Charles Mingus - The Clown

When I was about 12, there was a record called Making Bacon by the The Pork Dukes. It was a kind of rude-comedy-punk tune, with the activity in the title being a euphemism for sexual intercourse. Me and my mate Paul used to like it. We were 12, like.

That song has lodged in my head since and I sing the chorus every time making bacon, or facon, as was later the case, came up.

Fast forward to about five years ago, and I met up again with Paul, who now lives in Fremantle. Turns out that he too sings The Pork Dukes every time he makes bacon.

I mention this because today I will be making facon. I do this every couple of months, so that I always have some in the freezer. One of the key ingredients is Liquid Smoke. This seems to have been dropped from all the supermarkets since I bought my last bottle, so I had to schlep across town to a specialist Mexican shop to get some.

Whilst I was over that side of town I did some trail running in the hills for the first time in ages, and was reminded of how difficult it can be, when you don’t do it often enough.

It did give me the opportunity to hobble into Big Star Records, a shop I haven’t been to in years, where I picked up this.

It’s fantastic.

Its title track does remind me of the funniest joke ever, so always makes me smile.

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Charles Mingus - Cumbia & Jazz Fusion

The first time I ran a marathon, I did everything wrong. Of course. Everybody does.

I went out too fast, smashing through the first 10k, largely to overcome the massive panic attack I was having. I completely underestimated the amount of nutrition I would need and didn’t start taking on fuel until I was hungry, which is way too late.

Come the 30k mark I was cooked. My glycogen levels were in my boots, I could hardly put one foot in front of the other. I was, as they say, ‘bonking’. If you’ve never experienced this, it’s hard to describe just how fucking awful you feel. I had taken my headphones with me, so decided to play myself the list of pick-me-up music I had made for just this occasion.

Somehow, Charles Mingus’s Cumbia & Jazz Fusion had found its way on to the list. It’s nearly 28 minutes long. It wasn’t what I needed at all. What I should have done was get my phone out and flip forward, but my brain had lost all sensible decision-making capacity, so I struggled through. It was a long 28 minutes.

I haven’t felt able to listen to it again until this morning. I still find Cumbia & Jazz Fusion a bit re-traumatising, to be honest. However, Music for “Todo Modo” is great.

This was written as a film soundtrack, but was left on the cutting room floor. The sleeve notes gloss over this and don’t mention that it was described as a “dump” of previously discarded material, preferring to say it was because of the director’s deadline problems.

I’ve run quite a few marathons and ultra-marathons since, and don’t even bother taking my headphones with me. I just make sure I have a plan and try to stick to it. If it still all goes to shit, which it occasionally does - because sometimes, man, it just ain’t your day - I suck it up and try to make the best of it. There’s probably a lesson for life there.

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