only rock ’n’ roll
Rolling Stones (with Katy Perry), “Beast of Burden,” live, Las Vegas, 5/13
Seeing Mick perform these days makes me queasy. When Muddy was nearing seventy, he seemed, onstage, entirely at home in himself. Mick seems like an old guy—he turns seventy in July—who wishes he were still twenty.
two takes
“Take Five” (P. Desmond)
Ceramic Dog (Marc Ribot, guitar; Shahzad Ismaily, bass & percussion; Ches Smith, drums), live, Netherlands (Amsterdam), 2013
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Dave Brubeck Quartet (DB, piano; Paul Desmond, alto saxophone; Eugene Wright, bass; Joe Morello, drums), live, Germany, 1966
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), Bullfinch and Weeping Cherry Tree, 1834
Dixie Hummingbirds (feat. Ira Tucker, lead vocals), “Maybe It’s You,” TV show (TV Gospel Time), early 1960s
Talk about longevity. Ira Tucker joined the Dixie Hummingbirds in 1938, when he was 13. He was still with them in 2008, when he died.
soundtrack for a dream I’d like to have
Four Tet (AKA Kiernan Hebden), live (Boiler Room), 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
I don’t regard my life
as insufficient.
Inside the brushwood gate
there is a moon;
there are flowers.—Ryokan, 1758-1831 (translated from Japanese by Kazuaki Tanahashi [Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan])
what’s new
Chris Hadfield (Canadian astronaut), “Space Oddity” (D. Bowie)
International Space Station, 5/12/13 (released)
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lagniappe
reading table
I never saw any human being who was of sound mind.
—John Haslam (1764-1844), English physician, quoted in Times Literary Supplement, 3/29/13 (review of Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty, and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England)
keep on dancing
Charlie Parker (alto saxophone) with Ray Malone (tap dance), “Donna Lee,” TV show (Broadway Open House*), 1950
*Broadway Open House is network television’s first late-night comedy-variety series. It was telecast live on NBC from May 29, 1950 to August 24, 1951, airing weeknights from 11pm to midnight. One of the pioneering TV creations of NBC president Pat Weaver, it demonstrated the potential for late-night programming and led to the later development of The Tonight Show.
tonight
I’m going, with my son Alex, to hear a quartet led by this Chicago-based saxophonist at the Hideout, a small club on the city’s northwest side.
Nick Mazzarella Trio (NM, alto saxophone; Anton Hatwich, bass; Frank Rosaly, drums), live, “Do Not Disturb,” live, Asheville, N.C., 2011
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Make the drummer sound good.
There is, it appears, a new addition to the list of activities that threaten national security—channeling Whitney Houston, badly.
An American Airlines pilot was forced to make an emergency landing after a passenger refused to stop singing Whitney Houston’s hit song I Will Always Love You.
The solo performance began shortly into the flight from Los Angeles to New York and her crooning quickly became too much for passengers and staff on the domestic flight last Thursday.
The pilot was forced to change course halfway through the six hour flight and make an unscheduled stop at Kansas City so officers could escort the woman from the plane.
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lagniappe
reading table
“Pastoral Harpsichord”
by Charles Simic
A house with a screened-in porch
On the road to nowhere.
The missus topless because of the heat,
A bag of Frito Banditos in her lap.
President Bush on TV
Watching her every bite.Poor reception, that’s the one
Advantage we have here,
I said to the mutt lying at my feet
And sighing in sympathy.
On another channel the preacher
Came chaperoned by his ghost
When he shut his eyes full of tears
To pray for dollars.“Bring me another beer,” I said to her ladyship,
And when she wouldn’t oblige,
I went out to make chamber music
Against the sunflowers in the yard.
Today, celebrating his twenty-second birthday, we revisit a few of the many posts inspired by my son Luke.
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It’s impossible, sometimes, to separate our experience of music, especially pop music, from the surrounding circumstances. The other day, for instance, I was taking my son Luke back to school in Bloomington, Indiana. He was playing dashboard DJ. As we rolled through the hills of southern Indiana, nearing our destination, this came on after a long stretch of hip-hop (Lil Wayne, Eminem, Young Jeezy, Tyga, et al.), and the electronic intro, the Björk-like voice—they lit up the highway.
Ellie Goulding, “Lights,” 2010
(Originally posted 8/22/12.)
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what you’d be listening to if you were 20*
Lupe Fiasco, “The End of the World” (sampling M83, “Midnight City”), 2011
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Adele, “Rolling in the Deep,” Jamie xx Remix, feat. Childish Gambino, 2011
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*Based on a sample of one—my son Luke. What a treat to have a pair of 20-year-old ears back in the house (and car) over the holidays.
(Originally posted 1/2/12.)
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what’s new
I’ve got some music for you . . .
—my (20-year-old) son Luke, in a hospital room, moments after returning from general anesthesia and foot surgery
“Made In America,” Kanye West & Jay-Z, with Frank Ocean (Watch the Throne), 2011
. . . it might be my favorite song on the whole album.
(Originally posted, with a different visual, 9/3/11.)
back to church
Speech and song are sometimes indistinguishable.
Pastor Ezell Smith, live, Chicago (Prince of Peace Baptist Church)
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lagniappe
random thoughts on Mother’s Day
Professional jargon, whether legal, medical, psychological, whatever, is largely a desert. But once in a while you come upon a flowering tree. The great British psychoanalyst and pediatrician D. W. Winnicott (1896-1971) planted one such tree—the good enough mother.
