back to church
Speech and song are sometimes indistinguishable.
Pastor Ezell Smith, live, Chicago (Prince of Peace Baptist Church)
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lagniappe
random thoughts on Mother’s Day
Professional jargon, whether legal, medical, psychological, whatever, is largely a desert. But once in a while you come upon a flowering tree. The great British psychoanalyst and pediatrician D. W. Winnicott (1896-1971) planted one such tree—the good enough mother.
Yeah, I love Mozart and Chopin, but I don’t want to listen to them every day. I don’t want to listen to anything every day. This stuff, to these ears, is utterly exhilarating.
Nels Cline (guitar), Dave Rempis (saxophones), Devin Hoff (bass), Frank Rosaly (drums), live, Chicago (Hideout), 2011
#1
#2
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
I discovered that there’s a kind of a hidden connection between R&B and free jazz: the need for that kind of visceral connection with the audience and for something to happen that moves people. I think that beyond R&B, it’s a feature of black music — the moment the solo builds and builds and at a certain point, it hits that cry. Knowing when that needs to happen is something that players from that tradition seem to have.
—guitarist Marc Ribot
Once I start listening to this I don’t want to stop, ever.
The Original Gospel Harmonettes (featuring MCOTD Hall of Famer Dorothy Love Coates), “He’s Calling Me,” 1955
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lagniappe
art beat: Tuesday at the Chicago Cultural Center
Hale Woodruff (1900-1980), Old Farmhouse in Beauce Valley, 1928 (featured, through June 16th, in Rising Up: Hale Woodruff’s Murals at Talladega College)
*****
random thoughts
It seems to be difficult, if not impossible, for me to grasp the apparent fact that the distance between, say, 2010 and 1960, when I was eight years old, is just as great as that between 1960 and 1910.
Chicago: 1970s
Junior Wells (vocals, harmonica), Buddy Guy (guitar), et al., live, Theresa’s, 48th & Indiana, Chicago, 1970s
late yesterday afternoon
After a court hearing and a client meeting, I stopped at the Chicago Cultural Center, where this piece—on a scale many times larger than this—is installed through May 5th. One-word review: go.
Shawn Decker, Prairie
*****
As with an outdoor prairie, what the current installation looks like—and sounds like—depends on where you’re situated. Here’s one view:
last night
At the University of Chicago (Mandel Hall), I heard this played by the Keller Quartet, wonderfully.
Ludwig van Beethoven, String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Orion Quartet, live, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, 2008
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Music, like sex, is an immersive experience—you go to be engulfed.
*****
Intermission. Men’s room. Old man, with a cane, at the urinal. I hope I still go out to hear live music when—if—I’m his age.
never enough
Von Freeman, tenor saxophone (1923-2012, MCOTD Hall of Famer); Jodie Christian (1932-2012), piano; Rufus Reid (1944-), bass; Jack DeJohnette (1942-), drums; “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” (E. Maschwitz & M. Sherwin), live, Harrisburg, Penn., 1994
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Your sound is who you are; it is what makes you different from me and any other saxophonist. We all have the same 12 notes. The only thing that differentiates us, one from the other, is our tone. If you don’t have a sound you can play a thousand notes and no one will hear you, but if you have a sound you can play only one note and everyone will hear you.
Feel like floating?
Steve Reich (1936-), Music for 18 Musicians (1974-76)
eighth blackbird, Third Coast Percussion, et al., live, Chicago, 2011
Rock drummers trying to play jazz usually sound like, well, rock drummers trying to play jazz. Jazz drummers trying to play rock are no different; they typically sound like tourists pretending to be natives. This guy, no matter the idiom (rock, jazz, gospel, whatever), sounds right at home.
Brian Blade and The Fellowship Band, live, Chicago, 3/14/13
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lagniappe
reading table
Maybe we think that nirvana is a place where there are no problems, no more delusions. Maybe we think nirvana is something very beautiful, something unattainable. We always think nirvana is something very different from our own life. But we must really understand that it is right here, right now.
—Taizan Maezumi, Appreciate Your Life (2001)
Most saxophonists play with their mouths and fingers.
Not this guy—he uses his whole body.
Mats Gustafsson, baritone saxophone, live, Romania (Bucharest), 2010
*****
Sunday afternoon, at an art gallery on Chicago’s west side (Corbett vs. Dempsey), I heard Gustafsson, who lives in Sweden, perform with the Chicago-based reed player Ken Vandermark. One-word review: mesmerizing.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Sometimes discaholism is taken to its most further borders when the “holy 4″ is fulfilled:
When a vinyl has the holy 4 qualities: great music, great title, great rarity and an AMAZING cover and design!!!
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‘one piece of vinyl per day keeps the doctor away’
—Mats Gustafsson, Discaholic Corner
music clip of the day 