Having a lesbian affair, you ask? Nope. Nor am I a Single White Female trying to take over someone's life. I'm not a cat burglar, a dog-napper, a couch-surfer or a freak-nothing so exotic. I'm just enjoying that very Manhattan summer ritual: apartment-sitting.

I'm good at it. In fact, I've thought of making up a home-minder résumé. Competition for these jobs can be fierce-it's New York, after all-and I have top-notch qualifications. I've taken care of abodes in the West Village, Chelsea, Tribeca and Turtle Bay; off Central Park; around the corner from Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side; and even in two D.C. neighborhoods. I've looked after multiple cats, a poodle, a mutt, a shorthaired Lab and a chocolate one. But maybe most importantly, I'm a writer with a flexible schedule and an impoverished existence-this is the only way I can take a vacation anyway.

Whenever I arrive at one of my temporary pied-à-terre, I inevitably find some kind of missive waiting for me on the kitchen counter. One included a long paragraph on the "personality" of the hound I was tending: "I began calling him Dale Peck after he, as a baby, pissed on a pile of Rick Moody novels," it started. Another note detailed essential facts about the neighborhood, like "It's worth walking the extra couple of blocks for Murray's Bagels." The laid-back friend I'm currently sitting for usually leaves this: "Have fun! Eat anything and finish the opened wine."

Anything? After solemnly noting that "Max enjoys having his belly brushed while he lays on his back and chews his rawhide," I sack the fridge. Leftover pizza, blueberries, baby carrots, poached salmon, home-made chocolate-chip cookies-but only things that would go bad before the owner's return. I guess I could replace those gourmet fat-free brownies, but what if they cost as much as a decent pedicure? What if I can't find any place that sells the same kind? What if the apartment's rightful owner realizes I ate that entire bag of blue-corn chips and thinks I'm a gluttonous pig?

And, most importantly, never asks me back!

I hiccup guiltily as Max stares at me, his tail thumping amiably on the floor.

In Raymond Carver's famous apartment-sitting short story, "Neighbors," a discontented couple's sex life perks up after the husband begins sipping from his friends' booze bottles, masturbating on their bed and trying on their clothes-including a bra and skirt.

I've never done anything as transgressive as wearing other people's undies.

But I have tried some pretty fancy beauty products. Like organic free-range egg-yolk conditioner, which was in my hair before I noticed the water-corroded price tag: almost exactly what I spend on my haircut. With tip. But it's O.K. to use that stuff-right? I think so. After all, I'm helping these apartment owners out; they couldn't possibly begrudge me a little soap or some shampoo. Still, sometimes I've wondered if I should fill the Bumble and Bumble bottles with water to hide how much I've used, like a teenager would doctor her dad's gin.

I probably crossed the line when I once squeezed someone's high-end L'Occitane hand cream on my legs (with a strange splurge of pleasure, I might add). Spritzing perfume seems downright illegal. A particularly tempting French variety sat on the bathroom vanity table of a friend, Z., who actually owns her charming Chelsea one-bedroom, which features hardwood floors and exposed brick walls. I held out against the call of that eau de toilette for five days. But by the sixth-a Friday night-I greedily grabbed Z.'s bottle and promptly dropped it on the hard tile floor. The impact smashed the dispenser.

I took that Pandora's perfume to the jeweler; he couldn't fix it. I tried to find a replacement in shops, online-anywhere! But the more I looked, the worse my fears became: The broken thing had to be exotic and expensive. I couldn't find it.

When Z. finally returned, I confessed, offering to repay her, silently imagining myself washing dishes, selling my hair, perhaps scrubbing floors, to make the money I owed. I felt like a character out of a Maupassant story. Z. laughed and told me to forget it: The stuff was some discontinued model she'd gotten for free at the magazine where she worked.

But the single most terrifying experience of my sitter existence occurred one night while I was in a video store. Before entering, I'd tied Henri-my poodle companion, who shares a lovely West Village three-room walk-up with a friend who was out west on a ski vacation-to the parking meter. I figured that since every dog owner in the city seemed to do it, it must be O.K.

(On poodles: When W. told me her dog would want to sleep with me, I thought, Not over my L'Occitane-smeared body. But by my second night with Henri, I was so in love with him-he was polite, smart, affectionate; so different from all the other men in New York; so French!-that I was soon pounding the duvet for him to jump up next to me.)

