Monday, 2/28/11
When something is this lyrical, this convincing, there’s only one thing I want to do when it ends—hear it again.
Michael Burks, “Empty Promises,” live, Falls Church, Virginia, 8/21/09
Vodpod videos no longer available.music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
2011
Sunday, 2/27/11
I’ll fly away . . .
DeAndre Patterson, “I’ll Fly Away,” live, Chicago (homegoing service for Eugene Smith, Christian Tabernacle Church, 47th & Prairie), 5/18/09
#1
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
#2
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
art beat
After a court hearing Friday, I stopped by the Art Institute of Chicago, which is just a couple blocks from the federal courthouse. In the Modern Wing, there’s a wonderful space on the second floor—a small room you enter through a glass door. Once inside, these paintings—each has a wall to itself—surround you.
Jackson Pollock, Greyed Rainbow (1953)
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Joan Mitchell, “City Landscape” (1955)
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Willem de Kooning, Excavation (1950)
2011
Saturday, 2/26/11
If making mindless music is so easy, how come so few do it well?
Ramones, live, London, 1977
#1
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
#2
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
#3
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
lagniappe
reading table
Life on Earth is quite a bargain.
Dreams, for one, don’t charge admission.
Illusions are costly only when they’re lost.
The body has its own installment plan.—Wislawa Szymborska, “Here” (excerpt; trans. Clare Cavanagh & Stanislaw Baranczak)
2011
Friday, 2/25/11
Our music is a Secret Order.
—Louis Armstrong, 1954 (John F. Zwed, Space Is The Place: The Lives And Times Of Sun Ra [1997], epigraph)
Von Freeman (tenor saxophone, with Ed Petersen, tenor saxophone; Willie Pickens, piano; Brian Sandstrom, bass; Robert Shy, drums), live, Chicago (Green Mill Lounge), 12/31/10
Vodpod videos no longer available.2011
Thursday, 2/24/11
what’s new
(an occasional series)
Have you heard the Lupe & John Legend?
—my 19-year-old son Luke
Lupe Fiasco (featuring John Legend), “Never Forget You” (2010)
Vodpod videos no longer available.Listening to music that means a lot to someone else gives you an opportunity nothing else does. You get to hear the world through their ears. This song, for instance, coming to my ears through my son Luke’s, makes me wonder: What’s it like to look back on your life, on all that’s come before, when you’re 19 years old?
2011
Wednesday, 2/23/11
street music
(an occasional series)
It ain’t just the beats—it’s the show.
drummers, Chicago (Michigan Ave.)
#1
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
#2
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
Drum mashup?
Start the first clip.
Then start the second.
2011
Tuesday, 2/22/11
Don’t forget the Motor City
Theo Parrish, Detroit-based DJ & producer
Collecting sounds around Detroit
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Live, New York (Brooklyn Yard), 8/23/09
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Live, Paris (Elysee Montmarte), 4/30/10
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Recording, “Soul Control”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Recording (with Marcellus Pittman), “Equality of Patience”
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
langiappe
thoughts on music
Music history as a whole has been drastically misnamed. Jazz is just as rugged as hip-hop is, and hip-hop is just as elegant as classical. These things are present, but the language we’re using to talk about them tends to be outdated, outmoded.
—Theo Parrish (in The Wire, 3/11)
2011
Monday, 2/21/11
Whatever I’d say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I’ve ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.
—John Coltrane
Eric Dolphy (alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute)
June 20, 1928-June 29, 1964
John Coltrane Quintet (JC, tenor saxophone; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Reggie Workman, bass; Elvin Jones, drums), “Impressions,” live, Germany (Baden-Baden), 1961
Vodpod videos no longer available.(For whatever reason, this clip sometimes seems to play better, on my Mac, with Safari than Firefox.)
More Eric Dolphy? Here. And here.
More John Coltrane? Here.
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lagniappe
reading table
Leviathan
Truth also is the pursuit of it:
Like happiness, and it will not stand.Even the verse begins to eat away
In the acid. Pursuit, pursuit;A wind moves a little,
Moving in a circle, very cold.How shall we say?
In ordinary discourse—We must talk now. I am no longer sure of the words,
The clockwork of the world. What is inexplicableIs the ‘preponderance of objects.’ The sky lights
Daily with that predominanceAnd we have become the present.
We must talk now. Fear
Is fear. But we abandon one another.
2011
Sunday, 2/20/11
combustible, adj. capable of igniting and burning. E.g., gospel singer
Paul Arnold.
Gospelaires (featuring Paul Arnold), “Joy” & “Rest for the Weary,” live
(TV Gospel Time), 1966
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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lagniappe
He was singing, and he touched a lady, and she fainted . . .
—Paul Arnold, Jr., Gospel Memories (WLUW-FM), 2/12/11
2011
Saturday, 2/19/11
Listen yesterday; go today.
Burkina Faso: Life & Music in West Africa (2007)
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
According to the guidebook, Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world, but in our experience its people seemed confident and proud of their culture in this 50th anniversary of independence from French colonial rule. Deep red dust carpets the country, kicked up by the mopeds that crisscross the rutted ground and buy markets lining nearly every street. Yet through the coating of dust the people always look impeccably elegant.
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In Burkina, the sun drops away at 7 p.m. sharp. When we returned for the concert, we saw scores of parked mopeds glistening under the full moon., and hundreds of people queuing outside the high crumbling walls enclosing the open air theatre. Inside, beyond the light cast rom the state, a huge crowd bustled quietly in the darkness otherwise shrouding the vast auditorium. Families with children of all ages filled the wooden benches, and here too traders plied bronze jewellery and leather goods around the perimeter.
—Trevor Watts, The Wire, 3/11
