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Month: December, 2010

2010

Sunday, 12/5/10

If one sign of a great performance is that the moment it ends you want to hear it again, this one delivers—I just listened to it three times (may go back for three more).

Spencer Taylor & The Highway Q.C.’s, “I’ve Got Shoes,” live

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

radio

WGN Radio continues its celebration of the life of Ron Santo today, rebroadcasting one of “Ron’s Greatest Games” (Carlos Zambrano’s 9/14/08 no-hitter) at 2 p.m. (CST), with other special programs before and after.

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2010

Saturday, 12/4/10

You reach a certain age.

Waking up one morning, you hear news that’s both unsurprising and unbelievable: a Cubs radio broadcaster who’s been around forever died.

Later in the day you find yourself wondering: “When I die, what music should I have at the funeral?”

(WGN Radio remembers Ron Santo today at 1 p.m. [CST] with a rebroadcast of Kerry Wood’s 20-strikeout game [5/6/1998], followed by other special broadcasts.)

*****

replay: a clip too good for just one day

two takes

If God plays a musical instrument, I bet it’s the cello.

Bach, Suite No. 5 in C minor for Unaccompanied Cello, 4th Movement (Sarabande)

Mstislav Rostropovich, live

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Mischa Maisky, live

Want more of Bach’s cello music? Here.

(Originally posted on 10/21/10.)

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2010

Friday, 12/3/10

Is any drummer more exciting?

Keith Moon, August 23, 1946-September 7, 1978

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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The Who, “Young Man Blues,” live, Isle of Wight, 1970  

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

The man is a drummer.

—Elvin Jones

*****

[N]othing had prepared me for the ferocious energy of The Who. . . . Pete Townshend’s hard, tense suspended chords seemed to scour the air around them; Roger Daltrey’s singing was a young man’s fighting swagger, an incitement to some kind of crime; John Entwistle’s incessantly mobile bass playing was like someone running away from the scene of the crime; and Keith Moon’s drumming, in its inspired vandalism, was the crime itself.

—James Wood, “The Fun Stuff,” The New Yorker, 11/29/10

*****

this just in

Scientists said Wednesday that the number of stars in the universe had been seriously undercounted, and they estimated that there could be three times as many stars out there as had been thought.

—New York Times, 12/1/10

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2010

Thursday, 12/2/10

Memphis.

1953.

A little studio—Memphis Recording Service—over on Union Avenue.

Little Junior Parker, “Feel So Bad” (1953), “Sittin’ at the Bar” (1954), Sun Records, Memphis

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lagniappe

I’d like to dedicate this song to Little Junior Parker, a cousin of mine who’s gone on, but we’d like to kind of carry on in his name . . . .

Al Green, “Take Me To The River,” Hi Records, Memphis, 1974

Al wrote this, with guitarist Mabon “Teenie” Hodges, and recorded it first; Hi labelmate Syl Johnson had the hit.

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2010

Wednesday, 12/1/10

recipe

take one electric guitar

add another

& another

& . . .

Glenn Branca Ensemble, Symphony No. 5, live, New York (The Kitchen), 1984

Part 1

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Part 2

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lagniappe

Born . . . in 1949, [Glenn Branca] . . . ignored rock until attracted to the repetitiveness of certain songs by the Kinks and Paul Revere and the Raiders. He claims to have taught himself composition by listening to guitar feedback at point-blank range for forty-five minutes at a time.

—Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century (1997)

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