Words: viviparous, adj.

PROBABLY THE best book ever is Richard Cook and Brian Morton's The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD. In eight years and four editions, it has grown to 1750 pages.

Born in Kew and Dunoon, Cook and Morton do not affect hip jive, but their prose is uberated by such phrases as Bill Laswell's reworking of Miles Davis being a cause "to fear the heresies of the epigoni, and yet in the event this is a classic Miles Davis album"; also, in generative mode, "the Modern Jazz Quartet was born viviparously out of the post-war Dizzy Gillespie band".

Coined by Sir Thomas Browne, from the Latin for something brought forth alive, viviparous is entirely zoological in the OED - no hint of vibes.