Tuesday, December 31st
sounds of Chicago
DKV Trio (Hamid Drake [MCOTD Hall of Fame], drums; Kent Kessler, bass; Ken Vandermark, reeds), live, Chicago, 12/28/24
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lagniappe
random sights
Dingle Peninsula, Ireland, 2017
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: Ireland
2021
Wednesday, September 1st
sounds of Dublin
Xenia Pestova Bennett (toy piano, desk bells, music boxes) and Ed Bennett (electronics, music boxes), live, Dublin, 9/1/21
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lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill. (Frank Lloyd Wright, Laura Gale House, 1909)
*****
reading table
Midsummer
by William Bronk (1918-1999; MCOTD Hall of Fame; Poetry, May, 1955)
A green world, a scene of green, deep
with light blues, the greens made deep
by those blues. One thinks how
in certain pictures, envied landscapes are seen
(through a window, maybe) far behind the serene
sitter’s face, the serene pose, as though
in some impossible mirror, face to back,
human serenity gazed at a green world
which gazed at this face.
And see now,
here is that place, those greens
are here, deep with those blues. The air
we breathe is freshly sweet, and warm, as though
with berries. We are here. We are here.
Set this down too, as much
as if an atrocity had happened and been seen.
The earth is beautiful beyond all change.
2021
Friday, August 20th
sweet soul music
Isley Brothers (Ronald Isley [vocals], Ernest Isley [guitar], et al.), live (“Between the Sheets,” “Footsteps in the Dark,” “For the Love of You,” “That Lady”), St. Louis (home studio), published 8/18/21
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lagniappe
random sights
a while ago, Ireland (Dingle Peninsula)
2020
Sunday, December 20th
testify!
United House of Prayer Shout Bands, live, published 2011
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lagniappe
random sights
a while ago, Ireland (Dingle Peninsula)
*****
reading table
Do you sometimes imagine that you’re getting used to the emergency? I think I can guarantee that you’re not, burdened by states of mind that will be comprehensible only retrospectively, when they no longer pertain. The world going on nonetheless, as the world will, feels bizarrely conditional, subject in thought and action to a blanketing subjunctive mood: things as we wish they were. We are waiting this out with nostalgia for lost freedoms, fear and empathy in the present, and, perhaps, vague anticipation of eventual survivor’s guilt. Never has social privilege seemed more unfair while being clung to so tenaciously. Some of us—artists—are undergoing the siege in ways that can alert us to the subjective dimensions of an objective calamity. We should want those people to keep it up as best they can.
—Peter Schjeldahl, “The Art World: The Melancholy Gestalt of Isolation” (reviewing 100 Drawings from Now, Drawing Center, New York), New Yorker, website (12/14/20), 12/21/20 issue (“The Fix We’re In”)
*****
streaming
Tomorrow, 6:30 a.m. (CST): the 30th annual winter solstice concert by Chicago-based percussionists Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake (MCOTD Hall of Fame).
2020
Sunday, August 2nd
sounds of New Orleans
Funeral for singer Juanita Brooks, New Orleans, 2009
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lagniappe
random sights
a while ago, Ireland (Dingle Peninsula)
2019
Saturday, March 2nd
like nobody else
Laurie Anderson, “Language of the Future,” Dublin, 2017
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lagniappe
random thoughts
Each day we go somewhere we’ve never been before.
2017
Thursday, July 20th
sounds of Ireland
Gerry O’Beirne (guitar, vocals), live
“Tír na nÓg” (trad.)/”Angel Angel” (G. O’Beirne), Whidbey Island, Wash., 2015
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“Marbhna Luimnigh” (trad.), Ireland, 2010
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lagniappe
other day, Ireland (outside Dingle)
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2017
Wednesday, July 19th
sounds of Ireland
Danú, live, Ireland, 2015
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lagnaippe
random sights
other day, Ireland (outside Dingle)
2017
Tuesday, July 18th
sounds of Ireland
Seamus Begley (accordion, vocals) & Tim Edey (guitar), “Maidin Luan Cinches,” “Tomáisín a’ Rí,” live, Ireland (Donegal), 2010
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, Ireland (outside Dingle)
2017
Monday, July 17th
sounds of Ireland
Sean Leahy (guitar) & Jeremy Spencer (violin), live, Ireland
“Darley’s” / “Bógan Nua,” 2014
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O’Sullivan’s Courthouse Pub, Dingle, 2013
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, Ireland (outside Dingle)
music clip of the day 