Welcome back, Gentle Reader(s) to this humble compendium of verbal effluvia that flows, in fits and starts, from the thinky thing what resides betwixt and between the earholes of Your Humble Narrator. The Ides of May are nigh upon us and it has been a while since my last riposte, what with preparation for travel, travel, and recombobulation from travel taking up an exceptional portion of YHN’s time and attention. I have grabbed this brief moment to consider an opposing pair of epochal events that are marking 2016 as being a year of Exceptional Portent (in both the ominous and auspicious meanings of the term).   On the auspicious end of the spectrum, the Cubs of Chicago have begun the season with an epic tear that, at the time of this writing, finds them playing .806 beisbol, having emerged victorious from 25 of their initial 31 contests. It is a truly amazing situation the equivalent of which has had not been seen in Major League Beisbol since 1984 (the Detroit Tigers, 26 and 4 through their first 30 games), or in the National League since 1977 (the LA Dodgers, with 24 wins through their first 30 games). This is after the shock of the Cubs losing their power hitting left fielder Kyle Schwarber after a season-ending knee injury in game three and with hitting ace/first baseman Anthony Rizzo batting only .282 (respectable, but nothing amazing). How, pray tell, can this be?

This eagerly anticipated installment of the one-and-only Matador Playlist blogg represents an excursion into unexplored and potentially exciting terrain, Gentle Reader(s): Live (sort of) blogiating from the 58th Annual Grammy Awards, presented on the Tiffany Network, CBS, this very evening. The Grammys are usually held on a Sunday but considering that yesterday was both Valentine's Day and the night that new episodes of Downton Abbey air, the brain trust behind the primo music awards ceremony decided not to compete with the distractions of unbridled shagging that Downton Abbey inevitably inspires and put the Grammys off to the following night. The Dowager Countess of Grantham would doubtlessly approve.   Okay, here we go.

Ah, dear and Gentle Reader(s), I am returned from an extended hiatus from the posting of ruminations and lists of play upon these pages. The reasons for this extended silencio are various and sundry, but included amongst them are a) travel, b) more travel, c) distraction, d) physical malady, and e) (most dreadfully) f) deficit of inspiration. The travel is not a problem but whenever I think I'm going to get some writing done on the road I typically find that I am sorely mistooked. That's where the distraction comes into it—too much other stuffe to do and think about. The holidays snuck into the mix somewhere around the 25th of December as they are wont to do, and upon that very selfsame evening, right smack in the middle of Birthday o' Jebus observations, a rather dreadful throbbing began to manifest itself in the region of an upper right pre-molar, the lower portion of which had decided to bust a move for the Great Outdoors back in September (quite possibly inspired by a fairly dull Keith Richards documentary I had been watching on Netflix). The throb evolved into a mindbendingly dreadful pain that had Your Humble Narrator stumbling and mumbling about in a humble little mumble circle in his living room, groaning in agony—a state of affairs that continued intermittently throughout Jebus Birthday weekend. Timing, as is oft noted, is everything, and in this case the timing could scarcely have been worse. I survived till Monday when good Doctor Doug Reid was able to extract the offending article with dispatch, ending my holiday weekendus horribilis. It is said that if it don't kill you it makes you stronger and I am feeling quite strong at the moment.

Gentle Reader(s), since the last installment of this weekly-ish report from the trenches of Santa Fe musical subterranea I have once again ventured to and from the land of my birth, the city that puts the 'Id' into 'Humid,' New Orleans. The day before my impending departure I woke to the sad news that a true titan of the city's music scene—the great Allen Toussaint—had passed away suddenly following a gig in Madrid. There are few passings that could shake New Orleans to the core quite like the passing of this extraordinary man. He was an integral part of the city's rich cultural life for 60 years, starting off as a fill-in sideman in Earl King's band in 1955. Toussaint was a pianist, vocalist, composer, producer, arranger, and musical ambassador for his native city, but above and beyond all that, to all reports (and I have heard a few) he was a lovely, humble, soft spoken person and a true gentleman. Toussaint didn't shy away from stepping out in a bit of boldly colorful couture once in a while and his trademark about town was his succession of Rolls Royces, but he was a down-home guy and absolutely not a single person that I have ever spoken to has ever had a bad word to say about him.