a week in New Orleans: day five
Big Freedia
“Na Who Mad,” 2011
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Talking, walking around town, performing, etc.
Pitchfork TV, 2013
a week in New Orleans: day four
Mardi Gras Indians (Fat Tuesday, 2012)
Wild Magnolias
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Two Indian Tribes Meet in Treme
a week in New Orleans: day three
Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five
“West End Blues” (Joe “King” Oliver), 1928
*****
King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band
“Dipper Mouth Blues” (Joe “King” Oliver), 1923
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lagniappe
reading table
America, to me, should be shouting all the time, a bunch of shouting voices, most of them wrong, some of them nuts, but please, not just one droning glamorous reasonable voice.
—George Saunders, “My Flamboyant Grandson” (In Persuasion Nation)
a week in New Orleans: day two
Bon Mardi Gras
Professor Longhair, December 19, 1918-January 30, 1980
“Mardi Gras in New Orleans” (AKA “Go to the Mardi Gras”), 1950
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“Big Chief”
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“Tipitina” (with the Meters)
When he died, at the age of twenty-nine, folks got the news the same way they heard his music.
WCKY (Cincinnati), 1/1/1953, announcing Hank Williams’ death, followed by his recording of “I Am Bound For The Promised Land” (S. Stennett)
In heaven, I’ve heard, you can listen, any time of day, any time of night, to old radio shows.
Hank Williams, Mother’s Best Flour, WSM (Nashville), 1951
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lagniappe
random thoughts
How many of our shoes will outlive us?
only rock ’n’ roll
Some bands I keep coming back to.
The Dirtbombs, “Ever Lovin’ Man,” San Francisco (Amoeba Music), 2008
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lagniappe
reading table
Odd, I have now a mania for shortness. Whenever I read my own or other people’s works it all seems to me not short enough.
—Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
1 + 1 = infinity
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), Sonata for Viola (1975); Yuri Bashmet (viola), Ksenia Bashmet (Yuri’s daughter, piano)
This is the last thing Shostakovich composed before he died.
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lagniappe
Here’s another take on the last movement, with a younger Yuri Bashmet and Sviatoslav Richter.
#1
#2
alone
Hamid Drake, drums, Paris, 2010
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lagniappe
reading table
Last night I completed a long, meandering journey I began several years ago, finishing the last of the seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. If you’ve ever thought about making this trip yourself, I have just one word of advice: go. The minutes, and hours, I’ve spent in Proust’s company—often just a few pages at a time—are among the most rewarding, and pleasurable, I’ve had.
*****
One, two, three. Time, time!
—William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (II, 2, 51)
music clip of the day 