music clip of the day

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Category: saxophone

2013

Wednesday, April 3rd

Rock drummers trying to play jazz usually sound like, well, rock drummers trying to play jazz. Jazz drummers trying to play rock are no different; they typically sound like tourists pretending to be natives. This guy, no matter the idiom (rock, jazz, gospel, whatever), sounds right at home.

Brian Blade and The Fellowship Band, live, Chicago, 3/14/13

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Maybe we think that nirvana is a place where there are no problems, no more delusions. Maybe we think nirvana is something very beautiful, something unattainable. We always think nirvana is something very different from our own life. But we must really understand that it is right here, right now.

—Taizan Maezumi, Appreciate Your Life (2001)

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2013

Tuesday, April 2nd

two takes

Alton Ellis (1938-2008), “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”

Live


Recording


*****

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First day of spring—
I keep thinking about
the end of autumn.

—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694, translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)

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2013

Monday, April 1st

Monk

Thelonious Monk Quartet (TM [1917-1982], piano; Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone; Larry Gales, bass; Ben Riley, drums), 1968


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opening day . . .
green of the field
through the ticket gates

—Randy Brooks (Baseball Haiku, Cor van den Heuvel & Nanae Tamura, eds.)

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2013

Thursday, March 28th

Most saxophonists play with their mouths and fingers.

Not this guy—he uses his whole body.

Mats Gustafsson, baritone saxophone, live, Romania (Bucharest), 2010


*****

Sunday afternoon, at an art gallery on Chicago’s west side (Corbett vs. Dempsey), I heard Gustafsson, who lives in Sweden, perform with the Chicago-based reed player Ken Vandermark. One-word review: mesmerizing.

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musical thoughts

Sometimes discaholism is taken to its most further borders when the “holy 4″ is fulfilled:

When a vinyl has the holy 4 qualities: great music, great title, great rarity and an AMAZING cover and design!!!

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‘one piece of vinyl per day keeps the doctor away’

—Mats Gustafsson, Discaholic Corner

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2013

Wednesday, March 27th

What I love about the ’net is that sometimes, like yesterday, when I happened upon this, you find yourself being lifted out of your seat by something you didn’t even know existed two minutes ago.

Ned Rothenberg (clarinet, alto saxophone) & Samir Chatterjee (tabla), “Interstellar Duo #3,” live, New York, 2009

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The more I read, the less I understand.

—Charles Simic, “Serving Time” (New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012)

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2013

Wednesday, March 13th

heaven, n. a place where each morning you’d be awakened by a different combination of musical instruments.

Living By Lanterns (Mike Reed, drums; Jason Adasiewicz, vibraphone; Tomeka Reid, cello, et al.), live, Switzerland (Zurich), 2013

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2013

Saturday, March 9th

Happy (83rd) Birthday, Ornette!

Ornette Coleman Quartet (OC, alto saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Charlie Haden, bass; Billy Higgins, drums), live, Spain (Barcelona), 1987

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musical thoughts

How can I turn emotion into knowledge? That’s what I try to do with my horn.

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It’s not that I reject categories. It’s that I don’t really know what categories are.

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You take the alphabet of the English language. A to Z. A symbol attached to a sound. In music you have what are called notes and the key. In life you’ve got an idea and an emotion. We think of them as different concepts. To me, there is no difference.

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The violin, the saxophone, the trumpet: Each makes a very different sound but the very same notes. That’s pretty heavy, you know? Imagine how many different races make up the human race. I’m called colored, you’re called white, he’s called something else. We still got an asshole and a mouth. Pardon me.

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I don’t try to please when I play. I try to cure.

—Ornette Coleman

*****

radio

All Ornette, all day: WKCR-FM (Columbia University).

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2013

Friday, March 1st

Let’s end the week where we began—Europe, 1967, Sam & Dave.

“Hold On, I’m Comin'” (with Booker T. & the M.G.’s* and The Mar-Keys**), Norway


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random thoughts

The Internet, which reminds us, repeatedly, that there is here and then is now, may make Buddhists of us all.

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*Booker T. Jones, organ; Steve Cropper, guitar; Donald “Duck” Dunn, bass; Al Jackson, Jr., drums.

**Wayne Jackson, trumpet; Andrew Love & Joe Arnold, tenor saxophones.

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2013

Thursday, February 28th

serendipity

Something I just bumped into.

Trio WAZ (Ed Wilkerson, tenor saxophone; Tatsu Aoki, bass; Michael Zerang, drums), live, Michigan (Lakeside, concert presented by Portoluz), 2010


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musical thoughts

Color.

Texture.

Density.

Sometimes they’re more important than melody, or harmony, or rhythm.

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“The Snow Man”
by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

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2013

Monday, February 25th

two takes

“When Something Is Wrong With My Baby” (I. Hayes & D. Porter)

Sam & Dave, live, Germany (Offenbach), 1967


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Isaac Hayes, TV Show (Top of the Pops), England, 1995


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“The World Contracted to a Recognizable Image”
by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

at the small end of an illness
there was a picture
probably Japanese
which filled my eye

an idiotic picture
except it was all I recognized
the wall lived for me in that picture
I clung to it as a fly

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