Ken Vandermark (saxophone) & Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)
Live, Romania (Bucharest), 2010
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Last night, while I was listening to these guys at a little club on Chicago’s near northwest side (The Hideout), a thought kept running through my head: there’s nothing like live music; there’s nothing at all like live music; there’s nothing at all in this world even remotely like live music.
three takes
“Fool For You” (C.L. Green)
Alice Smith, recording and video, 2011
*****
Cee Lo Green, feat. Melanie Fiona, recording, 2011
*****
Alice Smith, live, Washington, D.C. (Howard Theatre), 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
What will it all be like in five years’ time
when you try to remember?—John Ashbery, “For John Clare” (excerpt)
only rock ’n’ roll
Granted, there are no sure things in pop music; but how can a shaggy-red-haired sister-and-brother duo miss?
White Mystery, “Switch It Off,” live, New York, 2010
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lagniappe
reading table
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural.—Louis MacNiece (1907-1963), “Snow” (excerpt)
Ever feel like wandering, aimlessly, in a fog?
The Velvet Underground and Nico, directed by Andy Warhol (shot at his NYC studio, The Factory), 1966
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lagniappe
reading table
More than twenty years west of Mount Yen . . .
when the moon lights the summit at night I sing—Stonehouse, The Zen Works of Stonehouse: Poems and Talks of a Fourteenth Century Chinese Hermit (translated from Chinese by Red Pine)
*****
Happy Birthday, Don!
Sixty-two?
I remember when you were twenty-six.
And six.
We met, as I recall, when you were two.
keep on dancing
Robyn, live, Belgium (Werchter), 7/3/11
“We Dance to the Beat”/”Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do”
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“Indestructible”
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“With Every Heartbeat”
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (between court hearings at the nearby federal court building)
Dawoud Bey, Harlem, U.S.A. (late 1970s), through 9/9/12
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passings
Arthel Lane “Doc” Watson, singer, guitar player, songwriter
March 3, 1923-May 29, 2012
“Deep River Blues,” 1960s
Country musicians who love blues, blues musicians who love country (as I frequently encountered years ago working at Alligator Records): stories of race and music are often complex, resisting reduction to black and white.
old stuff
Fred Astaire (with Ginger Rogers), “I Won’t Dance”
Roberta, 1935
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lagniappe
radio
Driving around yesterday afternoon, I happened upon a new series on NPR’s All Things Considered, “Mom and Dad’s Record Collection.” “[M]usicians, writers, even politicians” talk about a “song they discovered through a parent and how it shaped them.” First up was singer and actress Audra McDonald, who can be heard here.
two takes
“Human Nature” (S. Porcaro & J. Bettis)
Vijay Iyer Trio (VI, piano; Stephan Crump, bass; Marcus Gilmore, drums), live (studio performance [KPLU-FM]), 2011
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Michael Jackson, recording (Thriller), 1982
Sometimes a drought lasts so long it ceases to be noticed.
What’s missing from our world?
Elegance.
Gene Kelly, Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
two takes
The Mighty Clouds of Joy (feat. Joe Ligon, lead vocals)
“Steal Away To Jesus”
TV show (TV Gospel Time), early 1960s
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Live, South Carolina (Charleston), 1996
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at Harvard’s Sackler Museum (Cambridge, Mass.)
Lyonel Feinenger, Black Ice and Fog on the Burgkuhnauer Allee, November 1928
music clip of the day 