Today in my little corner of Manhattan the noise is ferociously anti-human, plus it must be driving the rats crazy, too. The hotel being constructed one apartment away from my back windows has come up with an even worse noise than I had assumed they would surely make. This noise is the vilest you hear in New York City--and you hear this noise nearly every day of the week--always someplace in the city--this is a noise that can happen at 3 p.m. or 3 a.m. or 7:30 a.m., which is when this noise I'm now suffering began. The cursed JACKHAMMER. Truly one of the noisiest devices ever devised against the privacy of New York City apartment dwellers is the jackhammer. And these holy demons from the construction-site and street-demolition Hell have been just as noisy since this maniacal intrusive tool was first invented--the design and way it works hasn't changed, except they are now attached to more powerful compression generators that make them as aggravating as a flock of Furies perpetually snarling at your brains--and this hotel construction site has blessed me with not just one of these aggravating beasts blasting away but two--TWO! Yep, like Casey Casem used to say, "That's fucking preponderous!" Or like the late great cigarette-smoking actor, John Wayne, said when giving a speech while drunk at a right-wing dinner honoring guns or something as obnoxious, "This is regod-damndiculous!"
I'm under the earphones--listening to John LaPorta trying to blow like Bird behind an obscure jazz singer named Ada Moore--this is stuff from Mingus's own record label, Debut, in the mid-1950s and this session has a weird assortment of cool cats, like Wally Cirillo on piano! Also Tal Farlow, Oscar P(ettiford), and Osie Johnson. Doesn't quite block out the jackhammers, but it gets your mind off them enough you can keep regaining your senses so that you can keep perculating until they finally surely cease, an assumption again--a primary premise.
And the calming Miles Davis is on this Debut-sampler CD--with Mingus, Teddy Charles (on vibes--we've honored Teddy on a previous Growler post), and Elvin Jones--and this is such a cool track--it's "Nature Boy," and what a tune to show off your chops on, the changes are that beautifully subtle, just like Nature. The Nature Boy was Eden Ahbez and Eden wrote the tune and the lyrics--Nat "King" Cole had a big hit with "Nature Boy."
There he is: Eden Ahbez, Nature Boy!
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The Bosch Brute jackhammer
An obeyer of noise,
thegrowlingwolf--an island unto himself, continental though he be
for The Daily Growler
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