I’m doing some maintenance on my digital music collection, moving files to a new hard drive, weeding out some tunes that went mysteriously awry the last time I moved stuff around. (For some reason, a cut will say Won’t Get Fooled Again but will actually be the middle of some Wilco song or something. There’s about 8000 of those, near as I can tell).

This makes it almost impossible to find the best three songs by anyone. I did find three songs by jazz legends that are all the same length: 9 minutes 23 seconds. I figure if 4′33″ is good enough for John Cage, it’s good enough a title for a blog post.

I’ve been a major jazz-head off and on my whole life so here are the three best songs I can find that last 9 minutes and 23 seconds. Take my word for it.

Joe Henderson – Black Miracle
Thelonius Monk – Straight No Chaser
Miles Davis – So What

How cool is it that my 82-year old Mom will travel across the country to spend a month with me and my wife and my three crazy kids? It’s totally cool. She heads back east tomorrow and the star fish is waving goodbye. (BTW: She digs all this stuff…tapping her toes to Social D. on the way to buy school supplies…you rock, Mom!)

Bob Dylan – Bye and Bye
Bay City Rollers – Bye Bye Baby
Bert Kaempfert – Bye Bye Blues
Mary Wells – Bye Bye Baby
G. Love And Special Sauce – Bye Bye Baby
Social Distortion – Bye Bye Baby
Ray Charles – Bye Bye Love
Thelonius Monk – Bye-Ya