So I was considering Fellini versus Fassbinder when I saw a woman undo Henri's leash and walk off with him. I dropped the VHS boxes I was holding and bolted over the store's turnstile.

Skidding onto the sidewalk, I screamed "Fire! Fire!" (Isn't that what you're supposed to say in emergencies?) People looked at me like I was crazy. I shouted, "She's stealing my poodle!"

The vigilante halted and, after informing me that she was a friend of W., publicly scolded me. Henri was a pricey, rare breed, she said; leashing him to the meter was emphatically not allowed. Never again, I told myself as I walked away, cooing at Henri. These gigs are not worth the anxiety!

Yet here I am again-in an enormous, deliciously air-conditioned apartment in an elevator-and-doorman building-escaping from my life. Why not? I can't afford a summer place. But for a few weeks, while the Hamptons set is off enjoying their second homes, I'll enjoy mine.

And I'm sure my friend will never find out I fed the dog an extra cup of food this morning so I could sleep in.

–Frank DiGiacomo

Holy Meta-Morty-phosis!

Television producer Robert Morton picked Independence Day to change the state of his union. Mr. Morton, the longtime bachelor, executive producer of You Don't Know Jack and former producer of The Late Show with David Letterman, quietly tied the knot with his fiancée, the Santa Monica, Calif., restaurateur Jenny Rush, on July 4 at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton.

The couple, who met three years ago at the Coffee Bean in Malibu, where they currently live, was married by Rabbi David Gelfand in the presence of the couple's parents. Private investor Stuart Kreisler and his wife, Tracy Bonbreast, served as the couple's official witnesses. Mr. Morton told The Transom that he and Ms. Rush had come to the Hamptons, where he keeps a home, expecting to tie the knot, but without a firm date in mind. It was Rabbi Gelfand who suggested the date. "He said, 'What about July fourth? That's a good anniversary to have,'" Mr. Morton recounted.

The following Sunday, Mr. Kreisler and Late Night with Conan O'Brien producer Jeff Ross celebrated the next phase of their buddy's familial evolution: Mr. Morton and Ms. Rush are infanticipating (as Walter Winchell used to put it) a daughter in September, and so the two men threw Mr. Morton a "boys-only" baby shower at Mr. Kreisler's Bridgehampton restaurant, 95 School Street. Guests included Greater Talent Network president Don Epstein, restaurateur Steve Hanson, attorney Gerald Lefcourt, Gil Morton, hotelier Jon Tisch and his producer brother Steve Tisch, attorney Andrew Fox, Lulu Guinness handbag company chief Michael Schultz, screenwriter Kevin Wade, former Leslie Fay chief Alan Golub and design executive Alan Kerner. Martha Stewart enjoyed the distinction of being the only woman invited to the party, but she never showed.

Ms. Rush, who owns the Blue Plate restaurant in Santa Monica, arrived in time to watch her husband open the gifts. One of the first ones out of the box was a man-sized pink tutu, from Mr. Epstein, which the black-clad Mr. Morton donned for the remainder of the party. Mr. Golub gave the gift of several DVD's that, he said, needed to be watched in a specific order. The first one was Snatch ; the last, Panic . Mr. Lefcourt bestowed earplugs.

Diapers were also prevalent. Jon Tisch brought a case of Huggies. And as part of his gift package, Mr. Hanson–who recently became a father–included what appeared to be a used diaper. After Mr. Morton showed it to the crowd, Mr. Hanson instructed him in the ways of Pamper analysis. "First you smell it," Mr. Hanson said, burying his nose in the presumably fragrant item. Then, applying his finger to the diaper's sweet spot, he added, "If you're not sure, you taste it." In this particular case, Mr. Hanson tasted some pretty convincing-looking peanut butter.

Mr. Kreisler also gave Mr. Morton diapers. But they were the adult kind, Depends. "What do you get a 48-year-old father-to-be?" Mr. Kreisler said.

–F.D .

Gallo's Song

Polly Jean Harvey's pummeling, acid-etched songs have jump-started the hearts of many an emotionally damaged man. But who knew that actor, musician and Buffalo 66 director Vincent Gallo would be among them?

After having been spotted hanging out together at the Park restaurant and at one of U2's Madison Square Garden shows (where Ms. Harvey was the opening act), Mr. Gallo told The Transom that he and Ms. Harvey plan to consummate their professional relationship by recording a duet for an album featuring the work of the late Texas singer-songwriter Lee Hazlewood, a cult hero of the Sonic Youth crowd best known for penning "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" for Nancy Sinatra.

