music clip of the day

Monday, February 25th

two takes

“When Something Is Wrong With My Baby” (I. Hayes & D. Porter)

Sam & Dave, live, Germany (Offenbach), 1967

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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 eye

an idiotic picture
except it was all I recognized
the wall lived for me in that picture
I clung to it as a fly

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Sunday, February 24th

back to church

The Wings of Faith, of Waynesboro, Mississippi (pop. 5,197), live, 2012

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Saturday, February 23rd

This seems, somehow, to these ears, anyway, to fit a day when the ashes of my mother-in-law are being buried.

Revolutionary Ensemble (Leroy Jenkins, violin; Sirone, bass; Jerome Cooper, drums), “Chicago” (Live at Moosham Castle, 1977)

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Wednesday, February 20th

basement jukebox

Magic Sam (AKA Samuel Maghett, 1937-1969), Cobra Records, Chicago

“All Your Love,” 1957

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“Love Me with a Feeling,” 1957

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“Everything Gonna Be Alright,” 1958

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“21 Days In Jail,” 1958

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taking a break

I’m taking some time off—back soon.

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Tuesday, February 19th

Kidd Jordan Quartet (KJ, tenor saxophone; Billy Bang, violin; William Parker, bass; Hamid Drake, drums), New York (Vision Festival), 2008

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

We tend to take musical instruments for granted, as if their existence were inevitable. But the fact that something exists doesn’t mean it had to. We could’ve been born into a world that never heard a violin.

*****

reading table

“What kind of heaven is that, you can’t have your records?”

—Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue

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2013

Monday, February 18th

yesterday afternoon

I took a journey that began in late 18th-century Austria, proceeded to mid-20th-century Russia, and concluded in early 20th-century France. Joseph Haydn, Dmitri Shostakovich, Maurice Ravel—they were the hosts. These folks, playing at the University of Chicago’s new Logan Arts Center, were the guides. If one day I learned that my life would be over at midnight, I’d be happy to spend the afternoon, after lunching at a Mexican restaurant (maybe Nuevo Leon on 18th Street), listening to a string quartet.

Pacifica Quartet, New York, 2009; Leo Janacek (1854-1928), String Quartet No. 2 (“Intimate Letters”), first movement