Saturday, June 11th
There’s Amsterdam.
There’s Ethiopia.
And there’s Amsterdam in Ethiopia.
The Ex & Han Bennink (drums), Ethiopia, 2002
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: hard-to-peg
2016
Wednesday, June 8th
sounds of New York
Lea Bertucci, “The Cepheid Variations,” live, New York, 2015
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
New sounds are heard in the dark.
2016
Tuesday, June 7th
like nobody else
Leroy Jenkins Gut Band (LJ [1932-2007] violin, compositions; Brandon Ross, guitar; David Wong, bass; Newman Taylor Baker, drums), live, New York, 2000
2016
Friday, June 3rd
Mozart one day, another day this—how lucky to live in a world so various.
Konono No. 1, “Yaya Mikolo,” live, France (Saint-Nazaire), 2009
2016
Thursday, June 2nd
sounds of Chicago and Oslo
Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone), Paal Nilssen-Love (percussion), “Song for Terrie,” live, Netherlands (Amsterdam), 5/26/16
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lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
*****
A big birthday shout-out to my brother Don, my first listening companion. All these years later, the basement jukebox still plays: “Wake Up Little Susie” (Everly Brothers) . . .”North to Alaska” (Johnny Horton) . . .”(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance” (Gene Pitney) . . . Hear it?
2016
Wednesday, June 1st
sounds of New York
Sandbox Percussion, live (excerpts from S. Reich, “Drumming”; A. Weiser, “Anatomy of a Drum Roll”; S. Reich, “Music for Pieces of Wood”), New York (Washington Square Park), 2014
2016
Monday, May 30th
Vancouver folkie + iconic Memphis rhythm section.
This should never have worked.
But it does, wonderfully.
Frazey Ford, “September Fields” (Indian Ocean), 2014
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lagniappe
reading table
The climate is pretty.
I wrote everything on it.
That’s the activity where it
gets relatively inauspicious.***
And you were sitting there
in the night of life. It sure was good.
My favorite desserts were there.
And when they invite you, it’s like an important document
goes missing. I’ll give you an example:
a twelve-year struggle upstate, in
the slick atmosphere of the breakfast room.
It might have gotten stuck in her farthingale.Otherwise no reply.
—John Ashbery (1927-), “As Someone Who Likes Travel,” fragments (New Yorker, 5/30/16)
To read Ashbery is to read English as a foreign language—which I mean as a compliment.
2016
Friday, May 27th
what’s new
Filastine, “The Cleaner,” released yesterday
2016
Thursday, May 26th
sounds of Sweden
Klara Lewis, live, England (Gateshead), 2015
2016
Tuesday, May 24th
sounds of Morocco
Mourad Belouadi, “Mawama,” live, Morocco (M’hamid), 2014
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lagniappe
random thoughts
Note to self: Let your mind be occupied, fully, by the Other.
music clip of the day 