But even Mr. Gallo–whose politics recall Republican cloth coats and Spiro Agnew–seemed surprised by Ms. Harvey's beguiling ways. "I always just thought her appeal was to a feminist sensibility," he said. "I mean, I thought she was cute. But I'd just sort of detach from her, because I'm not interested in the artistic work of any woman." Mr. Gallo added, "I don't think there was a woman in history who had any kind of impact in any way."

But then he saw Ms. Harvey perform. "I caught the last two songs. I was blown away. But I blocked it out and just forgot about her," he said. Two years later, he saw her again. "I saw she was … special," he said. "But I was so focused on what I was doing, I didn't take the time to listen."

Three months ago, however, Mr. Gallo broke up with his longtime girlfriend ("She lied about everything "), which left him feeling lonely. He tried to play the field but, he said, every time he got someone into bed, he'd get repulsed–"It's almost like Polanski's film with Catherine Deneuve, Repulsion ," he said. "Or a horror movie."

Enter Ms. Harvey–actually, her albums. Mr. Gallo found himself listening to Ms. Harvey's oeuvre for weeks on end. When he got to meet the artist through some friends, she was nice to him. Now they go to concerts together, they have dinner and they talk about Mr. Gallo's tortured inner life, which probably means that Ms. Harvey spends a lot of time listening.

Mr. Gallo said that the Hazlewood song they're singing together–"Come on Home to Me"–pretty much sums up his last breakup. "It's about pretending you don't have feelings for somebody anymore," he said. "It's one of the greatest songs of all time."

After a little prurient prodding about the extent of his relationship with Ms. Harvey, Mr. Gallo–who's readying his own album for release in the fall–said he's too broken up about being broken up to want to get Ms. Harvey into the sack. "I don't think I'd like to lift up her skirt–which is weird, because I'm sort of compulsive sexually. I don't even know if she likes me," he said with a teenage quaver. "I guess I'm sort of in love with her as a person. She smells nice. Real girly. Real, real nice. Like a milky flower. A girly, milky flower."

–Ian Blecher

Rue Sticks It Out

"Everyone always asks me, am I really like Blanche Devereaux?" actress Rue McClanahan, best known for her slutty Golden Girls character, was telling the mob at Chelsea's Blu bar the other night. "I always say, 'Puh- leeeze ! Just look at the facts! Blanche Devereaux was a mad, crazy, glamorous, oversexed Southern belle from Atlanta, and ... well, I'm not from Atlanta!'"

Ms. McClanahan, though she was busy rehearsing for her upcoming Broadway appearance in The Women , and though she was being sued by a former friend for allegedly abandoning her geriatric German shepherd, Ginger, somehow found time to host a few episodes of "Faggot Feud,"apseudo-game show that plays at the gay bar Wednesdays at midnight.

Dressed like a Boca retirement-home dominatrix in a sheer zebra-print top, black gloves and an ostrich feather sprouting from her head, Ms. McClanahan flitted about the stage assisted by Dick Dawson, a leather-underpants-and-dog-collar-clad beefcake.

"We got all these answers from a hundred faggots surveyed," Ms. McClanahan assured the Master and Slave families from her podium, which was decorated with a large, glittery silver phallus. "So this is all legitimate–you know what I mean?

"Name something," Ms. McClanahan continued, "that, although painful, provides much pleasure."

One of the Masters hit his button and a blue police light started flashing.

"Anal sex!" he shouted.

"I think everybody heard that," Ms. McClanahan said as a buzzer blared, indicating a wrong answer.

"Anal sex! I'm surprised!" she murmured.

Suddenly the judge up in the D.J. booth changed his mind, and the correct-answer bell dinged as the words "getting fucked" appeared on a screen.

"Aha!" said Ms. McClanahan. "Where's the next contestant?"

"Biting!" guessed another Master.

"I bet it's up there!" Ms. McClanahan sang. The buzzer buzzed again.

"I can't believe that biting isn't on there! Well, let's see what it is , for God's sake!" she declared.

The correct answers were revealed.

"Nipple clamps! Oh, heavens–I hadn't thought of that! These are hard questions!" Ms. McClanahan said.

"Other than lick," she went on, "what is something else you can do with your tongue? Gee …. "

"Flick!" a Slave chirped.

