Monday, 11/26/12
old stuff
Close your eyes and you’re there—one hand a martini, cigarette the other.
Fats Waller and his Rhythm, live radio broadcast
Yacht Club, 66 W. 52nd St., New York, 1938
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: radio
2012
2012
Saturday, 11/24/12
Happy 100th Birthday, Teddy!
Teddy Wilson, pianist, November 24, 1912-July 31, 1986
“Rosetta,” 1934
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“Body and Soul,” with the Benny Goodman Trio (BG, clarinet; TW, piano; Gene Krupa, drums), 1935
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“Foolin’ Myself,” Teddy Wilson Orchestra (TW, piano; Billie Holiday, vocals; Lester Young, tenor saxophone; Freddie Green, guitar; Jo Jones, drums, et al.), 1937
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lagniappe
radio
WKCR-FM’s celebration of his centennial, which I mentioned the other day, runs through midnight Sunday.
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musical thoughts
John Cage (whose centennial we recently celebrated), Conlon Nancarrow (ditto), Teddy Wilson—they’d make a helluva band.
2012
Thursday, 11/22/12
otherworldly
Maurice Ravel, Jeux d’eau (1901)
Martha Argerich, live (1977)
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Alfred Cortot, recording (1920)
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lagniappe
radio
After finishing, at midnight, their 24-hour Coleman Hawkins birthday celebration, the indefatigable folks at WKCR-FM didn’t rest for even a minute. Instead they embarked on a 4-day, 96-hour celebration of pianist Teddy Wilson’s centennial.
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Happy Thanksgiving!
MCOTD gives thanks for
Lester Bowie and
Blossom Dearie and
The Dirtbombs;
for Mingus, Miles, Monk,
Bach, Beethoven, Bruckner, Bartok;
for WKCR-FM and WFMU-FM;
for Morton Feldman and
Elliott Carter and
Alfred Schnittke and
Tristan Murail;
for Hound Dog Taylor, Junior Wells, Sonny Boy Williamson, Magic Sam;
for The Ex, The Heptones, The Swan Silvertones, The Impressions, The Art Ensemble of Chicago;
for Von Freeman and Art Pepper and Vernard Johnson;
for Friedrich Gulda and Martha Argerich, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Ursula Oppens;
for Ed Blackwell and
for Phillip Wilson;
for Julius Hemphill and
Henry Threadgill and
D’Angelo and
Dorothy Love Coates;
and for all the others—singers, musicians, composers, painters, photographers, printmakers, novelists, poets—who have graced this site;
and for you, who have found your way here, somehow, from Mongolia and Slovenia and Jamaica and Saudi Arabia; from Myanmar and Syria; from Angola, India, Ethiopia; from Finland, Thailand, Ireland, Iceland, and over 100 other countries.
2012
Wednesday, 11/21/12
Happy (108th) Birthday, Hawk!
Coleman Hawkins, tenor saxophonist, November 21, 1904-May 16, 1969
“Prisoner of Love,” 1958 (Art Ford’s Jazz Party, music starts at 1:15)
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“Lover Man,” 1961
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“Body and Soul,” London, 1967
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lagniappe
radio
WKCR-FM, broadcasting from Columbia University, is playing his music—and nothing but—until midnight. (Thank God for college radio.)
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reading table
We’re all in this apart.
—David Ferry, “Found Single-Line Poems,” excerpt (Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations [2012])
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something to get you in the holiday mood
William Burroughs, “Thanksgiving Prayer” (Gus Van Sant, dir.)
2012
Thursday, 10/25/12
serendipity
Cyrus, “Inversion” (Basic Channel), 1994
Last night, making dinner, I bumped into this on the radio (WFMU-FM). Television I could live without in a heartbeat. Radio? Never.
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lagniappe
found words
Better things will come or worse things, but they will come.
—Ozzie Guillen (Twitter, 10/23/12, after being fired by the Marlins)
2012
Friday, 9/14/12
old stuff
Count Basie Orchestra (feat. Jimmy Rushing [vocals] & Herschel Evans [tenor saxophone]), “When My Dreamboat Comes Home,” live (radio broadcast), New York (Savoy Ballroom, Harlem), 1937
The other day, driving to Rockford for a hearing in a murder case, listening to this for the first time, I couldn’t quit hitting the repeat button: “and once again the fields of gloom are adroitly plowed under.”
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
What music from today will folks be listening to in 2087?
2012
Wednesday, 9/5/12
Happy (100th) Birthday, John!
John Cage, composer, September 5, 1912-August 12, 1992
Today, celebrating his centennial, we revisit past clips.
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10/9/09
No matter where you are, this landscape is just around the corner.
John Cage (1912-1992), In a Landscape (1948); Stephen Drury, piano
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Music is a means of rapid transportation.
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What I’m proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude—that you act as though you’ve never been there before. So that you’re not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.
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As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
—John Cage
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5/22/10
Here’s a piece that sounds different every time you hear it.
John Cage, 4’ 33” (1952); David Tudor, piano
lagniappe
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musical thoughts
I didn’t wish it [4′ 33″] to appear, even to me, as something easy to do or as a joke. I wanted to mean it utterly and be able to live with it.
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Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.
—John Cage
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3/8/12
John Cage, Two (1987)
Live, Netherlands (Amsterdam), 2009
Dante Boon (piano), Rutger van Otterloo (soprano saxophone)
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Recording, 1991 (hat Art)
Marianne Schroeder (piano), Eberhard Blum (flute)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Every something is an echo of nothing.
—John Cage, Silence (1961)
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7/23/12
Monday, n. the day the weekly tide of confusion rolls in.
How about something simple?
John Cage (1912-1992), Six Melodies (for violin and keyboard; dedicated to Josef & Anni Albers), 1950; Annelie Gahl (violin) & Klaus Lang (electric piano), 2010
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lagniappe (new stuff)
radio
Today it’s all Cage all day at WKCR-FM.
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art beat: more from Sunday’s stop at the Art Institute of Chicago
Agnes Martin, Untitled #12, 1977 (detail)
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another birthday, closer to home
Today also marks the birthday of MCOTD—our third.
2012
Wednesday, 8/29/12
who you’d be swept away by—right now—
if you were a 24-year-old male*
Jessie Ware, live, London, 7/18/12
“Night Light”
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“Taking In Water”
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“Running”
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lagniappe
radio: final day of WKCR’s Pres-&-Bird Birthday Marathon
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*Based on a sample of one—my son Alex.
2012
Tuesday, 8/28/12
Need a ticket to an enchanted forest?
John Luther Adams, songbirdsongs (1974-80)
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lagniappe
radio: day two of WKCR’s Pres-&-Bird Birthday Marathon
music clip of the day 