2010-8-9

About Austin, Texas.

Even with a city I have never visited, I can get a general sense of what it is like…
It is the city where a gentleman of my own generation whom I met through business has his family living.

I learned what kind of city it was several years ago, when I was listening to and collecting, one after another, songs by the finest bands and singers in the world today on Last.fm (more about that another day). I could hear it in the sound of a band I discovered, The Lovely Sparrows.

So today I thought I would look into the city’s musical character.

Austin remains famous as a music city with a spirit of its own.
Guided by values distinct from those of major music movements across the United States, it has steadily formed a scene of its own.
It was precisely in the early 1970s that this tendency began to take a clear shape.
Wexler entered that environment and sensed firsthand that a new music movement was taking root. He was moved by the sight of Doug Sahm dynamically bringing together all kinds of music in his performance at a local club. He also became deeply interested in Willie Nelson, who had appeared before Doug that night, and signed him immediately, the account says.

Willie therefore made two albums for Atlantic, Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages.
Wexler then apparently suggested that he make an album with Asleep at the Wheel, a Western swing band that had only recently made its major-label debut. But because the two albums had failed to achieve satisfactory sales, Atlantic told Willie that his contract was over. The plan for an album with Asleep fell through. Ah…

Astonishingly, that long-imagined collaboration finally came about more than thirty years later. This is the album in question. Once again, Jerry Wexler set it in motion. In 2007, he went to a Willie Nelson concert and saw Asleep at the Wheel, who were the opening act. Apparently, it reminded him of the collaborative album that had never been made. That is how this album was born. Jerry Wexler died in the summer of 2008 at the age of ninety-one. But he did truly fine work right up to the very end. Wexler is credited on this album as executive producer. What a moving album this is.
The rest omitted. From kenta.

The recent buyer of Newsweek and Jerry Wexler alike did this kind of work at around the age of ninety-one… People who live by freedom and intellect—true democracy—to the marrow of their bones… They belong to no one; they live by their own philosophy and sensibility. That is the essence of America.

The suffering of the past twenty years shortened my expected lifespan of one hundred years by at least ten years, but through exercise I have now regained enough to reach ninety-five.
I had been thinking that I would regain the remaining five years by giving up the cigarettes I had cut down to just one during a break… Then yesterday, an acquaintance and I decided that we ought to swim in the sea at least once this summer, and we took a train to a beautiful beach. During that time I did not smoke. I even forgot about cigarettes… Should I quit just like that? I had not smoked a single one by about 2:30 earlier today… Should I give up cigarettes altogether?

I, too, will keep writing until my life runs out, no less than they did. So I would be better off not smoking.