two takes
How To Dress Well (Tom Krell), “& It Was U” (2012)
***
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
sounds of Thailand
Kung Narin Phin Sing, live, Thailand
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lagniappe
reading table
Like a tropical storm,
I, too, may one day become “better organized.”—Lydia Davis, “Tropical Storm” (The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, 2009)
two takes
Stephanie McDee, “Call the Police”
Recording (Living The Blues), 2002
***
Live, Baton Rouge, 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
We know we are very special. Yet we keep trying to find out in what way: not this way, not that way, then what way?
—Lydia Davis, “Special” (The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, 2009)
We ain’t never goin’ home . . .
—Neneh Cherry (59:55)*
Neneh Cherry & The Thing (Mats Gustafsson, baritone saxophone, electronics; Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, bass; Paal Nilssen-Love, drums), live, Austria (Konfrontationen 2012, Nickelsdorf), 7/21/12
*“Call the Police” (S. McDee).
old stuff
Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Jeni LeGon, Fats Waller, “Living in a Great Big Way” (Hooray for Love, 1935)
