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Monday, May 13th

Today, celebrating his twenty-second birthday, we revisit a few of the many posts inspired by my son Luke.

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It’s impossible, sometimes, to separate our experience of music, especially pop music, from the surrounding circumstances. The other day, for instance, I was taking my son Luke back to school in Bloomington, Indiana. He was playing dashboard DJ. As we rolled through the hills of southern Indiana, nearing our destination, this came on after a long stretch of hip-hop (Lil Wayne, Eminem, Young Jeezy, Tyga, et al.), and the electronic intro, the Björk-like voice—they lit up the highway.

Ellie Goulding, “Lights,” 2010


(Originally posted 8/22/12.)

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what you’d be listening to if you were 20* 

Lupe Fiasco, “The End of the World” (sampling M83, “Midnight City”), 2011

 

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Adele, “Rolling in the Deep,” Jamie xx Remix, feat. Childish Gambino, 2011


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*Based on a sample of one—my son Luke. What a treat to have a pair of 20-year-old ears back in the house (and car) over the holidays.

(Originally posted 1/2/12.)

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what’s new

I’ve got some music for you . . .

—my (20-year-old) son Luke, in a hospital room, moments after returning from general anesthesia and foot surgery

“Made In America,” Kanye West & Jay-Z, with Frank Ocean (Watch the Throne), 2011

 

. . . it might be my favorite song on the whole album.

(Originally posted, with a different visual, 9/3/11.)

Sunday, May 12th

back to church

Speech and song are sometimes indistinguishable.

Pastor Ezell Smith, live, Chicago (Prince of Peace Baptist Church)


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lagniappe

random thoughts on Mother’s Day

Professional jargon, whether legal, medical, psychological, whatever, is largely a desert. But once in a while you come upon a flowering tree. The great British psychoanalyst and pediatrician D. W. Winnicott (1896-1971) planted one such tree—the good enough mother.

Saturday, May 11th

Here, following Hélène Grimaud’s the other day and Rudolf Serkin’s a while back, is another take.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110, third movement, Maurizio Pollini (1942-), live


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lagniappe

reading table

I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch —
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Friday, May 10th

what’s new

Savages, “Shut Up,” 2013

http://vimeo.com/64571402

Thursday, May 9th

Some instruments just seem made for each other.

Ned Rothenberg (clarinet), Mivos Quartet, Clarinet Quintet (N. Rothenberg), excerpt, live, Ann Arbor, 2011


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lagniappe

reading table

Let there be physical suddenness.

—Michael McClure

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random thoughts

This morning, before sunrise, when I was out walking my son Luke’s dog, Roscoe, he stopped to inspect each blade of grass, carefully.

Wednesday, May 8th

Yesterday, listening to WKCR-FM (Columbia University), I bumped into this, a track I never tired of hearing when, in the ’70s, I was in college.

Bill Evans (1929-1980), piano, “Never Let Me Go” (Alone, 1968)

Tuesday, May 7th

Only a world this noisy could produce music this quiet.

Evan Parker (soprano saxophone), et al.,* live, London (Freedom of the City festival), 2011


*Heledd Francis Wright (flute), John Russell (guitar), Augusti Fernandez (piano), Adam Linson (bass), Toma Gouband (percussion), Lawrence Casserley (electronics), Matt Wright (electronics).

Monday, May 6th

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110; Hélène Grimaud (1969-), live, Germany (Berlin), c. 2001


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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Each performer plays this piece differently, and each performance is different. Each listener hears it differently, and each listen is different. This isn’t one piece; it’s many.

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random thoughts

Two sons, two fathers. Saturday evening, as we were driving back to Bloomington from Indianapolis, where we’d celebrated his graduation from Indiana University at a grand old steakhouse, Luke got a call from a friend. A guy he knew, who grew up in the town right next to us and was a couple years behind him at IU, had just been in a terrible car accident—north of Indianapolis, on the highway to Chicago. He was on his way home for the summer. Now all I could think of was his father, whom I had never met. He would be getting into his car. He would be driving into Chicago on the Eisenhower Expressway, then going south on the Dan Ryan. He would be taking the Skyway into Indiana, then heading toward Indianapolis on Interstate 65. He would be going to get his son. For the last time.

Sunday, May 5th

back to church

Rev. C. L. Franklin (1915-1984), “I’ll Go”

Saturday, May 4th

my kind of  folks 

Teletubbies (BBC, 1997-2001)