on the day i left japan, kanae and i had a little bit of time before i was supposed to meet my train, so we stopped by her parents' house. her mom and teruto were there, they were preparing spaghetti and talking. teruto is kanae's oldest brother. i think he's just past thirty, so he's at that stage in life where he works all the time. i got a chance to spend an evening with him at dinner, but that's about it for the two weeks i was there.
the guy has great taste in music. tim and i spent an hour one night in his room going through his records (ssh! don't tell him) and his collection partially mirrors my own: lots of coltrane, dolphy, booker little, kenny dorham, et cetera. he has a fetish for sixties jazz, one of the many genres of recorded music that is remarkably expensive and difficult to locate in japan. teruto and i talked about records in the short time we spent together. he doesn't speak much english, but i've found that music is one of those things that you can talk about pretty effectively with hand motions and names of players. we both expressed our love for eric dolphy in particular.
anyway, that day that i left to go home, teruto paused as we were saying our goodbyes, asked me to wait a second, and ran upstairs. he returned with a really nice copy of eric dolphy's "berlin concerts," a rather rare set recorded while the reedman was in europe in 1961 after leaving john coltrane's touring unit. i've seen it at the record store maybe twice in my vinyl-collecting lifetime. i was stoked! the guy is giving me an eric dolphy record! i thanked him profusely, i couldn't believe it. after we had left, kanae remarked how special that act on teruto's part was. he never gives anyone records, she said.
when i got home last week, i was determined to repay him with a gift of my own. i thought long and hard about what to get for teruto. i could get him some coltrane, but i didn't see his entire collection, and what i did see was coltrane-heavy. so, i'd run the risk of getting him something he already owns. i could get him another eric dolphy record, but if he loves dolphy, there's that same problem again. i thought of other artists that he'd like, such as sun ra or ornette or art ensemble of chicago. at any rate, i had to get him something that i know and enjoy. maybe even something from my personal collection.
i went to amoeba yesterday and dug in the jazz room for an hour. i found a few ornette live sets and some really nice mingus, but near the end of my search, i saw the two-record set that was perfect. it practially jumped out at me and landed in my hands: mingus at antibes! it's a great performance, a great recording, eric dolphy is all over it, and the particular pressing i found is not all that common. i took it home and listened to it (used records are usually open at the store so that you can inspect them). turns out it's a choice bit of wax. he'll be happy with it.
i'm also adding to the package i'm sending by including one of the records that changed the way i listen to music: "interstellar low ways" by sun ra and the arkestra. it's got a lot of really deep stuff on it, i'm sure he'll enjoy it. the copy is from my own collection. it peeled back the top of my head when i was eighteen, so now i hope it does the same for teruto at thirty.
Posted by snackfight at November 12, 2003 06:15 PM