who you’d be swept away by—right now—
if you were a 24-year-old male*
Jessie Ware, live, London, 7/18/12
“Night Light”
***
“Taking In Water”
***
“Running”
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lagniappe
radio: final day of WKCR’s Pres-&-Bird Birthday Marathon
*****
*Based on a sample of one—my son Alex.
Need a ticket to an enchanted forest?
John Luther Adams, songbirdsongs (1974-80)
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lagniappe
radio: day two of WKCR’s Pres-&-Bird Birthday Marathon
Everybody knows the boat is leaking . . .
Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows,” live, London, 2008
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lagniappe
talking (Canadian TV, 1997)
(Yeah, the interviewer is often obnoxious; but, despite [because of?] that, this is one of the more intriguing “celebrity interviews” I’ve heard.)
*****
reading table
Returning To My Cottage
by Wang Wei (699-759 [trans. David Young])
A bell in the distance
the sound floats
down the valley
one by one
woodcutters and fishermen
stop work, start home
the mountains move off
into darkness
alone, I turn home
as great clouds beckon
from the horizon
the wind stirs delicate vines
and water chestnut shoots
catkin fluff sails past
in the marsh to the east
new growth
vibrates with color
it’s sad
to walk in the house
and shut the door.
*****
radio: 72 hours of Pres & Bird
Celebrating the birthdays of Lester Young (8/27) and Charlie Parker (8/29), WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) will be playing their music all day today, tomorrow, and Wednesday.
timeless
Sly and the Family Stone
“Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again),” TV Show (Soul Train), 1974
*****
“In Time,” Fresh, 1973
Jazz legend Miles Davis was so impressed by the song “In Time” . . . that he made his band listen to the track repeatedly for a full 30 minutes. Composer and music theorist Brian Eno cited Fresh as having heralded a shift in the history of recording, “where the rhythm instruments, particularly the bass drum and bass, suddenly [became] the important instruments in the mix.”
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lagniappe
art beat: more from Tuesday’s stop at the Art Institute of Chicago
Roy Lichtenstein, Landscape in Fog (1996)
It’s impossible, sometimes, to separate our experience of music, especially pop music, from the surrounding circumstances. The other day, for instance, I was taking my son Luke back to school in Bloomington, Indiana. He was playing dashboard DJ. As we rolled through the hills of southern Indiana, nearing our destination, this came on after a long stretch of hip-hop (Lil Wayne, Eminem, Young Jeezy, Tyga, et al.), and the electronic intro, the Björk-like voice—they lit up the highway.
Ellie Goulding, “Lights”
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (after a hearing at the nearby federal court building)
Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective (through 9/3/12)
Look Mickey (1961)
*****
Artist’s Studio “Look Mickey” (1973)
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
“Cashback” (N. Cherry)
***
“Dirt” (J. Osterburg, R. Asheton, S. Asheton, D. Alexander)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
More and more, it seems, boundaries—race, gender, country, era, genre—mean less and less.
more sounds from Ethiopia
Getatchew Mekurya (tenor saxophone) with The Ex, live, Ethiopia (Hager Fikir Theater, Addis Ababa), 2007
serendipity
Umar (AKA Omar) Suleyman (AKA Suleeyman),* live, Ethiopia, c. 2010
This guy I bumped into the other day, as I do so many things, listening to the radio.**
********
*Not to be confused with Omar Souleyman.
Sometimes what you’re looking for—when, say, your hard drive crashes (as mine just did)—is something where not much seems to happen, beautifully.
John Luther Adams, “The Farthest Place” (2001); piano (Clint Davis), vibraphone (Brian Archinal & Andy Bliss) bass (Satoru Tagawa), violin (Lydia Kabalen); University of Kentucky (Lexington), 2008
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lagniappe
There are all kinds of music.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo”
Richard Burton
summer in the city
Grimes, “Circumambient”
Pitchfork Music Festival, Chicago (Union Park), 7/14/12
***
Here’s another take (Visions, 2012).
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lagniappe
Grimes goes record shopping (Amoeba Music, Los Angeles [Hollywood], 2012).
There’s a reason, I’m coming to realize, why so many pop musicians these days look young enough to be my children—they are.
music clip of the day 