"What the hell's a flick ?" the judge demanded.

"I'll show you later!" Ms. McClanahan said, looking over her shoulder toward the voice.

The buzzer buzzed.

"My guess would be 'rim,'" a Slave said.

"Rim … rim …. " Ms. McClanahan mused, pursing her lips. The bell dinged.

"What about that!" screamed Ms. McClanahan. Then, after giving the Masters a shot, she looked at the audience. "O.K., now I'm going to tell you what I would say. I would say 'stick it out.'"

"Oh, Rue," the judge lamented as the buzzer sounded again. "Any other ideas?"

"No, that was it," Ms. McClanahan said.

–Beth Broome

One-Woman Showbiz

There's no question that performance artist, actor, writer, director, N.Y.U. professor and 1996 recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" award Anna Deavere Smith is a hard-working woman. But now she's added even more diversity to her portfolio.

First came news of her involvement in The Seagull, a translation of Anton Chekhov's 1895 play by Tom Stoppard that will be performed in late July and August in Central Park as part of the Public Theater's free "Shakespeare in the Park" series. Though the cast includes Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Natalie Portman, Marcia Gay Harden, John Goodman, Christopher Walken and Philip Seymour Hoffman, the play's director, Mike Nichols, apparently felt that his talent base wasn't strong enough. So he asked Ms. Smith to serve as the production's dramaturge. Ms. Smith will be responsible for providing "reflection on the text," according to John Dias, a Public Theater producer and dramaturge for their Shakespeare productions.

"In Seagull , a question came up about a bingo game [the characters] play. And the director and actors needed to know how the game was played, who would have played it, did it have particular meaning, did it say anything about class?" Mr. Dias explained that Ms. Smith was researching the game and reporting back to the cast on its historical context, cultural significance, and rules and regulations.

After she's brushed up on her late 19th-century Russian bingo, Ms. Smith will take on an entirely different task. Next spring, she will tackle teaching at New York University's School of Law. At press time, Ms. Smith's assistant was unable to track down her busy boss for comment, but Mary Schmidt Campbell, Dean of N.Y.U.'s Tisch School of the Arts, explained that in addition to her position in Tisch's performance-studies department, Ms. Smith has an affiliate appointment at the law school, where she will participate in a "lawyers' ring colloquium" designed for people who are "not necessarily lawyers" to discuss specific themes in broad cultural contexts.

When asked if Ms. Smith's appointment might have something to do with her recurring role as District Attorney Kate Brunner on ABC's The Practice , Dean Campbell said, "Oh, God, no!" But given Ms. Smith's appearances as National Security Advisor Nancy McNally on NBC's The West Wing , all we can say is: Watch your back, Condoleezza Rice.

– Rebecca Traister

Watch Your Back, Anna Deavere Smith

For The Sopranos ' Robert Iler, the summer hiatus has been a study in method acting, what with the July 4 arrest of the 16-year-old, who plays Mafioso Tony Soprano's son on the HBO series, on charges of robbery and drug possession. But it's Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who plays his sister Meadow, who has really lived up to her role as the "perfect older sister" by spending her break diligently sticking her fingers into other career-opportunity pies.

First, the 20-year-old actress belted her way through the title role in the touring musical Cinderella . Then she began recording her first album, a solo affair that will be released this fall. "They are all original songs, and I wrote four of them," Ms. Sigler said via e-mail. In June, she began peddling a "teen-survival" book–"part memoir, part inspirational"–to New York publishers. "Of course, it will mainly focus on my eating disorder, but it will have a lot of light subjects, too," said Ms. Sigler.

But perhaps the most visible project is her rendition of the 1980 Diana Ross hit "I'm Coming Out," which appears in the ubiquitous commercials for Levi's Superlow jeans. But instead of featuring the cherubic multitasker, the song is lip-synched by a bunch of belly-buttons. "My friends that I didn't get a chance to tell about it call me all the time telling me that the voice on the commercial sounds just like me … =)," wrote the enthusiastic Ms. Sigler.

Asked what else Ms. Sigler has her sights on, she replied, "I just want to do it all! I am so lucky and fortunate to be able to do film, Broadway, recording and writing and I never want to stop. This is in my heart and it will always be." Well, it beats petty larceny.

– R.T.

