favorites
“La-La (Means I Love You)” (T. Bell & W. Hart)
Bill Frisell (guitar) with Tony Scherr (bass) & Kenny Wollesen (drums), live, Rochester (NY), 2007
(Originally posted 5/28/10.)
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The Delfonics, 1968
(Originally posted 2/14/12.)
basement jukebox
The Falcons, “Good Good Feeling” (1967)
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Otis Clay, “That’s How It Is (When You’re In Love)” (1967)
The voice, too, is a rhythm instrument.
Yasiin Bey, AKA Mos Def
Live (studio performance), Paris, 3/5/12*
*“Quiet Dog,” “Niggas In Poorest,” “Sunshine/Screwface,” “Forever Alive”
two takes
Robert Glasper Experiment, “Always Shine” (feat. Lupe Fiasco & Bilal)
TV show (David Letterman), 2/29/12
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Recording, Black Radio (2012)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Jazz, classical, R&B: so much great music, no matter the genre, shares a particular quality—density.
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reading table
It’s as if your body were itself a person
And the person wasn’t you.—Frederick Seidel, “Track Bike” (excerpt), London Review of Books, 7/19/12
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art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (between court hearings at the nearby federal court building)
Willem de Kooning, Untitled XI (1975)
keep on dancing
Sometimes I don’t want to listen.
What I want are sounds washing over me.
Theo Parrish, “Summertime Is Here” (originally released 1999; reissued 2006)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
[W]hat we find in our mind and our thought is the same as what we find in our ear and in sound: an ocean in constant flux. Just as our ear turns out to be nothing but a construct, and likewise sound, neither can we isolate anything we might call our mind or thought, much less our self.
—The Heart Sutra, translation (from Sanskrit) and commentary (from which this is drawn) by Red Pine, AKA Bill Porter (2004)
*****
reading table
the whining mosquito
also thinks I’m old . . .
edge of my ear—Kobayashi Issa, 1819 (translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
basement jukebox
The Valentinos (feat. Bobby Womack), “Lookin’ For A Love,” 1962
*****
Billy Stewart, “Sitting In The Park,” 1965
Happy (Day After) Father’s Day
Nas (son) with Olu Dara (father), “Bridging the Gap” (2004)
(sampling Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy”)
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lagniappe
Here’s more from the old man.
David Murray Octet, “Dewey’s Circle” (DM, tenor saxophone; Olu Dara, trumpet; Butch Morris, cornet; George Lewis, trombone; Henry Threadgill, alto saxophone; Anthony Davis, piano; Wilber Morris, bass; Steve McCall, drums), Ming (Black Saint, 1980)
*****
Muddy Waters, “Mannish Boy” (Chess, 1955)
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lagniappe
reading table
People are mysterious, unfathomable—like divinities: natural objects for reverence. But our habits of thought turn the people around us into objects, the means for our self-protection.
—Lama John Makransky, “Family Practice,”
Tricycle, Summer 2001
three takes
“Fool For You” (C.L. Green)
Alice Smith, recording and video, 2011
*****
Cee Lo Green, feat. Melanie Fiona, recording, 2011
*****
Alice Smith, live, Washington, D.C. (Howard Theatre), 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
What will it all be like in five years’ time
when you try to remember?—John Ashbery, “For John Clare” (excerpt)
two takes
“Human Nature” (S. Porcaro & J. Bettis)
Vijay Iyer Trio (VI, piano; Stephan Crump, bass; Marcus Gilmore, drums), live (studio performance [KPLU-FM]), 2011
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Michael Jackson, recording (Thriller), 1982
two takes
“Kung Fu” (C. Mayfield)
The Dirtbombs, live, New York (Southpaw, Brooklyn), 2008
*****
Curtis Mayfield, recording (Sweet Exorcist), 1974
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lagniappe
found words
Yesterday, in Cambridge, Massachusetts (where I am for my son Alex’s college graduation), sitting on a brick sidewalk in Harvard Square, a panhandler with a sign:
OBAMA’S NOT THE ONLY ONE
WHO WANTS CHANGE
music clip of the day 