music clip of the day

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Category: rock/pop

2010

Thursday, 7/1/10

looking back

Today, celebrating our 300th post, we revisit a few favorites.

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3/12/10

Both Chicago blues artists. Both guitar players. Both influenced by other kinds of music.

Musical personalities? They could hardly be more different.

Buddy Guy, “Let Me Love You Baby,” live

*****

Fenton Robinson, “Somebody Loan Me A Dime,” live, 1977

***

Back in the 1970s, when I was at Alligator Records, I had the pleasure of working with Fenton, co-producing his album I Hear Some Blues Downstairs (a Grammy nominee). He didn’t fit the stereotype of a bluesman. Gentle, soft-spoken, serious, introspective: he was all these things. He died in 1997.

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3/3/10

What other pop star has made such stunning contributions as a guest artist?

Sinead O’Connor

With Willie Nelson, “Don’t Give Up”

*****

With the Chieftains, “The Foggy Dew”

*****

With Shane MacGowan, “Haunted”

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5/28/2010

two takes

“La-La Means I Love You”

The Delfonics, live, 2008 (originally recorded 1968)

*****

Bill Frisell, live, New York (Rochester), 2007

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Music . . . carr[ies] us smoothly across the tumult of experience, like water over rocks.

—Vijay Iyer, liner notes, Historicity (2009)

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2010

Thursday, June 10, 2010

We still have this song . . .

—my 19-year-old son Luke, at the end of a long, hard day—one full of setbacks—as he played this (again) on the car CD player

Mike Posner, “You Don’t Have To Leave” (2009)

Want more? Here.

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2010

Friday, June 4, 2010

The rock & roll mansion boasts a particularly spacious lunatic wing.

Jerry Lee Lewis, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” live (TV broadcast), 1957

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2010

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

so much depends

upon

a  jacket’s

unbuttoning

—William Carlos Williams (after seeing Jackie Wilson)

Jackie Wilson, “No Pity (In The Naked City),” live (TV broadcast), 1965

Want more? Here. Here. Here.

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lagniappe

At the 1984 Grammy Awards, Michael Jackson dedicated his Album of the Year award (for Thriller) to Jackie Wilson, telling the audience:

In the entertainment business, there are leaders and there are followers. And I just want to say that I think Jackie Wilson was a wonderful entertainer . . . I love you and thank you so much.

*****

Michael Jackson studied Jackie Wilson, mimicked him, emulated him, subjected himself to his discipline. He covered ‘Lonely Teardrops’ when he was a teenager, and to some extent sang it the rest of his life.—Tom Junod

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2010

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Sometimes you don’t feel like Beethoven.

Or Miles Davis.

Or the Soul Stirrers.

What you want is a jolt.

Micachu & The Shapes, “Lips”

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lagniappe

This is what I call PR.

[Mica Levi of Micachu & The Shapes is] the most singular artist leading the future-pop frontier, with an instinctual understanding of music only possible from one of those rare lives where rhythms, melodies, discord and noise have underpinned every last waking second.

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Born in Guildford and raised in Watford, Mica Levi couldn’t have had much more of a musical upbringing if she was conceived between Mozart and an oboe and forced to grow up inside a grand piano.

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‘Lips’ is a short, sharp procession of maddening fret-hits and taunting vocal refrains that lead you everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

—Rough Trade Records

*****

live music on the radio

One of my favorite radio stations, WFMU-FM, is broadcasting live today from the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona: the Almighty Defenders, Cold Cave, Van Dyke Parks, et al.

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2010

Friday, May 21, 2010

Jenny said when she was just five years old
There was nothin’ happening at all
Every time she puts on the radio
There was nothin’ goin’ down at all
Not at all

Then one fine mornin’, she puts on a New York station
You know, she couldn’t believe what she heard at all
She started shakin’ to that fine, fine music
You know, her life was saved by rock and roll . . .

—Lou Reed, “Rock & Roll” (The Velvet Underground, Loaded [1970])

*****

Bo Diddley, “Hey, Bo Diddley,” “Bo Diddley,” live (TV broadcast [Ed Sullivan Show]), 1955

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lagniappe

This well may be the human race’s greatest ever achievement.

—YouTube comment

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2010

Thursday, May 20, 2010

These guys sounded awfully good the other day—let’s hear some more.

Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue, “Orleans & Claiborne,” live, New Orleans, 2010

There are a lot of things to like about this performance. One is the way Shorty, following two hot solos (tenor, baritone), doesn’t try to out-blow those guys. Instead, he changes directions (3:20). Sometimes nothing packs more punch than restraint. (Yeah, I don’t know why this clip cuts off when it does, either.)

Want more? Here.

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lagniappe

passings

Soon I’ll be leaving for a funeral—my uncle, Hugh Frebault. Nine days ago we sat and talked and laughed for over an hour; now he’s silent. Does life get any more understandable as you get older? I don’t think so—if anything, it seems to become only more mysterious, more unfathomable.

Blind Willie Johnson, “Dark Was The Night – Cold Was The Ground” (1927, Dallas)

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2010

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Dear MCOTD,

What would go well with a bottle of sleeping pills?

Chet Baker, “Almost Blue” (Let’s Get Lost [1988])

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lagniappe

Here’s a big birthday shout-out to my 19-year-old son Luke, who’s opened my ears to more things than I could ever count.

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2010

Wednesday, 5/5/10

Without hitting you over the head with his classical training, this guy, early in his career, took pop songs to new places—melodically, harmonically, structurally.

Randy Newman

Dusty Springfield, “I Don’t Want To Hear It Anymore” (1969)

*****

“Just One Smile”

Gene Pitney (1966 [#8, UK Charts])

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Blood, Sweat & Tears (1968)

*****

Randy Newman, live (TV broadcast [with The BBC Concert Orchestra, London]), “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today” (2008; first recorded in 1966 [Julius LaRosa, 8/66; Judy Collins, 11/66])

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lagniappe

To me, someone who writes really good songs is Randy Newman. . . . You know, he’s got that down to an art. Now Randy knows music. He knows music.—Bob Dylan (1991)

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2010

Tuesday, 5/4/10

How often do you get to witness something of this historical magnitude—the first MCOTD clip directed by a MCOTD reader? (Before suspicious minds begin to wonder, let me assure you that this selection was untainted by payola—MCOTD cannot be bought [at least not cheaply].)

Man/Miracle, “Pushing and Shoving” (2010)

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lagniappe

art beat

William Eggleston (Art Institute exhibit closes May 23rd)


Want more? Here.

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