Polly Jean Harvey has done a lot in 30 years. Raised by a stonecutter and a sculptor deep in the English countryside, she formed her own band in 1991 at age 21; pumped out five albums of shape-shifting, ultra-modern blues over the next nine years; strutted around in high heels, a feather boa and a candy-apple red dress the way a rock diva should; played Mary Magdalene in a Hal Hartley flick; and never once shied away from tackling the big subjects–love, death, God, sex–in her own soulfully warped way. And yet it took only six months of living in New York to throw that sophisticated musical palette of hers right out the window.

Ms. Harvey's alt-rock potlatch takes place on her sixth and latest release, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (Island), an amalgam of her experiences in New York in 1999 and life back home in Dorset, England. Ms. Harvey has always worn her influences on her sleeve, from deep American blues riffs to the gothic rumblings of Nick Cave, and has done well by them. Which is not to say her songs have been mere knockoffs. Far from it. Ever since her fevered debut on 1992's Dry , and especially on 1995's To Bring You My Love , she's wallowed happily in the murk of human emotions. ("Whatta monster / Whatta night / Whatta lover / Whatta fight," she blurted on the latter's "Meet Ze Monsta.") Even when she was losing herself in the formidable haze of atmospheric effects built in, around and often on top of her voice by mixing-board senseis like Head and Flood (see 1998's Is This Desire? ), she managed to rise above. No matter how beautiful or grotesque the album production, Ms. Harvey stood her ground at the core, rubbing the listener's ears raw.

But that rawness has been polished to an unnerving sheen on Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea . You could blame it on the personnel, but Ms. Harvey has been working with Head, as well as co-producers Rob Ellis (her drummer) and Mick Harvey (Mr. Cave's right-hand Bad Seed), for years. You could blame it on love, certainly, since many of the songs seem to be directed at a significant other dragging her in and out of several states of desire; but then Ms. Harvey has been mired in the dirty world of love since the beginning, and has repeatedly turned it into an alluring nightmare worth the price of admission.

I prefer to blame it on New York. There's something that happens to every new arrival the moment we step into the subway: the feeling that our experiences–slogging through trash monsoons, getting drunk and waking up naked on a West Side pier, whatever–are so profound that we have to share them with everyone else.

Ms. Harvey seems to have fallen prey to that inclination. The first six songs of the 12 on the album suffer from the deadening combination of lyrical cliché–often of the things-I-saw-and-did-in-New York variety–and super-clean production. If ever there was a subject begging to be souped up with sonic mud and grime, it's the Disneyfied New York of today. But P.J. and the band run in the opposite direction this time, eschewing her operatic purge-and-dirge delivery for straightforward Pepto-Bismol rock ( coats, soothes, relieves … ), which all too often makes her sound disconcertingly like Martha Davis from the Motels. Nowhere is this more evident than in the single, "Good Fortune," and a hoary old chestnut called "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore." In the former, she sings about being hung over in Chinatown, walking through Little Italy with a lover, feeling like "some bird of paradise, my bad fortune slippin' away," until she ends up fantasizing "about leaving / like some modern day / gypsy landslide / like some modern day/ Bonnie and Clyde / on the run again." In the latter, well, news flash: The whores hustle! The hustlers whore! Somebody get Bono on the horn, pronto.

Things grow a little darker, more ethereal, more gritty–that is, better–on the second half of the album. New York City still floats in and out as a vaguely malevolent character, but Ms. Harvey seems to keep it at arm's length. Thom Yorke of Radiohead adds his falsetto to a penetrating duet on "This Mess We're In." Ms. Harvey channels her Medusa-ness on the rockers "Kamikaze" and "This Is Love," not to mention her ability to throw her voice off-key to sumptuous effect as she plods into the mystic on "Horses in My Dreams." But by now, the CD's almost over.

O.K., maybe I don't blame New York for Ms. Harvey's loose talk about not-so-clean living during good times. I blame us. We made this city the way it is, Giuliani time and all, and now we are living with the consequences: New York doesn't inspire great art anymore, it inspires parody. And that's the ultimate problem with Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea : P.J. Harvey didn't set out to make a startling new album, she set out to make a startling new P.J. Harvey album .

