Some places actually exist because they could never be imagined.
Treme Sidewalk Steppers Second Line, Rebirth Brass Band (with guest Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews, trumpet), New Orleans, 2/1/09
Happy Mardi Gras!
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lagniappe
Mardi Gras in New Orleans (with Arthur Hardy)
Blues is a big tent. Over here is Slim Harpo (“I’m A King Bee,” 2:18-). And over there are the Stooges (“I Wanna Be Your Dog,” 4:48-).
Alejandro Escovedo, live, Austin (Continental Club), 11/29/11
With guests Marc Ribot & David Hidalgo (guitars)
More Alejandro Escovedo? Here. And here.
Marc Ribot? Here. And here. And here. And here. And here.
David Hidalgo? Here.
not for the faint of heart
Weasel Walter (drums), Peter Evans (trumpet), Mary Halvorson (guitar), live, Toronto (Placebo Space), 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
We call it a grain of sand,
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine without a name,
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
incorrect, or apt.Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it.
It doesn’t feel itself seen and touched.
And that it fell on the windowsill
is only our experience, not its.
For it, it is no different from falling on anything else
with no assurance that it has finished falling
or that it is falling still.The window has a wonderful view of a lake,
but the view doesn’t view itself.
It exists in this world
colorless, shapeless,
soundless, odorless, and painless.The lake’s floor exists floorlessly,
and its shore exists shorelessly.
Its water feels itself neither wet nor dry
and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural.
They splash deaf to their own noise
on pebbles neither large nor small.And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless
in which the sun sets without setting at all
and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.
The wind ruffles it, its only reason being
that it blows.A second passes.
A second second.
A third.
But they’re three seconds only for us.Time has passed like a courier with urgent news.
But that’s just our simile.
The character is invented, his haste is make-believe,
his news inhuman.—Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012), “View with a Grain of Sand” (translated from Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)
A lot of trumpet players try to bowl you over. This guy, whose last album appeared on many year-end top-10 lists (When the Heart Emerges Glistening, Blue Note), does something different. He gets under your skin.
Ambrose Akinmusire (ah-kin-MOO-sir-ee) Quintet (AA, trumpet; Walter Smith III, tenor saxophone; Fabian Almazan, piano; Harish Ragavan, bass; Justin Brown, drums); live, New York (Jazz Standard), 2011
Part 1
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Part 2
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Part 3
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Part 4
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Everything you don’t love, make sure that’s not in your playing.
—Steve Coleman (saxophonist, composer, bandleader) to Ambrose Akinmusire
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passings
Wislawa Szymborska (vees-WAH-vah shim-BOR-ska), poet
July 2, 1923-February 1, 2012
The world—whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we’ve just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don’t know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we’ve got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world—it is astonishing.
But “astonishing” is an epithet concealing a logical trap. We’re astonished, after all, by things that deviate from some well-known and universally acknowledged norm, from an obviousness we’ve grown accustomed to. Now the point is, there is no such obvious world. Our astonishment exists per se and isn’t based on comparison with something else.
Granted, in daily speech, where we don’t stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like “the ordinary world,” “ordinary life,” “the ordinary course of events” . . . But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone’s existence in this world.
—Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel Lecture (excerpt, translated from Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh), 12/7/96
More Szymborska? Here. And here. And here. And here.
Until 1996, when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, I’d never heard of her. Since then I’ve read virtually everything of hers that’s appeared in translation. How much does she mean to me? Well, she’s one of two charter members (the other’s saxophonist Von Freeman) of the ultra-exclusive MCOTD Hall of Fame.
most useless label?
world music
indie rock
free jazz
The competition’s fierce.
Mostly Other People Do the Killing (Moppa Elliott, bass; Peter Evans, trumpet; Jon Irabagon, alto saxophone; Kevin Shea, drums), live, London (The Vortex), 7/14/11
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (after a hearing at the nearby federal court building)
Vincent van Gogh
The Bedroom (1889)
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Self-Portrait (1887)
With van Gogh, the life continually threatens to overtake the art; the challenge is to look with fresh eyes.
trying to teach white folks
This Is Ska! (1964)
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lagniappe
found words
Real Messages from Heaven
—book title (Books-A-Million, 144 S. Clark St., Chicago)
The other night my son Alex took me—this was my Christmas present—to see this guy at a small concert hall on the north side of Chicago (Old Town School of Folk Music). We’d last seen him together 20 years ago, in 1992, at a little club not far from where we live (FitzGerald’s). Alex wasn’t even five years old. It was an early evening set, part of a big Fourth of July festival. The night was stormy. The power went out. He played by candlelight.
Alejandro Escovedo (1951-), singer, songwriter, guitarist, bandleader
“Anchor” (A. Escovedo & C. Prophet)
Live, Austin, Tx., 2010
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“Always a Friend” (A. Escovedo & C. Prophet)
Live (with Bruce Springsteen), Asbury Park, N.J., 2010
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“Tender Heart” & “Street Songs” (A. Escovedo & C. Prophet)
Live, Austin, Tx., 2010
Roy Hargrove Quintet,* “Strasbourg/Saint Denis,” live, Paris, 2008
What better way to begin the new year than with live music, which is what I did last Sunday (with my wife Suzanne and older son Alex), catching these guys at Chicago’s Jazz Showcase, where they played an ebullient set for the overflow crowd.
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lagniappe
reading table
In January baseball lives in the imagination.
Now he was stuck at this ramshackle ballpark between a junkyard and an adult bookstore on the interstate outside Peoria.
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“The shortstop is a source of stillness at the center of the defense. He projects this stillness and his teammates respond.”
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When your moment came, you had to be ready, because if you fucked up, everyone would know whose fault it was. What other sport not only kept a stat as cruel as the error but posted it on the scoreboard for everyone to see?
—Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding (2011)
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*RH, trumpet; Justin Robinson, alto saxophone; Gerald Clayton, piano; Danton Boller, bass; Montez Coleman, drums
This week we revisit a few favorites from the past year.
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[D]ance first and think afterwards . . . . It’s the natural order.
—Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1953, 1955 [English-language premiere])
Al Minns & Leon James, New York (Savoy Ballroom, Harlem), 1950s
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
art beat
Helen Levitt, New York, c. 1940
(Originally posted 1/11/11.)
music clip of the day 