basement jukebox
Ray Harris, “Where’d You Stay Last Night” (1956)
***
Ronnie Self, “Rocky Road Blues” (1957)
***
Johnny Powers, “Long Blonde Hair” (1957)
only rock ’n’ roll
Japandroids, “For the Love of Ivy”
Live, Austin (SXSW), 3/15/12
This is what rock ’n’ roll should sound like.
—my (24-year-old) son Alex, the other day, while playing their new album (Celebration Rock)
24 hours of ragas
On Thursday, June 21st WKCR-FM will feature a historic first in radio broadcast: a live raga marathon with 24 musicians performing in 24 hours! Curated by Brooklyn Raga Massive and HarmoNYom, the festival will start on Wednesday, June 20th at midnight and end on Thursday June 21st at midnight. Raga, which literally means “to color the mind,” are musical modes in Indian Classical Music that correspond with specific times of the day or the night. All Ragas in the festival will correspond to the time of their performance. Read more for the schedule of the festival:
12am Neel Murgai – Sitar
1am Sameer Gupta and Ehren Hanson – Tabla Duo
2am Achyut Joshi – Vocal
3am Iklhaq Hussain – Sitar
4am Anjana Roy and Sanjay Rajan Pal – Sitar and Tabla
5am Akshay Anantapadmanabhan – Mridangam
6am Indrajit Roy Chowdhury – Sitar
7am Daisy Paradis – Sitar
8am Samarth Nagarkar – Vocal
9am Eric Fraser – Flute
10am Falu Shah – Vocal
11am Shanti Sivani – Vocal
12pm Steve Gorn – Flute
1pm Karavika – Violin & Cello
2pm Gargi Shinde – Sitar
3pm Camila Celin – Sarod
4pm Kedar Naphade – Harmonium
5pm Vivek Rudrapatna – Carnatic Violin
6pm Jay Gandhi – Flute
7pm Andrew Mendelson – Sitar
8pm Arun Ramamurthy – Carnatic Violin
9pm Ashvin Bhogendra – Carnatic Vocal
10pm Oded Tzur – Saxophone
11pm Kiran Ahluwalia – VocalOn Tabla & Harmonium accompaniment:
Nitin Mitta, Sameer Gupta, Ehren Hanson, Naren Budhakar, Dan Weiss, Stephen Celluci, Andrew ShantzOn Mridingam accompaniment:
Akshay Anantapadmanabhan
*****
Nikhil Banerjee, sitar (with Kanai Dutta, tabla)
Rag Bhimpalasri, Rag Multani (35:42-)
Live, Netherlands (Rotterdam), 1970
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
There’s no “Indian music” in India.
bread and circuses
This is my idea of good government.
A Summer Solstice Backyard Parade and Procession
Wednesday, June 20th, 2012, 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
[Garfield Park, Chicago]Featuring Mucca Pazza, the Circus Punk Marching Band, Kaotic Drumline, Oper-a-matic, Food Trucks, and More!
Marching bands, both traditional and unique, will be lining up in our backyard space for a mid-summer’s night march. Chicago’s inspiring community drum corps Kaotic, as well as the fantastic punk rock marching band Mucca Pazza will be parading throughout our backyard spaces, in a non-traditional community parade. Instrument making stations will be stationed throughout the event. Come make your own parade.
*****
Mucca Pazza, live, Evanston (Ill.), 6/30/11
***
Kaotic Drumline, 2009
Turn it off: cellphone, email, Twitter—the whole modern rot.
Let this, and nothing else, surround you.
Frederic Chopin, Nocturne in D-flat major, Op. 27, No. 2
Martha Argerich (piano), live, Germany (Saarbrücken), 1972
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
In the right hands there are no notes—only mysteries.
*****
reading table
Then I considered the spiritual bread that a newspaper constitutes, still warm and moist as it emerges from the press and the morning mist in which it has been delivered at crack of dawn to the housemaids who take it to their masters with a bowl of milk, this miraculous loaf, multiplied ten-thousandfold and yet unique, which stays unchanged for everyone while proliferating across every threshold.
—Marcel Proust, The Fugitive (translated from French by Peter Collier)
Happy (Day After) Father’s Day
Nas (son) with Olu Dara (father), “Bridging the Gap” (2004)
(sampling Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy”)
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lagniappe
Here’s more from the old man.
David Murray Octet, “Dewey’s Circle” (DM, tenor saxophone; Olu Dara, trumpet; Butch Morris, cornet; George Lewis, trombone; Henry Threadgill, alto saxophone; Anthony Davis, piano; Wilber Morris, bass; Steve McCall, drums), Ming (Black Saint, 1980)
*****
Muddy Waters, “Mannish Boy” (Chess, 1955)
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lagniappe
reading table
People are mysterious, unfathomable—like divinities: natural objects for reverence. But our habits of thought turn the people around us into objects, the means for our self-protection.
—Lama John Makransky, “Family Practice,”
Tricycle, Summer 2001
four takes
“I’ll Fly Away,” Albert E. Brumley, 1929 (publ. 1932)
Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley
Live (TV show), 1980
***
The Caravans (feat. Shirley Caesar)
Recording, 1964
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Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley
Live, Virginia (Coeburn), 1970s (?)
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Aretha Franklin
Live (Albertina Walker’s home-going service), Chicago, 2010
(This last clip was originally posted on 10/24/10, shortly after Albertina Walker, the leader of the Caravans, passed away.)
two takes
Santigold, “Disparate Youth”
Recording & video, 2012
***
Live (studio performance), BBC, 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
After a certain age our memories are so interwoven with each other that the object of our thoughts or the book which we are reading has practically no importance. We have left traces of ourselves everywhere, everything is fertile, everything is dangerous, and we can make discoveries every bit as precious in an advertisement for soap as Pascal’s Pensées.
—Marcel Proust, The Fugitive (translated from French by Peter Collier)
Aretha’s father
Rev. C. L. Franklin (1915-1984), live, Dallas
“The Doors of the Church Are Open”/“I Will Trust in the Lord”
(recording ends at 5:55)
One thing I love about this is the ease with which he slides into and out of song (1:20, 2:25, 2:50, etc.). (Or is it all song?)
More? Here.
*****
taking a break
I’m going to take some time off—back in a bit.
Spirits need a lift?
Consider this: how much wonderful music—more than a lifetime’s worth—waits to be heard for the first time.
Morton Feldman, For Philip Guston (1984)*
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
More Feldman?
And here.
And here.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Q. This is a tough question, but what would be your five Desert Island disks?
John Luther Adams: I’d want music I could live inside for a long time; music that’s complex and enigmatic enough that there’s always something new to discover. Off the top of my head, my choices might be . . .
One of Morton Feldman’s major works, probably the Second String Quartet. Or maybe For Philip Guston.
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*For piano, celesta, piccolo, flute, alto flute, glockenspiel, vibraphone, marimba, chimes.
music clip of the day 