heaven, n. a place where each morning you’d be awakened by a different combination of musical instruments.
Living By Lanterns (Mike Reed, drums; Jason Adasiewicz, vibraphone; Tomeka Reid, cello, et al.), live, Switzerland (Zurich), 2013
Happy (83rd) Birthday, Ornette!
Ornette Coleman Quartet (OC, alto saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Charlie Haden, bass; Billy Higgins, drums), live, Spain (Barcelona), 1987
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
How can I turn emotion into knowledge? That’s what I try to do with my horn.
***
It’s not that I reject categories. It’s that I don’t really know what categories are.
***
You take the alphabet of the English language. A to Z. A symbol attached to a sound. In music you have what are called notes and the key. In life you’ve got an idea and an emotion. We think of them as different concepts. To me, there is no difference.
***
The violin, the saxophone, the trumpet: Each makes a very different sound but the very same notes. That’s pretty heavy, you know? Imagine how many different races make up the human race. I’m called colored, you’re called white, he’s called something else. We still got an asshole and a mouth. Pardon me.
***
I don’t try to please when I play. I try to cure.
*****
radio
All Ornette, all day: WKCR-FM (Columbia University).
Let’s end the week where we began—Europe, 1967, Sam & Dave.
“Hold On, I’m Comin'” (with Booker T. & the M.G.’s* and The Mar-Keys**), Norway
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lagniappe
random thoughts
The Internet, which reminds us, repeatedly, that there is here and then is now, may make Buddhists of us all.
*****
*Booker T. Jones, organ; Steve Cropper, guitar; Donald “Duck” Dunn, bass; Al Jackson, Jr., drums.
**Wayne Jackson, trumpet; Andrew Love & Joe Arnold, tenor saxophones.
serendipity
Something I just bumped into.
Trio WAZ (Ed Wilkerson, tenor saxophone; Tatsu Aoki, bass; Michael Zerang, drums), live, Michigan (Lakeside, concert presented by Portoluz), 2010
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Color.
Texture.
Density.
Sometimes they’re more important than melody, or harmony, or rhythm.
*****
reading table
“The Snow Man”
by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare placeFor the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
two takes
“When Something Is Wrong With My Baby” (I. Hayes & D. Porter)
Sam & Dave, live, Germany (Offenbach), 1967
***
Isaac Hayes, TV Show (Top of the Pops), England, 1995
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lagniappe
reading table
“The World Contracted to a Recognizable Image”
by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)at the small end of an illness
there was a picture
probably Japanese
which filled my eyean idiotic picture
except it was all I recognized
the wall lived for me in that picture
I clung to it as a fly
back to church
The Wings of Faith, of Waynesboro, Mississippi (pop. 5,197), live, 2012
This seems, somehow, to these ears, anyway, to fit a day when the ashes of my mother-in-law are being buried.
Revolutionary Ensemble (Leroy Jenkins, violin; Sirone, bass; Jerome Cooper, drums), “Chicago” (Live at Moosham Castle, 1977)
basement jukebox
Magic Sam (AKA Samuel Maghett, 1937-1969), Cobra Records, Chicago
“All Your Love,” 1957
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“Love Me with a Feeling,” 1957
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“Everything Gonna Be Alright,” 1958
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“21 Days In Jail,” 1958
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taking a break
I’m taking some time off—back soon.
Kidd Jordan Quartet (KJ, tenor saxophone; Billy Bang, violin; William Parker, bass; Hamid Drake, drums), New York (Vision Festival), 2008
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
We tend to take musical instruments for granted, as if their existence were inevitable. But the fact that something exists doesn’t mean it had to. We could’ve been born into a world that never heard a violin.
*****
reading table
“What kind of heaven is that, you can’t have your records?”
—Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue
Voices, hands.
Guitar, bass, drums.
And soul.
Sensational Friendly Brothers, Canton, Mississippi (St. James Missionary Baptist Church), 1978
“Where Shall I Be (When the First Trumpet Sounds)”
***
“Heaven Is My Goal”
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lagniappe
Thanks, Richard—great clips too.
—George Saunders, featured here the other day
music clip of the day 