radio | music clip of the day

Sunday, 5/20/12

three takes

“Trials, Troubles, Tribulations” (E.C. Ball)
(AKA “Tribulations”)

Andrew Bird
Live, Nashville (Grimey’s New & Preloved Music), 2009

***

Wayne Henderson, Martha Spencer & Jackson Cunningham
Live, Maryland (Rockville), 2010

***

E.C. Ball & Lacey Richardson
Recording (Alan Lomax), 1959-60

**********

lagniappe

listening room: (some of) what’s playing

• Face A Frowning World: An E.C. Ball Memorial Album (Tompkins Square)

• Merle Haggard, If I Could Only Fly (Anti- Records)

• The Canton Spirituals, The Live Experience 1999 (Verity Records)

• Getatchew Mekuria & The Ex & Guests, Moa Anbessa (Terp Records)

• Derek Bailey, Bill Laswell, Tony Williams, Arcana (DIW Records)

• Peter Brotzmann Octet, Machine Gun (FMP)

• Peter Brotzmann Sextet & Quartet, Nipples (Atavistic Records/Unheard Music Series)

• Miles Davis Quintet, Live in Europe 1967 (Columbia)

• Cecil Taylor European Orchestra, Alms/Tiergarten (Spree) (FMP)

• Alfred Cortot, piano, The Master Pianist (EMI, Icon Series)

• Nathan Milstein, violin, J.S. Bach: Sonatas & Partitas (Deutsche Grammaphon)

• Arnold Schoenberg, Das Klavierwerk, Peter Serkin, piano (Arcana)

• WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)

—Bird Flight (Phil Schaap, jazz [Charlie Parker])
—Eastern Standard Time (Carter Van Pelt, Jamaican music)

• WFMU-FM

—Mudd Up! (DJ/Rupture, “new bass and beats”)
—Sinner’s Crossroads (Kevin Nutt, gospel)
—Cherry Blossom Clinic (Terre T, rock, etc.)
—Fool’s Paradise (Rex; “Vintage rockabilly, R & B, blues, vocal groups, garage, instrumentals, hillbilly, soul and surf”)
—Downtown Soulville (Mr. Fine Wine, soul, etc.)

• WHPK-FM (broadcasting from University of Chicago)

—The Blues Excursion (Arkansas Red)

Leave a comment

2012

Monday, 4/30/12

Happy (79th) Birthday, Willie!

Willie Nelson, “She’s Not For You,” “Darkness On the Face of the Earth,” “Hello Walls,” TV show (The Porter Wagoner Show), 1965

**********

lagniappe

Today, at 8 a.m. (EST), WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) kicks off their Annual Country Music Festival. This year’s fest, which runs until midnight Wednesday, focuses on “the Outlaw and Progressive country movements of the 1970s”: “new and archival interviews from Ray Wylie Hubbard, Billy Joe Shaver, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings”; “[s]pecial segments . . . detail[ing] the fertile creative scene in Lubbock, Texas”; “the endurance of the outlaw theme in country music”; “progressive country’s Californian comrades,” etc. (To college students this stuff ain’t just old—it’s history.)

Leave a comment

2012

Sunday, 4/29/12

Let’s go to church.

“Until I Die,” Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, N.C., 2001

**********

lagniappe

reading table

On the Death of Friends in Childhood

We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven,
Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell;
If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,
Forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands
In games whose very names we have forgotten.
Come, memory, let us seek them there in the shadows.

—Donald Justice (Collected Poems, 2004)

***

“[We find] it impossible, when we have to analyze death, to imagine it in terms other than those of life.”

—Marcel Proust, The Fugitive (translated from French by Peter Collier)

*****

listening room: (some of) what’s playing

• The Dirtbombs, Ultraglide In Black (In the Red Records)

• Wild Flag (Merge Records)

• That’s What They Want: The Best of Jerry McCain (Excello)

• The Best of Slim Harpo (Hip-O)

• Ambrose Akinmusire, When the Heart Emerges Glistening (Blue Note)

• Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy, I Only Have Eyes For You (ECM)

• Anthony Braxton, 9 Compositions (Iridium)

• Chicago Tentet, American Landscapes 1 & 2 (Okka)

• Steve Lehman Octet, Travail, Transformation, and Flow (Pi Recordings)

• Joe McPhee, Nation Time (Unheard Music Series)

• Weasel Walter, Mary Halvorson, Peter Evans, Electric Fruit (Thirsty Ear)

• J. Berg’s Royal Rarities Vols. 2-3; A Cappella Archives, Vol. 3; Gospel Goldies, Vol. 2 (Rare Gospel)

• The Fisk Jubilee Quartet, There Breathes A Hope (Archeophone)

• This May Be My Last Time Singing: Raw African-American Gospel On 45 RPM 1957-1982 (Tompkins Square)

• Bach, Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, Pierre Fournier, (Archiv Production/DG)

• Mozart, Piano Sonatas Nos. 16 and 17, Peter Serkin, piano (Pro Arte)

• Arnold Schoenberg, Das Klavierwerk, Peter Serkin, piano (Arcana)

