Monday, 7/11/11
This’ll fortify you for the whole week.
Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, live
Vodpod videos no longer available.Wanna loop this, so it plays over and over? Here.
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Month: July, 2011
2011
Sunday, 7/10/11
Think you can listen to this just once?
Pilgrim Travelers, “Straight Street” (1955)
Vodpod videos no longer available.2011
Saturday, 7/9/11
Here’s another take on the brass band.
Ray Anderson’s Pocket Brass Band (RA, trombone; Lew Soloff, trumpet;
Matt Perrine, sousaphone; Bobby Previte, drums)
Live, Powerplay Studio, Switzerland (Maur), 5/27/10
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Live, Trondheim Jazz Festival (Norway), 5/14/10
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
art beat
Cy Twombly, April 25, 1928-July 5, 2011
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The death of Cy Twombly has an oddly catastrophic feel—oddly because he was eighty-three and a canonical master, but catastrophic because he takes with him a certain epochal, now thoroughly historical, sense of wide-open liberty in very high culture. Such was the cynosure of new art in New York sixty years ago, when Twombly had his first show of startlingly scrawly, somehow furiously languid paintings and drawings. Unlike the heroes of Abstract Expressionism and his comrades Rauschenberg and Johns, he never drove that afflatus. Rather, he took it as a routine state of mind and soul. This could seem dandyishly insolent of him: shrugging off the requirement for logical necessity in big-time avant-garde art. He made clear that he did what he felt like doing. His feeling-like-doing-it was the point, ever just a dramatic whisker short of pointlessness. Who did he think he was?
—Peter Schjeldahl, New Yorker (blog), 7/6/11
2011
Friday, 7/8/11
It takes a village, in Fela’s world, to put on a show.
Fela Anikulapo Kuti, October 15, 1938-August 2, 1997
Live, Paris, 1981
Part 1
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Part 2
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
1938 Born 15 October in Abeokuta, Nigeria to politically active and middle class family.
1958 Sent to London to train as a doctor, but instead enrolled in the Trinity College of Music. Formed Koola Lobitos in 1961.
1969 Took Koola Lobitos to Los Angeles. His political zeal was fired when he befriended radical black activists including Angela Davis.
1971 Kuti renames his band Afrika 70 (and later Eygpt 80), and, newly politicised, he determines to give voice to Nigeria’s underclass.
1974 After he enraged the Nigerian establishment, the army almost destroyed Kuti’s home while trying to arrest him.
1977 In a second government-sanctioned attack, 1,000 soldiers descended on Kuti’s compound. He suffered a fractured skull, arm and leg in the onslaught and his 82-year old mother was thrown from an upstairs window. He left for voluntary exile in Ghana.
1978 Ghanian authorities deported Kuti back to Lagos. On his arrival he married 27 women simultaneously. Divorcing them in 1986, he said: ‘ no man has the right to own a woman’s vagina’.
1979 Founded his own political party MOP (Movement of the People)
1984 Jailed in Nigeria for five years on what was regarded as sham currency smuggling charges, and released in 1986 after a change of government.
1996 Arrested and released on an alleged drug charge.
1997 Died of complications from Aids aged 59.
*****
2011
Thursday, 7/7/11
keep on dancing
(an occasional series)
If nothing bad ever happens while you’re dancing, can dancing keep anything bad from ever happening?
Arnold Jarvis, “Take Some Time Out” (1987)
Original Club Mix
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Rugged Riddim Mix
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Dub/Instrumental Mix
Vodpod videos no longer available.2011
Wednesday, 7/6/11
People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett), “DrivingFlyingRisingFalling”
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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lagniappe
listening room
What did I listen to last night?
A radio show I’d never heard before—Antique Phonograph Music Program with MAC (WFMU-FM), which features old (really old, like 90, 100, 110 years old) 78s and cylinders, played on period hand-cranked players. Last night’s program, as well as previous shows, can be heard here.
2011
Tuesday, 7/5/11
only rock ’n roll
(an occasional series)
13th Floor Elevators
TV broadcast, 1966
“You’re Gonna Miss Me” (Billboard Hot 100, #55)
*****
Live, San Francisco (Avalon Ballroom), 1966
“Gloria”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“You Really Got Me”
Vodpod videos no longer available.More of Roky Erickson? Here.
