two takes
. . . the most beautiful song in the English language.
“Waterloo Sunset” (Ray Davies)
The Kinks, live, 1973 (TV broadcast), England
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Ray Davies, live, 2010, England (Glastonbury)
Vodpod videos no longer available.two takes
The other night, as my older son Alex packed up his stuff for the next day’s trip back to school, this played on his computer—over and over and over.
The Mountain Goats, “This Year”
#1: recording (The Sunset Tree), 2005
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
#2: live, Iowa (Ames), 2006
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
art beat
Lee Friedlander, New York City (Self-Portrait), c. 1960(?)
*****
More Son Seals
Last night I discovered that two of the sets Son played at the Bottom Line in January of 1978 can be heard here and here. The second features a guest
artist—Johnny Winter.
Subtlety has its place; but so does noise.
Whoopie Pie with guest Marc Ribot (guitar), live, New York, 2009
Vodpod videos no longer available.More Marc Ribot? Here.
**********
lagniappe
reading table
It might be thought the height of poor taste to ascribe good fortune to a healthy man with a young family struck down at the age of sixty by an incurable degenerative disorder from which he must shortly die. But there is more than one sort of luck. To fall prey to a motor neuron disease is surely to have offended the Gods at some point, and there is nothing more to be said. But if you must suffer thus, better to have a well-stocked head.
—Tony Judt, The Memory Chalet (2010)
*****
radio
Simone Dinnerstein, featured here a couple weeks ago, was on NPR’s All Things Considered the other day.
[D]ance first and think afterwards . . . . It’s the natural order.
—Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (English-language premiere, 1955)
Al Minns & Leon James, New York (Savoy Ballroom, Harlem), 1950s
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
art beat
Helen Levitt, New York, c. 1940
Happy Birthday, Max!
No drummer is more clear, more precise, more melodic.
Max Roach, January 10, 1924-August 16, 2007
“The Third Eye,” live
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“The Drum Also Waltzes” (Drums Unlimited), 1966
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
With Sonny Rollins (saxophone), “St. Thomas” (Saxophone Colossus), 1956
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
With Clifford Brown (trumpet), “Sweet Clifford” (Brown and Roach Incorporated), 1955
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
With Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Charlie Parker (saxophone), Bud Powell (piano), Charles Mingus (bass), “Salt Peanuts,” live, 1953
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
In this music, you have to find out who you are, what you feel, what you want to say. That’s one of the reasons that it’s so American. You have to be yourself.
That’s also one way jazz is different from classical music. In classical music, you learn to study and come up with the finest interpretation of a work that you can. That’s a different way of expressing your personality. You have to learn to use what’s written already to express yourself. In jazz, you have to learn to be who you are, and create the music from that.
—Max Roach (in Gene Santoro, Highway 61 Revisited [2004])
*****
radio
Today it’s all Max all day at WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University).
Talk about a one-two punch.
9/10
The MacArthur Foundation awards him a “genius grant.”
12/10
The Village Voice, in its annual Jazz Critics’ Poll, names his album Ten the year’s best.
Jason Moran (piano) and the Bandwagon (Tarus Mateen, bass; Nasheet Waits, drums), live, Virginia (Rosslyn), 9/11/10
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
fathers and sons
While still a teenager, Moran began studying with Jaki Byard—a relationship that lasted four years.
*****
reading table
I’m interested in how close our orderly lives are to utter chaos.
—Scott Spencer
Happy New Year!
Hearing her talk about music, as I discovered yesterday during WKCR-FM’s Bach Festival (where she played deejay for a couple hours), is nearly as enthralling as hearing her play.
Bach, Goldberg Variations (excerpt)/Simone Dinnerstein, piano (Bach & Friends, 2010)
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
new year’s resolution
To try to bring the excitement that Roscoe, my son Luke’s dog (who’s staying with us over Christmas break), brings to opening the front door and walking outside—as if, each time, it’s a new world (which, of course, it is).
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)
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Take 2: Krystian Zimerman, live
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Take 3: Claudio Arrau
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Take 4: Alfred Cortot
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Take 5: Sviatoslav Richter, live (Kiev)
Vodpod videos no longer available.More Chopin? Here. And here. And here.
**********
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])
Music has always been like medicine to me.
—Aaron Neville
Aaron Neville (with Allen Toussaint, piano), “I Know I’ve Been Changed” (excerpt), “I Done Made Up My Mind” (excerpt), 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.Merry Christmas!
Bessie Smith (with Joe Smith, cornet; Charlie Green, trombone; Fletcher Henderson, piano), “At the Christmas Ball” (1925)
*****
Lowell Fulson, “Lonesome Christmas (I & II)” (1950)
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Sonny Boy Williamson, “Sonny Boy’s Christmas Blues” (1951)
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
radio: all Bach, all the time
WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) is currently in the midst of their annual Bach Festival, which runs through the end of the year.
*****
reading table
Barn’s burnt down—
now
I can see the moon.—Mitzuta Masahide (trans. Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto), 1657-1723
*****
going forward
I won’t be here every day; but I’ll be here often.
music clip of the day 