–Jay Stowe

Sun Ra: Cosmos Factory

An endlessly confounding character who claimed the planet Saturn as his birthplace, Sun Ra was never a darling of the jazz establishment. During the scene's heady run through the 50's and 60's, tweedy critics were slow to dig the bizarre pageantry and mystical philosophies of this man who dressed in cosmological headdresses and talked about sound as a mode for interplanetary transport. But over the course of his strange 60-year career, Sun Ra–who was born Herman Blount in Birmingham, Ala.–made a pretty good case for both his intergalactic citizenry and his peculiar brand of self-made genius.

The latest testimony comes by way of five new CD's released by the appropriately named Evidence label, which has spent the last four years rescuing some 25 Sun Ra albums from obscurity. Continuing a sustained spell of archival resurrection since his death in 1993, the reissues cover Sun Ra's spacey output during the 60's and 70's, a couple of "lost" albums and a "greatest hits" primer. They also help to shine light on a shadowy legacy that has only grown as music moves toward the future age that Sun Ra spent his creative life evoking.

Because he was interested more in the great cosmic order than in the fashions of his time, Sun Ra was unconcerned that the gatekeepers of jazz dismissed him as a clownish cosmic crier. He seemed to relish his outsider's role and, through his music, managed to convince members of his cult-like band, the Arkestra, and more than a few of his fans that his talk of other worlds was rooted in something close to truth. "Each one of my numbers is like a news item, only it's like a cosmic newspaper," he said in John Szwed's definitive 1998 biography, Space is the Place: The Life and Times of Sun Ra (Da Capo Press).

For Sun Ra, "other worlds" represented a place far away from this one, with its racial divisiveness, violent predilections and curiously one-sided history. Part of the great wave of Southern blacks who had headed north for Chicago's promised land, Sun Ra was a learned, self-taught scholar of the mystical sciences and strains of black thought that traced all of civilization back to the ancients of Egypt and Ethiopia. Poring over obscure texts and skeptical of anything resembling received wisdom, he synthesized numerous contrarian philosophies into an ideology that spoke for its time while reaching well beyond it.

Of course, Sun Ra was presciently early with all this stuff. He seized on space travel as a leitmotif in the 40's, when it was just a Flash Gordon fantasy, and he was waxing "post-human" long before such talk became fashionable.

In a way, he laid a philosophical foundation for much of the black music that followed in his wake. From Miles Davis' starry fusion and George Clinton's cosmic funk to Lee Perry's gravity-defying dub and early hip-hop's seemingly odd fascination with Kraftwerk, many of black music's experimental directives have been launched behind some idea of transport, some notion of reconciling this world by creating a new one. Even techno– nowadays a relatively white-washed genre–was birthed by black Detroit scenesters who name-checked futurist Alvin Toffler and spoke of color-blind utopias.

Whether this trend is the product of willed philosophical maneuvering or simply an endless search for out-there sounds is up for debate. But in the case of Sun Ra, a serious ideologue who became a cult figure more by default than by design, it is impossible to overestimate his grandiose ambitions.

During a break from his cosmic travels, Sun Ra followed the traditional jazz migration path and moved, in 1961, to New York, where he found a home in the East Village and became one of the cast of characters that made this city what it was. This is where we find him on the first of Evidence's new reissues, When Angels Speak of Love .

Recorded in 1963 and given an extremely limited release three years later on Sun Ra's own Saturn label, When Angels Speak of Love documents the Arkestra whispering a free-jazz language that wouldn't become the talk of the town for a number of years.

With its sparse cosmic catcalls and echo-drenched aural experimentation, When Angels Speak of Love catches the band in a particularly scientific state of mind. Of the five tracks, only "The Idea of It All" is jazzy in the strict, swing-derived sense of the term. Elsewhere, the band plays with sound in the abstract. The Arkestra's members were like lab chemists, mixing different sounds and waiting to consider their reactions.

In the studio, Sun Ra liked to fiddle with recording techniques, putting microphones in strange positions and using distortion as a coloring agent. As a result, his own lingering low-end piano storm on the album's high point, "Next Stop Mars," sounds like it's coming from the attic of a haunted house. Toward the end of the sprawling 17-minute piece, saxophonist John Gilmore spits out some strained, ear-piercing frequencies, squeezing more soul out of his high register than most players summon in bellowing bass walks.

The next CD follows a similar path but goes further out. Pairing two albums recorded in 1973 for an ill-fated stint on the Impulse label, Pathways To Unknown Worlds/Friendly Love features madcap improvisations that sound extra-spacey thanks to Sun Ra's sizable synthesizer fetish. Even when he played acoustic piano, Sun Ra had a way of coaxing melodies out of his music rather than playing them directly. He messed with chord structures and phrasing techniques, approaching traditional jazz figures the way a snake-charmer does a cobra. On synthesizer, his style was blown-out and distended in all kinds of gloriously maddening ways.

