drums | music clip of the day

Category: drums

Wednesday, September 17th

tonight in Chicago

These guys will be at the Hideout, as will I.

Survival Unit III (Joe McPhee, tenor saxophone, pocket trumpet; Fred Lonberg-Holm, cello; Michael Zerang, drums), live, Denmark (Copenhagen), 2013

I could live a thousand years and never tire of going out in the dark to hear music.

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lagniappe

art beat: Monday at the Art Institute of Chicago (brief stop after lunch)

Josef Koudelka (1938-), Slovakia, 1963 (from Gypsies)
Nationality Doubtful, through September 21st

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Tuesday, September 16th

passings

Joe Sample, keyboard player, composer, February 1, 1939-September 12, 2014

Digable Planets with guests Lester Bowie (trumpet), Melvin “Wah Wah Watson” Ragin (guitar), Joe Sample (keyboards), “Flyin’ High in the Brooklyn Sky,” live, New York, 1990s

As much as I love Lester, a MCOTD Hall-of-Famer, this performance could get along without him. Same with Wah Wah Watson. Not Joe—he makes everybody sound better.

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lagniappe

random thoughts

Life doesn’t end; it stops.

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Saturday, September 13th

David T. Little (1978-), Haunt of Last Nightfall; Third Coast Percussion, live

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

It’s not hard to imagine a world where the different kinds of music could be counted. Maybe there’d be 49, or 94, or 949. Thank God, or whatever, we don’t live there.

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Wednesday, September 10th

Following up on Friday’s post, here are a couple more early favorites.

*****

October 15, 2009

How to be both solid and fluid, both fat and delicate. How to make the beat breathe. These are things that, as a child, Philly Joe Jones began to learn while dancing—tap-dancing. Just watch the way Thelonious Monk, listening to this solo, rocks back and forth (1:25-1:50), as if he’s about to break into a little dance himself.

Philly Joe Jones, live (with Thelonious Monk), 1959

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October 3, 2009

Here are two New Orleans drummers who embrace the Muhammad Ali aesthetic: float like a butterfly (0:56-1:58, etc.), sting like a bee (1:59, etc.).

Dwayne Williams (bass drum) and Jason Slack (snare), live (before a gig), Hudson, New York, 2007

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2014

Thursday, September 4th

composer, n. somebody who wants to hear sounds nobody’s ever heard before.

Mario Diaz de León (1979-), Prism Path; International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE),* live, New York, 2011

*****

*Claire Chase, flutes; Eric Lamb, flutes; Joshua Rubin, clarinets; Cory Smythe, piano; Nathan Davis, percussion; Mario Diaz de León, electronics.

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2014

Tuesday, September 2nd

summer in the (small) city

Tom Harrell Colors of a Dream,* live, Iowa City, 7/5/14

*****

*Tom Harrell, trumpet; Jaleel Shaw, alto saxophone; Wayne Escoffery, tenor saxophone; Esperanza Spalding, bass, vocals; Uganna Okegwo, bass; Jonathan Blake, drums.

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2014

Friday, August 29th

Drums, voice, piano—who needs more?

Fiona Apple, “Hot Knife,” 2013 (video)

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2014

Wednesday, August 27th

sounds of Chicago & Norway & the Netherlands

Who needs coffee?

Lean Left (Ken Vandermark, reeds [Chicago]; Paal Nilssen-Love, drums [Norway]; Andy Moers & Terrie Hessels, guitars [Netherlands]), live, Belgium (Brussels), 2014

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lagniappe

musical (& other) thoughts

Ken Vandermark has a lot of interesting things to say about improvised music and life as a musician, about politics and movies and journalism and New York, as you can hear in this podcast-interview.

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2014

Saturday, August 23rd

voices I miss

Albert Collins (1932-1993), “Cold, Cold Feeling,” live, Switzerland (Montreux Jazz Festival), 1979

Nobody sounds like this guy, whose 1978 album Ice Pickin’, recorded at Curtis Mayfield’s studio in Chicago and nominated for a Grammy, I’m happy to say I co-produced.