musical thoughts | music clip of the day

Wednesday, 12/29/10

The other night, driving home from a family gathering with my (19-year-old) son Luke (we left early to accommodate his hectic social calendar), this jumped out of the radio.

Willow Smith, “Whip My Hair,” 2010

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

A few years ago Bill Gates was boasting that we’ll soon have sensors which will turn on the music that we like . . . when we walk into a room. How boring! The hell with our preexisting likes . . . .

—Denis Dutton (February 9, 1944-December 28, 2010), founder and editor of Arts & Letters Daily (long my home page)

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Denis Dutton, The Colbert Report (1/28/09)

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radio

Worn out by the holidays? I know of no better tonic for post-Christmas, pre-New Year’s malaise than WKCR-FM’s Bach Festival, which runs until midnight Friday.

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Monday, 12/27/10

Of beauty you cannot have too much.

Frederic Chopin, Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23 (1835-36)

Take 1: Vladimir Horowitz, live, New York (Carnegie Hall)

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Take 2: Krystian Zimerman, live

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Take 3: Claudio Arrau

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Take 4: Alfred Cortot

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Take 5: Sviatoslav Richter, live (Kiev)

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More Chopin? Here. And here. And here.

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

[T]he things we feel in life are not experienced in the form of ideas, and so their translation into literature, an intellectual process, may give an account of them, explain them, analyse them, but cannot recreate them as music does, its sounds seeming to take on the inflections of our being, to reproduce that inner, extreme point of sensation which is that thing that causes us the specific ecstasy we feel from time to time and which, when we say ‘What a beautiful day! What beautiful sunshine!’, is not conveyed at all to our neighbour, in whom the same sun and the same weather set off quite different vibrations.

—Marcel Proust, The Prisoner (1925) (trans. Carol Clark [2002])

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Thursday, 12/16/10

It’s a remix world.

Gil Scott-Heron, “New York Is Killing Me” (2010), Chris Cunningham remix

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lagniappe

Here’s the original track, followed by a couple more remixes.

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With Nas

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With Mos Def

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musical thoughts

In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing. About the dark times.

—Bertolt Brecht

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Want more of Gil Scott-Heron? Here and here.

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taking a break

I’m going to take a little break (my first since July)—back soon.

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Wednesday, 11/17/10

Do not find yourself in the music, but find the music in yourself.

—Heinrich Neuhaus (Russian piano teacher whose students included Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, Radu Lupu, et al.)

Marilyn Crispell, “Dear Lord” (John Coltrane), live

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mail

“Jesus Dropped The Charges” [The O’Neal Twins, Sunday, 11/7/10] made my day.

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Tuesday, 11/16/10

Find a note that pleases you.

Then another.

And another.

—Cecil Taylor (when asked what advice he would give to a young musician)

Cecil Taylor, live, 1981 (Imagine the Sound)

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lagniappe

art beat

Going to an art museum you never know what you may encounter. This painting, for instance, I’d never laid eyes on—never even heard of the artist—until I happened upon it the other day at Chicago’s Art Institute.

Arthur Wesley Dow (American, 1857-1922), Boats at Rest

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2010

Sunday, 8/29/10

If only Janis were still around to cut a gospel album.

Tom Jones, “Strange Things Happening Every Day,” live (TV broadcast), 2010

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langiappe

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, “Strange Things Happening Every Day” (1944)

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mail

He’s [Tom Jones] got a new gospel album out on Lost Highway that is really good.

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Absolutely love your latest clips. Was that Kermit Ruffins and Trombone Shorty on the Rebirth clip [don’t believe so]? If you haven’t already, please check out Praise & Blame by Tom Jones. I picked it up after reading a review by Jim Fusilli in the WSJ. It is very good. Thanks for what you do. I look forward to your email each day.

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art beat

The other day I happened upon a wonderful photography exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center (through September 19th), The Jazz Loft Project, W. Eugene Smith in NYC, 1957-1965.

From Smith’s loft (821 Sixth Ave. [near W. 28th St.])

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Thelonious Monk

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Zoot Sims

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musical thoughts

It is hard to believe of the world that there should be/music in it . . .

—William Bronk (from “The Nature of Musical Form”)

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radio

WKCR-FM winds up their three-day Lester Young/Charlie Parker marathon today—Parker’s 90th birthday.

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2010

Wednesday, 7/21/10

getting older

“Where did everybody go?” you wonder.

With each passing year, more of the musicians who’ve shaped your world—who’ve made life sing—are gone.

Ed Blackwell, Lester Bowie, Betty Carter, Malachi Favors, Steve Lacy, Kate McGarrigle, Art Pepper, Professor Longhair, Sun Ra, Junior Wells, Julius Hemphill (below): the list goes on, and on, and on.

World Saxophone Quartet (Julius Hemphill, alto saxophone; Oliver Lake, soprano and alto saxophones; David Murray, tenor saxophone; Hamiet Bluiett, baritone saxophone)

Medley: “West African Snap,” “I Heard That,” “Fast Life,” “Hattie Wall,” live (TV Broadcast [Night Music]), 1990 (music starts at 2:20)

Listening to Julius Hemphill (far left), a phrase from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech comes to mind: “the fierce urgency of now.” Hemphill has, it seems, so much to say—right now. Listen, for instance, to 4:30-6:35.

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Live, with M’Boom (Max Roach’s 9-piece percussion ensemble), New York (The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine), 1981 (music starts at 1:55)

Want more? Here.

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Without music, life would be an error.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

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2010

Friday, 7/16/10

Simple, subtle, soulful: blues is (as Artur Schnabel said of Mozart’s piano sonatas) “too easy for children, too difficult for adults.”

R.L. Burnside, “Goin’ Down South,” live, early 1970s, Mississippi

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Music is the healing force of the universe.

—Albert Ayler

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2010

Thursday, 7/1/10

looking back

Today, celebrating our 300th post, we revisit a few favorites.

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3/12/10

Both Chicago blues artists. Both guitar players. Both influenced by other kinds of music.

Musical personalities? They could hardly be more different.

Buddy Guy, “Let Me Love You Baby,” live

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Fenton Robinson, “Somebody Loan Me A Dime,” live, 1977

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Back in the 1970s, when I was at Alligator Records, I had the pleasure of working with Fenton, co-producing his album I Hear Some Blues Downstairs (a Grammy nominee). He didn’t fit the stereotype of a bluesman. Gentle, soft-spoken, serious, introspective: he was all these things. He died in 1997.

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3/3/10

What other pop star has made such stunning contributions as a guest artist?

Sinead O’Connor

With Willie Nelson, “Don’t Give Up”