Friday, 10/21/11
what’s new
Trash Talk, “Awake,” 2011
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what’s new
Trash Talk, “Awake,” 2011
Joseph Haydn, Piano Sonata No. 24 in D major, excerpt (2nd Movement)
Sviatoslav Richter, live
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Logic does not exist for me. I float on the waves of art and life and never really know how to distinguish what belongs to the one or the other or what is common to both. Life unfolds for me like a theatre presenting a sequence of somewhat unreal sentiments; while the things of art are real to me and go straight to my heart.
—Sviatoslav Richter
*****
reading table
After a black day, I play Haydn,
and feel a little warmth in my hands.The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.
The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.The sound says that freedom exists
and someone pays no taxes to Caesar.I shove my hands in my haydnpockets
and act like a man who is calm about it all.I raise my haydnflag. The signal is:
“We do not surrender. But want peace.”The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;
rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.The rocks roll straight through the house
but every pane of glass is still whole.—Tomas Transtromer (winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature), “Allegro,” trans. from the Swedish by Robert Bly
*****
Herman E. Johnson, “She’s A-Looking For Me”*
Rec. 1961, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
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lagniappe
So my life was just that way, to keep out of trouble, drink my little whiskey, an’ go an’ do little ugly things like that, but in a QT way.
—Herman E. Johnson (August Kleinzahler, Red Sauce, Whiskey and Snow [1995], epigraph [I’ve changed “cue-tee” to “QT”])
*This is how this song is titled on the album Louisiana Country Blues (Arhoolie). To these ears a better rendering would be “She Out Looking For Me.”
clear, adj. bright, luminous, transparent. E.g., Wadada Leo Smith’s trumpet playing.
Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet), live, London (Cafe Oto), 9/5/11
A performance like this opens up, I’ve found, once you quit trying to find
a foothold.
Stick around long enough and images that conjure your own past, going out to clubs on Chicago’s south and west sides, start to turn up as history.
Ricky Allen, “No Better Time Than Now” (One-Way 1974)
Light: On The South Side (Numero 2009)
Yeah, that’s Junior Wells at 1:08.
Rough.
Grainy.
Insistent.
Long after a song has ended, you still hear that voice.
Dorothy Love Coates & the Gospel Harmonettes
“I’m Just Holding On,” live (TV broadcast)
*****
“That’s Alright With Me”
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lagniappe
Were gospel to be more publicly acclaimed, she [Dorothy Love Coates] might have the stature of a Billie Holiday or a Judy Garland. Instead, for thousands of black people, she is the message carrier.
—Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times (6th ed. 2002)
*****
[I]t was obvious that Keith [Richards] and Gram [Parsons] enjoyed spending time together. . . . [W]e just all cared deeply about the same things. We just loved, for instance, to sit and listen to Dorothy Love Coates, the gospel singer.
(Originally posted 3/28/10.)
serendipity
Want to feel no better than you do right now?
If so, don’t bother with this stuff.
Last night, while I was listening to the radio,* these tracks came on back to back to back to back, brightening my mood considerably.
Valorie Keys, “Listen Here” (Double Shot 1966)
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Arthur Alexander, “You Better Move On” (Dot 1961; London [UK] 1962))
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Bessie Banks, “Go Now” (Blue Cat 1964; Soul City re-release 1966)
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Dee Dee Warwick, “You’re No Good” (Jubilee 1963)
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*WFMU-FM (Betsy Nichols, subbing for Mr. Fine Wine)
Happy (Belated) 70th Birthday, Lester!
Lester Bowie, October 11, 1941-November 8, 1999
trumpet player, bandleader, irrepressible spirit
Lester Bowie Brass & Steel Band, Umbria Jazz Festival (Italy), 1996
Part 1
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Part 2
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Part 3
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Part 4
More? Here. And here. And here. And here. And here.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Jazz is neither specific repertoire nor academic exercise . . . but a way of life.
—Lester Bowie
No one could convince me, when I’m listening to the clarinet, that any instrument is more beautiful.
Shabaka Hutchings, clarinet, with Kit Downes, keyboards; John Edwards, bass; Mark Sanders, drums; Leafcutter John, electronics; live, London (St. Sepulchre-without-Newgate), 7/14/11
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