music clip of the day

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Category: bass

2011

Sunday, 10/23/11

Slim and The Supreme Angels, “I Wanna Go”
Live, North Carolina (Branch Memorial Tabernacle, Goldsboro), c. 1996

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

reading table

—“Never again, never again!”
—And yet there’s a contradiction: “never again” isn’t eternal, since you yourself will die one day.
“Never again” is the expression of an immortal.

—Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary (trans. Richard Howard, 2010)

More of these handwritten diary entries, which were written after Barthes’ mother died, can be found here. (Thanks to Orange Crate Art for the tip.)

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2011

Tuesday, 10/18/11

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.

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2011

Wednesday, 10/12/11

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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2011

Monday, 10/10/11

Happy Birthday, Thelonious!

Thelonious Monk, composer, pianist, bandleader
October 10, 1917-February 17, 1982 

Monk’s music—its exquisite mix of logic and lyricism—sometimes makes me think of Mozart.

“’Round Midnight” (AKA “’Round About Midnight”) (T. Monk)

Take 1: Bill Evans Trio (BE, piano; Eddie Gomez, bass; Marty Morrell, drums), live, Sweden, 1970

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Take 2: Don Pullen (piano), rec. 1984 (Don Pullen Plays Monk)

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Take 3: Milt Jackson (vibes), live, Japan, 1990

Vodpod videos no longer available.

More Monk? Here. And here. And here. And here.

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

If it wasn’t for music, man, life wouldn’t be nothing—it’s all about music.

—Thelonious Monk

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Sonny Rollins talks about Monk:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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radio

All Monk, all day: WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University).

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2011

Friday, 10/7/11

It’s easy to forget, sometimes, just how great somebody could be.

B.B. King, “How Blue Can You Get?”
Live, Sing Sing Prison (Ossining, New York), 1972

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

last night

W. S. Merwin, who just finished a term as U.S. Poet Laureate, gave a reading at Chicago’s downtown library, where he talked about this and that:

The English language is a great dump. Everything that has come into it has stayed there.

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Poetry begins . . . with listening.

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I wanted to be open . . . to anything that sounded like poetry.

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To animals the meaning is the sound—and that’s pretty close to poetry.

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Time is one of the great human fictions.

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Many of the most important things we do are not calculated. They take us by surprise.

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What the arts are made of is nothing but pure attention.

*****

radio

Happy (100th) Birthday, Papa Jo! WCKR-FM’s Centennial Festival, mentioned Monday, continues until noon tomorrow.

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2011

Wednesday, 9/28/11

Charisma needs no translation.

Mahmoud Ahmed & Badume’s Band, live, France (Festival de Sete), 2008

“Belomi Benna”

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“Atawurulegn Lela”

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2011

Monday, 9/26/11

three takes

Blues guitarists—great ones, anyway—aren’t instrumentalists; they’re singers with two voices.

“Born Under A Bad Sign” (W. Bell, B.T. Jones)

Albert King, live, Sweden, 1980

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Albert King, recording, 1967 (Stax)

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Jimi Hendrix, recorded in 1969 (Blues, 1994)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

What makes this last take effective? Part of it is the phrasing: Jimi, like Albert, doesn’t play anything that couldn’t be sung.

More Albert? Here.

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2011

Sunday, 9/25/11

Don Byron New Gospel Quintet (DB, tenor saxophone & clarinet; DK Dyson, vocals; Xavier Davis, piano; Brad Jones, bass; Pheeroan akLaff, drums), “Precious Lord” (T. A. Dorsey), live, Brazil (São Paulo), 2010

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Last night I heard these folks live at the University of Chicago. Whenever I go out and hear someone, I’m reminded, again, that even (especially?) today, when records and the ’net make more music more available than ever before, there’s no substitute for live music. No recording offers the textures and nuances of a great live performance. (Never, for instance, have I heard a recording that truly reproduces the sounds of a drum kit, much less the interplay between horn and drums.) Not only is there more to hear live, your focus is sharper: you know you won’t have another opportunity to experience these sounds. And when you go to a club or a concert hall, you become, for that night, a member of an ad hoc musical community—something you can’t do sitting in your living room.

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2011

Friday, 9/23/11

Happy (85th) Birthday, Trane!

John Coltrane, September 23, 1926-July 17, 1967

John Coltrane Quartet (JC, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums), “I Want To Talk About You,” live, Sweden (Stockholm), 1962

Vodpod videos no longer available.

More? Here. And here. And here. And here.

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lagniappe

radio

All Trane, all day: WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University).

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2011

Tuesday, 9/20/11

Life thickens as you get older, becoming more layered. The other night, for instance, listening to Mad Professor dub Bob Marley at a club on Chicago’s south side (Reggie’s, State near Cermak), I found it hard not to think of another night over thirty years ago, of another club on the other side of town (Quiet Knight, Belmont near Clark, now gone), of hearing Bob Marley not dubbed but live.

Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Trenchtown Rock”
Live, Chicago (Quiet Knight), 1975

Vodpod videos no longer available.

More? Here. And here. And here.

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