more favorites from the past year
Wild Flag, live, SXSW (Austin, Texas), 3/11
“Romance” (Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop)
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“Future Crimes” (IFC Crossroads House)
Someday an all-female band will seem no more remarkable than an all-male one.
(Originally posted 10/24/11.)
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She’s going to be a big star someday.
Nneka, live
Vodpod videos no longer available.(Originally posted 2/15/11.)
This week we revisit a few favorites from the past year.
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[D]ance first and think afterwards . . . . It’s the natural order.
—Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1953, 1955 [English-language premiere])
Al Minns & Leon James, New York (Savoy Ballroom, Harlem), 1950s
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
art beat
Helen Levitt, New York, c. 1940
(Originally posted 1/11/11.)
Let’s go to church.
Solomon Burke, “Silent Night” (Savoy, 1982)
where I’d like to be tonight
Po’ Monkey’s, Merigold, Mississippi, 2010
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lagniappe
reading table
Charles Simic, “1938”
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random thoughts
Life’s often said to be too short.
Too short for what?
La Monte Young, The Well-Tuned Piano
Part 1
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Part 2
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Part 3
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Part 4
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Part 5
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lagniappe
Minimalism proper begins with La Monte Young, the master of the drone. He was born in 1935 in a tiny dairy community in Idaho, and spent his childhood listening to the secret music of the wide-open landscape—the microtonal chords of power lines, the harsh tones of drills and lathes, the wailing of far-off trains, the buzzing songs of grasshoppers, the sound of the wind moving over Utah Lake and whistling through the cracks of his parents’ log cabin. In 1940 he moved to Los Angeles with his family. As he later said, he fell in love with California’s ‘sense of space, sense of time, sense of reverie, sense that things could take a long time, that there was always time.’
—Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007)
What I get from this guy I can’t quite put my finger on. But I do know this:
I don’t get it anywhere else.
Arthur Russell (1951-1992), singer, songwriter, cellist
“You And Me Both”
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“This Is How We Walk on the Moon”
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“That’s Us/Wild Combination”
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Terrace of Unintelligibility, live studio performance, 1985
Part 1
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Part 2
(First three clips originally posted 11/23/09.)
If sounds define a space as much as walls and windows, you don’t need to knock out a wall to open up a room—just play this.
International Contemporary Ensemble with Steve Lehman
Impossible Flow (S. Lehman), live, New York (Le Poisson Rouge), 4/19/11
The moment this ends I want to hear it again. Is there any higher compliment?
More Steve Lehman? Here.
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lagniappe
reading table
A strange old man
Stops me,
Looking out of my deep mirror.—Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (c. 662-710; trans. Kenneth Rexroth)
What a treat to hear a guitar-led group that sounds so fresh.
Nels Cline (guitar) and Friends play the music of Andrew Hill
Live, New York (Jazz Standard), 2007
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
The more one studies the harmony of music, and then studies human nature, how people agree and how they disagree, how there is attraction and repulsion, the more one will see that it is all music.
recipe
1 river
1 bridge
1 brass band
Mix lightly.
Raya Brass Band, live, Poughkeepsie, New York
Walkway Over The Hudson Grand Opening, 10/3/09
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music clip of the day 