Wednesday, April 30th
sounds of Chicago
Specter (AKA Spekter, Andres Ordanez), “Pipe Bomb,” 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
[N]othing enhances pleasures and blocks guilt like a looming cataclysm.
—Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Month: April, 2014
2014
2014
Tuesday, April 29th
Happy (115th) Birthday, Duke!
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, April 29, 1899-May 24, 1974
pianist, composer, bandleader
“Black Beauty,” 1928
*****
“C Jam Blues,” 1942
*****
“Mood Indigo,” “Sophisticated Lady,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” 1943
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lagniappe
radio
WKCR (Columbia University): all Duke, all day.
2014
Monday, April 28th
passings
DJ Rashad, October 9, 1979-April 26, 2014
Live, Chicago (Pitchfork Music Festival), 2013
*****
“I Don’t Give A Fuck” (sampling Tupac Shakur’s dialogue in Juice), 2013
*****
“I’m Gone” (remixing Gil Scott-Heron’s “Home Is Where The Hatred Is”), 2011
2014
Sunday, April 27th
Friday he was at a nightclub in Vancouver. Today he’s playing a different venue—his father’s Shreveport church.
Choir (with Brian Blade, drums), Zion Baptist Church (Brady Blade Sr., pastor), Shreveport, La., December 23, 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
celestial geese—
none of them come down
to my pine—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827; translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
2014
Saturday, April 26th
only rock ’n’ roll
MC5: A True Testimonial (2002)
Thanks to my brother Don for the tip. We first encountered these guys in Chicago’s Lincoln Park during the 1968 Democratic Convention. The park is still there. But that moment, when, as a teenager, nothing mattered more than intensity and attitude, is long gone.
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lagniappe
found words
Sometimes it’s hard to tell the advertising from the conceptual art. Last night, while driving to Hyde Park to hear pianist Rafal Blechacz, I came upon a billboard:
BE AMBITIOUS.
NOT THIRSTY.
Who knew Diet Coke could be so deep?
2014
Friday, April 25th
only rock ’n’ roll
Black Dub (Daniel Lanois, guitar, vocals; Trixie Whitley, keyboards, vocals; Jim Wilson, bass, vocals; Brian Blade, drums), “Ring the Alarm,” live, Vancouver, 2011
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lagniappe
art beat
Danny Lyon (1942-), Four Boys, Uptown, Chicago (1965)
2014
Thursday, April 24th
never enough
Frederic Chopin (1810-1849), Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor
Rafal Blechacz (1985-), piano, live
1st Movement
2nd Movement
3rd Movement
4th Movement
*****
can’t wait
Tomorrow Blechacz (pronounced, I just learned, BLEH-hatch), who recently won the 2014 Gilmore Artist Award,* will be at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall, playing Bach and Beethoven and Chopin.
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*New York Times (1/8/14):
[O]ne of the great windfalls of the music world . . . the $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award . . . is given every four years to an unsuspecting pianist deemed worthy of a great career by a panel of anonymous judges who conduct their worldwide talent search in secret.
2014
Wednesday, April 23rd
sounds of New Orleans
Let Me Do My Thang: Rebirth Brass Band (Keith Reynaud, 2000)
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lagniappe
random thoughts
Day after day tiptoeing through minefields, until finally our luck runs out.
2014
Tuesday, April 22nd
Happy (92nd) Birthday, Mingus!
Charles Mingus, bassist, composer, bandleader
April 22, 1922-January 5, 1979
Charles Mingus Quintet (CM, bass; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Booker Ervin, tenor saxophone; Ted Curson, trumpet; Dannie Richmond, drums) with guest Bud Powell (piano), “I’ll Remember April” (G. de Paul, P. Johnston, D. Raye), live, France (Antibes Jazz Festival), 1960
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lagniappe
radio
WKCR (Columbia University): all Mingus, all day.
2014
Monday, April 21st
old stuff
Jeannette and Her Synco Jazzers (Mary Lou Williams, piano, et al.), “The Bumps” (rec. 1927, Chicago)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Whistling was said to be popular among ancient Chinese hermits as a way of achieving oneness with nature.
—Laughing Lost in the Mountains: Poems of Wang Wei (translations by Tony Barnstone, Willis Barnstone, Xu Haixin)
music clip of the day 