music clip of the day

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Tag: music clip of the day

Friday, 12/10/10

two voices

Some voices are so distinctive and indelible that, once heard, they occupy rooms all their own in your mind.

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, “Hound Dog,” live (TV broadcast; Buddy Guy, guitar; Fred Below, drums), Europe, 1965 (originally recorded 1952)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Happy (180th) Birthday, Emily!

I’d subscribe to her Twitter feed in a heartbeat.

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

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Escape is such a thankful Word

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Our lives are Swiss –

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I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

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My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –

—Emily Dickinson (first lines)

Thursday, 12/9/10

Some music asks nothing more than to be a source of delight.

Wim Mertens Ensemble, “Maximizing the Audience,” live, Spain (Madrid), 1998

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Wednesday, 12/8/10

Some sounds never grow old.

Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials, “Find My Baby,” live

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

mail

In response to yesterday’s post, a reader writes:

No, you were right the first time, the movement to bebop was immense progress. . . . To deny progress in art or politics is bad politics, tho there are clearly eddies and flows as we know from being currently enmeshed in a backward eddy.

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reading table

They don’t live long
but you’d never know it—
the cicada’s cry.

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Awake at night—
the sound of the water jar
cracking in the cold.

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Even in Kyoto—
hearing the cuckoo’s cry—
I long for Kyoto.

—Matsuo Basho (trans. Robert Hass), 1644-1694

Tuesday, 12/7/10

The history of jazz, I once thought (like a lot of folks), is a story of progress. The shift from swing to bebop, for example, wasn’t simply a change; it was an advance. What bunk.

Erskine Hawkins Orchestra, “Swinging in Harlem,” 1938

Monday, 12/6/10

Here’s more from the city that does death like no other.

Funeral for Juanita Brooks, New Orleans, 2009

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

Here’s a taste of the Syl Johnson show I recently saw.

Syl Johnson, “Same Kind of Thing,” live, Chicago, 11/27/10

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Sunday, 12/5/10

If one sign of a great performance is that the moment it ends you want to hear it again, this one delivers—I just listened to it three times (may go back for three more).

Spencer Taylor & The Highway Q.C.’s, “I’ve Got Shoes,” live

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

radio

WGN Radio continues its celebration of the life of Ron Santo today, rebroadcasting one of “Ron’s Greatest Games” (Carlos Zambrano’s 9/14/08 no-hitter) at 2 p.m. (CST), with other special programs before and after.

Saturday, 12/4/10

You reach a certain age.

Waking up one morning, you hear news that’s both unsurprising and unbelievable: a Cubs radio broadcaster who’s been around forever died.

Later in the day you find yourself wondering: “When I die, what music should I have at the funeral?”

(WGN Radio remembers Ron Santo today at 1 p.m. [CST] with a rebroadcast of Kerry Wood’s 20-strikeout game [5/6/1998], followed by other special broadcasts.)

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replay: a clip too good for just one day

two takes

If God plays a musical instrument, I bet it’s the cello.

Bach, Suite No. 5 in C minor for Unaccompanied Cello, 4th Movement (Sarabande)

Mstislav Rostropovich, live

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Mischa Maisky, live

Want more of Bach’s cello music? Here.

(Originally posted on 10/21/10.)

Friday, 12/3/10

Is any drummer more exciting?

Keith Moon, August 23, 1946-September 7, 1978

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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The Who, “Young Man Blues,” live, Isle of Wight, 1970  

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

The man is a drummer.

Elvin Jones

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[N]othing had prepared me for the ferocious energy of The Who. . . . Pete Townshend’s hard, tense suspended chords seemed to scour the air around them; Roger Daltrey’s singing was a young man’s fighting swagger, an incitement to some kind of crime; John Entwistle’s incessantly mobile bass playing was like someone running away from the scene of the crime; and Keith Moon’s drumming, in its inspired vandalism, was the crime itself.

—James Wood, “The Fun Stuff,” The New Yorker, 11/29/10

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this just in

Scientists said Wednesday that the number of stars in the universe had been seriously undercounted, and they estimated that there could be three times as many stars out there as had been thought.

New York Times, 12/1/10

Thursday, 12/2/10

Memphis.

1953.

A little studio—Memphis Recording Service—over on Union Avenue.

Little Junior Parker, “Feel So Bad” (1953), “Sittin’ at the Bar” (1954), Sun Records, Memphis

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lagniappe

I’d like to dedicate this song to Little Junior Parker, a cousin of mine who’s gone on, but we’d like to kind of carry on in his name . . . .

Al Green, “Take Me To The River,” Hi Records, Memphis, 1974

Al wrote this, with guitarist Mabon “Teenie” Hodges, and recorded it first; Hi labelmate Syl Johnson had the hit.

Wednesday, 12/1/10

recipe

take one electric guitar

add another

& another

& . . .

Glenn Branca Ensemble, Symphony No. 5, live, New York (The Kitchen), 1984

Part 1

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Part 2

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lagniappe

Born . . . in 1949, [Glenn Branca] . . . ignored rock until attracted to the repetitiveness of certain songs by the Kinks and Paul Revere and the Raiders. He claims to have taught himself composition by listening to guitar feedback at point-blank range for forty-five minutes at a time.

—Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century (1997)