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Category: guitar

2010

Tuesday, 7/20/10

recipe

1 cup funkiness

1 cup elegance

Mix until thoroughly blended.

Professor Longhair (AKA Henry Roeland [“Roy”] Byrd), December 19, 1918-January 30, 1980

“Tipitina,” live

*****

“Hey Little Girl,” live

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lagniappe

mail

Mike Kinnamon, Bonnie Bramlett’s Nashville-based manager, in response to an email letting him (and Bonnie) know that her music was featured here (Delaney, alas, is no longer alive), left a voice-mail message yesterday:

. . . I just love it when somebody like you cares enough to send stuff like that around. It’s really cool, and it lifts her [Bonnie] up, too. Thank you so much, buddy . . .

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2010

Friday, 7/16/10

Simple, subtle, soulful: blues is (as Artur Schnabel said of Mozart’s piano sonatas) “too easy for children, too difficult for adults.”

R.L. Burnside, “Goin’ Down South,” live, early 1970s, Mississippi

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Music is the healing force of the universe.

—Albert Ayler

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2010

Thursday, 7/15/10

Music can be made anywhere—a street corner, a subway station, even a bathroom.

Shiyani Ngcobo

“The Bathroom Recordings,” live, France (Nantes), 1997

*****

“Izinyembezi” (Introducing Shiyani Ngcobo [2004])

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lagniappe

I’d like to make a plea for a new concept—elastic precision.  It’s what [South African musician] Shiyani Ngcobo has, and what so many musicians have: an absolutely determined (in both senses of the word) and precise groove, with infinite, fractal variants that relate to what comes before and after. . . . Perfection may be infinitely seductive, but it’s the flaws and differences that make the beauty.

—Ben Mandelson, liner notes, Introducing Shiyani Ngcobo (2004)

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2010

Wednesday, 7/14/10

They weren’t glamorous. And they couldn’t have been paying a whole lot. But everybody, it seemed, wanted to play with them.

Delaney & Bonnie

With Eric Clapton (guitar), Dave Mason (guitar), Bobby Whitlock (vocal); “Poor Elijah-Tribute to Robert Johnson”; live (TV broadcast), England, 1969

•••••

With Eric Clapton (guitar), George Harrison (guitar), Bobby Whitlock (keyboards), Carl Radle (bass), Jim Gordon (drums); “Comin’ Home”; live, England, 1969

*****

With Duane Allman (guitar), Gregg Allman (organ), King Curtis (tenor saxophone); “Only You Know And I Know”; live, 1971

(The bass player, whoever he is, is the MVP here—he lights up everything [check out, for instance, 1:06-1:56].)

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2010

Friday, 7/9/10

Alternate career plan for the next life (if the tap-dance thing doesn’t work out): rubboard player.

C.J. Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band, “Jolie Blonde” & “Jambalaya,” New York City, 2008

Like the Blasters and Brave Combo, these guys played last weekend (Sunday the 4th) at FitzGerald’s American Music Festival.

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lagniappe

reading table

. . . I received five hundred thousand discrete bits of information today, of which maybe twenty-five are important. And how am I going to sort that out, you know?

—David Foster Wallace (in David Lipsky, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace [2010])

*****

great minds at work

When you see your starting pitcher win a game, that means you’ve played a good baseball game.

—Lou Piniella, talking with Ron Santo on WGN Radio before last night’s Cubs game

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2010

Thursday, 7/8/10

You can learn how to play the harmonica. You can learn how to sing. What you can’t learn is the most important thing—presence.

Junior Wells (vocal and harmonica), Buddy Guy (guitar), “Cryin’ Shame” (AKA “Country Girl”), live, Chicago, 1970 (Chicago Blues)

Want more? Here.

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2010

Wednesday, 7/7/10

Fluid, supple, springy: with him on drums, the beat just floats.

Fred Below, September 16, 1926-August 14, 1988

Otis Rush, guitar; Little Brother Montgomery, piano; Jack Myers, bass; Fred Below, drums; Europe, 1966

Want more? Here. Here.

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2010

Tuesday, 7/6/10

What the world needs now?

Nah, not love.

What the world needs now—what it cries out for, daily—is inspired silliness.

Brave Combo, live

“The Denton Polka,” Texas (Denton), 2007

*****

“Louie, Louie,” Illinois (Berwyn [FitzGerald’s]), 2008

Brave Combo played a wild set Sunday night (the 4th) at FitzGerald’s American Music Festival—everything from “Beer Barrel Polka” to a hard-rockin’ “Hokey Pokey” to a polka-inflected “Ode to Joy” (“Any Beethoven fans in the house?”) to a Tejano-style “America the Beautiful.” By the end of the 90-minute set, everybody’s IQ, it seemed, had gone up 15 points. Or was it down?

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2010

Monday, 7/5/10

How many songs are so 4th-of-July perfect?

The Blasters, “American Music”

Take 1

Live, Illinois (Champaign), 1985

*****

Take 2

Live, Los Angeles, 2010

On Saturday night these guys played this, in overdrive, at FitzGerald’s American Music Festival, a wonderful 4-day event that just celebrated its 30th anniversary.

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2010

Thursday, 7/1/10

looking back

Today, celebrating our 300th post, we revisit a few favorites.

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3/12/10

Both Chicago blues artists. Both guitar players. Both influenced by other kinds of music.

Musical personalities? They could hardly be more different.

Buddy Guy, “Let Me Love You Baby,” live

*****

Fenton Robinson, “Somebody Loan Me A Dime,” live, 1977

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Back in the 1970s, when I was at Alligator Records, I had the pleasure of working with Fenton, co-producing his album I Hear Some Blues Downstairs (a Grammy nominee). He didn’t fit the stereotype of a bluesman. Gentle, soft-spoken, serious, introspective: he was all these things. He died in 1997.

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3/3/10

What other pop star has made such stunning contributions as a guest artist?

Sinead O’Connor

With Willie Nelson, “Don’t Give Up”

*****

With the Chieftains, “The Foggy Dew”

*****

With Shane MacGowan, “Haunted”

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5/28/2010

two takes

“La-La Means I Love You”

The Delfonics, live, 2008 (originally recorded 1968)

*****

Bill Frisell, live, New York (Rochester), 2007

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Music . . . carr[ies] us smoothly across the tumult of experience, like water over rocks.

—Vijay Iyer, liner notes, Historicity (2009)

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