love it or hate it
Weasel Walter (drums), Mary Halvorson (guitar), Peter Evans (trumpet), live, New York (Death By Audio, Brooklyn), 2012
only rock ’n’ roll
Here’s something from the show I saw the other night.
Savages, “She Will,” live, Chicago (Metro), 9/16/13
In the hope-I-die-before-I-get-old department, it occurred to me, as I was driving home from this show, that I’ve been doing variations on this particular theme—going out into the dark night to hear live music—for at least, uh, let’s see, yeah, it must be at least forty-five years, since it was 1968, when I was fifteen, that my brother Don and I, after seeing the Velvet Underground at Chicago’s Kinetic Playground, were arrested and taken to the police station. The charge? Curfew.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
The best music, you can seek some shelter in it momentarily, but it’s essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.
—Bruce Springsteen
alone
R.L. Burnside (1926-2005), “See My Jumper Hanging on the Line,” live, Independence, Miss., 1978
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lagniappe
reading table
Harvest in progress
a crane stands
in the rice paddy—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694; translated from Japanese by David Young)
serendipity
Yesterday. Late afternoon, working on an old murder case. Happen upon this: windows open, letting in a breeze.
Mary Halvorson Quintet (MH, guitar, compositions; Jon Irabagon, alto saxophone; Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet; John Hebert, bass; Ches Smith, drums), “Love in Eight Colors,” “Hemorrhaging Smiles,” live, Washington, D.C., 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
From now on
it’s all clear profit,
every sky.—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), on his fiftieth birthday (translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
last night*
Savages (Jehnny Beth, vocals; Gemma Thompson, guitar; Ayse Hassan, bass; Fay Milton, drums), live, England (Glastonbury Festival, Somerset), 2013
*I saw them at Metro, a club on Chicago’s north side, near Wrigley Field. The way drummer Fay Milton rode the beat, like a wave that kept surging, surging, surging, reminded me at times of Keith Moon. Is there any higher compliment?
old school
Charlie Musselwhite (1944-; vocals, harmonica) with Big Walter Horton (1918-1981; vocals, harmonica), live, Chicago, 1981
Charlie’s playing is wonderful: it both swings and sings. And he’s got great presence. But listen to Walter, whom I had the chance to work with in the ’70s when I was with Alligator Records. He’s not onstage long; this was only months before his death. But there are moments, when Walter’s playing, where time seems to stop (16:11, 18:03, 18:22, 19:57, etc.).
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lagniappe
reading table
You can fall a long way in sunlight.
You can fall a long way in the rain.The ones who don’t take the old white horse
take the morning train.—Robert Hass (1941-), “August Notebook: A Death” (excerpt)
Why not start the week with a slap in the face?
Savages, “City’s Full,” “Shut Up,” “She Will,” “Husbands,” live (studio performance), Seattle, 2013
After hearing Molly, it seems hard—no, impossible—to listen to him without thinking of her.
Nick Drake (1948-1974), “Day Is Done” (Five Leaves Left, 1969)
If I were to compile a short list, numbering, say, six or seven, of folks I wish I could’ve heard live, this guy, whom I’ve been listening to for over forty years, would be on it.
Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945), singer, guitarist
“God Don’t Never Change” (New Orleans, 1929)
*****
“It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine” (Dallas, 1927)
*****
“Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed” (Dallas, 1927)
*****
“John The Revelator” (Atlanta, 1929; with Willie B. Harris, his wife)
*****
“The Rain Don’t Fall On Me” (Atlanta, 1929; with WBH)
*****
“Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” (Dallas, 1927)
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lagniappe
reading table
Seamus Heaney (April 13, 1939-August 30, 2013), “The Given Note,” Paris, 2013
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On the most westerly Blasket
In a dry-stone hut
He got this air out of the night.Strange noises were heard
By others who followed, bits of a tune
Coming in on loud weatherThough nothing like melody.
He blamed their fingers and ear
As unpractised, their fiddling easyFor he had gone alone into the island
And brought back the whole thing.
The house throbbed like his full violin.So whether he calls it spirit music
Or not, I don’t care. He took it
Out of wind off mid-Atlantic.Still he maintains, from nowhere.
It comes off the bow gravely,
Rephrases itself into the air.
*****
Last October, with my son Alex, I heard him read at the Art Institute of Chicago. Nobel Prize winner, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard—none of that was on display. He seemed not the least self-impressed, nor even much interested in himself. What interested him, it was clear, was language. With each poem, he seemed to be saying: “Come in, sit down. Let’s listen, together.”
For over thirty years he’s been taking me places no one else does.
Henry Threadgill’s Zooid, live, New York, 2013
#1
#2
*****
It’s not just notes on a page. Threadgill really reaches out and grabs you by the lapels. Someone else described it to me as ‘every time Threadgill enters, it’s like the curtains just parted.’ He has this way of cutting right through the texture of the music.
—pianist Vijay Iyer
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lagniappe
reading table: passings
Between my fingers and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.—Seamus Heaney (April 13, 1939-August 30, 2013), “Digging” (excerpt)
music clip of the day 