drums | music clip of the day

Category: drums

Wednesday, May 7th

basement jukebox

Howlin’ Wolf, “Moanin’ at Midnight,” 1951*

Who needs chord changes?

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Wolf’s harmonica playing was always the right amount. He would never do anything on the harmonica that would detract from you waiting to get back to Wolf’s voice. . . . There is a certain lonesomeness about the harmonica that just fit the Wolf’s character in voice, in song, in lyric; and he just played that just enough to titillate things he was going to do next with his voice.

—Sam Phillips

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*HW (AKA Chester Burnett [1910-1976], vocals, harmonica), Willie Johnson (guitar), Willie Steel, drums.

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Sunday, April 27th

Friday he was at a nightclub in Vancouver. Today he’s playing a different venue—his father’s Shreveport church.

Choir (with Brian Blade, drums), Zion Baptist Church (Brady Blade Sr., pastor), Shreveport, La., December 23, 2012

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lagniappe

reading table

celestial geese—
none of them come down
to my pine

—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827; translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)

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Saturday, April 26th

only rock ’n’ roll

MC5: A True Testimonial (2002)

Thanks to my brother Don for the tip. We first encountered these guys in Chicago’s Lincoln Park during the 1968 Democratic Convention. The park is still there. But that moment, when, as a teenager, nothing mattered more than intensity and attitude, is long gone.

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lagniappe

found words

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the advertising from the conceptual art. Last night, while driving to Hyde Park to hear pianist Rafal Blechacz, I came upon a billboard:

BE AMBITIOUS.
NOT THIRSTY.

Who knew Diet Coke could be so deep?

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2014

Friday, April 25th

only rock ’n’ roll

Black Dub (Daniel Lanois, guitar, vocals; Trixie Whitley, keyboards, vocals; Jim Wilson, bass, vocals; Brian Blade, drums), “Ring the Alarm,” live, Vancouver, 2011

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lagniappe

art beat

Danny Lyon (1942-), Four Boys, Uptown, Chicago (1965)

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2014

Wednesday, April 23rd

sounds of New Orleans

Let Me Do My Thang: Rebirth Brass Band (Keith Reynaud, 2000)

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lagniappe

random thoughts

Day after day tiptoeing through minefields, until finally our luck runs out.

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2014

Tuesday, April 22nd

Happy (92nd) Birthday, Mingus!

Charles Mingus, bassist, composer, bandleader
April 22, 1922-January 5, 1979

Charles Mingus Quintet (CM, bass; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Booker Ervin, tenor saxophone; Ted Curson, trumpet; Dannie Richmond, drums) with guest Bud Powell (piano), “I’ll Remember April” (G. de Paul, P. Johnston, D. Raye), live, France (Antibes Jazz Festival), 1960

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lagniappe

radio

WKCR (Columbia University): all Mingus, all day.

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2014

Friday, April 11th

sounds of Chicago

Oshwa, “Old Man Skies,” live (recording session), Chicago, 2013

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2014

Friday, April 4th

only rock ’n’ roll

The War On Drugs, “Under the Pressure”

Live, Philadelphia, 3/14/14

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Recording (Lost in the Dream), 3/14

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lagniappe

reading table

Now, unlike then—sixty years ago—we know so much more about others . . . . [t]hough, of course, we know not much more of the important things—what’s in others’ hearts; and if their hearts are broken or damaged or full.

—Richard Ford, “A Symposium on Magic,” The Threepenny Review, Spring 2014

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2014

Thursday, April 3rd

sounds of Chicago

Chicago Underground Duo (Rob Mazurek, cornet, electronics, voice; Chad Taylor, drums, mbira, electronics), live (music begins at 4:30), Italy (Venice), 2013

(This clip, alas, has some glitches: at 56:15 both the sound and the picture drop out, returning, with just one of two audio channels, at 58:46.)