Pathways' opening title track starts off as a loose pile of sounds, with Sun Ra dizzily twiddling his keyboard's pitch-shifter before reaching a brief fit of noise that gets softened up by Ronnie Boykins' bowed bass. It's the sort of interplay that the Arkestra metes out over both albums, with varying degrees of intensity. Sometimes achingly slow, Pathways … /Friendly Love is the least essential of the new discs, but its highlights include saxophonist Danny Davis' muted jungle roar on "Friendly Love II."

Things tighten up a bit on Cymbals and Spears , two previously unreleased records packaged together as a two-disc set called The Great Lost Sun Ra Albums . Because of his prodigious recording habits and oftentimes less-than-accessible style, one could argue that all of Sun Ra's albums were "lost" to some degree, making the distinction here kind of arbitrary. Nonetheless, both albums rank among Sun Ra's best work.

Recorded in 1973 at the now-defunct Variety Recording Studios in Times Square, the albums showcase the Arkestra moving a step closer to its swing roots. At heart, Sun Ra was always a big-band man, as evidenced by the sprawling–and economically suicidal–size of his Arkestra. For Cymbals , though, he pared down both the band's size and sound in a more straightforward approach to accepted jazz wisdom. He still plays his spacey organ, but on tracks like "The Order of the Pharaonic Jesters," he riffs tenderly over a bluesy walking bass line.

The second track, "Thoughts Under a Dark Blue Light," is the album's highlight for its somewhat unusual star turn by sax-player Gilmore. Because of his faceless role in the studiously democratic Arkestra, Gilmore never received the recognition handed out to many of his solo-going peers. But as displayed on the Great Lost Sun Ra Albums , he could play with both sweet-lipped finesse and a ferocity that make late-period John Coltrane and even Albert Ayler seem tame by comparison.

The putative jewel of the Evidence reissues is 1978's Lanquidity . Rabid Sun Ra fans–a peculiar type, to be sure–have reportedly shelled out $400 for vinyl copies of this all-but-unfindable record, which catches the band in near-funk form in 1978. Even at their noisiest, members of the Arkestra always found ways to extract fluid rhythms from seemingly dry sources. So it comes as little surprise that when funk was the order of day, they grooved quite well. "Where Pathways Meet" swaggers in an almost goofy gait, with a chorus of horns strutting together in a loosely choreographed parade. "That's How I Feel" swings to a cartoonishly elastic bass line, with Sun Ra laying ethereal, feather-touched synthesizer lines before its feet.

The album's highlight, "There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)," is a drawn-out exercise in ambient suggestion. Beginning with a moaning chant that evolves into gauzy, floating sheets of sound, the song works like a seductive, subtle manifesto, with Sun Ra and vocalist June Tyson whispering the title in quietly convincing ways.

Despite its seemingly quixotic ambition, Greatest Hits: Easy Listening for Intergalactic Travel works well as a primer for those new to Sun Ra's universe. Focusing on the Arkestra's more accessible moments, the compilation covers vast territory between 1956 and 1973. Tracks like "Kingdom of Not" (from the album Super-Sonic Jazz ) and "Medicine for a Nightmare" (from Angels and Demons at Play ) show the Arkestra cooking better than many of the bands of its day. "Rocket Number Nine Take Off for the Planet Venus" is a tumbling rave-up launched by the band's speedy chant of the title and heartening cries of "Zoom! Zoom!" And "The Perfect Man" (from The Singles , Evidence's compilation of the Saturn label's 45's) takes a jaunty, pop-ready ride through Sun Ra's weird musical maze.

The songs on Greatest Hits , like those on the more accessible Great Lost Sun Ra Albums and Lanquidity , help illuminate the obscure reaches of Sun Ra's restless mind. While he was drop-dead serious about his work's cosmic worth, he was also a playful bandleader who gave himself over to music's more ephemeral qualities. His take on traditional musical beauty weighed just as heavily on his harshest sounds as his sometimes grating tendencies did on his faithful jazz standards. In the work of Sun Ra, they're both one and the same, sonic thought balloons inflated with devotion and then cut loose to float freely about the cosmos.

–Andy Battaglia