10 to get; band/artist and album title please.
Valuable 'Spill points for the lucky winner.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
OMG! We haven't done one of these in ages
Yes, it's an album covers quiz.
10 to get; band/artist and album title please.
Valuable 'Spill points for the lucky winner.
10 to get; band/artist and album title please.
Valuable 'Spill points for the lucky winner.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Random cover version
With apologies to others for burying more 'serious' posts, I couldn't resist posting this cover version of Ms Lauper's finest moment. My daughters are currently watching the film from which it's taken (Confessions Of A Shopaholic) and I just heard it and fell in love with it straight away. Others may hate it - I think it's just gorgeous - and very inventive ...
Let me know what you think.
Let me know what you think.
Quick Dr, to the fo'csle
Heard a reference to mercy ships in a song lyric and wondered wtf they are. Now isn't this just the cool idea:Imagine a ship crewed by doctors, nurses, water engineers and agriculturalists visiting some of the world’s poorest countries.....
If this was 1972 - it could be Carole's AOTW
Nektar were an English band who were noticeably more successful in Europe than they were in the UK, particularly in Germany. They got together in Hamburg at the end of the 1960s apparently and worked and recorded in Germany, particularly on their earlier albums, which are pretty good examples of spacey prog. They continued to record and tour until the 1980s, I think and reformed in 2002, releasing a few albums and playing at prog festivals.
The band's original line-up was;
Roye Albrighton – guitars, vocals
Allan Freeman – keyboards, backing vocals, mellotron
Ron Howden – drums, percussion, backing vocals
Derek Moore – bass, vocals
A Tab In The Ocean was their second release and it came out in 1972.
Here it is in all its progtastic glory;
A Tab In The Ocean
Desolation Valley
Waves
Crying In The Dark
King Of Twilight
1999
Wise Up - Aimee Mann
Je Pense Á Toi - Amadou & Mariam
Get A Move On - Mr. Scruff
Feeling For You (Les Rythmes Digitales Remix) - Cassius
Da Rockwilder - Method Man & Redman
Buster - Sporto Kantes
Sympathique - Pink Martini
Eve - Spacek
Window Licker - Aphex Twin
Apologies to some of my favourites songs which for various reasons I decided not to include.
I should be so lucky ... (apart from the Lambrini!)
Take two daughters to one Church Fête, put in five pound coins to each right hand, point at the tombolas, and watch them simmer for around 90 minutes. The result?
.
Add to that the three 2010 church diaries; a large pitstop full of cakes, biscuits, soup&rolls and drinks; and as of ten minutes ago, ANOTHER carrierbag-full of prizes hand-delivered to DarceysSis for winning the Tie'N'Scarf quiz, and I think you can safely say we did OK for total outlay of under fifteen quid!!
So who wants to let my girls pick their lottery numbers for next week? They won't charge you much ...
And here's a tune appropriate for the post, but also as an antidote to all the vim over on the mothership.
Au Revoir Simone - The Lucky Ones
.
.
Add to that the three 2010 church diaries; a large pitstop full of cakes, biscuits, soup&rolls and drinks; and as of ten minutes ago, ANOTHER carrierbag-full of prizes hand-delivered to DarceysSis for winning the Tie'N'Scarf quiz, and I think you can safely say we did OK for total outlay of under fifteen quid!!
So who wants to let my girls pick their lottery numbers for next week? They won't charge you much ...
And here's a tune appropriate for the post, but also as an antidote to all the vim over on the mothership.
Au Revoir Simone - The Lucky Ones
.
You're Making My Dog Sad
Look at that long face; how can you all do this to him? It's all because I used this picture to accompany the posting of the latest edition of Radio Abahachi, roughly a minute before twenty different people posted their playlists for 'Vim' so it's now disappeared into the depths far beyond the usual scrolling range. I'm not worried about the podcast, but Bailey thinks it's him that everyone is ignoring. He may be neurotic, forgetful and incontinent, but he doesn't deserve this...
