old school
Golden Gate Quartet, “Golden Gate Gospel Train” (1937), “Rock My Soul” (1938), “Noah” (1939), “Ride Up in the Chariot” (1941)
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lagniappe
reading table
his peach sapling
has blossomed . . .
though he never prays—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827; translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
alone
Gyorgy Ligeti (1923-2006), Piano Etudes (Book 1), No. 6 (Automne a Varsovie [Autumn in Warsaw]); Susanne Anatchkova (piano), live
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lagniappe
reading table
[N]othing has ever been—nor will it ever be—the way it used to be.
—Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives
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yesterday
Some things cannot be planned for, nor can they be explained. Such was the case this week when a friend of my son Alex—someone who was in our house, full of conversation, just a few weeks ago—killed himself. The funeral was yesterday. Before it began Alex and I talked briefly with the mother and father, whom I had never met. I told them one of the things I appreciated about their son was that he wasn’t merely polite to me, his friend’s father. He wanted to connect. A greater sorrow a parent could not know.
only rock ’n’ roll
The War On Drugs, “Under the Pressure”
Live, Philadelphia, 3/14/14
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Recording (Lost in the Dream), 3/14
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lagniappe
reading table
Now, unlike then—sixty years ago—we know so much more about others . . . . [t]hough, of course, we know not much more of the important things—what’s in others’ hearts; and if their hearts are broken or damaged or full.
—Richard Ford, “A Symposium on Magic,” The Threepenny Review, Spring 2014
sounds of Chicago
Chicago Underground Duo (Rob Mazurek, cornet, electronics, voice; Chad Taylor, drums, mbira, electronics), live (music begins at 4:30), Italy (Venice), 2013
(This clip, alas, has some glitches: at 56:15 both the sound and the picture drop out, returning, with just one of two audio channels, at 58:46.)
passings
Frankie Knuckles, DJ, January 18, 1955-March 31, 2014
2013 Boiler Room set, excerpt (Lou Rawls, “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine,” remix)
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It could be plausibly argued that Knuckles was as important to the birth of contemporary dance music as James Brown was to soul or Chuck Berry to rock ‘n’ roll. And like those innovators, Knuckles helped nurture a deceptively sophisticated sound that celebrated and embraced outsiders and misfits — in Knuckles’ case, the gay African-American and Hispanic communities.
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—Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune (obituary), 4/1/14
music clip of the day 