Saturday, July 30th
keep on dancing
M.A.K.U. SoundSystem, live (TV show), New York, 2016
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: miscellaneous keyboards
2016
Monday, July 4th
Happy Fourth!
Let’s celebrate by remembering three giants.
Ralph Stanley, singer, banjo player, February 25, 1927-June 23, 2016
“Little Maggie,” live (TV show), Austin, Tx., 1980
*****
Bernie Worrell, keyboard player, April 19, 1944-June 24, 2016
Live (with George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic), Switzerland (Montreux Jazz Festival), 2004
*****
Scotty Moore, guitar player, December 27, 1931-June 28, 2016
“Blue Suede Shoes” (with Elvis Presley), live, 1956
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lagniappe
radio
Today, Louis Armstrong’s adopted birthday, it’s all Louis all day at WKCR (Columbia University).
2016
Thursday, April 21st
what’s new
Vijay Iyer (keyboards), Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet), A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke, 2016
***
“Passages”
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lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
2016
Monday, April 18th
Feel like floating?
Music for Airports, “1/1” (B. Eno, R. Davies, R. Wyatt), 1978; Bang on a Can All-Stars, live (arr. Michael Gordon), San Diego Airport, 2015
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lagniappe
reading table
To a Snail
By Marianne Moore (1887-1972)If “compression is the first grace of style,”
you have it. Contractility is a virtue
as modesty is a virtue.
It is not the acquisition of any one thing
that is able to adorn,
or the incidental quality that occurs
as a concomitant of something well said,
that we value in style,
but the principle that is hid:
in the absence of feet, “a method of conclusions”;
“a knowledge of principles,”
in the curious phenomenon of your occipital horn.
2016
Wednesday, March 30th
sweet soul music
Curtis Mayfield (1942-1999), “Move On Up” (C. Mayfield), live (Master Henry Gibson [1942-2002], hand drums), Netherlands (The Hague), 1987
2016
Thursday, January 28th
sounds of Jamaica
Burning Spear, live, Paris, 1988
2016
Wednesday, January 13th
sounds of New York
More from the drummer on the new David Bowie album.
Mark Guiliana Beat Music (MG, drums; Stu Brooks, bass; Yuki Hirano, keyboards; with guests Steve Wall [tape recorder], Jeff Taylor [vocals]), live, New York, 2014
*****
lagniappe
reading table
Unknown –
—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), #778 (Franklin), last line
2016
Monday, January 11th
passings
Friday: “what’s new.”
Saturday: the guys who back him on his new album.
Today: “passings.”
David Bowie, singer, songwriter, January 8, 1947-January 10, 2016
“Blackstar,” 2015
2016
Saturday, January 9th
These guys back David Bowie on his new album.
Donny McCaslin Quartet (DM, tenor saxophone; Jason Lindner, keyboards; Tim Lefebvre, bass; Mark Guiliana, drums), “Fast Future,” New York, 2015
2015
Monday, December 21st
Why start the new week with the same old stuff?
Julia Wolfe (1958-), Believing (2001); Bang on a Can All-Stars, live, South Korea (Tongyeong International Music Festival), 2014
lagniappe
art beat
Regular readers may recognize this drawing, which was posted last year. The artist is a client of mine, Walter Unbehaun, a seventy-something bank robber whose story is told in the January issue of GQ magazine (Kathy Dobie, “The Curious Case of the Homesick Bank Robber”). This drawing makes an appearance:
[H]e’d created a strong bond with his lawyer. He considered ‘Rich’ a friend, giving him two finely wrought pencil sketchings. One was of an ancient and deeply wrinkled Peruvian woman, the other of a plump African woman wearing glasses.
Walter Unbehaun, African Preacher (Kankakee County Jail, 2014)
music clip of the day 