Radiolarians III is out and I haven’t even finished with II? These guys are killing me.

No, really. They always have, ever since Boston’s Accurate Records sent me a copy of Notes From the Underground back in the early ‘90s. The coming together of groove and free improvisational directions—with the emphasis on the…

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Said of the 1960s, it’s also true of the 1980s: If you remember them you weren’t there. Reasons to forget? You worked and partied too long and hard and did too many drugs to maintain the rigorous schedule. You’ve repressed the embarrassing struggle to appear above your socio-economic status. And…

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The second greatest honor in America is to be accepted as a regular in your local bar. The first is to be granted free drinks on a regular basis by your favorite bartender. It took me over a year to be accepted as a regular at the sea-side hang that…

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Enrico Rava’s New York Days is a warm, impressionistic tribute to the city that has contributed much to the Italian trumpeter’s career. With saxophonist Mark Turner, pianist Stefano Bollani, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Paul Motian, Rava paints a moody, intellectual landscape that belies the soaring skyscraper vistas. This is the…

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Those who believe that shrinks are as neurotic and deluded as their patients—hey, it isn’t always true—will find supporting evidence in Hanif Kureishi’s new novel Something To Tell You. Its narrator, Jamal, is a gentle London psychoanalyst who loves gossip and secrets. “I deal in them for a living,” he…

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Listening through the two-CDs in Bill Frisell’s History, Mystery is much like going through the dozen panels of cartoon artist R Crumb’s “A Short History of America.” In a dozen wordless panels, Crumb takes us through an untouched pastoral setting which gives give way to a single rail line, then a…

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…this is as pretty and as entrancing picture book as you’ll find, something to be explored under the spell of psychedelics as much as studied when perfectly straight.

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…other psychological states figure in, notably schizophrenia. Dick was a heavy abuser of amphetamines and as he progressed into the ‘70s, questions of sanity dominated his work.

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Using a 15-or-so-year-old Mexican-American kid who smiles every time he says something in French as the vehicle to address black-white race relations isn’t the only clever turn in Dagoberto Gilb’s latest novel The Flowers. There’s also a black albino named Pink who passes in an apartment building where the landlord…

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “jazz age” aside, the relationship between America’s “indigenous” music–as jazz is mistakenly referenced–and American literature is symbiotic but somewhat murky. Michael Ondaatje’s Coming Through the Slaughter imagined the hard scrabble beginnings of “jass” through the life of New Orleans progenitor and cornet player Buddy Bolden. Beat-groupie John Clellon…

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