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Vade Retro S.A.D.
Jesus Cristo - Erlon Chaves
Rag Mama Rag - Blind Boy Fuller
Touradas Em Madri - Carmen Miranda
Toma Que Toma - Songs Of Innocence
Children Go Where I Send You - Nina Simone
Roderigo - Lack of Afro
Cherie D'amour - Le Knight Club
Good Girl (Cousin Cole Remix v1.4) - Wale
Watch For The Hook (Dungeon Family Mix) - Cool Breeze
Atoladinha - Bola De Fogo E As Foguentas
Robert JohnsonBACKSPACE BACKSPACE Other People: King of the Delta Blues
The King of the Delta Blues Singers compilation didn’t come out until 23 years after Robert Johnson’s untimely death, but was such a force in the burgeoning folk movement of the early sixties that it quickly brought his music to the masses, inspiring young singers like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Rolling Stone called it the 27th greatest album of all time.'Ray' over at the Cover Me blog decided to honour the record by gathering the best available cover of each song on the album. Get the column and song links here
TubeRadio - All the hits, all the time. Just turn to WWW on your internet dial
No promises as I rarely use Utoob, but TubeRadio promises to filter out the non-musical videos on YouTube and leave you with the world's largest music library.
Autumn mix CD
I made an old-fashioned mix-cd today. it has a real nice autumnal mood (IMHO), tracklisting:
1. Jochen Distelmeyer - Regen
2. Big Star - Kanga roo
3. The Mountain Goats - Matthew 25:21
4. The Black Heart Procession - Wasteland
5. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - The rider song
6. Hush Arbors - Fast asleep
7. Jay Farrar & Benjamin Gibbard - Willamine
8. Grant-Lee Phillips - Buried treasure
9. Chuck Prophet - Love won’t keep us apart
10. Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions - Trouble
11. John Martyn - Sweet little mystery
12. The Walkabouts - Cold eye
13. Kings of Convenience - Peacetime resistance
14. Captain Beefheart - Observatory crest
15. Grand Archives - Silver amongst the gold
16. Bernd Begemann – Hitler, menschlich gesehen
17. Girls - Ghost mouth
18. The XX - Infinity
19. Iain Archer - Canal song
20. The Raveonettes - Last dance
Not too familiar with posting music on the internet, I am offering anyone interested a free copy of this cd, just check the first comment on this post....
Saturday, November 7, 2009
A Dose of Vim
(I think BLimpy's posted this video on the 'Spill before, so I'll try to think of something else, but it is very vimmy)
Elmore James - Rollin and Tumblin
Isley Brothers - Shout
Herb Alpert - Taste of Honey
Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers - Hyena Stomp
Lee Perry - Soul Fire
Carlos Malcolm - Bonanza Ska
Dick Dale - Miserlou Twist
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Up Above My Head I Hear Music in the Air
SR Tharpe - Shout, Sister, Shout
The Clash - Know Your Rights
The Decemberists - July July!
Matt & Kim - Daylight
Matt & Kim - Don't Slow Down
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - By the Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth
CYHSY - Satan Said Dance
Lupe Fiasco - Go Gadget Flow
Mos Def - Quiet Dog
Outkast Gasoline Dreams
Cee Lo - Childz Play ft. Ludacris
Busdriver - Imaginary Places
The Roots - Rhymes and Ammo
The Roots - Rolling With Heat
I'll give you vim ...
I mentioned over on the mothership that this could be a good week for Northern Soul and associated genres (by which I meant Stax and other classic (mainly sixties) soul labels). I recently (but rather belatedly) put a selection of my favourite floor fillers into the Northern Social dropbox (under the title Northern Soul-cial - witty or what?) but I suspect that most of you missed that. So here's your chance to catch up on some of the most vimmulous highlights of said selection.
