old school
Stevie Wonder, live (TV show), Germany, 1974
It doesn’t take long, sometimes, to realize how strong something is. With this, for instance, I could listen all day, happily, to a loop of the first ninety seconds.
alone
John Cage (1912-1992), Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1946-1948); Louis Goldstein, piano, live, Winston-Salem, N.C. (Reynolda House Museum of American Art), 1982
What I love about this performance is its directness. He doesn’t treat these pieces as arty exotica. He plays them as simply and naturally, as musically, as one might play Bach, or Mozart, or Chopin.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.
***
A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not time for any consideration–it is occupied with the performance of its characteristics: before it has died away it must have made perfectly exact its frequency, its loudness, its length, its overtone structure, the precise morphology of these and of itself.
***
They say, “you mean it’s just sounds?” thinking that for something to just be a sound is to be useless, whereas I love sounds just as they are, and I have no need for them to be anything more than what they are. I don’t want them to be psychological. I don’t want a sound to pretend that it’s a bucket or that it’s president or that it’s in love with another sound. I just want it to be a sound.
last night
I heard these guys at a small Chicago club (Hideout)—what a storm.
Peter Brötzmann (reeds), Ken Vandermark (reeds), Hamid Drake (drums), Chad Taylor (drums), live, Slovenia (Ljubljana), 7/3/13
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
When our minds are filled with music, they’re free of everything else.
alone
Ran Blake (1935-), “Over the Rainbow” (H. Arlen & E. Harburg), live, Portugal (Lisbon), 2010
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lagniappe
reading table
Even in Kyoto—
hearing the cuckoo’s cry—
I long for Kyoto.—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694; translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
What’s needed sometimes, like, for instance, the other morning, when I was driving to court for a hearing in a murder case, slid this into the CD player, and cranked up the volume, is something to get your juices going.
Mark Ernestus, “Mark Ernestus Meets BBC,” 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
“Come see
the crappy house at night!”
croak the frogs—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), 1807 (translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
baseball and boogie–woogie
In advance of tonight’s All-Star game, here’s the answer to a baseball trivia question: Who’s the finest musician ever to work between the foul lines? This guy, “the progenitor of boogie-woogie piano,” played for the Chicago All-Americans, a Negro league team, during World War I, then worked for twenty-five years as a groundskeeper for the Chicago White Sox.
Jimmy Yancey (1894 [or 1898]-1951), piano, “Yancey Stomp,” 1939
sounds I miss*
Albert Collins (1932-1993), “Two-Lane Highway” (John Zorn, Spillane, 1987)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
[A] particular brand of comment showed up enough [on the Alan Lomax Archive recordings on YouTube] that I started a collection. I call them “blues affirmations.” They number in the dozens, posted to an assortment of clips of black vernacular music. These performances don’t necessarily pertain to the song structure or performance style called “blues”—they could be field hollers or minstrel pieces—but the commentary was single-mindedly focused on it.
The notion of a “pure” culture, of any kind, is informed by ignorance and/or ideology and/or romanticism. I feel set upon by a thick, dumb fog just looking at the phrase. But the Blues Affirmations stir something in me; they insist, childlike, on something real, true, forever enduring, constructed of unadulterated and unmediated purity. I look forward to them, and they undo me a bit when they arrive.
They feel authentic, so I’d like to give them the last word:
one word: BLUES…
This is blues
The real blues
Real O.G. Blues. No fancy shit!
This is the real face of the blues right here.
this is how it’s done with real blues!
this that old school real sittin on your porch blues!
That’s REAL old school blues
Oh man….. that’s the Blues baby….. that’s the real, down South, low down, heartfelt blues.
Authentic, real Blues, Love it.
it doesnt get anymore authentic than this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now that is the blues.
THE BLUES
true blues
Pure Blues
Blues is timeless.
there is nothing as hard as the blues
This man over here folks is the blues himself!
Great melody that shows blues music comes from the soul.
The blues is very expressive, and it is the foundation of rock music!
True music, with emotion, feelings.. His soul is speakin
the Blues needs no roaring electric guitars and smashing drums to show all the hard aspects of life without disguise
Clapton who?…THIS IS THE BLUES, R.L. shows you how it smells, looks, taste, sounds, and most importantly how it feels. Clapton never had babies cry in the background of his performances
it’s only perfect because he’s authentic
that look in his eyes at 4:05…. thats the blues right there
The blues is real, that’s why the blues lives on.
That’s from far one of the best blues I never heard… real blues… from the guts… not from the wallets !!!
This is where the blues started – AND THIS IS WHERE THE BLUES ENDS.
—Nathan Salsburg (curator, Alan Lomax Archive), “Part V of Against Authenticity,” Oxford American (6/21/13)
*****
*As I’ve mentioned, I had the great pleasure of working with Albert, co-producing his 1978 album Ice Pickin’ (Alligator)—singular guitarist, sweet guy.
D’Angelo (with Questlove, drums; Pino Palladino, bass; Kuumba Frank Lacy, trombone, trumpet; Chalmers “Spanky” Alford, guitar; Anthony Hamilton, vocals, et al.), live, Switzerland (Montreux Jazz Festival), 2000
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
No stage anywhere in the world can compare with the one that exists in the imagination. Where else can you find Jimi Hendrix jamming with Miles Davis? Sam Cooke singing with Smokey Robinson? Sly Stone taking everybody higher with Sun Ra?
*****
Happy Birthday, Suzanne!
3n
Matthew Shipp Trio (MS, piano; Michael Bisio, bass; Whit Dickey, drums), live, Cold Spring, N.Y., 2011
#1
#2
#3
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lagniappe
reading table
Don’t be too eager to ask
What the gods have in mind for us . . .—Horace (65 BC-25 BC), Ode I.11 (excerpt; translated from Latin by David Ferry)
They play each note as if, at that particular moment, nothing in the world is more important.
György Kurtág (1926-) and Márta Kurtág, live, Kurtág (Játékok [Games]) and Bach (miscellaneous transcriptions), Paris, 2012
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lagniappe
musical (and other) thoughts
Q. One last question—are you a believer?
A [G. Kurtág]. I do not know. I toy with the idea. Consciously, I am certainly an atheist, but I do not say it out loud, because if I look at Bach, I cannot be an atheist. Then I have to accept the way he believed. His music never stops praying. And how can I get closer if I look at him from the outside? I do not believe in the Gospels in a literal fashion, but a Bach fugue has the Crucifixion in it—as the nails are being driven in. In music, I am always looking for the hammering of the nails. . . . That is a dual vision. My brain rejects it all. But my brain isn’t worth much.
—Alex Ross, New Yorker blog, quoting György Kurtág: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages (2009)
music clip of the day 