Tuesday, 8/24/10
I’m the person I see least of over the course of my life, and even what I see is not accurate.
—Gil Scott-Heron (New Yorker, 8/9/2010 [Alec Wilkinson, “New York Is Killing Me”])
Gil Scott-Heron, “I’m New Here” (2010)
More? Here.
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
2010
2010
Monday, 8/23/10
Who would’ve thought this would be so good?
Tom Jones & Janis Joplin, “Raise Your Hand,” live (TV broadcast), 1969
2010
Sunday, 8/22/10
I have no idea what they’re saying.
It makes no difference.
I could listen to this all day.
(That’s why God made “replay.”)
The South African Gospel Singers, live, Wales (Brecon Jazz Festival), 2006
2010
Saturday, 8/21/10
replay: a clip too good for just one day
If spirit could be sold, New Orleans would be rich.
Rebirth Brass Band, live, New Orleans, 2009
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lagniappe
Brass band musicians are a wild bunch. They’re hard to control. The street funk that the Rebirth Brass Band plays definitely isn’t traditional—it might be in thirty years time.
—Lajoie “Butch” Gomez (in Mick Burns, Keeping the Beat on the Street: The New Orleans Brass Band Renaissance [2006])
(Originally posted on 9/11/09.)
2010
Friday, 8/20/10
Here’s more from the guy who, the other day, we heard live in Slovenia.
Bob Dylan, “Beyond Here Lies Nothin'” (2009)
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lagniappe
Howlin’ Wolf (with Hubert Sumlin, guitar; Hosea Lee Kennard, piano; Alfred Elkins, bass; Earl Phillips, drums), “Who’s Been Talking” (Chess Records, Chicago, 1957)
More Howlin’ Wolf? Here.
*****
lagniappe
art beat
The New Yorker (8/16/10) writes of Matisse’s Bathers by a River, which is currently on view, in the exhibit “Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917,” at the Museum of Modern Art: “it consumes at least as much aesthetic energy as it imparts.” Except when it’s on loan elsewhere, this painting hangs at Chicago’s Art Institute. Over the years I’ve seen it dozens (maybe hundreds) of times. Never once, as I looked at it, did it occur to me how much “aesthetic energy” it was “consum[ing].”
Henri Matisse, Bathers by a River (1909-16)
2010
Wednesday, 8/18/10
Actually, you don’t even need a single string.
Steve Reich, “Clapping Music” (1972)/So Percussion, live, California (Palo Alto), 1/8/10 (music starts at 3:35)
More Steve Reich? Here.
2010
Tuesday, 8/17/10
Last week I wrote: “Guitar, drums—that’s all it takes.”
Actually, all it takes is a single string.
Lonnie Pitchford (diddley bow), live, Mississippi, 1978 (The Land Where The Blues Began [1979])
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lagniappe
? and the Mysterians—still more (take #4 [NYC, Great Jones Cafe; 7/31/10])
*****
mail (makes me want to be [yikes!] a grandfather)
The other day Oran Etkin, whose music was featured here a while back, wrote:
I’ve been checking in every once in a while to your blog— you’ve got some really amazing and diverse music up there!
***
I wanted to let you know about a new project I have and a great video I just posted yesterday. I have a project for kids called Timbalooloo (www.timbalooloo.com), which has music classes for 0-10 year olds using a new approach I developed to reach that age group, CDs, Videos, Books, etc. I am putting out a kids CD next month called Wake Up, Clarinet! based on this whole approach. It’s with my band featuring Jason Marsalis, Curtis Fowlkes, Fabian Almazan, Garth Stevenson and Charenee Wade. Anyways, I put up this video from a live concert, and I thought you might enjoy it and see if it would be cool for your blog.
***I’m loving the videos up on the site!
—Oran
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Oran Etkin, “Wake Up, Clarinet!”; live
2010
Monday, 8/16/10
Suppose Blind Willie McTell, who died in 1959, came back to life for a day.
How would you explain this to him—a video clip of a pop icon singing a song about him, during a recent concert in Slovenia, captured by a cell-phone camera then uploaded onto the ’net for anyone, anywhere in the world, to see?
Bob Dylan, “Blind Willie McTell,” live, Slovenia (Ljubljana), 6/13/2010
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lagniappe
Blind Willie McTell
hotel room, Atlanta, 1940
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“Statesboro Blues,” 1928 (Atlanta)
2010
Sunday, 8/15/10
three takes
“Milky White Way”
The Trumpeteers (1947, Baltimore)
*****
Elvis Presley (1960, Nashville)
*****
The Trumpeteers, live (TV broadcast, with “I John Saw the Number”), 1960s
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lagniappe
all roads lead (on Friday, anyway) to Bay City, Michigan
Friday morning: I post ? and the Mysterians’ “96 Tears,” which was recorded in 1966 in, yep, Bay City, a town of about 35,000 on Lake Huron that also gave the world Madonna (she was born there) and the Bay City Rollers their name (the first dart landed on Arkansas but “Arkansas Rollers” lacked pizazz).
Friday afternoon: I stop by a book fair in Chicago, where I buy one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever seen—a rare one by a favorite poet (William Bronk, Careless Love And Its Apostrophes, Red Ozier Press, 1985, limited edition [175 copies])—from a dealer (Jett W. Whitehead) based in, where else, Bay City.
