Jose Padua: A Free Jazz Solo for the New Wave Sky

I remember playing John Coltrane’s Ascension when my mother
came downstairs with one of the women she sewed for and they
both seemed to think that the music sounded like “a dreary day,”
but one time when I was a little older the B-52s’ “Rock Lobster”
was playing and my mother started swaying to the beat, almost dancing
in the doorway of our house on Hobart Street and she turned to me
to say that she liked it and it sounded “mysterious” as she moved
her head this way then that, meaning that she wasn’t a fan of
Coltrane’s later, wilder, avant-garde, and totally free work, but
this new wave, part punk rock, retro-forward, pop sound featuring
a guitar missing two of its strings was something she could believe in.
We drank our Royal Crown cola with ice in the kitchen back in those days
when I was even younger, living in an apartment, going to school at my
downtown parochial school, and on warm days driving to the beach
when the beach was the Chesapeake Bay, not an ocean, and not a vacation,
but a Saturday afternoon when summer was a deep blue heaven
I could crawl into with my hands waving in the air like long goodbyes
as soon as the sky turned dark. And today I believe in both the true
new wave and punk rock, as well as the real outside, free-jazz sound
of John Coltrane’s later years, and I know that if my mother were
here today she would listen to it once again, seeing the clouds
scatter, watching gray turn to blue, letting the mystery begin.

Copyright 2023 Jose Padua