2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
Happy Birthday, Pops!*
Louis Armstrong, “Basin Street Blues” (three takes)
#1 (live, 1959, Germany [Stuttgart])
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
#2 (live, 1953, New Orleans)
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
#3 (recording, 1928, Chicago)
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
more
Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five, “West End Blues,” 1928, Chicago
*****
radio
The federal government, in its wisdom, gives you the day off so you can listen to Louis Armstrong.
—Phil Schaap, 7/2/11, Traditions in Swing, WKCR-FM
(broadcasting from Columbia University), which today is all Pops, all day
*****
reading table
Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
—Henry James
*Louis Armstrong gave July 4th as his birthday, something that was determined, after his death, not to be true—at least not literally.
2011
Sunday, 7/3/11
This guy I can’t get enough of.
Vernard Johnson, “Don’t Wait ’Til The Battle Is Over, Shout Now!”; live, TV broadcast (Bobby Jones Gospel)
Vodpod videos no longer available.Time for just one note? 6:23.
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lagniappe
art beat
Lee Friedlander, Cherry Blossom Time in Japan (2006)
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reading table
Yesterday, opening my Emily Dickinson collection (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R. W. Franklin) at random, I came upon this.
We do not play on Graves —
Because there isn’t Room —
Besides — it isn’t even — it slants
And People come —And put a Flower on it —
And hang their faces so —
We’re fearing that their Hearts will drop —
And crush our pretty play —And so we move as far
As Enemies — away —
Just looking round to see how far
It is — Occasionally ——Emily Dickinson (#599)
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*****
listening room: what’s playing
• Echocord Jubilee Comp. (Echocord)
• Art Ensemble of Chicago, Full Force (ECM)
• Art Ensemble of Chicago, Urban Bushmen (ECM)
• Paul Motian (with Lee Konitz, soprano & alto saxophones; Joe Lovano, tenor saxophone; Bill Frisell, guitar; Charlie Haden, bass), On Broadway Vol. 3 (Winter & Winter)
• Rebirth Brass Band, Feel Like Funkin’ It Up (Rounder)
• Marc Ribot, Silent Movies (Pi Recordings)
• Wadada Leo Smith, Kabell Years: 1971-1979 (Tzadik)
• Charles “Baron” Mingus, West Coast, 1945-49 (Uptown Jazz)
• John Alexander’s Sterling Jubilee Singers, Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb (New World Records)
• Rev. Johnny L. Jones, The Hurricane That Hit Atlanta (Dust-to-Digital)
• Elliott Carter, composer; Ursula Oppens, piano; Oppens Plays Carter (Cedille)
• Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, composers; Maurizio Pollini, piano, piano works (Schoenberg), Variations Op. 27 (Webern) (Deutsche Grammophon)
• Morton Feldman, For Bunita Marcus, Stephane Ginsburgh, piano (Sub Rosa)
• WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)
—Bird Flight (Phil Schaap, jazz [Charlie Parker])
—Traditions in Swing (Phil Schaap, jazz)
—Daybreak Express (Various, jazz)
—Out to Lunch (Various, jazz)
—Jazz Profiles (Various, jazz)
—Jazz Alternatives (Various, jazz)
—Morning Classical (Various, classical)
—Afternoon New Music (Various, classical and hard-to-peg)
—Eastern Standard Time (Carter Van Pelt, Jamaican music)
• WFMU-FM
—Mudd Up! (DJ/Rupture, “new bass and beats”)
—Sinner’s Crossroads (Kevin Nutt, gospel)
—Give The Drummer Some (Doug Schulkind, sui generis)
—Downtown Soulville with Mr. Fine Wine (soul)
2011
Saturday, 7/2/11
Here’s a different take—one deeply indebted to Lester Bowie—on the
brass band.
Dave Douglas & Brass Ecstasy
DD, trumpet; Louis Bonilla, trombone; Vincent Chancey, horn (AKA French horn); Marcus Rojas, tuba; Nasheet Waits, drums
“Bowie,” recording session (Spirit Moves, 2009)
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“Spirit Moves,” “This Love Affair,” “Twilight of the Dogs”
Live, Washington, D.C., 2009
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lagniappe
reading table
How can I possibly sleep
This moonlit evening?
Come, my friends,
Let’s sing and dance
All night long.—Ryokan (1758-1831), trans. John Stevens
music clip of the day 