Four cassettes

During the time I was living in LA in '92 there was a period of about four months when I was working for a messenger service, driving around making deliveries to minor celebrities. I was absorbing a weird combination of music for a good chunk of that time, with exactly four cassettes to listen to 8 hours a day: John Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard and Live at Birdland, along with Locust Abortion Technician and Psychic, Powerless... Another Man's Sac by the Butthole Surfers.

Occasionally I'd turn on the radio and would get some Steven Jesse Bernstein, or the Rollins Band, Helmet or some such. A notable experience was having In a Silent Way come on while being stuck in traffic on one miserably hot afternoon, running way late on a delivery to Gary Shandling (eventually got there around 7:30, when he answered the door in his bathrobe, looking a little pissed. Hey, I got other deliveries, and I'm not making a 75 minute detour to Topanga when I'm in the middle of a swath of stuff between West Hollywood and Venice. You want to try to route this mess? Shandling?):



But mostly it was these tunes coming up again and again for weeks:




Continued after the break:






These things have become like classical music to me- every sound is exactly right and exactly where it belongs:






BONUS: Here's some of that Steven Jesse Bernstein- this came on the radio a lot: