Some singers are so distinctive that when you’re in the mood for them no one else will do.
Blossom Dearie (1924-2009), “They Say It’s Spring,” 1958*
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lagniappe
reading table: Albion Beatnik Bookstore, Oxford, England
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*BD, vocals, piano; Herb Ellis, guitar; Ray Brown, bass; Jo Jones, drums.
soundtrack for a dream I’d like to have
Four Tet (AKA Kiernan Hebden), live (Boiler Room), 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
I don’t regard my life
as insufficient.
Inside the brushwood gate
there is a moon;
there are flowers.—Ryokan, 1758-1831 (translated from Japanese by Kazuaki Tanahashi [Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan])
what’s new
Chris Hadfield (Canadian astronaut), “Space Oddity” (D. Bowie)
International Space Station, 5/12/13 (released)
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lagniappe
reading table
I never saw any human being who was of sound mind.
—John Haslam (1764-1844), English physician, quoted in the Times Literary Supplement, 3/29/13 (review of Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty, and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England)
There is, it appears, a new addition to the list of activities that threaten national security—channeling Whitney Houston, badly.
An American Airlines pilot was forced to make an emergency landing after a passenger refused to stop singing Whitney Houston’s hit song I Will Always Love You.
The solo performance began shortly into the flight from Los Angeles to New York and her crooning quickly became too much for passengers and staff on the domestic flight last Thursday.
The pilot was forced to change course halfway through the six hour flight and make an unscheduled stop at Kansas City so officers could escort the woman from the plane.
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lagniappe
reading table
“Pastoral Harpsichord”
by Charles Simic
A house with a screened-in porch
On the road to nowhere.
The missus topless because of the heat,
A bag of Frito Banditos in her lap.
President Bush on TV
Watching her every bite.Poor reception, that’s the one
Advantage we have here,
I said to the mutt lying at my feet
And sighing in sympathy.
On another channel the preacher
Came chaperoned by his ghost
When he shut his eyes full of tears
To pray for dollars.“Bring me another beer,” I said to her ladyship,
And when she wouldn’t oblige,
I went out to make chamber music
Against the sunflowers in the yard.
Here, following Hélène Grimaud’s the other day and Rudolf Serkin’s a while back, is another take.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110, third movement, Maurizio Pollini (1942-), live
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lagniappe
reading table
I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch —
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Some instruments just seem made for each other.
Ned Rothenberg (clarinet), Mivos Quartet, Clarinet Quintet (N. Rothenberg), excerpt, live, Ann Arbor, 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
Let there be physical suddenness.
—Michael McClure
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random thoughts
This morning, before sunrise, when I was out walking my son Luke’s dog, Roscoe, he stopped to inspect each blade of grass, carefully.
passings
Richie Havens, January 21, 1941-April 22, 2013
“All Along The Watchtower” (B. Dylan), live, Mountain Jam (Hunter, N.Y.), 2009
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lagniappe
reading table
Nakamichi, 1892 (Japanese Death Poems, Yoel Hoffman, ed.)
Ice in a hot world:
my life
melts.
There seem to be two possibilities here. One is that you’ll find this mesmerizing, as I do. The other is that it’ll drive you bonkers.
Roscoe Mitchell, alto saxophone, live, Italy (Bologna, Angelica Festival), 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
Wang Wei (699-759), “Deer Park”
(translated from Chinese by Gary Snyder)
Empty mountains:no one to be seen.Yet—hear—human sounds and echoes.Returning sunlightenters the dark woods;Again shiningon the green moss, above.
sounds of India
Vilayat Khan (1928-2004), sitar, with Kishan Maharaj (1923-2008), tabla, Raga Bhairavi, live, London, 2002
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lagniappe
reading table
Sun and moon, sun and moon, time goes.
—John Updike, Rabbit, Run
two takes
Julius Eastman (1940-1990), Evil Nigger (1979)
Julius Eastman, Frank Ferko, Janet Kattas, Patricia Martin, pianos; live, Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.), 1980 (Unjust Malaise, New World Records, 2005)
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Jace Clayton, electronics; David Friend & Emily Manzo, pianos (The Julius Eastman Memory Depot, New Amsterdam Records, 2013)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Today’s composer, because of his problematical historical inheritance, has become totally isolated and self-absorbed. Those composers who have gained some measure of success through isolation and self-absorption will find that outside of the loft door the state of the composer in general and their state in particular is still as ineffectual as ever. The composer must become the total musician, not only a composer. To be only a composer is not enough.
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reading table
Ecstasy affords/the occasion and expediency determines the form.
—Marianne Moore (1887-1972), “The Past is the Present”
music clip of the day 