• The Art of Joseph Szigeti (Biddulph Recordings)

• Anton Webern, Five Movements For String Quartet, Op. 5; Six Bagatelles For String Quartet, Op. 9; String Quartet, Op. 28; Quartetto Italiano (Philips)

• Anton Webern, Complete Works for String Quartet and String Trio, Artis Quartet Wien (Nimbus)

• Music of Stefan Wolpe, Vol. 6, David Holzman, piano (Bridge)

• WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)

—Bird Flight (Phil Schaap, jazz [Charlie Parker])
—Traditions in Swing (Phil Schaap, jazz)
—Eastern Standard Time (Carter Van Pelt, Jamaican music)
—Rag Aur Taal (various, Indian)

• WFMU-FM

• WHPK-FM (broadcasting from University of Chicago)

—The Blues Excursion (Arkansas Red)

*****

radio

Happy Birthday, Duke!

All Ellington, all day: WKCR-FM.

Leave a comment

2012

Sunday, 4/22/12

two takes

“Feel Like Going Home” (C. Rich)

Charlie Rich (vocals & piano), demo, 1973

*****

Tom Jones with Mark Knopfler (guitar), TV performance, 1996

**********

lagniappe

musical thoughts

I don’t think I ever recorded anyone who was better as a singer, writer, and player than Charlie Rich. It is all so effortless, the way he moves from rock to country to blues to jazz.

—Sam Phillips (Sun Records)

*****

radio

Happy Birthday, Charles!

All Mingus, all day: WKCR-FM.

*****

reading table

I thought that you were an anchor in the drift of the world;
but no: there isn’t an anchor anywhere.
There isn’t an anchor in the drift of the world. Oh no.
I thought you were. Oh no. The drift of the world.

—William Bronk,* “The World” (mp3 [Hudson Falls, NY, 1978], Selected Poems [1995])

***

*Bronk, who died in 1999, was recently inducted, posthumously, into the ultra-exclusive MCOTD Hall of Fame, joining tenor saxophonist Von Freeman and poet Wislawa Szymborska.

Leave a comment

2012

Tuesday, 4/17/12

Happy (70th) Birthday, Han!

Han Bennink, drummer, percussionist, visual artist, etc.

Han Bennink (drums) & Guus Janssen (piano), “One Bar”
Live, Japan (Chiba), 2010

**********

lagniappe

You’ve got to hand it to WKCR-FM. There are a few stations, here and there, that might spin a track or two in honor of the Dutch drummer’s 70th birthday. Somebody might even give him an hour or two. But who, other than a station deeply in tune with Bennink’s own inspired lunacy, would stage a five-day marathon?

Leave a comment

2012

Monday, 4/9/12

Shabazz Palaces, live (studio performance, KEXP-FM), 2011

These guys—their mix of drums, mbira, electronics—call to mind the AACM’s* tagline: ancient to the future.

*Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Fred Anderson, Leroy Jenkins, et al.).

Leave a comment

2012

Saturday, 4/7/12

The tree of country music has lots of eccentric branches.

The Handsome Family, “My Friend” (2009)

**********

lagniappe

reading table

The Everyday Enchantment of Music
by Mark Strand
(Almost Invisible [2012])

A rough sound was polished until it became a smoother sound, which was polished until it became music. Then the music was polished until it became the memory of a night in Venice when tears of the sea fell from the Bridge of Sighs, which in turn was polished until it ceased to be and in its place stood the empty home of a heart in trouble. Then suddenly there was sun and the music came back and traffic was moving and off in the distance, at the edge of the city, a long line of clouds appeared, and there was thunder, which, however menacing, would become music, and the memory of what happened after Venice would begin, and what happened after the home of the troubled heart broke in two would also begin.

*****

Happy Birthday, Billie!

All Billie, all day—WKCR-FM.

Leave a comment

2012

Thursday, 3/29/12

Erlend Viken, “Storpolsdansen,” live

This guy I stumbled upon the other day, as I do so many things, listening to the radio (Transpacific Sound Paradise, WFMU-FM, Sat., 6-9 p.m. [EST]). His studio performance, and interview, can be heard here.

**********

lagniappe

random thoughts

Does life become more understandable as you get older—or less?

Leave a comment

2012

Saturday, 3/10/12

Happy (109th) Birthday, Bix!

How many sonic experiences are as dizzying as the one offered this time each year by WKCR-FM (Columbia University)? First there’s 24 hours, straight, of Ornette. The next 24? Bix, Bix, Bix.

Frankie Trumbauer and His Orchestra (feat. Bix Beiderbecke, cornet), “There’ll Come A Time (Wait and See),” 1928

**********

lagniappe

found words

A distinctive psychiatric hospital

—advertisement, New Yorker, 3/5/12

Leave a comment

2012

Friday, 3/9/12

Happy (82nd) Birthday, Ornette!

Ornette Coleman Quartet with guests Joshua Redman (tenor saxophone), James Blood Ulmer (guitar), Charlie Haden (bass), live, Netherlands (North Sea Jazz Festival, Rotterdam), 2010

Part 1