimi is singing the words with real conviction––one forgets that he was only a couple years  from starving on the street. Greenwich Village scrounging days, "revenge best served cold" yada yada.

This is all before Herbie Rich makes his presence known on bluesy, haunting Hammond B-3 organ. Seriously waxing it down. And Jimi signals his appreciation by laying out and performing some of the most amazing mid-1960s Stax soul runs ever. Bone-chilling Curtis vibrations.

Then it is on to aggressive back-to-the-races "super climax" Hendrix, which I find to be his weak point. Then again, I am not 23 any longer. ​​

Coming soon: "Finding Virgil Gonsalves––Plight of the Wiped Flute Guy."

*Just found out that one of the cats at Cafe Au GoGo is Herbie Rich on organ and sax. That connection was not an accident––I really had no idea. What I also know is that a young Bob Marley, up in NY to try out for Johnny Nash's JAD label, was in the dozen-strong audience.

**Authenticity trumps greed.

***Photo is from an Allan Tannenbaum gallery at SohoBlues.

#endurancewriter (aka Nomad Regneb Nelush).