Jackie Wilson - Higher & Higher
The Jackson Sisters - I Believe In Miracles
Lindy Stevens - Penny Gold
Margie Joseph - Nobody
Patti & The Emblems - I'm Gonna Love You A Long Long Time
Side Effect - Always There
The Esquires - Woman
Jeanne & The Darlings - Standing In The Need Of Your Love
The O'Jays - Working On Your Case
Betty Moorer - Speed Up
The Charmells - I'll Never Grow Old
And there's also this:
sourpus presents: H2H #1
Had a nice idea for a thread series. How about 'Head to Head'?
Put two bands/songs up for comparison (however arbitrary this becomes) and let the panel decide.
My picks for number one:
Diesel Park West - Fall to Love
The Gin Blossoms - Allison Road
What say you?
Put two bands/songs up for comparison (however arbitrary this becomes) and let the panel decide.
My picks for number one:
Diesel Park West - Fall to Love
The Gin Blossoms - Allison Road
What say you?
Full of pep
Ivan being bouncy - he's about a mover, as you see.
Monkey Riding - the Cock and Bull Band
When I'm Up I Can't Get Down - Oysterband
Ҫa Plane Pour Moi - Richard Thompson
Look At Granny Run Run - Ry Cooder
She's About A Mover - Doug Sahm & the Sir Douglas Quintet
Pine Island Bayou - the Gourds
Open Fire - Any Trouble
The Road To Santiago - Oysterband
Time for a little lie down...
So I tried a little Freddie - FP's Vimmy playlist
Haven't done one of these for a while. I had a busy summer with ma n' pa over and then things at work got horrendously busy too. I liked this week's theme in spite of initial reservations that it is waaaaaay tooooooo broad and that the old lags amongst you will remember Dorian's "sonic tonic" list many moons ago. The theme threw up some wonderful suggestions and, applying my own rule that these have to be songs that make me jig up and down, I have selected ten of the vimmiest tunes I know. All of these songs have been there for me at various times in my life when I have just needed an extra kick. Well, it's better than OD-ing on Red Bull!
Question to go. I daren't actually count the days but I know we're only a kick in the pants off Christmas (that's that Geordie expression again Toffee - it means 'not very far from'). Frogprince and I are sorted present-wise. I shall kiss a tearful goodbye to our old and faithful cathode ray tube telly which has served us splendidly over the years and we will invest in a not too large but hopefully beautiful HD flat screen fuck off model. Well with all the fillums I watch and Frogprince's documentaries we really have to get round to it. Some time. I just hope it doesn't conk out on us after three years whereas the old one has given brilliant service. And over to you. Now's the time. For all your loved ones who may be, even as I type, scratching their heads and whizzing frantically round Amazon trying NOT to buy whatever TV chef cookbook is at number one.. WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT FOR CHRISTMAS? And what will you probably be getting....?
Discover the playlist VIM with Peggy March
I Still Believe In Rock'n'Roll...
Well, up to a point. Welcome to the (much delayed) latest episode of Radio Abahachi, with additional contributions from Bailey the neurotic, insomniac, deaf, short-sighted, incontinent and dementia-inflicted greyhound, in which I offer a mirror image of Japanther's recent podcast by charting a confirmed jazz fan's recent adventures in contemporary, erm, stuff...radioabahachi5.mp3
Friday, November 6, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Quick! EOTWQ!
1 You hear that John Byrne's 'Tutti Frutti' is out on DVD at last. Your response?
2 How did you find out where babies come from ? Were you surprised?
3 Any (other) long-term lies you believed in? How did you find out they weren't true?
4 What (non-musical) invention during your lifetime has changed your life the most?
5 Favourite interior decorating style? Would we be able to guess, if we visited your house?
Singing drummers who sing and drum while singing
I've been listening to Levon Helm's new album Electric Dirt (7/10; needs more grit) this week and was trying to think of others who sang from behind the skins. Phil Collins, of course. Karen Carpenter, Don Henley, um, er. Ringo when they had to give him a go. Um, er.....
