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.
Jose James, “Do You Feel”
Live, KCRW Berkeley Street Session, Santa Monica, 12/17/12
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
R&B?
Jazz?
Pop?
We need a new vocabulary—or maybe none at all.
The other night, as Mitsuko Uchida was performing two of Mozart’s piano concertos (17, 27) with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, there were moments so pure, so open, I would have liked nothing more than to disappear into one of the spaces between the notes and stay there.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, KV. 466; Mitsuko Uchida (piano and conducting), Camerata Salzburg, live, Germany (Salzburg), 2001
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
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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lagniappe
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.
*****
radio
All Ornette, all day: WKCR-FM (Columbia University).
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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lagniappe
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.
two takes
“When Something Is Wrong With My Baby” (I. Hayes & D. Porter)
Sam & Dave, live, Germany (Offenbach), 1967
***
Isaac Hayes, TV Show (Top of the Pops), England, 1995
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lagniappe
reading table
“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 eyean idiotic picture
except it was all I recognized
the wall lived for me in that picture
I clung to it as a fly
music clip of the day 