keep on dancing
Theo Parrish, “Dan Ryan” (1998)
Repetitive?
Yep.
That’s the idea.
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lagniappe
reading table
There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.
My heart’s on fire . . .
Nona Hendryx (with Ronny Drayton, guitar), Philadelphia, 2012
“Temple of Heaven”
*****
“Rock This House”
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lagniappe
reading table
Her life, she said, was an out-of-tune piano played with passion.
***
This evening I sat listening to five presidential candidates offering their imaginary solutions for a country that doesn’t exist.
***
“Imaginary maladies are much worse than the real ones, because they’re incurable,” an old friend who walks with difficulty was telling me.
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Much of what our eyes see and our ears hear is lost in translation.
***
“An alarm clock with no hands, ticking on the town dump,” is how he described himself.
***
They gave the nice old gentleman I met at the bake sale several medals for the misery he caused in some country that no one could find any longer on the map.
***
I bet all our elected representatives in Washington spend a great deal of time in front of mirrors admiring themselves. They lift their noses and chins, stare straight ahead without moving an eyebrow or a muscle, then nod their heads gravely and smile to themselves as they go out to meet the people.
***
He sat on a bench in Washington Square Park whispering something extremely confidential to his dog, who sat before him with ears perked, wagging his tail cautiously from time to time.
***
The crosses all men and women must carry through life are even more visible on this dark and rainy November evening.
—Charles Simic, “A Year in Fragments” (excerpts), New York Review Blog, 12/31/12
He wasn’t content with the sounds he found—so he created new ones.
Harry Partch (1901-1974), Music Studio (1958)
#1
#2
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
There’s a world, somewhere, that sounds nothing like this one.
passings
Fontella Bass, singer, July 3, 1940-December 26, 2012
“Rescue Me,” TV Show (Shindig), 1965
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“Theme De Yoyo,” with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, 1970
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“God Has Smiled On Me,” with mother Martha Bass, brother David Peaston, Amina Claudine Myers (piano), Malachi Favors (bass), Phillip Wilson (drums), 1980
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“All That You Give,” with The Cinematic Orchestra, 2002
two takes
How To Dress Well (Tom Krell), “& It Was U” (2012)
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Bear//Face, “Taste My Sad” (2012)
Nineteen-year-old Bear//Face—his nonvirtual self, that is—lives in Belfast.
keep on dancing
Then suddenly I could hear Q-Tip—blessed Q-Tip!—not a synthesizer, not a vocoder, but Q-Tip, with his human voice, rapping over a human beat. And the top of my skull opened to let human Q-Tip in, and a rail-thin man with enormous eyes reached across a sea of bodies for my hand. He kept asking me the same thing over and over: You feeling it? I was. My ridiculous heels were killing me, I was terrified I might die, yet I felt simultaneously overwhelmed with delight that “Can I Kick It?” should happen to be playing at this precise moment in the history of the world, and was now morphing into “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” I took the man’s hand. The top of my head flew away. We danced and danced. We gave ourselves up to joy.
—Zadie Smith, “Joy,” The New York Review of Books, 1/10/13
A Tribe Called Quest, “Can I Kick It?” (album, 1990; single, 1991)
A great singer creates, within a song, a space, inviting you, the listener, to come inside.
Mahalia Jackson, “Silent Night,” 1961
***
Marion Williams, “O Holy Night,” “Silent Night,” 1959
what’s new
Bryan Ferry’s new album, The Jazz Age, which features songs from Roxy Music, as well as his solo career, refashioned as 1920s-style jazz instrumentals, is one of the stranger concept albums I’ve encountered in a long time—which I mean as a compliment.
Bryan Ferry, “Don’t Stop the Dance,” The Jazz Age
U.K. release, 11/26/12; U.S. release, 2/12/13
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lagniappe
Here’s the original (Boys and Girls, 1985).
A reader writes:
Dear Richard:
I think you should check out the YouTube link below. From Dore Stein who is the host of a great radio show on Sat. nights on the SF United School District’s radio station, KALW.
Melos: Mediterranean Songs (filmed in Tunisia and Germany, 2011)*
*****
taking a break
I’m taking some time off—back in a while.
*****
*With Dorsaf Hamdani & Ensemble (Tunisia), En Chordais (Greece), Juan Carmona & Ensemble (Spain), Keyvan Chemirani (France/Iran), et al.
two takes
What makes a song last?
It’s not the meaning.
It’s the sounds, the particular sounds of the particular words—sounds that singers, year after year, decade after decade, keep wanting to hear, to sing.
Why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart . . .
“Cold, Cold Heart” (H. Williams)
Hank Williams, TV show, 1952
***
Norah Jones, BBC Radio show, 2007
music clip of the day 