Friday, 8/31/12
only rock ’n’ roll
Wilco, live, Barcelona (Primavera Sound Festival), 5/31/12
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music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Month: August, 2012
2012
Thursday, 8/30/12
playing this weekend at the Chicago Jazz Festival
Matt Wilson’s Arts & Crafts* (Sunday, 3:30 p.m.)
“We See” (T. Monk), live, New York, 2011
(Paul Motian, this guy—drummers seem to have a particular feeling for Monk.)
*****
Steve Coleman and Five Elements** (Sunday, 7:10 p.m.)
Live, New York, 2010
*****
Ken Vandermark’s Made To Break Quartet*** (Sunday, 2:20 p.m.)
Live, Barcelona, 2011
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*MW, drums; Terell Stafford, trumpet; Gary Versace, piano; Martin Wind, bass.
**SC, alto saxophone; Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet; Tim Albright, trombone; Miles Okazaki, guitar; David Virelles, piano; Thomas Morgan, bass; Marcus Gilmore, drums.
***KV, reeds; Christof Kurzmann, electronics; Devin Hoff, bass; Tim Daisy, drums.
2012
Wednesday, 8/29/12
who you’d be swept away by—right now—
if you were a 24-year-old male*
Jessie Ware, live, London, 7/18/12
“Night Light”
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“Taking In Water”
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“Running”
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lagniappe
radio: final day of WKCR’s Pres-&-Bird Birthday Marathon
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*Based on a sample of one—my son Alex.
2012
Tuesday, 8/28/12
Need a ticket to an enchanted forest?
John Luther Adams, songbirdsongs (1974-80)
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lagniappe
radio: day two of WKCR’s Pres-&-Bird Birthday Marathon
2012
Monday, 8/27/12
Everybody knows the boat is leaking . . .
Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows,” live, London, 2008
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lagniappe
talking (Canadian TV, 1997)
(Yeah, the interviewer is often obnoxious; but, despite [because of?] that, this is one of the more intriguing “celebrity interviews” I’ve heard.)
*****
reading table
Returning To My Cottage
by Wang Wei (699-759 [trans. David Young])
A bell in the distance
the sound floats
down the valley
one by one
woodcutters and fishermen
stop work, start home
the mountains move off
into darkness
alone, I turn home
as great clouds beckon
from the horizon
the wind stirs delicate vines
and water chestnut shoots
catkin fluff sails past
in the marsh to the east
new growth
vibrates with color
it’s sad
to walk in the house
and shut the door.
*****
radio: 72 hours of Pres & Bird
Celebrating the birthdays of Lester Young (8/27) and Charlie Parker (8/29), WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) will be playing their music all day today, tomorrow, and Wednesday.
2012
Sunday, 8/26/12
Here are a few more takes on a song we listened to a couple weeks ago—“Sending Up My Timber.”
Rev. Raymond Branch, Los Angeles (Heavenly Rainbow Baptist Church), 2010
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Blind Willie McTell (Pig ’n Whistle Red), 1950
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Otis Clay & Clarence Fountain (Direct Hits from Bullseye Blues), 1993
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Ya’Londa Freeman & Gardner Family, Baltimore (Har Sinai Church of Christ, funeral for Jaycee Gardner), 2008
2012
Saturday, 8/25/12
favorites
Good taste is timeless.
Girl Talk, “Play Your Part (Pt. 1)”
(Originally posted 10/27/09.)
2012
Friday, 8/24/12
timeless
Sly and the Family Stone
“Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again),” TV Show (Soul Train), 1974
*****
“In Time,” Fresh, 1973
Jazz legend Miles Davis was so impressed by the song “In Time” . . . that he made his band listen to the track repeatedly for a full 30 minutes. Composer and music theorist Brian Eno cited Fresh as having heralded a shift in the history of recording, “where the rhythm instruments, particularly the bass drum and bass, suddenly [became] the important instruments in the mix.”
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lagniappe
art beat: more from Tuesday’s stop at the Art Institute of Chicago
Roy Lichtenstein, Landscape in Fog (1996)
2012
Thursday, 8/23/12
Music, for some people, is no less vital than oxygen.
James Rhodes, talking and playing (2010)
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lagniappe
reading table
To Praise the Music
by William Bronk (1918-1999)
Evening. The trees in late winter bare
against the sky. Still light, the sky.
Trees dark against it. A few leaves
on the trees. Tension in their rigid branches as if
–oh, it is all as if, but as if, yes,
as if they sang songs, as if they praised.
Oh, I envy them. I know the songs.
As if I know some other things besides.
As if; but I don’t know, not more
than to say the trees know. The trees don’t know
and neither do I. What is it keeps me from praise?
I praise. If only to say their songs,
say yes to them, to praise the songs they sing.
Envied music. I sing to praise their song.
(Want to hear Bronk, a MCOTD Hall of Famer, read this? Here.)
*****
art beat: more from Tuesday’s stop at the Art Institute of Chicago
Roy Lichtenstein, Mirror #3 (Six Panels) (1971)
2012
Wednesday, 8/22/12
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”
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (after a hearing at the nearby federal court building)
Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective (through 9/3/12)
Look Mickey (1961)
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Artist’s Studio “Look Mickey” (1973)
music clip of the day 