OK, that’s enough clarity.
There’s a place, too, for utter mayhem.
Karp, live, Alabama, 1996
Hands down one of the most important videos on youtube
—superdude593, YouTube
Labels are often worse than useless. This guy, for instance, is often tagged as “cerebral.” But here’s something you can’t—I can’t, anyway—listen to without smiling.
Anthony Braxton, Composition No. 58
Taylor Ho Bynum Chicago Big Band,* live, 2009, Chicago
*****
Here’s another take—Braxton’s original recording (The Complete Arista Recordings of Anthony Braxton [Mosaic], rec. 1976).
More? Here.
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lagniappe
reading table
To obtain the value
of a sound, a movement,
measure from zero.***
A sound has no legs to stand on.
***
The world is teeming: anything can
happen.—John Cage, “2 Pages, 122 Words on Music and Dance” (excerpts)
*Taylor Ho Bynum & Josh Berman (cor), Jaimie Branch (tpt), Jeb Bishop & Nick Broste (tb), Nicole Mitchell (fl), Caroline Davis, Keefe Jackson & Dave Rempis (saxes), Jeff Parker (g), Jason Adasiewicz (vib), Nate McBride (b), Tim Daisy & Tomas Fujiwara (d)
Who needs a stage when you’ve got the subway?
“Diamonds And Pearls,” Washington, D.C.
*****
“Thin Line Between Love And Hate,” New York
*****
“Stand By Me,” Chicago
what’s new
Can I put on a song?
—my (20-year-old) son Luke
M83, “Midnight City” (2011)
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lagniappe
random thoughts
Having grown up with 45s and LPs, I sometimes feel a bit like folks whose first records were 78s must have felt when I was young. Listen, for instance, to Pitchfork‘s review of M83’s new album (Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming):
Well, throughout the past decade, the 30-year old Gonzalez has honored the tremendous impact of growing up during the golden age of CD buying by implicitly serving as a patron saint for those who treat the weekly trip to the record store as a pilgrimage and still covet the album as a physical proposition: His output always comes stylishly packaged, with cover art worth obsessing over and credits that need to be scoured in order to spot the guest appearances.
The “golden age of CD buying”?
Chrome, “Meet You In The Subway” (1979, record; 1984, video)
So much of our musical experience resists explanation. Take this track, for instance. As soon as it’s over, I want to hear it again. Why? No idea.
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lagniappe
mail: two posts, two messages, same correspondent
Last Monday (Koko Taylor/Louis Jordan):
Great boost!
Yesterday (Brother Anthony Wynn/Sensimo):
what the fuck!?!
sounds of Haiti
Rara festival, Kabic (Haiti), Easter, 2005
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lagniappe
Rara music is a Lenten processional music with strong ties to the Vodou religious tradition. It has been commonly confused with Haitian Carnival since both celebrations involve large groups of dancing revelers in the streets. Rara is performed between Ash Wednesday (the day after Carnival ends) until Easter Sunday (or Easter Monday in some parts of Haiti.) Rara bands roam the streets performing religious ceremonies as part of their ritual obligations to the “lwa” or spirits of Haitian Voodoo. Guédé, a spirit associated with death and sexuality, is an important spiritual presence in Rara celebrations and often possesses an ougan (male Voodoo priest) or mambo (female Voodoo priest) before the band begins its procession in order to bless the participants and wish them safe travels for their nightly sojourns.
only rock ’n roll
Animal Collective, Unitled/“Brothersport”
Live, Chicago (Pitchfork Festival), 7/15/11
*****
Want to hear the entire set?
Jazz, classical, gospel, rock: the names may be different, but what they offer is the same—a way, pleasurably, to lose your mind.
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lagniappe
In the evening darkness at a place outside New York, an outlook where/you can perceive eight million people’s homes in a single glance. . . ./Schubert’s being played in some room/there and for someone the tones at this moment are more real than everything else.
—Tomas Transtromer, “Schubertiana” (excerpt), trans. Samuel Charters
Here, in an undated audio clip, Transtromer, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature, talks about this poem and reads it in this English translation.
*****
Transtromer suffered a stroke in 1990, at the age of fifty-nine, which robbed him of speech and impaired the use of his right arm. Rather than delivering the customary [Nobel] laureate’s address when he accepts the award, on December 10th, he will play a piece on the piano using only his left hand.
—Dan Chiasson, “Night Thoughts: The poetry of Tomas Transtromer,” New Yorker, 10/31/11
