My g-g-g-generation, dropping like flies, teenagers dying of old age.
Carpe diem?
After my nap.
250: Mose Allison, ‘Young Man’s Blues’
Other
273: The Necks, ‘Sex’
Jeff’s Top Ten from the last fortnight–surprises, non-surprises, and Rachael Price going ‘Ooh-ooh–ooh’.
Continue reading...092: Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, Zakir Hussain, ‘Babar’ (“The Melody of Rhythm”)
Alchemy 101:
Take a jazz banjoist, a classical double-bassist, and a percussionist of traditional Indian music, toss in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, mix vigorously. Waddaya get? A ménage a trois of a centaur, a mermaid, and a Toyota Prius? Nope! “The Melody of Rhythm” is as natural as the petal of a daisy — unforced, convincing and absolutely lovely.
086: ‘Different Trains’, Steve Reich (Kronos Quartet)
Minimalism and “the only adequate musical response—one of the few adequate artistic responses in any medium—to the Holocaust.”
Continue reading...044: Paul Robeson, ‘Go Down, Moses’
It’s Passover! Let’s sing a song of slavery!
Paul Robeson brought the Spiritual to the concert hall, singing the suffering and indignity of his own father in slavery. A remarkable life any standards.
295: Rita Payés, ‘Nunca Vas a Comprender’/Nils Landgren, ‘Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight’
Watch this clip and tell me you didn’t love it. I dare you.
Continue reading...039: Blind Willie Johnson, ‘Motherless Children Have a Hard Time’
Willie was blinded at age seven when the lye his stepmom threw lye at his dad and missed. Willie sang on the street corners of Beaumont, Texas and slept in a li’l church. When it burned down, he slept there in a rain-soaked bed and caught pneumonia. And you think you got the blues?
Continue reading...058: Dave Frishberg, ‘Van Lingle Mungo’
The lyric consists entirely of names of obscure baseball players from the late 1940s and early 1950s. You don’t have to be a baseball fan to feel here the magic that only music can create–what our adult heart does with the treasured memories of our youth.
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