May | 2010 | music clip of the day

Friday, May 21, 2010

Jenny said when she was just five years old
There was nothin’ happening at all
Every time she puts on the radio
There was nothin’ goin’ down at all
Not at all

Then one fine mornin’, she puts on a New York station
You know, she couldn’t believe what she heard at all
She started shakin’ to that fine, fine music
You know, her life was saved by rock and roll . . .

—Lou Reed, “Rock & Roll” (The Velvet Underground, Loaded [1970])

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Bo Diddley, “Hey, Bo Diddley,” “Bo Diddley,” live (TV broadcast [Ed Sullivan Show]), 1955

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lagniappe

This well may be the human race’s greatest ever achievement.

—YouTube comment

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Thursday, May 20, 2010

These guys sounded awfully good the other day—let’s hear some more.

Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue, “Orleans & Claiborne,” live, New Orleans, 2010

There are a lot of things to like about this performance. One is the way Shorty, following two hot solos (tenor, baritone), doesn’t try to out-blow those guys. Instead, he changes directions (3:20). Sometimes nothing packs more punch than restraint. (Yeah, I don’t know why this clip cuts off when it does, either.)

Want more? Here.

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lagniappe

passings

Soon I’ll be leaving for a funeral—my uncle, Hugh Frebault. Nine days ago we sat and talked and laughed for over an hour; now he’s silent. Does life get any more understandable as you get older? I don’t think so—if anything, it seems to become only more mysterious, more unfathomable.

Blind Willie Johnson, “Dark Was The Night – Cold Was The Ground” (1927, Dallas)

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2010

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

1. Things you’ve heard before.

2. Things you’ve never heard.

Suppose you could listen to only one for the rest of your life.

Which would you choose?

Tristan Murail (1947-), “L’Espirit de Dunes” (1993-94)/Bent Frequency, Robert Ambrose conducting; live, Georgia (Morrow), 2006

Part 1

*****

Part 2

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lagniappe

Our conception of music is held prisoner by our education. All has been cut into slices, put into categories, classified, limited. There is a conceptual error from the very beginning: the composer does not work with 12 notes, x rhythmic figures, x dynamic markings, all infinitely permutable–he works with sound and timbre. Sound has been confused with its representations . . .

—Tristan Murail, “Spectra and Pixies” (1984)

Want more? Here.

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2010

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

this just in: teenagers (still) crazy about sex

While riding with my newly-19-year-old son Luke the other day (coming home from Champaign), here’s what jumped out of the radio.

Rihanna, “Rude Boy”

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Trey Songz, “Neighbors Know My Name”

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Drake, “Best I Ever Had”

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2010

Monday, May 17, 2010

In embracing music from another continent, this guy—a Gypsy born in Belgium who grew up near Paris—was way ahead of his time.

Django Reinhardt, January 23, 1910-May 16, 1953

Quintette du Hot Club de France

Live, “J’attendrai Swing,” 1939

*****

Live, “Echoes of France,” 1945

It’s something of a miracle that Django was able, physically, to make music at all. When he was eighteen, his left hand was badly injured in a fire, leaving his fourth and fifth fingers permanently curled toward the palm.

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lagniappe

Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision that I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn’t have.—Django Reinhardt

*****

With Duke Ellington (1939)

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2010

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Same song (as last Sunday), same city, different singer.

Grandpa Elliott, “Amazing Grace,” live, New Orleans, April 29, 2010

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lagniappe

Interview with Grandpa Elliott, New Orleans, April 29, 2010

This is like my medicine, my doctor, my everything.

—Grandpa Elliott

Want more? Here.

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2010

Saturday, May 15, 2010

replay: a clip too good for just one day

The world became a less interesting place the day Lester Bowie died.

Digable Planets (with Lester Bowie [trumpet], Joe Sample [keyboard], Melvin “Wah-Wah Watson” Ragin [guitar]), “Flying High in the Brooklyn Sky,” live

Want to hear more of Lester? Here.

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lagniappe

Part of the job of a musician is that of a messenger. If you ain’t ready to be a messenger, forget it. You need to get a job in the post office or somewhere. If you ain’t ready to travel, pack up your family, or pack up yourself and hit the road, you’re in the wrong business. Because that’s what music is about. It’s about spreading knowledge and education, and re-education. It’s about spreading. You have got to travel with it to spread the word. Like all the people in the past that have had to travel to spread the music.

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It’s life itself that this [music] is about.

—Lester Bowie (in George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music [2008])

(Originally posted 10/28/09.)