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Category: musical thoughts

Friday, November 14th

sounds of Chicago

Steve Dawson’s Funeral Bonsai Wedding (SD, vocals and guitar; Jason Adasiewicz, vibraphone; Jason Roebke, bass; Frank Rosaly, drums), “As Soon As I Walk In” (S. Dawson), 2014

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Music and family have provided two of my life’s through lines. As little boys, my brother Don and I would play in the basement, listening, on the brightly lit juke box, to the Everly Brothers (“Wake Up, Little Susie”), and Johnny Horton (“The Battle of New Orleans”), and Gene Pitney (“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”). Soon we were out the door, hearing the Beatles at Comiskey Park, the Velvet Underground at the Kinetic Playground, and the MC5 in Lincoln Park. Still the beat goes on, undiminished by the passing years. Last week, for my sixty-second birthday, Don gave me (what else?) a record—the new album by this guy, Steve Dawson.

Friday, October 17th

sounds of Japan

Perfume, live, Tokyo, 2014


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lagniappe

art beat

Garry Winogrand (1928-1984), New York (Metropolitan Opera), c. 1951

winogrand_metropolitian-opera1951

*****

musical thoughts

No musical pleasure is “guilty.”

Wednesday, October 15th

sounds of Argentina

Juana Molina, live, Paris, 2013*


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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Tempo, rhythm, improvisation—baseball, too, is music.

Mike Moustakas (third base), Kansas City Royals, 10/14/14

kTYVDpK - Imgur
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*Set list (courtesy of YouTube):

– Wed 21 00:50
– Eras 04:06
– Lo decidi yo 10:11
– Ay, no se ofendan 14:41
– Un dia 21:20
– Las edades 29:03
– Sin guia, no 34:59
– Final feliz 41:15

Friday, October 10th

Happy Birthday, Thelonious!

Thelonious Monk, October 10, 1917-February 17, 1982, pianist, composer, bandleader

Live (TV studio),* Paris, 1969


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lagniappe

musical thoughts

A note can be as big as a mountain, or small as a pin. It only depends on a musician’s imagination.

—Thelonious Monk (Robin D. G. Kelley, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original)

*****

radio

WKCR-FM (Columbia University): all Monk, all day.

*****

*Set list:

1. Dreamland
2. Monk’s Mood (Version 1)
3. Thelonious
4. Reflections
5. Epistrophy
6. Round Midnight
7. Crepuscule With Nellie
8. Ugly Beauty
9. Monk’s Mood (Version 2)
10. Don’t Blame Me
11. Coming On The Hudson
12. Nice Work If You Can Get It

Wednesday, October 8th

This I could listen to all day.

Morton Feldman (1926-1987), Palais de Mari (1986); Blair McMillen (piano) & Ryan Olivier (video processing), live, Philadelphia, 2014

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

My obsession with surface is the subject of my music. In that sense, my compositions are really not ‘compositions’ at all. One might call them time canvases in which I more or less prime the canvas with an overall hue of the music.

—Morton Feldman, “Between Categories” (Give My Regards to Eighth Street)

Thursday, October 2nd

basement jukebox

The Ohio Untouchables (feat. Robert Ward, guitar), “Forgive Me Darling,” 1962


***

Lonnie Mack, “Memphis,” 1963


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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Maybe, when this life is over, instead of listening to music, we’ll become it.

Saturday, September 13th

David T. Little (1978-), Haunt of Last Nightfall; Third Coast Percussion, live


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lagniappe

musical thoughts

It’s not hard to imagine a world where the different kinds of music could be counted. Maybe there’d be 49, or 94, or 949. Thank God, or whatever, we don’t live there.

Sunday, September 7th

back to church

Nazareth Missionary Baptist Church Hymn Choir (Rock Hill, S.C.),”I Got Shoes,” live, McConnells, S.C. (Mt. Do-Well Missionary Baptist Church), 2001

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Mission: To transmit the tenderness of the human spirit through the disciplined action of a human body.

—pianist Marilyn Nonken (featured yesterday, heard last night in Chicago)

Thursday, September 4th

composer, n. somebody who wants to hear sounds nobody’s ever heard before.

Mario Diaz de León (1979-), Prism Path; International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE),* live, New York, 2011

*****

*Claire Chase, flutes; Eric Lamb, flutes; Joshua Rubin, clarinets; Cory Smythe, piano; Nathan Davis, percussion; Mario Diaz de León, electronics.

Thursday, August 28th

never enough

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor (“The Tempest”); Daniel Barenboim (piano), live, Berlin, 2005

I went decades without listening to Beethoven. Now I can’t imagine life without him. No matter what kind of day I’m having, no matter what my mood, his music makes life seem richer, and deeper, and more worth living.