I started today with the final segment of the “Raga for the Rainy Season” I mentioned recently. I would have liked to play the whole thing, but there’s too much other music to play. It’s so good, though.

I usually try to avoid repeating tracks I’ve played before, even though when you think about how commercial radio beats songs into submission, it’s not such a crime, especially since it’s been a few weeks — so I replayed the title track from a Ronnie Boykins that I picked up last month.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I finally read Francis Davis’ “Like Young”, which I’d picked up at a remainder store almost a year ago. I’ve read a few of Davis’ other books, and I really enjoy his style, as well as the music he chooses to cover. I’m really lucky to have access to the WNUR library, where I can look up most everything that caught my interest in the book, at least in the jazz vein. The Charlie Haden, Paul Bley, and Arthur Blythe tracks were inspired by stories from that one. (Subscribers to the Atlantic Monthly can read Jazz — Religious and Circus, Davis’ article about the late 70′s, when most people had given up on jazz, overlooking brilliant stuff like the several India Navigation recordings I played today.)