(ranting email, 2007)

Ya know, personally I hate these ten best lists. I never know whet the fuck is the best. And I’m not on any major label lists so I don’t get any of the Verve or Blue Note or Prestige or Disney jazz reissues anyway. So i just try and find cool stuff I got this year that says 2007 and pick ten of them and write them in a list and send it in. Those All About Jazz people make me nervous anyway [they do not….]. I mean I like their paper and all (well, I did when my eyes could read 4 point type), but all these jazz expert guys are so goddamned serious and detailed and fanatical and opinionated. They start talking and I get lost completely. And once Greg Burk told me that someone asked that I go to a jazz journalist (excuse me, Jazz Journalist) awards thing. Holy fucking shit I was bored. I’d been all day at the Central Ave Festival listening to all this righteous music and hanging with cool, fun people and getting burned to a fucking skin cinder and suddenly I’m at this event with shitty food, no booze (Coronas?!?!?), a very boring band and all these dull, pale people. For christ fucking sake. None of them were even stoned. None of them probably get stoned. None of them probably ever had been stoned. If they smoked dope maybe they’s lossen up a little. Nope….instead they’re home with their box sets and reissues and carefully cataloged vinyl collections and record cleaner kits and turgid jazz liner notes and turgider jazz history volumes by some elmer phd with all their Amoeba bags neatly folded and tucked for future use. And they never hit the local clubs becuase I never see their sorry asses out anywhere but there they are bitching about how there’s no good jazz anymore….