Nine Two Five: Parton Is Such Sweet Sorrow

Dolly Parton - Boulder to Birmingham

Sorry, I'm late again, but I was out shopping for ice cream cones and they had the cookie dipped ones on sale. I hope the lady behind me doesn't mind that I bought the last 77 boxes of them, even though the kid next to her in the wheelchair seemed a little upset. OK, a lot upset.

So now that I'm settled into a really pleasant diabetic coma (dancing pink lemonade elephants and everything), it's time to take stock of the calendar and WHAT? It's Nine Two Five. What a way to make a living!!

All jokes aside, we all know what happened exactly a month ago, and this is the first 9/25 without her down here making everyone feel included.

See, me and this Queen go way, way back. Back to about 1973 or so, when 7 year old Joshy would gear up in his purple Lidsville pajamas for the greatest single hour of American television ever to taste air.

Because Saturday mornings -- after we got the Underdog, Magilla Gorilla and Schoolhouse Rock premiere jams outta the way -- it was time for Porter Wagoner. To be followed by -- and if the WOR-TV programming executive who decided to put these back-to-back is somehow reading this, you are like a living, walking god to me -- Don Cornelius and the Soul Train pulling into the station.

Now I loved Hee-Haw, don't get me wrong. How could you not love Buck Owens and Roy Clark, guitar duetting at speeds that would make Paganini retire to become a fruit salesman?

But Porter Wagoner -- he of The Rubber Room and other demented Country classics I'd discover later in life -- was just another level of pickin' and sangin', come on now people. Especially if you're 7 and the rest of your Saturday is begging to stay up past your bedtime to watch SNL, which somehow won't even premiere for another two years. And catching up on some Spider Man. Back when Spider Man was one of the real ones, and not this Marvel Universe preteen pabulum they feed us these days. Like we really need to watch people with perfect skin and competent Hollywood agents prance around in front of a green screen for two hours, like John Ford or Pier Pasolini would approve of that as cinema.

So yeah, I digress, but.... Porter Wagoner. That guy could rock a Nudie jacket in ways that would make Gram Parsons himself question if he was Country enough. And Porter had a secret weapon that was, when you drilled down into the dynamics, the star of the show.

Those two would get into Dark End of the Street or some cheatin' song like that, and young Joshy would sit there unsure if he wanted to grow up and endure puberty at all, just to get left at home holding the remote whilst his love interest "visited a sick friend". OK, remote controls weren't invented yet either, but work with me, will you? Most of my time is spent making 700 songs a day the same volume by hand, so I'm way on the Cut In Half By The Trap Trying To Acquire The Cheese side of mouseclick Hell over here, folks.

And this ain't a hay bale made of sawdust compared to when she'd mesmerize my miniature mind with a solo song or five. I might have been watching the day she first sang Jolene, and spent the rest of the day asking mommy if daddy was gonna run off with the lady at the deli counter, just because they can. Only later did I discover that dear old dad was a lot more likely to be looking at the guy making the sandwiches, but that's a mixtape for another moment kids.

Yep, me and this beloved Queen -- possibly the only human being in global culture I can think of whom people across all political, social and cultural spectra adored -- go way back. When she passed I cried, full disclosure because I can remember loving her back when I had a Banana Splits lunchbox, for Chrissakes. And you know what? If she had never made a record, been in movies or built amusement park monuments where you could Tennessee for Miles, just the philanthropic stuff she did making sure kids all over the US had books upon books to read makes her untouchable in my world.

There are very few Dolly Parton -- you didn't think I was talking about Taylor Swift, did you? -- ROIOs for some strange reason; for instance there are no Silver Eagle Network FMs of her for whatever error of omission. But when she left the realm in August I started making this epic mixtape of her tackling other people's songs, that told the story through conspicuously curated covers. It took a minute, but me and the in-laws demo'ed it on a drive up and down the Oregon Coast last week and we all agreed it's a serious keeper.

Dolly Parton

Cover Girl

Dolly Sings Songwriters

1967-2023

CD1

01 Travelin' Prayer (1999)

02 What's Up (w.Linda Perry 2023)

03 If (2002)

04 Don't Think Twice (2014)

05 The Dark End of the Street (w.Porter Wagoner 1968)

06 Put a Little Love In Your Heart (1993)

07 (Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher (1977)

08 After the Gold Rush (2004)

09 Before the Next Teardrop Falls (w.David Hidalgo 1996)

10 Chicken Every Sunday (1971)

11 Love Is Strange (w.Kenny Rogers 1990)

12 Farther Along (1996)

13 Ballad of the Green Beret (2003)

14 In the Ghetto (1969)

15 Big Wind (1969)

16 Drives Me Crazy (2008)

17 Crimson and Clover (2005)

18 I Get a Kick Out of You (2001)

19 Great Balls of Fire (1979)

20 Lay Your Hands On Me (2014)

CD2

21 Something's Burning (1996)

22 Boulder to Birmingham (1976)

23 Harper Valley P.T.A. (1969)

24 Highway Headin’ South (1974)

25 Once In a Very Blue Moon (1985)

26 My Girl (My Love) (1977)

27 D.I.V.O.R.C.E. (1969)

28 Grey Funnel Line (w.Emmylou Harris & Linda Ronstadt (1986)

29 Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos) (1980)

30 I’ve Lived My Life (1967)

31 If I Were a Carpenter (w.Joe Nichols 2005)

32 In the Pines (1994)

33 Life’s Like Poetry (1976)

34 Seven Bridges Road (2001)

35 Help! (1979)

36 It's My Time (1969)

37 I Still Miss Someone (1999)

38 Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On (1983)

39 Lovin' You (1977)

40 Single Women (1982)

41 Dark As a Dungeon (1980)

CD3

42 Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) (2023)

43 Games People Play (1969)

44 How Great Thou Art (1971)

45 He's Alive (1989)

46 Peace Train (w.Ladysmith Black Mambazo 1996)

47 Somewhere Between (w.Porter Wagoner 1968)

48 Mule Skinner Blues (Blue Yodel No. 8) (1971)

49 The Carroll County Accident (1969)

50 Detroit City (1980)

51 Where Do the Children Play (2005)

52 Heartbreaker (1978)

53 Tall Man (1970)

54 I Wish I Felt This Way At Home (1968)

55 I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know (w.Tammy Wynette & Loretta Lynn 1993)

56 Release Me (1982)

57 You Gotta Be My Baby (1994)

58 Time for Me to Fly (1989)

59 The Great Pretender (1984)

60 Sweet Music Man (1977)

61 The Last Thing On My Mind (w.Porter Wagoner 1967)

62 I Believe (1971)

63 Jesus & Gravity (2008)

CD4

64 Where Have All the Flowers Gone (2005)

65 Knockin' On Heaven's Door (w.Ladysmith Black Mambazo 1997)

66 Shine (2001)

67 Two Lovers (1987)

68 What Ain’t to Be, Just Might Happen (1972)

69 Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season) (1984)

70 Cowgirl and the Dandy (1977)

71 Sittin' On the Front Porch Swing (w.Tammy Wynette & Loretta Lynn 1993)

72 Pretty Paper (w.Willie Nelson 2020)

73 Just When I Needed You Most (w.Alison Krauss & John Sebastian 1996)

74 Night Moves (w.Chris Stapleton 2023)

75 You’ll Always Be Special to Me (1975)

76 Everyday People (1980)

77 Stairway to Heaven (2002)

78 Blowin’ In the Wind (2005)

79 Calling My Children Home (w.Emmyou Harris & Linda Ronstadt 1986)

80 Imagine (2005)

Total time: 4:32:14

compendium of songs normally associated with other artists and songwriters, as covered by Dolly Parton

selected, assembled and remastered for unity by EN, August 2026
1.65 GB FLAC/direct link

I'm gonna have one more for September as I get back on the beam here after taking the summer off to get my Masters in In Over Your Head Home Ownership. But do enjoy the burgeoning weekend with 80 (her age when she died) career-spanning Dolly Parton reframings of a whole lotta songs from a whole lotta artists, some of whom (Stairway to Heaven?) might surprise your eyes and ears, OK? I takes a lot of money to look this cheap, as Dolly -- really an underrated musician in some ways, for someone so famous for music, and oh so very skilled at using removing a disguise to achieve all the anonymity she needed for those cross-country camper voyages with her hubby -- loved to say.--J.

1.19.1946 - 8.25.2026
I will always love you

Wise One Hundred: The John Coltrane Centennial

Elvin Jones Quintet - Naima

I've been at work on this all week and I need to just pop it loose already... obviously with a figure like this there are a zillion different possibilities and sometimes you just have to make decisions.

Equally as obvious is that our subject matter today is among the greatest exponents American music of any kind will ever produce, and likely the only person I'll ever post about on here that has his own church.

There's no hint of hyperbole to suggest that our honoree today is possibly the single most influential musician in American, and perhaps even global, history. Bold, but not necessarily exaggerated.

It's almost as if there was music in black and white before him, and he inaugurated an age of unprecedented color.

Really he's almost like a prism, with all music that came before him transmuted and refracted into a whole new visible spectrum after he showed up and changed the DNA and the perceived possibilities of things.

The story is well documented so I'm not gonna rehash. He was from North Carolina, had been in the Navy, and really made the scene when he joined fellow 2026 centennialist Miles Davis' band in around 1958.

