PHAROAH SANDERS - KARMA

So I came back home last night from working late and realized I had left the iron on, not that morning but the previous one. I had wondered why it was hotter than usual in a kitchen that hadn't seen use since the weekend. It crossed my mind that my apartment could quite easily have burnt down and lives could have been lost. Okay, before the lives something else, something that should by now be obvious crossed my mind. Yes the flat round black things.

Anyway, I unplugged the iron and I took the bin out too as the chicken off cuts that I had left festering since the previous Sunday were already noticeable like a mysterious and dead mouse from the corridor. Then I got in the shower and the thought hit me again. They could have melted into a mashed and gooey pile of plastic nothingness. This thought was followed in quick succession by two observations, 1.) I decided that if at some point my records did burn to death, I would have to have them removed professionally so that I wouldn't get my heart broken and 2.) Following that I would do my very best not to give a shit, see it as some second chance from God and never ever, ever, much to my wife's delight ever waste another Saturday in a record shop.

I dried myself off feeling almost cathartic. There was a way out. All I had to do was set the fire, yes there could be casualties, collateral damage but there was a way out. Unfortunately that was last night. By this morning I was already back to cruising Ebay for a half decent un-peeled stereo first torso sleeve of THE VELVET UNDERGROUND WITH NICO. How easy it is for good intentions to wither and die. If I had a little bit more conviction about me I could be explaining my little stunt to the fire department at this very moment.

Anyway, more importantly this is in my humble opinion the best Pharoah Sanders album I have ever heard, I haven't heard THEMBI yet, I have a copy but something about the sleeve bothers me and I can't bring myself to listen to it yet. Anyway, first time I heard it I was sat in the bath shortly after moving to Amsterdam, this was on the stereo and I was drinking a glass of desert wine having bought it by accident from the local Dirk supermarket. I remember sinking into the bath, alcohol buzzing, a bar of soap destroying the bubbles as 'The Creator Has a Master Plan' played.

It's brilliant. Two tracks, one longer than the whole of SLAYER'S 'Reign in Blood', the other a more modest five minutes or so. Both huge statements about god, life and the cosmos. I wonder if he actually believed it or if he was just really fucking high, either way I don't care, I love this record and it surprises me that it hasn't found it's way into RE class rooms the world over.