music clip of the day

jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more

Tuesday, 12/20/11

kaleidoscopic, adj. 1. changing form, pattern, color, etc., in a manner suggesting a kaleidoscope. 2. continually shifting from one set of relations to another. E.g., Azealia Banks’ “212” (2011).

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lagniappe

reading table

In an age when other fantastically speedy, widespread media are triumphing, and running the risk of flattening all communication into a single, homogeneous surface, the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because they are different, not blunting but even sharpening the differences between them, following the true bent of written language.

—Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1988 [trans. Patrick Creagh])

Monday, 12/19/11

Rebirth Brass Band, Treme Sidewalk Steppers Parade, New Orleans, 2/6/11

If there’s a God, He loves parades.

More? Here. And here. And here. And here. And here.

Sunday, 12/18/11

It’s our lucky day. Down on the corner there’s a guy with a little guitar amp who just finished setting up. Let’s listen.

Rev. Billy H. Grady, “Holy Rock” (1965)

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lagniappe

reading table

Going too fast for myself I missed
more than I think I can remember

almost everything it seems sometimes
and yet there are chances that come back

that I did not notice when they stood
where I could have reached out and touched them

this morning the black shepherd dog
still young looking up and saying

Are you ready this time

—W. S. Merwin, “Turning”

Saturday, 12/17/11

Happy (Belated) 103rd Birthday, Elliott!

Elliott Carter, composer, December 11, 1908-

The other night I put this on, thinking I’d do something else while it played; but, as it turned out, “something else” had to wait.

String Quartet No. 2 (1959), Composers Quartet

More? Here. And here.

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lagniappe

Juilliard String Quartet with Elliott Carter, 2008
Rehearsing String Quartet No. 5

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musical thoughts

Mr. Carter has written 15 new works since his 100th birthday.

—Allan Kozinn, New York Times, 12/13/11

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Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Webern, Bartok, Shostakovich, Carter, et al.: you could spend the rest of your life listening to nothing but string quartets without ever feeling deprived.

Friday, 12/16/11

only rock ’n roll

Happy Refugees, “What’s Your Appeal”
Live, New York (Cake Shop), 12/10/11

More? These guys recently did a live studio performance at WFMU-FM (The Cherry Blossom Clinic with Terre T), which can be heard here.

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lagniappe

art beat: Tuesday at the Art Institute of Chicago (after a hearing at the nearby federal court building)

George Inness (1825-1894), Early Morning, Tarpon Springs (1892)

Thursday, 12/15/11

mysterious, adj. exciting wonder, curiosity, or surprise, while baffling efforts to comprehend or identify. E.g., the string quartet music of Anton Webern.

Anton Webern (1883-1945), Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5
Penderecki String Quartet, live
Falls Village, Connecticut (Music Mountain), 2010

Part 1

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Part 2

More? Here.

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Ignorance has a big upside: the more music you’ve never heard, the more there is to discover.

Wednesday, 12/14/11

What I get from this guy I can’t quite put my finger on. But I do know this:
I don’t get it anywhere else.

 Arthur Russell (1951-1992), singer, songwriter, cellist

“You And Me Both”

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“This Is How We Walk on the Moon”

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“That’s Us/Wild Combination”

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Terrace of Unintelligibility, live studio performance, 1985

Part 1

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Part 2

(First three clips originally posted 11/23/09.)

Tuesday, 12/13/11

two takes

Rock ’n roll, like blues, is for old folks too.

Dick Dale (guitar, 1937-), “Nitro”

Live (radio broadcast, KEXP-FM [Seattle]), 12/11/09

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Recording and Video, 1993

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lagniappe

I make my guitar scream with pain or pleasure or sensuality. It makes people move their feet and shake their bodies. That’s what music does.

—Dick Dale

Monday, 12/12/11

Maybe everything in your life would be better—or at least seem better—
if only you had more banjo.

Sam Amidon, “As I Roved Out” (trad.), live, Austin (SXSW), 2011

Sunday, 12/11/11

One of the things I love about these guys is their name: you could hardly get
any simpler, any homelier.

Harmonizing Four

TV broadcast (TV Gospel Time), early 1960s

“That’s Alright”

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“I’m Going Through”

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Recordings, 1957

“Farther Along”

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“Motherless Child”

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lagniappe

It was 25 years ago . . . that four boys in the Dunbar Elementary School Glee Club in South Richmond [Virginia] decided to see what they could do with some close four part harmony. The director of the glee club encouraged their first efforts and pretty soon the Harmonizing Four developed to the point that the were invited to sing for civic meetings, clubs, schools, and churches all over the city.

—Program, 25th Anniversary Tribute to the Harmonizing Four, Richmond, Virgina, 1952 (quoted in Jerry Zolten, Great God A’Mighty! The Dixie Hummingbirds: Celebrating the Rise of Soul Gospel Music [Oxford 2003])

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odds & ends

• Elvis Presley was a huge fan of these guys, particularly bass singer Jimmy Jones. (Jones left the group in 1958, after these records were made but before this TV appearance, to form his own group [Jimmy Jones and The Sensationals]; he was replaced by Ellis Johnson.)

• One of the group’s members, Lonnie Smith (rear right on “That’s Alright”), is the father of keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith.