Today was meet sessioneer Matt in Manhattan day, but this time I was in the hot seat! Matt is an acupuncturist and he has been helping me with my hands – and back, legs, arms, neck, haha. It all started with a conversation about my thumbs hurting and general discomfort in the one place where I do not need to have any issues. So, when I first arrived here in New York Matt told me to come over and he’d see what he could do. All those needles, releasing muscles, electric jolts, and a lot of the pain dissipated, especially in the lower back area. Today, three months later, a second session seemed most needed as I had hand pains again, especially in one finger with a pain in my palm at the finger’s base, today with one needle that pain went away. A needle in my tense shoulder and I felt it in my head, connecting the migraine eye issues with muscle tension. Today my body was so sensitive I felt every needle in my legs, it didn’t matter what part of my body was being worked on. Some of the electricity jolts today were intense, like touching the electric fence that keeps the cows in the field. Thanks, Matt, relief all ‘round.

The rain was pouring down but we went for a coffee and a chat about the universe followed by a visit to Academy Records where I picked up Blue Cheer’s second album Outsideinside (1968), The Best Of The Raspberries (1976), Geoff and Maria Muldaur‘s Sweet Potatoes (1973), and Julie London‘s Julie (1957).

We walked down to the West Village in the rain, stopping off at T-Mobile to inquire about keeping our US phone number. We taught the girl to say “Sound” and she taught us how to say “Dope” and “Lit”. We carried on in the rain on our way to Caffé Reggio for a dose of the atmosphere in there, Olivia ordered an undrinkable hot chocolate and I had some pesto pasta which was $17, I was going to have the avocado toast but it was also $17, it just seemed so ridiculously expensive for the cheapest snack in the universe that I went for the pasta instead, haha, cheapskate. On reflection, I imagine that pasta pesto must be one of the cheapest hot meals to make too. I don’t understand how Julie London’s record from 1957 can be $7 cheaper.

From there we went to West 4th subway and caught the train to 47-50th Street where I wanted to go back to Rough Trade to pick up the Patrick Sky album I’d seen – A Harvest of Gentle Clang (1966), Mandrill’s Composite Truth (1973) and Stackridge’s Do The Stanley (1976) but there was a hip hop producer signing records and there was a long queue from outside in the rain through the record racks. Initially, the staff didn’t really want me looking for records amongst the queuing, but they relented when they tried to find me the Patrick Sky record and couldn’t find it. I noticed that everyone in the queue was in their twenties or younger and Olivia noticed that they were 99% male.

We left into the worsening rain and the Patrick Sky record got some water damage. Matt had given me a pile of CDs for the archive, water had seeped into the cases of two or three of them. The rain was getting worse and worse and the wind was up, it was cold, getting inside was so welcome, taking off wet clothes. Being dry was suddenly the greatest thing ever, getting your records wet the worst.

Music today was Julie London’s Julie (1957), her sixth album, produced by her husband-to-be Bobby Troup, both appeared in the seventies hospital drama Emergency. London stopped making records in 1969 as her acting career took off, leaving behind a treasure of 29 studio albums and a vague memory of her early hit Cry Me A River (Troup wrote Route 66). London died in 2000 aged 74.

Music Of The Daze