love it or hate it
Weasel Walter (drums), Mary Halvorson (guitar), Peter Evans (trumpet), live, New York (Death By Audio, Brooklyn), 2012
serendipity
Yesterday. Late afternoon, working on an old murder case. Happen upon this: windows open, letting in a breeze.
Mary Halvorson Quintet (MH, guitar, compositions; Jon Irabagon, alto saxophone; Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet; John Hebert, bass; Ches Smith, drums), “Love in Eight Colors,” “Hemorrhaging Smiles,” live, Washington, D.C., 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
From now on
it’s all clear profit,
every sky.—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), on his fiftieth birthday (translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
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.
Stevie Wonder with Prince, “Superstition” (S. Wonder), live, Paris, 2010
Not many stars would handle this the way Prince does. Actually, what’s most impressive is what he doesn’t do. Given a guitar solo, he doesn’t try to steal the show—or even draw attention. Instead, he feeds the groove.
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lagniappe
reading table
Sophistication is upscale conformity.
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What is more yours than what always holds you back?
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The heart is a small, cracked cup, easy to fill, impossible to keep full.
—James Richardson, “Even More Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays from Vectors 3.0” (excerpts)
can’t wait: Chicago Jazz Festival, 8/29-9/1
Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet (8/30), Louis Moholo, drums, Steve Noble, drums, live, London, 2010
#1
#2
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lagniappe
reading table
What a glut of books! Who can read them?
—Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)
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.
music clip of the day 