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I'll describe my last half hour, partly to get it straight in my mind.

... and now I can't remember what triggered it. Oh yes I can, Shine. There's a song written in 1910 called "That's Why They Call Me Shine" and I heard a band play it outside the Guildhall one lunchtime around 1987 - Harvey Brough and the Wallbangers, they specialized in resurrecting old jazz like that around the pubs of South London. So, like one does, I looked on YouTube and found lots of versions, some of which were novel - Janet Klein with her Ukelele friends, for instance. Weird but very very clever.

And the version I settled for was Rheinhardt/Grappelli and I was intrigued by the vocalist because he sounded familiar but I didn't recognize the name. Who's Freddy Taylor, I wondered. And I looked on AllMusic for a biography and it said something completely odd: "this artist's discography consists largely of appearances on Django Reinhardt records. In this context he is obviously controversial". What?? Where does the "obviously" come from? The biography was by someone called Eugene Chadbourne who has a website and I expect I'll have to end up writing and asking, because otherwise that "obviously" is going to keep me puzzled.

Mr Chadbourne turns out to play free-form banjo, his website is one of the worst expressions on the Internet and he has at least 200 of his own self-published CDs for sale dating from the early 70s to this year, together with a thousand-page autobiography/road-diary. If I email him with my "obviously" question I'll have to buy one just out of civility, but they do look interesting. Not enjoyable, necessarily, but the guy has put a lifetime into becoming.

You may not have wanted to read all that, but you got to hear the Hot Club Quintet circa 1937 play a fine tune. I don't recommend you check Eugene Chadbourne on YouTube though, he's plain scary.

You gone and did it. You made me look....and listen.

It was pretty awful but " a direct threat to the American way of life" is a touch harsh. We're all capable of playing free form to one extent or another. I'm not sure how you sort the good from the bad.

Talking of browsing. It always amazes me, the paths we take and where we end up sometimes. I was just reading about Icelanders penchant for fermented shark meat, which, by my reckoning can't be fit for human consumption. How hungry does someone have to be to want to put that in ones mouth ?

You might enjoy this sharks-not-for-eating article from the Guardian - I recall the book and it was very very peculiar indeed. Gavin Maxwell's Harpoon at a Venture

Who could have imagined that Ring of Bright Water was written by a psychopath. I had no idea. Reading that has taken me aback

It just goes to show, that's what my grannie told me. Mind your Ps and Qs or the bogeyman will lop off your fiddly bits.

Freddy Taylor was quite popular in the 30s. He collaborated with Reinhardt, Oscar Aleman and others, had a swing band in Harlem. He was also in several movies in the 30s. (Apparently uncredited)

To circle back around, your friend, Mr Chadbourne wrote a biography on Mr Taylor.

Freddy Taylor | Biography | AllMusic