His time in that group included Kind of Blue, widely considered the world's favorite Jazz recording, in 1959 before he split to go solo and really mess up the world's hair.

I guess if you had to describe in words (impossible) what his most potent innovation was, it was to use the mathematics of music to determine what every modal avenue was for every single possible chord change, and to be able to play every note of the connective tissue between keys as the chords went by in a sequence. At about 5000 miles an hour.

For me, I see John Coltrane -- born this day in 1926 -- as just as much a mathematician as a musician, or rather as a most world-altering combination of the two.

So yes, speaking of math and numbers, John Coltrane is 100 today. I've whipped up a folder full of blissful goodies as you might imagine I might do. Let's get it!

Elvin Jones Quintet

A Love Supreme: A Tribute to John Coltrane

Yubin Chokin Hall

Tokyo, Japan

6.13.1988

01 Chim Chim Cheree

02 I Want to Talk About You

03 Body and Soul 

04 Blues Minor

05 Naima

06 A Love Supreme

07 Bessie's Blues   

Total time: 1:49:35

disc break goes after Track 04

Elvin Jones - drums

McCoy Tyner - piano

Freddie Hubbard - trumpet & cornet

Sonny Fortune - tenor saxophone

Richard Davis - bass

256/48k audio extracted from a Japanese DVD of a 1992 laserdisc-only release on the Pioneer label

spectral analysis is lossless to 20 kHz, making this equivalent to a preFM source

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited & remastered by EN, September 2026
687 MB FLAC/link is below

Charles Tolliver & Jazz Orkestar HRT

John Coltrane's "Africa/Brass": a re-creation

JAZZ.HR Festival/Spring

Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall

Zagreb, Croatia

4.11.2014

01 Blues Minor

02 The Damned Don't Cry

03 Song of the Underground Railroad

04 Greensleeves

05 Africa

06 Household of Saud

Total time: 1:07:44

Charles Tolliver - trumpet & cornet

Sasa Nestoroic - tenor & soprano saxophones

with Jazz Orkestar HRT:

Antonio Gecek, Zvonimir Bajavic, Davor Krizic & Branko Sterpin - trumpet

Zvonko Kosak & Andrija Petej - trombone 

Marin Ferketin & Luca Zuzic - euphonium

Miro Kadoic, Zdenko Ivanusic, Zeljko Kovacevic, Mario Bocic & Damir Horvat - saxophones & clarinets

Joe Kapiowitz - piano 

Elivs Penava - guitar 

Sasa Borovec - bass 

Marko Lazaric - drums

Jazzrita capture of a digital Croatian FM broadcast, prepared by Lewojazz

spectral analysis is lossless to 22 kHz, making this equivalent to a high-end preFM source or an official release

edited, denoised and slightly remastered by EN, September 2026
478 MB FLAC/direct link to both concerts and who knows what else

In addition to the two (banger) concerts I put in there, you'll find a truly bizarre (yet strangely beautiful) dark ambient remix I made of a famous Coltrane ballad, where I used the Audacity stretchy tool and the AI splitter to concoct a 50-minute fantasia that's something like a cross between No Pussyfooting (Fripp & Eno), 2 H.B. (Roxy Music) and of course, Alabama. This features both JC and son, Ravi on tenor sax.

Also lurking stealthily in the folder is a little mixtape I smashed together yesterday, which features all sorts of killer Coltrane covers, as well as music that has a direct aesthetic lineage tracable to him.

OK? That oughta tide everybody over until Friday, when I pay tribute to another icon of American music who sadly departed our realm last month. What a way to make a living, eh?

But that is in 48 hours, according to Eddie Murphy or Reggie or whatever his name is. Today is the day we honor and celebrate the Wise One, John William Coltrane, on his 100th birthday, and wish that a few dozen more like him would pick up actual musical instruments and save culture from itself.--J.

9.23.1926 - 7.17.1967

The Hills Have Eyes

Ziwahatan x Nowbodhi - Missing Time (For Barney & Betty Hill)

North they'd flown;

a long drive home

White Mountain

road winding

High bright light

night eyes blinding

Trailing after

tracking close

nervous laughter

nerves exposed

shrieking silence

something knows

first the headlights

engine dies

quiet stripes

a starry sky

Missing time

gone in the mist

crime of my mind

the visitors insist

Open skies

Watching eyes

Missing time

amplifies

Wake me

Take me

out of this car

and through the stars

distant climes

Missing time

Corridors white

Ice blue light

wordless voices

endless night

hidden shadows

empty eyes

right into my mind

he pries

Maps of stars

and constellations

hypnotize mind alterations

minimize kind explanations

Shut your eyes

count to ten

is where we are

where we have been?

