music clip of the day

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Category: hard-to-peg

2010

Monday, 2/15/10

Listen to “Sunny Day” by Akon and Wyclef.—Luke (my 18-year-old son, on the phone the other night)

Akon with Wyclef Jean, “Sunny Day” (2008)

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One of the things I find intriguing about contemporary popular music is the widespread practice (particularly in hip-hop) of featuring guest artists, usually, it seems, people whose style and approach are very different from one’s own. Implicit in this is the notion that hearing two different musical personalities can make for a more interesting and rewarding experience than hearing just one. And including another artist opens a song up, making it less a fixed, static thing and more a vehicle for improvisation and variation, something subject to different takes, whose content and texture ultimately depend to a large extent on the identity and contributions of the featured guest.

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lagniappe

mail

My son called from Minnesota the other day to tell me that the weather was terrible, his car had been towed, he didn’t like his job, and he had a cold and a sore throat. Is it bad that the only motherly advice I could think to give him was to listen to Fats Waller [2/9/10]?

*****

The drummer’s comments were great [Brian Blade, 2/13/10]. You layin’ down a pretty good groove your own self, Richard.

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2010

Monday, 2/8/10

Here’s a voice I didn’t know if I’d ever hear again.

Gil Scott-Heron, I’m New Here (out this week)

“Where Did The Night Go” (Gil Scott-Heron)

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“Me And The Devil” (Robert Johnson)

Want more? Here.

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lagniappe

I’ve had bad times in my life when I’d rather be somewhere else doing something else, for sure. But you get to my age, that shit happens. You get in trouble; you maybe lose some folks—a parent or a friend. Maybe your marriage breaks up, you lose your wife, lose touch with your kid. But what life does not have those things in it?—Gil Scott-Heron (in yesterday’s Guardian)

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2010

Tuesday, 2/2/10

You can pay 600 bucks to fly to Berlin—or you can play this clip.

Arto Lindsay, The Penny Parade, live, Berlin, 2009

Want more? Here.

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2010

Saturday, 1/30/10

It seems hard to believe, sometimes, that anyone escapes childhood with a shred of sanity.

I still remember, for instance, my mother dragging me to this movie. I was eight years old. Popcorn in hand, the lights dimming, I sat there in the gathering darkness, waiting. And waiting. Until, suddenly, I was transported to a cinematic Ft. Lauderdale, where, for the next 90 minutes, on sandy beaches under sunny skies, my playmates included Paula Prentiss and George Hamilton and Frank Gorshin and (who could ever forget) Connie Francis. 

Where The Boys Are (1960)

Trailer

Clip

Title Song

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2010

Thursday, 1/28/10

This guy—one of my all-time musical heroes (someone I’ve been listening to for over 30 years)—makes you move. He makes you feel. He makes you think. What more could you ask for?

Henry Threadgill, alto saxophone

With His Very Very Circus, live, New York, 1995

*****

With his Society Situation Dance Band (featuring Craig Harris, trombone), live, Germany (Hamburg), 1988

Like a lot of live performances (especially ones where the musicians haven’t had many chances to play together [as no doubt was the case here]), this gets better as it goes along. At first, things are a bit tentative and raggedy. Then, at around 1:50, trombonist Craig Harris starts to find his way. By around 2:15, the horns and strings begin to sound more cohesive. By around 3:30, the drummers, having gotten more comfortable with the tempo and structure, start to push the groove harder. At around 8:00, with everything going full steam, Threadgill, feeling Harris feeling it, suddenly breaks things down, leaving just the ’bone and the electric guitar. And with that, the performance jumps out of its skin.

*****

With Judith Sanchez Ruiz (dancer), live, New York, 2008

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lagniappe

Music should go right through you, leave some of itself inside you, and take some of you with it when it leaves.—Henry Threadgill

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2010

Tuesday, 1/26/10

No matter what musical language he’s speaking, you’d swear it was his first.

Marc Ribot, guitar

With Los Cubanos Postizos, “Aurora en Pekin,” live, France, 2002

*****

With Ceramic Dog, “Caravan,” live, Berlin, 2008

*****

Solo, “Bouncing Around” (Django Reinhardt, c. 1937), live, New York, 2009

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2010

Saturday, 1/23/10

Who else sounds like Kate & Anna McGarrigle?

Who else makes such wonderfully eccentric career moves—like, for instance, putting out an album all in French?

Who else has not one but two children following in their musical footsteps (Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright)?

Kate McGarrigle (February 6, 1946-January 18, 2010)

Kate & Anna McGarrigle

“Ce Matin,” live, Chicago, 2004

*****

“Talk To Me of Mendocino,” live, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1990

*****

With Family & Friends (including Rufus and Martha Wainwright), live, Mariposa Folk Festival, Toronto, 1989

*****

“Complainte Pour Ste. Catherine,” live, 1981

*****

“Proserpina,” live, London, 12/9/09 (Kate’s last concert)
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2010

Saturday, 1/2/10

“Check out Gonzales”—a longtime friend (in a recent email)

Gonzales, Piano Vision (2007)

Part 1

Part 2

(Yo, Scott: Thanks!)

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2009

Thursday, 12/31/09

In the public imagination, the guitar’s associated with freedom and individuality. The musical reality’s different. Guitarists travel in herds; few stray from the pack. One who has gone his own way is this man, who’s played with everyone from Muddy Waters (as a session musician for Chicago-based Chess Records) to Miles Davis (as a member of his group [1973-1975]). He employs a variety of unusual tunings and effects. He sounds like no one else.

Pete Cosey, guitar

“Calypso Frelimo” (excerpt), Pete Cosey’s Children of Agharta (JT Lewis, drums; Gary Bartz and John Stubblefield, saxophones & flute; Matt Rubano, bass; Johnny Juice, turntables; Baba Israel, words and beats; Kyle Jason, voice; Bern Pizzitola, guitar; Wendy Oxenhorn, harmonica), live, 2002, New York

*****

Live (with Melvin Gibbs, bass; JT Lewis, drums; Johnny Juice, congas and turntables)

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lagniappe

He’s [Pete Cosey’s] the guy who, after Hendrix, showed you how ‘out’ you could go with guitar playing, particularly in the improvised context.—Greg Tate

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2009

Wednesday, 12/30/09

Musicians (and composers) fall into two camps: less-is-more and more-is-more.

The less-is-more camp may, in turn, be divided into the less-less-is-more and the more-less-is-more.

And the less-less-is-more . . .

Jon Hassell and Maarifa Street (Jon Hassell, trumpet; Peter Freeman, bass, laptop; Hugh Marsh, violin; Steve Shehan, percussion, laptop), live, Serbia (Belgrade), 2006

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Want more? Here.

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lagniappe

. . . Jon Hassell’s ideas and techniques have so thoroughly permeated lo- and hi-brow contemporary electronic music, albeit often in a third or fourth hand way . . . that it’s difficult to think what contemporary music would sound like without his influence. . . . there’s categorically no doubt that Hassell has had as an important effect on contemporary music as Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix or James Brown or the Velvet Underground.—The Wire

*****

reading table

More on John Berryman (12/28/09): Here Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Philip Levine recalls John Berryman (also Robert Lowell) as a teacher at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

He [John Berryman] took that class with a seriousness I had never seen before. . . . He was entrancing. He was magnetic. . . . He had a marvelous sense of humor. . . . He really took this seriously. He was a great teacher. He was the greatest teacher I ever had—and an inspiration.—Philip Levine

Philip Levine, live, England (Aldeburgh), 2009

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