something cheery to start the week
There’s some things, you reach a certain point in life when you just don’t have time to get better from it.
—Randy Newman
Randy Newman, “Losing You,” live, London, 2011
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
How many of my records, I wondered the other day while sorting CDs, will I never listen to again? How many will never be heard again by anyone?
bread and circuses
This is my idea of good government.
A Summer Solstice Backyard Parade and Procession
Wednesday, June 20th, 2012, 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
[Garfield Park, Chicago]Featuring Mucca Pazza, the Circus Punk Marching Band, Kaotic Drumline, Oper-a-matic, Food Trucks, and More!
Marching bands, both traditional and unique, will be lining up in our backyard space for a mid-summer’s night march. Chicago’s inspiring community drum corps Kaotic, as well as the fantastic punk rock marching band Mucca Pazza will be parading throughout our backyard spaces, in a non-traditional community parade. Instrument making stations will be stationed throughout the event. Come make your own parade.
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Mucca Pazza, live, Evanston (Ill.), 6/30/11
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Kaotic Drumline, 2009
Happy (Day After) Father’s Day
Nas (son) with Olu Dara (father), “Bridging the Gap” (2004)
(sampling Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy”)
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lagniappe
Here’s more from the old man.
David Murray Octet, “Dewey’s Circle” (DM, tenor saxophone; Olu Dara, trumpet; Butch Morris, cornet; George Lewis, trombone; Henry Threadgill, alto saxophone; Anthony Davis, piano; Wilber Morris, bass; Steve McCall, drums), Ming (Black Saint, 1980)
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Muddy Waters, “Mannish Boy” (Chess, 1955)
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lagniappe
reading table
People are mysterious, unfathomable—like divinities: natural objects for reverence. But our habits of thought turn the people around us into objects, the means for our self-protection.
—Lama John Makransky, “Family Practice,”
Tricycle, Summer 2001
two takes
Santigold, “Disparate Youth”
Recording & video, 2012
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Live (studio performance), BBC, 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
After a certain age our memories are so interwoven with each other that the object of our thoughts or the book which we are reading has practically no importance. We have left traces of ourselves everywhere, everything is fertile, everything is dangerous, and we can make discoveries every bit as precious in an advertisement for soap as Pascal’s Pensées.
—Marcel Proust, The Fugitive (translated from French by Peter Collier)
Spirits need a lift?
Consider this: how much wonderful music—more than a lifetime’s worth—waits to be heard for the first time.
Morton Feldman, For Philip Guston (1984)*
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
More Feldman?
And here.
And here.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Q. This is a tough question, but what would be your five Desert Island disks?
John Luther Adams: I’d want music I could live inside for a long time; music that’s complex and enigmatic enough that there’s always something new to discover. Off the top of my head, my choices might be . . .
One of Morton Feldman’s major works, probably the Second String Quartet. Or maybe For Philip Guston.
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*For piano, celesta, piccolo, flute, alto flute, glockenspiel, vibraphone, marimba, chimes.
Ken Vandermark (saxophone) & Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)
Live, Romania (Bucharest), 2010
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Last night, while I was listening to these guys at a little club on Chicago’s near northwest side (The Hideout), a thought kept running through my head: there’s nothing like live music; there’s nothing at all like live music; there’s nothing at all in this world even remotely like live music.
keep on dancing
Robyn, live, Belgium (Werchter), 7/3/11
“We Dance to the Beat”/”Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do”
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“Indestructible”
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“With Every Heartbeat”
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (between court hearings at the nearby federal court building)
Dawoud Bey, Harlem, U.S.A. (late 1970s), through 9/9/12
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old stuff
Fred Astaire (with Ginger Rogers), “I Won’t Dance”
Roberta, 1935
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lagniappe
radio
Driving around yesterday afternoon, I happened upon a new series on NPR’s All Things Considered, “Mom and Dad’s Record Collection.” “[M]usicians, writers, even politicians” talk about a “song they discovered through a parent and how it shaped them.” First up was singer and actress Audra McDonald, who can be heard here.
two takes
“Human Nature” (S. Porcaro & J. Bettis)
Vijay Iyer Trio (VI, piano; Stephan Crump, bass; Marcus Gilmore, drums), live (studio performance [KPLU-FM]), 2011
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Michael Jackson, recording (Thriller), 1982
music clip of the day 