As for me, The Lovely Mrs. JC and I relocated to The Berkshires last Thursday to get out of Manhattan and our little studio apartment. She is a psychotherapist, as many of you know, and has been able to set herself up with video conferencing so she can continue to see her patients remotely. This is great, of course, because they need her now more than ever and, she is truly compassionate and empathetic and a professional in every way, so I’m sure she is a great comfort to them. We are staying safely inside, avoiding physical contact with people, taking walks, watching TV in the evenings and listening to some music.

As for me, my work is also continuing uninterrupted. If anything, it has perhaps increased a bit. I write about technology and one of my clients has asked me to contribute to an ongoing series focused on cybersecurity during this time. Yesterday I spent an hour on the phone with a retired Army general who was also a deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy here in the U.S.  It was enlightening and gives me the chance to write about something that people will find of value whereby I can offer some degree of guidance.

As for music, records, etc., I have found that I’m using my listening time to go a little deeper into my collection and discover records that I haven’t listed to in a while. The other day I put on the Roland Kirk album “I Talk to the Spirits,” which is one of his best. I’ve written about this before, but I never felt he got the recognition he deserved because his talents weren’t truly captured on records. To be fair, the excitement and energy of his live performances were very hard to match by any jazz artist. I saw him probably a couple of dozen times and he was magical. In addition to “I Talk With the Spirits” I highly recommend Side Two of “Volunteered Slavery,” which was recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival. He blows his ass off on the Coltrane tribute, and throughout you can feel the energy from Kirk, the musicians and the audience. Also, you can try to find the documentary The Case of the Three Sided Dream, which I’ve seen on Amazon Prime.

Speaking of documentaries, this will be a great time to catch up on viewing. I know there was a recent Miles Davis bio on PBS that is available on Netflix, called Birth of the Cool.  I also recently re-watched, probably for the fifth or sixth time, the Bill Evans documentary Time Remembered, which is great and heartbreaking at the same time. I find that watching the documentaries doesn’t get old, because it is like spending an hour or two in the company of that person, and in the case of someone like Evans, spending it in the company of genius. Outside of the jazz realm, I also recently watched (again) two documentaries on Mike Nichols, one called Becoming Mike Nichols, the other the American Masters bio directed by Elaine May. The other night, the Lovely Mrs. JC and I watched Six By Sondheim yet again on HBO. I recommend all of these.

I have many more to recommend, but instead, I will turn it over to my loyal readers, if you are still out there after my latest long gap, to share some of your favorites with us. I am always looking for great documentaries to watch and, at this time, whilst spending the bulk of my hours indoors, I can think of few better things to do than to spend this time in the company of people and artists I admire. Also, now that I am relatively cooped up, as pleasant as it is here in The Berkshires, I hope to be listening more to my records and writing more for Jazz Collector. I am wondering about the impact of the pandemic on our world of eBay, so I will explore that in a future post. In the meantime, please stay safe and healthy.