Sneak Peek of November 2025

Story XX, Liner Notes, is the record of a troubled marriage told through vinyl: he's “the big jazz DJ.” She's "a girl from Ohio." Here are two records from their collection.

Mercy, Mercy, Mercy | Jersey City, 2018

1. I don’t want to live in a jazz cathedral. I don’t want a Louis Armstrong handkerchief collection on the console. I need to put my own shitty things somewhere.

2. This is just how I grew up! So, we yelled!

3. But think about it, Laz, isn’t that so you? Half of them are unopened because they are worth so much. Isn’t that what’s happening with our marriage? I’m fucking half-unopened.

4. Eighteen thousand pages of liner notes.

5. You said it yourself! I’m quoting you! Etta and I are “shrieking and chaos.” We’re just not John Coltrane’s shrieking and chaos.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside | Miscellaneous Home Recordings, 2019-2022

1. If Etta learning my music is such simple crap, then you play it. Play mommy’s crap melody. Pick it out. Watch daddy pick it out.

2. Laz, please. I’m begging you. Don’t leave. I’m begging you. We’re both begging you.

3. You know what? Sometimes, I think you don’t even love jazz, Laszlo. You love being the jazz man, the big, intellectual genius. It’s all trivia bullshit, and honestly it is trivial. You’re trivial.

4. Take off that silly hat. You’re not John Coltrane.

5. You’re emotionally impotent, and the rest isn’t so hot either.

6. Stay.

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John Coltrane’s Ascension: the legendary recording my jazz critic spent his marriage writing about. Here’s the “shrieking and chaos.”

And The Köln Concert: Laszlo Craçek’s gateway to jazz.

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An excerpt from “Liner Notes,” Story XX.

Full story next Sunday, November 9, 9:00 a.m EST

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