When people hear I’m a criminal defense lawyer, they often ask: “How come there aren’t more songs about serial killers?”
Eddie Noack, “Psycho,” 1968
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lagniappe
In response to yesterday’s post, a reader writes:
Vodpod videos no longer available.Ever wonder what it would be like if Neil Young circa 1971 Heart of Gold and Bruce Springsteen circa his 1975 Time magazine cover performed “Whip My Hair”?
Here’s your answer.
The other night, driving home from a family gathering with my (19-year-old) son Luke (we left early to accommodate his hectic social calendar), this jumped out of the radio.
Willow Smith, “Whip My Hair,” 2010
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
A few years ago Bill Gates was boasting that we’ll soon have sensors which will turn on the music that we like . . . when we walk into a room. How boring! The hell with our preexisting likes . . . .
—Denis Dutton (February 9, 1944-December 28, 2010), founder and editor of Arts & Letters Daily (long my home page)
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Denis Dutton, The Colbert Report (1/28/09)
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
radio
Worn out by the holidays? I know of no better tonic for post-Christmas, pre-New Year’s malaise than WKCR-FM’s Bach Festival, which runs until midnight Friday.
Of beauty you cannot have too much.
Frederic Chopin, Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23 (1835-36)
Take 1: Vladimir Horowitz, live, New York (Carnegie Hall)
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Take 2: Krystian Zimerman, live
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Take 3: Claudio Arrau
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Take 4: Alfred Cortot
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Take 5: Sviatoslav Richter, live (Kiev)
Vodpod videos no longer available.More Chopin? Here. And here. And here.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
[T]he things we feel in life are not experienced in the form of ideas, and so their translation into literature, an intellectual process, may give an account of them, explain them, analyse them, but cannot recreate them as music does, its sounds seeming to take on the inflections of our being, to reproduce that inner, extreme point of sensation which is that thing that causes us the specific ecstasy we feel from time to time and which, when we say ‘What a beautiful day! What beautiful sunshine!’, is not conveyed at all to our neighbour, in whom the same sun and the same weather set off quite different vibrations.
—Marcel Proust, The Prisoner (1925) (trans. Carol Clark [2002])
Music has always been like medicine to me.
—Aaron Neville
Aaron Neville (with Allen Toussaint, piano), “I Know I’ve Been Changed” (excerpt), “I Done Made Up My Mind” (excerpt), 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.Merry Christmas!
Bessie Smith (with Joe Smith, cornet; Charlie Green, trombone; Fletcher Henderson, piano), “At the Christmas Ball” (1925)
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Lowell Fulson, “Lonesome Christmas (I & II)” (1950)
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Sonny Boy Williamson, “Sonny Boy’s Christmas Blues” (1951)
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lagniappe
radio: all Bach, all the time
WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) is currently in the midst of their annual Bach Festival, which runs through the end of the year.
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reading table
Barn’s burnt down—
now
I can see the moon.—Mitzuta Masahide (trans. Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto), 1657-1723
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going forward
I won’t be here every day; but I’ll be here often.
Captain Beefheart (AKA Don Van Vliet), January 5, 1941–December 17, 2010
replay: a clip too good for just one day
For some people, going their own way seems to be the only way they could possibly go.
Captain Beefheart (AKA Don Van Vliet)
The Artist Formerly Known As Captain Beefheart (BBC Documentary, 1997)
Part 1
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Part 2
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Part 3
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Part 4
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Part 5
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Part 6
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lagniappe
Don’t you think that somebody like Stravinsky . . . it would annoy him if somebody bent a note the wrong way?
—Captain Beefheart
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About the seventh or eighth time [I listened to Trout Mask Replica], I thought it was the greatest album ever made—and I still do.
—Matt Groening
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art beat
Paintings by Don Van Vliet
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(Originally posted 3/6/10.)
Having posted this, I’m going to return to the break I mentioned the other day—back soon.
It’s a remix world.
Gil Scott-Heron, “New York Is Killing Me” (2010), Chris Cunningham remix
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lagniappe
Here’s the original track, followed by a couple more remixes.
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
With Nas
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With Mos Def
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musical thoughts
In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing. About the dark times.
—Bertolt Brecht
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Want more of Gil Scott-Heron? Here and here.
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taking a break
I’m going to take a little break (my first since July)—back soon.
A Brief History of American Popular Music Since World War II
1950
chicks & cars
1960
chicks & cars
1970
chicks & cars
1980
chicks & cars
1990
chicks & cars
2000
chicks & cars
2010
chicks & cars
Big Boi, “Shutterbugg,” 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.This guy moved to Chicago, after World War II, from Birmingham, Alabama.
The temperature outside, on this mid-December day, is 7 degrees.
Is it any wonder springtime meant so much?
Sun Ra And His Intergalactic Myth Science Solar Arkestra, “Springtime Again,” 1979
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Want more? Here.
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lagniappe
Happy (90th) Birthday to Clark Terry!
(Yo, Michael: Thanks for the tip!)