atomized

agonized

a knowable unknown

Missing time

amorphous pain

Missing time

can't explain

Silver light

silent flight

Missing time

days of night

Road still waiting

clock still turning

sanity breaking

dreams returning

Stars flash

no more wishing

memories crash

time is missing

Missing time

they remembered

line by line

days dismembered

Veil of darkness

Trail of fear

Missing time

hours or years

Missing time

but they're still here

Ziwahatan x Nowbodhi - Missing Time (for Barney & Betty Hill)

01 Ziwahatan x Nowbodhi - Missing Time (for Barney & Betty Hill)

collaboration between Ziwahatan & Nowbodhi in the realm of AI generated music
lyrics & hypnosis session remastering by Nowbodhi, July-September 2026
41 MB FLAC/direct link

Yes, sorry for my absence but there's a lot happening, including the 65th anniversary of the first known incident of claimed alien abduction. My husband, who does AI music, and I collaborated with The Machine on this song to commemorate the occasion, but since I wanted to collaborate with it and not just prompt it, we essentially did a thing where we generated several versions of the song and I stitched them all up in Audacity to sound like one unified piece, with the Barney Hill hypno-audio -- still real fuckin' terrifying 65 years later -- stirred in to give the thing an edge suitable to such an experience. I also wrote the words, wordy fucker that I am.

I've got a few things stacked up for the end of September as I make my return from summer vacation... kind of like Betty & Barney Hill were making their way back home after their little Montreal weekend, only to run into a little Grey Area...-J.

6.28.1919 - 10.17.2004            7.20.1922 - 2.25.1969

Mask, and Ye Shall Receive

Angine de Poitrine - Sherpa

OK, now there's been another 1946 death.... when's the one we're all waiting for? I'm just kidding. Or am I?

I'm working on Dolly P and Tim C, but today we're continuing with the hard-rockin' posts I seem to be backloading into August with these guys, just your average microtonal masked math-rockers.

The story goes that they had booked two slots at a venue on the same night and were trying to fool the promoter into thinking they were a different group so he'd pay them. It's always the promoter with the money, isn't it?

So they fashioned these crazy papier-mâché outfits and went on as a totally different band than the one that had played earlier in the evening. It worked, and an Affectation vs. Authenticity debate erupted as they began to go viral.

They concocted a whole narrative to go with the personae: that they were ETs from another world where everyone is famous, and it takes 6 hours to go to the supermarket because everyone has to sign autographs for everyone else. And so on.

Now, whether the costumery has anything to do with the music outside of the Magma-type storyline is up for debate, and this isn't Peter Gabriel-era Genesis where every mask is meant to move the characters being portrayed through the song.

Of course they've become, overnight it seems, one of the world's biggest bands, with slots at festivals on every continent this summer. And they've done so with a truly unusual brand of music, played as it often is in truly unusual time signatures, and with the barefoot, polka-dotted guitarist manipulating who knows how many live loops with his feet as they cycle through their tunes.

Anyway there were no 'board sourced boots of these cats until they played Fuji Rock a month ago today, and the HD video documenting their set got taken down pretty quickly, but I managed to pilfer the audio from that feed before it disappeared into the aetheric realms of copyright.

So, what do you say, O Court of Public Opinion? Hype? Sincere Progressive music with a theatrical twist? Somewhere between those poles? Dynasty-era KISS meets the scalloped-fretted guitars of Shakti on the Math Rock mountaintop? The floor is yours, apple cores.

Angine de Poitrine

Fuji Rock 2026

Field of Heaven

Naeba Ski Resort

Niigata, Japan

7.26.2026

01 MC introduction

02 Angine de Poitrine intro

03 Angor

04 Yor Zarad

05 Tamebsz

06 Mata Zyklek

07 Ababa Hotel

08 Sarniezz

09 Fabienk

10 Sherpa

11 Angine de Poitrine outro

12 L'Aberek/Ababa Hotel

Total time: 1:19:32

Track 12 is a bonus track from Session Secrete @ La Société Secrète de Cap-d'espoir en Gaspésie 

Percé, Quebec CAN 8.18.2025

Khn de Poitrine - guitar, bass & vocals

Klek de Poitrine - drums & vocals

320/48k audio extracted from enhanced bitrate HD YouTube Premium files

spectral analyses is lossless to 18 kHz for both

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited & remastered by EN, August 2026
530 MB FLAC/direct link

Personally I dig what these guys do, and beyond the hidden mystery schtick they are obviously badass musicians. I liked this show so much, I even added a bonus track that I came across, just because I felt like it.

I'll be back with one or two more at the tail end of the month, but until then I'd encourage you to peek behind the mask for a moment and take a taste of what these crazy Québécois from Canada are up to with their many-fretted micro-guitars, obscured identities and 21/8 loopy moves.--J.