Tuesday, 8/30/11
keep on dancing
DJ Funktual, “Top 10 Samples in Hip-Hop History” (Part I)
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keep on dancing
DJ Funktual, “Top 10 Samples in Hip-Hop History” (Part I)
Vodpod videos no longer available.what’s new
(an occasional series)
Kanye West & Jay-Z, “Otis” (feat. Otis Redding)
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favorites
(an occasional series)
Buddy Holly, Patsy Cline, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and many more, including this man: if you could somehow revive all the folks who’ve died falling out of the sky, you’d have a hell of a band.
Otis Redding, “Try a Little Tenderness,” live, Norway, 1967
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give the drummer some
Listen to the double-time pattern Al Jackson begins playing at the start of the second verse (0:47): what a subtle, rippling urgency it creates.
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lagniappe
“[Otis would] keep pushing, and each time Al Jackson would go with him. He would enable the rest of the musicians to reach whatever Otis was trying for. Otis would record stripped to the waist. He put bath towels under his arms. He wanted those horn players live on the floor; he’d sing their parts to them and put that whole session together. Otis got a live feel that nobody else on that label [Stax] ever got.”—Jim Dickinson (in Peter Guralnick, Sweet Soul Music [1986]; for more on Dickinson, see the 9/9/09 post)
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Bassist Duck Dunn (also in Guralnick’s book):
— “Otis would come in [the studio], and, boy, he’d just bring everybody up. ‘Cause you knew something was gonna be different. When Otis was there, it was just a revitalization of the whole thing. You wanted to play with Otis. He brought out the best in you. If there was a best, he brought it out. That was his secret.”
— “When you talked to him [Otis Redding], he was like you was. Then you see him on stage. Hey, there ain’t too many people wear the crown. Elvis wore it, and I guess Frank Sinatra wore it. And here he comes, and, boy, he wore it. He wore that halo. He knew it. He was a goddam star.”
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At Redding’s 1996 Whiskey A Go Go shows in Los Angeles, Bob Dylan “presented Redding with a prerelease copy of ‘Just Like A Woman,’ claiming his vocal approach had been Otis-inspired. ‘Otis’ appraisal of it,’ says [Phil] Walden, ‘was that it had too damn many words in it.'”—Carol Cooper
(Originally posted 9/25/09)
favorites
(an occasional series)
She’s going to be a big star someday.
Nneka, live
Vodpod videos no longer available.(Originally posted 2/15/11.)
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It used to be that music came from a particular place. No more. Whether it’s Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi (the Iranian saxophonist who’s lived in Germany, in Japan, and now in New York City [2/18/10]), or Burkina Electric (whose members come from Burkina Faso, from Germany, and from New York City [by way of Austria] [2/22/10]), or this singer, who’s lived (and has homes) in Nigeria and in Germany, much of today’s most intriguing music has its ears and heart and feet on more than one continent.
Nneka, “Heartbeat”
Take 1: recording/video
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Take 2: live, Philadelphia, 2009
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Take 3: J. Period Remix, featuring Talib Kweli
(Originally posted 2/27/10.)
Happy Birthday, Luke!
What would it be like—I can only wonder—to be turning twenty today?
Here’s a fave from the Luke files.
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If I didn’t have kids, would my ears be stuck, forever, on “repeat”?
Here’s something my younger son Luke, who just started college, played for me recently, after first pronouncing it, with quiet but absolute authority, the best thing this guy has done (already Luke’s learned that what’s important isn’t to be right; it’s to seem right).
Lupe Fiasco, “Hip Hop Saved My Life,” live, Los Angeles, 2008
(Originally posted 9/14/09.)
three takes
I’ve heard, mainly through my (19-year-old) son Luke, more hip-hop tracks celebrating weed (and other stuff) than I could count. Here’s a different take.
Macklemore, “Otherside”
Live, Seattle (Bumbershoot), 2009
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Live, radio broadcast, Seattle, 2009
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Recording, 2009
Vodpod videos no longer available.More? Here.
A hip-hop outtake from Winter’s Bone?
Yelawolf, “Pop the Trunk,” 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.what’s new
an occasional series
The future of hip-hop?
Odd Future (with The Roots), “Sandwitches,” live (TV broadcast), 2/16/11
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
reading table
The bad news is the ship hasn’t arrived;
the good news is it hasn’t left yet.—John Ashbery, “He Who Loves And Runs Away” (excerpt; Planisphere [2009])
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radio
WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) will be playing the music of jazz violinist Billy Bang, who died Monday night, all day.
two takes
What Tip O’Neill said about politics is true of music too—it’s all local.
Macklemore, “The Town” (2009)
#1 (recording/video)
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
#2 (live; Bellingham, Washington)
Vodpod videos no longer available.
More Lester
The world became a less interesting place the day Lester Bowie died.
Digable Planets with Lester Bowie (trumpet), Joe Sample (keyboard), Melvin “Wah-Wah Watson” Ragin (guitar), “Flying High in the Brooklyn Sky,” live
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lagniappe
Part of the job of a musician is that of a messenger. If you ain’t ready to be a messenger, forget it. You need to get a job in the post office or somewhere. If you ain’t ready to travel, pack up your family, or pack up yourself and hit the road, you’re in the wrong business. Because that’s what music is about. It’s about spreading knowledge and education, and re-education. It’s about spreading. You have got to travel with it to spread the word. Like all the people in the past that have had to travel to spread the music.
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It’s life itself that this [music] is about.
—Lester Bowie (in George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music [2008])
(Previously posted 10/28/09.)
music clip of the day 