Hello! It’s Tuesday once again, which means it’s time for The Piper Block on datafruits.fm! Let’s see what we’ve got on the schedule tonight…
Talkie Time: Men At Sea - Able-Bodied Cooks / Beans, Bullets, And Oil
yvan eht nioj
There was a very, very brief period in my culinary career where I’d regularly daydream about signing onto a cruise line and slinging dishes on the open seas. There’s something about the idea of living on a boat that still appeals to me now and again; stepping out onto the railing at night and gazing into the vastness, feeling the gentle rocking of the waves as I drift off to sleep.
Did the constant labor law violations and exploitative business practices of the cruise ship industry kill that idea? Well, that, and the fact that I can’t swim for shit. Anyways, speaking of bad ocean-related decisions that my gay ass never made, let’s listen to wartime propaganda about joining the navy. I mean, shit, they probably pay better than half the chefs I’ve worked under, and it isn’t like the dishies can sell meth out the back if the back door leads to the fuckin’ Mariana Trench.
Tonight, we’ve got two episodes of Men At Sea, one of an absolute boatload koff of programs released during wartime designed to spur patriotism and encourage recruitment. Produced in cooperation with the War Shipping Administration, Men At Sea tells the tale of the sailors who ran the merchant and supply routes to keep the front lines sustained and fed during the fight against the Axis powers.
And, despite (as OTRCat puts it) sporting “nearly as much swelling organ music as a daytime soap opera”, the show’s a decently entertaining romp through the shipping routes. We’ve got two episodes for you this evening: “Able-Bodied Cooks”, originally aired on August 6, 1944, and “Beans, Bullets, And Oil”, originally aired on August 5, 1945.
My new record player, complete with the most recently played records in vinyl, cassette, and cd. The CD and the tape both may be familiar to long-time listeners of the show.
The Jazz Program : Jean-Luc Ponty - Enigmatic Ocean (1977) / Fables (1985) / Imaginary Voyage (1976)
Over the past few months, a local transmasc friend and I have been hitting the thrift stores, trying to find him some new suits and handsome threads while I gas him up before inevitably getting distracted looking at records. Gotta support the kings. You know how it be. On one of our more recent trips, however, we came across a massive score on my end: this gloriously chintzy-ass Emerson combo record player.
Don’t get it twisted. These models are not exactly what I’d call the pinnacle of hi-fi. The function to switch between the turntable, CD, and radio is a knob with zero tactile feedback. The tape player has no rewind functions and is only activated by putting a tape physically into the bay, with fast-forward activated by pushing the blocky eject knob halfway in and hoping you don’t accidentally eject the tape. The internal tweeters and woofer are somehow buzzy on both the high and low ends, most likely due to them all being crammed next to a bunch of other electronics into a single block of pseudo-wood barely eighteen inches tall. Etc., etc., ad nauseum ad infinitum.
BUT, seeing as I haven’t had a hooked-up record player in multiple years at this point, and seeing as I just finally got my vinyls out of storage last month, just having the option to spin up a record puts me over the moon. Hell, we played Morgana King two weeks ago because I was feeling nostalgic and missed the snaps and pops of my gnarled copies of It’s A Quiet Thing and A Taste Of Honey. You’ll never guess what my first in-studio sound test with this ol’ beast was.
my vinyl collection says trans rights btw
And this week, we’ve got another pull from my own personal crates; French violinist, Zappa collaborator, and fusion pioneer Jean-Luc Ponty, whose 1977 Atlantic Records release Enigmatic Ocean was a bargain bin four-bucks-fifty-cents find for me at the Quad Cities’ own Co-Op Records. That’ll be our first port of call this evening.
(As an aside…just to celebrate getting to hear this on vinyl again, I’ve unearthed my old photo roll from the old blog that’s all about the records I pulled on that trip. And my giant stuffed bear named after Snake Pliskin, of course. You can stroll through my nostalgia and crate pulls here.)
After that, we’ve got the 1985 release Fables, also on Atlantic Records and featuring Scott Henderson on bass, whose entire discography is full of such absolutely batshit album covers that it’s only a matter of time before I cave and do an episode on him just because of how absolutely wild the design work is. I’m not even joking. What even is this? Absolutely majestic.
And finally, keeping with the nautical nonsense this week’s episode’s been on, we’ve got 1976’s Imaginary Voyage, also (fairly thematically) released on Atlantic.
aaaaaand that about covers this week’s show! Next week, we’ll be hitting the sands with the X man and hitting the disco with the big Mann.
(Can you guess what we’re playing next week from these clues? If you have a guess, email me at piperbomb (at) protonmail (dot) com. If you can, I’ll give you a shoutout on-air!)
If you’re reading this the day of, and you can make it in tonight, you should come hang out in the chat with us on Datafruits! We’ve got a good crowd of folks in the chat every week, and whether you have a suggestion for a future show or just want to hang out and chat with fellow jazz enjoyers, you’re welcome here with us.
You’re all amazing and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not. Stay safe out there, and I’ll see you back again next week. Same time, same station: on datafruits dot fm..
Footnotes…