guitar | music clip of the day

Friday, March 29th

only rock ’n’ roll

Dolly Varden, “California Zephyr,” live, Chicago, 1999

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Last Saturday, with my wife Suzanne and son Alex, I heard these folks at Fitzgerald’s, a wonderful club in Berwyn (just outside Chicago) that I’ve been going to since long before Alex, now twenty-five, was born. Some people, if given the chance to be anywhere in the world on a Saturday night, might choose Paris. Others might take Rome. London would likely get some votes, New York too. For me, last Saturday anyway, there was nowhere I would rather have been than Berwyn.

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2013

Sunday, March 24th

They sounded so good last Sunday—let’s hear some more.

Pastor B. L. Blade with Daniel Lanois (guitar, vocals), Brian Blade (drums), et al.
“The Maker” (D. Lanois), excerpt (“Oh, river rise from your sleep.”)

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lagniappe

random thoughts

How strange it seems sometimes, like the other day in the shower, to have hands and feet.

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2013

Friday, March 22nd

only rock ’n’ roll

Savages, “City’s Full,” live, London, 2012

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2013

Monday, March 18th

From Zion Baptist Church in Shreveport to Miles Davis Hall in Montreux.

Black Dub (Daniel Lanois, guitar, pedal steel guitar, vocals; Brian Blade, drums; Trixie Whitley, guitar, keyboards, vocals; Jim Wilson, bass, vocals), Montreux, Switzerland, 2011

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Set list (courtesy of YouTube):

1) Intro
2) Surely
3) I Believe In You
4) Steel
5) The Collection Of Marie Claire
6) Silverado
7) The Messenger
8) I’d Rather Go Blind
9) Ring The Alarm

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2013

Sunday, March 17th

Pastor B. L. Blade (with Daniel Lanois, guitar; Brian Blade, drums, et al.), “Louisiana Poor Boy,” Zion Baptist Church, Shreveport, La.

Most guitarists, most drummers would muck this up, thinking it needed a fill here, a roll there. Great musicians know how not to draw attention to themselves.

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2013

Friday, March 15th

Screwdriver business just gets me confused . . .

Billy Bragg, “Handyman Blues,” 2013

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2013

Sunday, March 3rd

Lord, have mercy . . .

Rev. Gary Davis, “Death Don’t Have No Mercy,” c. 1970

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2013

Friday, March 1st

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.

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*Booker T. Jones, organ; Steve Cropper, guitar; Donald “Duck” Dunn, bass; Al Jackson, Jr., drums.

**Wayne Jackson, trumpet; Andrew Love & Joe Arnold, tenor saxophones.

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2013

Monday, February 25th

two takes

“When Something Is Wrong With My Baby” (I. Hayes & D. Porter)

Sam & Dave, live, Germany (Offenbach), 1967

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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 eye

an idiotic picture
except it was all I recognized
the wall lived for me in that picture
I clung to it as a fly