Friday, April 12th
2n
D’Angelo (vocals, keyboards) & Questlove (drums), live, New York, 2013
“Africa”
***
“Tell Me If You Still Care”
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2n
D’Angelo (vocals, keyboards) & Questlove (drums), live, New York, 2013
“Africa”
***
“Tell Me If You Still Care”
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.
Jose James, “Do You Feel”
Live, KCRW Berkeley Street Session, Santa Monica, 12/17/12
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
R&B?
Jazz?
Pop?
We need a new vocabulary—or maybe none at all.
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)
two takes
Alton Ellis (1938-2008), “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”
Live
Recording
*****
lagniappe
reading table
First day of spring—
I keep thinking about
the end of autumn.—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694, translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
Monk
Thelonious Monk Quartet (TM [1917-1982], piano; Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone; Larry Gales, bass; Ben Riley, drums), 1968
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lagniappe
reading table
opening day . . .
green of the field
through the ticket gates—Randy Brooks (Baseball Haiku, Cor van den Heuvel & Nanae Tamura, eds.)
The other night, as Mitsuko Uchida was performing two of Mozart’s piano concertos (17, 27) with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, there were moments so pure, so open, I would have liked nothing more than to disappear into one of the spaces between the notes and stay there.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, KV. 466; Mitsuko Uchida (piano and conducting), Camerata Salzburg, live, Germany (Salzburg), 2001
only rock ’n’ roll
Dolly Varden, “California Zephyr,” live, Chicago, 1999
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Last Saturday, with my wife Suzanne and son Alex, I heard these folks at Fitzgerald’s, a wonderful club in Berwyn (just outside Chicago) that I’ve been going to since long before Alex, now twenty-five, was born. Some people, if given the chance to be anywhere in the world on a Saturday night, might choose Paris. Others might take Rome. London would likely get some votes, New York too. For me, last Saturday anyway, there was nowhere I would rather have been than Berwyn.
I think I’m in love—with the sister in the middle, that is.
Andy & The Bey Sisters (with Kenny Clarke, drums), “Smooth Sailing” (A. Cobb), live, Paris, c. 1964
They sounded so good last Sunday—let’s hear some more.
Pastor B. L. Blade with Daniel Lanois (guitar, vocals), Brian Blade (drums), et al.
“The Maker” (D. Lanois), excerpt (“Oh, river rise from your sleep.”)
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lagniappe
random thoughts
How strange it seems sometimes, like the other day in the shower, to have hands and feet.
music clip of the day 