A real cool pleasure
Finally, I’m happy to announce, after moving here to our Caribbean paradise island more or less permanently three years ago, Judy and I have found adequate replacements for every single one of the wonderful aspects of our previous life in – and around – our other home in Malibu, California.
Yes, even including the sheer joy of many Sunday afternoons spent driving around winding Pacific coast roads in Judy’s snazzy red Mustang with the top down and the radio blaring cool jazz. Before ending-up in the local ice cream parlour for “Fudge Covered Peanut Butter Filled Pretzels and Vanilla Malt” (Judy’s favourite) and “White and Dark Chocolate Chunks, Pecans, Walnuts and Chocolatey Covered Almonds in Dairy Cream” (mine).
Very soon after our arrival here, we discovered so many West Indian delights to compensate for the lack of a sports car and frankly, both calorie and cholesterol-wise, deep-down we always knew we’d be better off without the decadent ices anyway.
But how to continue getting loads and loads of – as the Manhattan Transfer so rightly called it – “steaming jazz”?
To satisfy acute Thelonious Monk and Charlie Mingus deficiencies we tried everything. From expanding our CD collection by mail order to ingratiating ourselves with fellow-islanders and borrowing their Long-Playing vinyl classics to record at home.
But still the total jazz radio experience remained unfulfilled. We had the smooth music but not the non-sequitur laconic announcements from even cooler DJ’s.
Like Clint Eastwood in his “Play Misty for Me” saying things like, “The clock on the wall tells me we’re approaching three-o-clock in the a.m.-high time for more Julian Cannonball Adderley.” Or, “they’re predicting shower activity later today so let’s have a Gerry Mulligan classic.”
The absence of this last remnant of Southern Californian laid-back living was keeping us from total tropical immersion and we didn’t know where to turn.
Until a blinding flash of lightning hit me the other day and by fiddling around on the Internet, I came across KJAZZ 88.1 FM streaming live 24/7 from California State University in Long Beach. (For true jazz fans -www.jazzandblues.org/ )
So now on Sunday afternoons – or Thursday mornings or Monday evenings if we feel like it -lounging together on the terrace listening to the coolest jazz station on the planet, Judy and I are again in complete harmony.
Like a couple of Fudge Pretzels and Chocolatey Covered Almonds.
