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)
alone
Jürg Frey (1953-), A Memory of Perfection (2010)
Mira Benjamin (violin), live, London, 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
Two more words from Seamus Heaney, who died Friday in a Dublin hospital:
noli timere
[don’t be afraid]—text message to his wife minutes before his death
this morning
I seem to be falling in love with someone who’s been dead twenty years.
Molly Drake, 1916-1993 (mother of singer-songwriter Nick Drake, 1948-1974)
“I Remember”
***
“The First Day”
***
“How Wild The Wind Blows”
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lagniappe
found words
Yesterday, walking in the garden at Chicago’s Millenium Park, I came upon a small sign, close to the dirt, that read:
THIS AREA
IS IN
TRANSITION.WE APPRECIATE
YOUR
UNDERSTANDING.CHECK BACK
SOON.
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)
nothing much happening
Phill Niblock, “Pan Fried 70” (Touch Food, 2003)
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
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lagniappe
random thoughts
If they’re both immeasurable, is a lifetime any greater than a moment?
can’t wait: Chicago Jazz Festival, 8/29-9/1
The Engines (9/1; Dave Rempis, saxophones, Jeb Bishop, trombone; Kent Kessler [filling in for Nate McBride], bass; Tim Daisy, drums), live, Columbia, South Carolina, 2013
#1
#2
fifty years ago
March on Washington, August 28, 1963
Mahalia Jackson, “How I Got Over”
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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Martin Luther King
Has there ever been a greater musician of speech?
alone
If you’re in the mood for his music, as I often am, nothing else will do.
Morton Feldman (1926-1987), Triadic Memories (1981); Louis Goldstein, piano
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lagniappe
reading table
In the summer rain
the path
has disappeared.—Yosa Buson (1716-1783; translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
*****
musical thoughts
What would it be like to live in a world without sound?
can’t wait: Chicago Jazz Festival, 8/29-9/1
Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet (8/30), Louis Moholo, drums, Steve Noble, drums, live, London, 2010
#1
#2
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lagniappe
reading table
What a glut of books! Who can read them?
—Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)
sounds of Ethiopia
Mahmoud Ahmed & Badume’s Band, “Era Mela Mela,” live, Switzerland (Geneva), 2010
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lagniappe
random thoughts
Someday I will be remembered in the past tense as today, her birthday, my mother is.
music clip of the day 