timeless
Wailers (Bob Marley, vocals, guitar; Peter Tosh, vocals, guitar; Bunny Wailer, vocals, percussion, et al.), “Stir It Up” (B. Marley), live (studio), London, 1973
sounds of Brazil & Jamaica
Slavish imitation. Contrived reinvention. Tributes usually leave me wondering why they even bothered. Not this.
Gilberto Gil (1942-), Tribute to Bob Marley, live, Brazil (Sao Paulo), 2001
more favorites from the past year
Dub shows aren’t an everyday thing in Chicago, so last night, despite the weather (rain) and weariness (from traveling to see a client in prison), I ventured out to a club to catch this guy. A show like this isn’t just an aural experience: each beat of the bass vibrates your ribcage.
Mad Professor (AKA Neil Fraser, born 1955, Guyana)
Live, London, 2011
Vodpod videos no longer available.******
Live remix, Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Lively Up Yourself,” c. 2008
Vodpod videos no longer available.(Originally posted 9/19/11.)
*******
Life thickens as you get older, becoming more layered. The other night, for instance, listening to Mad Professor dub Bob Marley at a club on Chicago’s south side (Reggie’s, State near Cermak), I found it hard not to think of another night over thirty years ago, of another club on the other side of town (Quiet Knight, Belmont near Clark, now gone), of hearing Bob Marley not dubbed but live.
Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Trenchtown Rock”
Live, Chicago (Quiet Knight), 1975
(Originally posted 9/20/11.)
Life thickens as you get older, becoming more layered. The other night, for instance, listening to Mad Professor dub Bob Marley at a club on Chicago’s south side (Reggie’s, State near Cermak), I found it hard not to think of another night over thirty years ago, of another club on the other side of town (Quiet Knight, Belmont near Clark, now gone), of hearing Bob Marley not dubbed but live.
Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Trenchtown Rock”
Live, Chicago (Quiet Knight), 1975
Dub shows aren’t an everyday thing in Chicago, so last night, despite the weather (rain) and weariness (from traveling to see a client in prison), I ventured out to a club to catch this guy. A show like this isn’t just an aural experience: each beat of the bass vibrates your ribcage.
Mad Professor (AKA Neil Fraser, born 1955, Guyana)
Live, London, 2011
Vodpod videos no longer available.******
Live remix, Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Lively Up Yourself,” c. 2008
Vodpod videos no longer available.three takes
Is this—the new cover—great?
Maybe, maybe not.
No matter—I, uh (to dip into the aging hipster’s lexicon), dig it.
“Is This Love” (Bob Marley)
Corinne Bailey Rae
Take 1: recording, 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Take 2: live, Los Angeles, 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Bob Marley
Take 3: live, Santa Barbara, 1979
Vodpod videos no longer available.More Bob Marley? Here.
Wednesday’s featured artist, Curtis Mayfield, was so popular and influential among Jamaican musicians, including the early Wailers (back when the group included Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer [before becoming “Bob Marley and . . .”]), that one British deejay dubbed him the “Godfather of Reggae.”
The Wailers (with Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer), “Keep On Moving” (1972)
Want more? Here (don’t miss “Soul Shakedown Party”).
*****
The Impressions (with Curtis Mayfield), “I Gotta Keep on Moving” (1964)
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lagniappe
reading table
It’s odd to think back on the time—not so long ago—when there were distinct stylistic trends, such as “this season’s colour” or “abstract expressionism” or “psychedelic music.” It seems we don’t think like that any more. There are just too many styles around, and they keep mutating too fast to assume that kind of dominance.
As an example, go into a record shop and look at the dividers used to separate music into different categories. There used to be about a dozen: rock, jazz, ethnic, and so on. Now there are almost as many dividers as there are records, and they keep proliferating.
***
We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.
I think this is good news. As people become increasingly comfortable with drawing their culture from a rich range of sources—cherry-picking whatever makes sense to them—it becomes more natural to do the same thing with their social, political and other cultural ideas. The sharing of art is a precursor to the sharing of other human experiences, for what is pleasurable in art becomes thinkable in life.—Brian Eno, 11/18/09
*****
MEMO
To: Elliott Carter
From: MCOTD
Happy 101st Birthday!
music clip of the day 