two takes
The Davis Sisters (feat. Jackie Verdell), “We Need Power”
TV Show (TV Gospel Time), 1964
Recording, 1959
**********
lagniappe
reading table
Nothing lasts, and yet nothing passes, either. And nothing passes just because nothing lasts.
—Philip Roth, The Human Stain
Composers, too, like singers, saxophonists, even drummers, have distinctive voices. Here’s one we haven’t heard in a while.
Morton Feldman (1926-1987), For Stefan Wolpe (1986), The Choir of Saint Ignatius of Antioch (Harold Chaney, cond.), Benjamin Ramirez & Thomas Kolor, vibraphones
**********
lagniappe
random thoughts
My father, gone since 1977, does he miss being alive?
Jose James, “Do You Feel”
Live, KCRW Berkeley Street Session, Santa Monica, 12/17/12
**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
R&B?
Jazz?
Pop?
We need a new vocabulary—or maybe none at all.
Feel like floating?
Steve Reich (1936-), Music for 18 Musicians (1974-76)
eighth blackbird, Third Coast Percussion, et al., live, Chicago, 2011
Rock drummers trying to play jazz usually sound like, well, rock drummers trying to play jazz. Jazz drummers trying to play rock are no different; they typically sound like tourists pretending to be natives. This guy, no matter the idiom (rock, jazz, gospel, whatever), sounds right at home.
Brian Blade and The Fellowship Band, live, Chicago, 3/14/13
**********
lagniappe
reading table
Maybe we think that nirvana is a place where there are no problems, no more delusions. Maybe we think nirvana is something very beautiful, something unattainable. We always think nirvana is something very different from our own life. But we must really understand that it is right here, right now.
—Taizan Maezumi, Appreciate Your Life (2001)
two takes
Alton Ellis (1938-2008), “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”
Live
Recording
*****
lagniappe
reading table
First day of spring—
I keep thinking about
the end of autumn.—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694, translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
Monk
Thelonious Monk Quartet (TM [1917-1982], piano; Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone; Larry Gales, bass; Ben Riley, drums), 1968
**********
lagniappe
reading table
opening day . . .
green of the field
through the ticket gates—Randy Brooks (Baseball Haiku, Cor van den Heuvel & Nanae Tamura, eds.)
back to church
“He Set Me Free,” Mt. Do-Well Baptist Church, McConnells, S.C., 1991
**********
lagniappe
reading table
“God’s Grandeur”
By Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)The world is charged with the grandeur of God.It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oilCrushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soilIs bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.And for all this, nature is never spent;There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;And though the last lights off the black West wentOh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —Because the Holy Ghost over the bentWorld broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
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
only rock ’n’ roll
Dolly Varden, “California Zephyr,” live, Chicago, 1999
**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
Last Saturday, with my wife Suzanne and son Alex, I heard these folks at Fitzgerald’s, a wonderful club in Berwyn (just outside Chicago) that I’ve been going to since long before Alex, now twenty-five, was born. Some people, if given the chance to be anywhere in the world on a Saturday night, might choose Paris. Others might take Rome. London would likely get some votes, New York too. For me, last Saturday anyway, there was nowhere I would rather have been than Berwyn.
