music clip of the day

jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
2009

Thursday, 10/15/09

How to be both solid and fluid, both fat and delicate. How to make the beat breathe. These are things that, as a child, Philly Joe Jones began to learn while dancing—tap-dancing. Just watch the way Thelonious Monk, listening to this solo, rocks back and forth (1:25-1:50), as if he’s about to break into a little dance himself.

Philly Joe Jones, live (with Thelonious Monk), 1959

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lagniappe

He [Philly Joe Jones] breathed our history as/his walking beat . . . . The Man/So Hip/A City/Took/His/Name.—Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones, in Eulogies [1996])

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2009

Wednesday, 10/14/09

Kinda cheesy. Utterly irresistible. When it comes to pop music, what more could you ask for?

Memory Tapes, “Graphics”

Want more? Here.

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2009

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Even on the street the old musical categories—live vs. recorded, instrumental vs. electronic—just seem, well, old.

Beatbox Dub FX (featuring Mr. Woodnote), “Flow,” live, England (Bristol), 2009

Want more? Here.

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2009

Monday, 10/12/09

These clips really take me back, as I worked with blues guitarist Albert Collins, co-producing his 1978 album Ice Pickin’, when I was at Alligator Records. Not only was he an absolute joy onstage; he was, offstage, a real sweetheart.

Albert Collins, live, Germany (late 1970s)

More:

Albert Collins, “Frosty,” live, Germany, 1988

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lagniappe

odds & ends

MacArthur “genius” grant winner John Zorn composed a piece for Albert, “Two-Lane Highway,” which appears—with Albert on guitar—on Zorn’s album Spillane.

*****

Amaze your friends with your ability to answer this (seldom asked) question: Who’s “the first blues guitar book published in Hebrew in Israel” dedicated to?

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2009

Sunday, 10/11/09

Here, at Luther Vandross’s funeral, Stevie testifies.

Stevie Wonder, “I Won’t Complain,” live, New York (The Riverside Church), 2005

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lagniappe

For as long as you’ve got a harp in your heart, God’s got a hymn for your hurt. And as long as you’ve got a hymn, then you’ve got hope.—Maurice O. Wallace (funeral sermon, quoted in Karla FC Holloway, Passed On: African American Mourning Stories [2002])

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2009

Saturday, 10/10/09

No matter where you are, this landscape is just around the corner.

John Cage (1912-1992), “In a Landscape” (1948)/Stephen Drury, piano

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Music is a means of rapid transportation.

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What I’m proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude—that you act as though you’ve never been there before. So that you’re not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.

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As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.

—John Cage

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2009

Friday, 10/9/09

Here the World Saxophone Quartet brings it all back home, performing in the high school gymnasium in Lovejoy (AKA Brooklyn), Illinois, a little town (with an interesting history) near St. Louis, where baritone sax player Hamiet Bluiett, now in his 60s, grew up. (If you have time for only one of these clips, check out Part 3, where everyone, including the kids, gets down with the O’Jays’ “For The Love Of Money.”)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

*****

For another take on the first of these pieces (“Hattie Wall”)—this one featuring Bill T. Jones, dancer/choreographer extraodinaire—go here.

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2009

Thursday, 10/8/09

This ain’t no duke. No earl. No prince. This is the (once and forever) King of Zydeco.

Clifton Chenier, “I’m A Hog For You,” live, New Orleans (New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival), 1978

More:

Clifton Chenier, “Josephine Par Se Ma Femme”

(Here’s a birthday shout-out to my brother Doug [a fan of this New Orleans festival].)

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2009

Wednesday, 10/7/09

Delicacy and drive: they aren’t often found in equal measure. They are here.

Don Pullen & the African-Brazilian Connection, “El Matador,” live, Japan, 1992

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lagniappe

All the music you’ve ever heard in your life is somewhere in your head.—Don Pullen

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2009

Tuesday, 10/6/09

If you want to stay right where you are, don’t even bother with this clip. But if, instead, you’d like to go somewhere you may never have been before, well, this might be just the ticket.

Gyorgy Ligeti (1923-2006), Three Etudes, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano

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I listen to all kinds of music—new music, old music, music of my colleagues, everything.—Gyorgy Ligeti (whose influences included not only the usual suspects [Chopin, Debussy, et al.] but also Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans and the Rainforest Pygmies and fractal geometry)

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