Drunk On God...from out of nowhere...

"from out of nowhere..."

Hot dry dead heat at half moon midnight in August 1988 I was driving from Moscow Idaho to Pullman Washington listening the jazz show on public radio. Just as I hit the backroad thru the wheatfields that I liked to take the music changes. Changes to some tripped late-electric '70s dark period seliM sivaD vibe with a voice over from god that said:

"...and they said that after three days climbing they finally came to a place where the shamen lived high in a mountain in the center of Mexico.."

...and at the end of that line I turned the radio louder as I pulled my car over deep into the fields and opened the car doors and the hatch and got on the hood. and LISTENED. for eighteen minutes and thirty-eight seconds. I drove home silent. in silence.

The DJ never said who it was I heard that night. He left the studio when the next shift started and it took me ages to find out who it was that I heard that night. It was the late Julius Hemphill's Big Band with K. Curtis Lyle reciting his poem Drunk On God.

Naturally this album is out of print.
But there are a couple used copies at Amazon and Ebay.

Drunk On God MP3
Please Play this loud.

Here's a couple videos with Mr. Hemphill incl his work with World Saxophone Quartet