Monday, April 20th
what’s new
Ken Vandermark (reeds), live, Chicago (Quarantine Concert presented by Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago), 4/6/20
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lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: hard-to-peg
2020
Monday, April 13th
what’s new
Andrea Bocelli (1958-, voice), Music for Hope (“Panis Angelicus” (from “Messe Solennelle” Op. 12, FWV 61), César Franck; “Ave Maria,” CG 89a (arr. from Johann Sebastian Bach, “Prelude” no. 1, BWV 846), Charles-François Gounod; “Sancta Maria” (arr. from “Cavalleria Rusticana”, Intermezzo), Pietro Mascagni; “Domine Deus” (from “Petite Messe Solennelle”), Gioachino Antonio Rossini; “Amazing Grace,” John Newton), live, Italy (Milan), 4/12/20
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, Oak Park, Ill.
*****
reading table
“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—I’ve heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), 314 (Franklin)
2020
Friday, April 10th
more
Bonnie Raitt (1949-), John Prine (1946-2020), “Angel From Montgomery” (J. Prine), live, Nashville, 2019
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
2020
Thursday, April 9th
what’s new
Four Tet (aka Kieran Hebden, 1977-, DJ), live “from the middle of nowhere,” streamed 4/3/20
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
*****
reading table
[E]very reading of every poem, regardless of language, is an act of translation: translation into the reader’s intellectual and emotional life. As no individual reader remains the same, each reading becomes a different—not merely another—reading. The same poem cannot be read twice.
—Eliot Weinberger (1949-), 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei
2020
Wednesday, April 8th
passings
John Prine, singer, songwriter, October 10, 1946–April 7, 2020
Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about “Sam Stone” the soldier junky daddy and “Donald and Lydia,” where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that. If I had to pick one song of his, it might be “Lake Marie.” I don’t remember what album that’s on.
—Bob Dylan, 2009 interview
“Lake Marie” (J. Prine), live (TV show), New York, 2000
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
2020
Tuesday, April 7th
what’s new
Fantastic Negrito, “Chocolate Samurai,” 3/28/20
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, Chicago (Columbus Park)
2020
Saturday, April 4th
Some sounds offer solace.
Jürg Frey (1953-), Extended Circular Music No. 7 (2011/2014); Singularity, live, New York, 2018
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lagniappe
reading table
Empty mountains:no one to be seen.Yet—hear—human sounds and echoes.Returning sunlightenters the dark woods;Again shiningon the green moss, above.
—Wang Wei (699-759), “Deer Park” (translated from Chinese by Gary Snyder)
2020
Thursday, April 2nd
alone
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou (b. 1923 [Ethiopia], piano), live, Jerusalem (where she moved in 1984), c. 2014
*****
More.
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
2020
Saturday, March 28th
alone
Mat Maneri (1969-, viola), “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” (trad.), live, Paris, 2020
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
*****
reading table
A leaf, one of the last, parts from a maple branch:
it is spinning in the transparent air of October, falls
on a heap of others, stops, fades. No one
admired its entrancing struggle with the wind,
followed its flight, no one will distinguish it now
as it lies among the other leaves, no one saw what I did. I am
the only one.—Bronisław Maj (1953-), “A Leaf,” translated from Polish by Czesław Miłosz and Robert Hass
2020
Friday, March 27th
sounds of Nashville
Marty Stuart (1958-, vocals, mandolin, guitar), Vince Gill (1957-, vocals, guitar), Brad Paisley (1972-, vocals, guitar), live, Nashville (Grand Ole Opry), 3/21/20
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, outside Chicago (Prairie Path, Bellwood)
*****
reading table
That’s being lonely. Lying here. Head and feet not knowing where they’ve come to.
—Eimear McBride (1976-), A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing
music clip of the day 