sweet soul music
D’Angelo and The Soultronics (Questlove, drums; Pino Palladino, bass; Chalmers “Spanky” Alford, guitar; Frank Lacy, trombone, trumpet; Anthony Hamilton, vocals, et al.), “Send It On,” live, London, 2000
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lagniappe
art beat
Helen Levitt (1913-2009), New York, c. 1940
love it or hate it
Anthony Braxton 12+1tet, Composition 355, live, Italy (Venice), 2012
*****
Anthony, a MacArthur “genius” award winner (1994) and professor at Wesleyan University, talks about this and that:
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Music can take us places we’ve never been before, if we’re willing to listen to sounds we’ve never heard before.
can’t wait: Chicago Jazz Festival, 8/29-9/1
The Engines (9/1; Dave Rempis, saxophones, Jeb Bishop, trombone; Kent Kessler [filling in for Nate McBride], bass; Tim Daisy, drums), live, Columbia, South Carolina, 2013
#1
#2
more
O.V. Wright (1939-1980)
“God Blessed Our Love,” “When A Man Loves A Woman,” live, Japan, 1979
*****
“I’d Rather Be Blind, Crippled, And Crazy” (Back Beat, 1973)
*****
“A Nickel And A Nail” (Back Beat, 1975)
old school
O.V. Wright (1939-1980), “Into Something (Can’t Shake Loose)”
Live, Japan, 1979
*****
No other soul singer—not Otis Redding, not Al Green, no one—gives me such chills.
D’Angelo (with Questlove, drums; Pino Palladino, bass; Kuumba Frank Lacy, trombone, trumpet; Chalmers “Spanky” Alford, guitar; Anthony Hamilton, vocals, et al.), live, Switzerland (Montreux Jazz Festival), 2000
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
No stage anywhere in the world can compare with the one that exists in the imagination. Where else can you find Jimi Hendrix jamming with Miles Davis? Sam Cooke singing with Smokey Robinson? Sly Stone taking everybody higher with Sun Ra?
*****
Happy Birthday, Suzanne!
tonight
These guys will be at FitzGerald’s (see yesterday’s post)—me, too.
St. Paul and the Broken Bones, “Broken Bones and Pocket Change,” live, Nashville, 2012
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Went to Mercury Lounge tonite. I have seen the future of music & the name of the band is St. Paul & the Broken Bones.
—Rosanne Cash, Twitter, 6/5/13
one thing after
another after another
after another after another after . . .
John Cage (1912-1992), Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1958); Variable Geometry (Jean-Phillippe Calvin, director), live, London, 2011
A performance like this can go wrong in so many ways. This one, to these ears, works wonderfully. Momentum, tautness, immediacy—it has them all.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Everything we do is music.
Who better to sing about a ghost town than a band that’s survived not only Katrina but three—yes, three—homicides?*
Hot 8 Brass Band, “Ghost Town,” New Orleans, 2012
*As detailed in Wikipedia, in 1996 “seventeen-year-old trumpet player Jacob Johnson was found shot execution-style in his home”; in 2004 “trombone player Joseph ‘Shotgun Joe’ Williams was shot dead by police in controversial circumstances”; and in 2006 “drummer Dinerral “Dick” Shavers was shot and killed while driving with his family,” with a bullet intended for his fifteen-year-old stepson.