(in keeping with the Sesame Street flow)
(in keeping with the Sesame Street flow)
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Well if we're gonna talk Music On Sesame Street ...
I found this one day when me & Darcey were pfaffing around on the PC. Darce absolutely loved this, so much so I put the original on my mp3 player and her CD-R compilation for the car. But now that she's got used to the proper version of the song, she won't watch this any more because "that lady gets the words wrong"!
I'm gutted!!
It's a boy!
Thought you might be interested to know that Young Master Satan (or Matthew, to his mother) was born on Friday 30th October at 7.27am weighing 7lb 9oz. Mother and son are extremely well; Little Miss Satan is coping very well with the competitor for our attention; father is dead chuffed.The satanic dynasty is now complete: I have an heir - kneel before me and tremble, mortals.
Shoey's Album Of The Month - Oct.
New albums from Yello, Goats & Bunnymen all in one month? Very tempting, but these are my choices for Oct. One can be declared Shoey AOTM. Over to you:
Bless Those
4 People
You Go On Ahead (Trumpet, Trumpet II)
Bonfires on the Heath
Melee
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
la la la
These are a few pictures of Halloween in my town. I have many more, dramatic, at night with the blue light and the smoke...
but this is all an excuse to ask...I had an idea for AOTW, but I was wondering if somebody else had one, or if we thought maybe all the wonderful saxophone & japanthocasts were enough to listen to this week. Actually, it's an album I nominated a song from this week and it didn't get a lot of attention, so, I suppose there's no hurry.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Sid's Moon
I was walking home from Portobello tonight, up Ladbroke Grove, and at the point where the road crests the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal, saw the full moon rising in the east. I'm always kicking myself for not carrying the camera at this time of year, this spot is perfect for sunsets over Wormwood Scrubs and the moon rising out of Maida Vale.
So I stood there for a good ten minutes enjoying the starlings homing in on Kensal Green Cemetery and the grave of Steve Peregrine Took; with a pair of coots doing some late afternoon shopping under the arc lighting at Sainsburys. Arrived back home to find that Ace Blogger Sid Smith had been looking at the same scene 300 miles due north.
Going to get tucked into the lengthy jazz posts below; already got some tickets booked for the London Jazz Festival but feel this could be a full-on, swinging month.
Jazz. But not Jazz
I'm really trying to keep this one on the straight and narrow. No biographical guff, no name-dropping, and absolutely no bottoms whatsoever. It was supposed to be serious-bearded music : Jazz and Classical. And how, like paleolithic man and neanderthal, they may have mated but never produced offspring. But bigre! et bougre! - a woman pissing on a potty has managed to creep in. It is part of Erwin Schulhoff's 1917 Sonata Erotica written for solo woman's voice.
Schulhoff, a German-speaking Czech Jew, was born in Prague in 1894. He was a child prodigy: Dvorak heard him perform on the piano in 1901 and predicted a great musical future for the seven-year-old - and gave him two bars of chocolate. Schulhoff went on to study in Prague, followed by the conservatories in Leipzig and Cologne. Among his teachers were the composers Max Reger and Claude Debussy. As he entered his 20s, he displayed enormous talent in both performance and composition. A Prague critic said he was “a distinguished virtuoso pianist, especially bred for new music, with a splendid technique, unequalled memory and radical interpretational will; a revolutionary composer, with both feet firmly planted on the ground.”
But Schulhoff, embittered by his experiences during WW1, left off mainstream classical composition and embraced the Dada movement. During this phase he composed a number of pieces with absurdist elements - like "In futurum" (from the Fünf Pittoresken for piano) -- a completely silent piece made up entirely of rests, that anticipates John Cage's 4′33″ by over thirty years. Schulhoff's composition is notated in great rhythmic detail, and employs bizarre time signatures and intricate, though silent, rhythmic patterns.
Now this is the Dada piece, with the potty, that you've been patient enough to wait for:
Sonata Erotica for female voice solo (1917) Here is Helena Remeijers Moloek performing it at ILLUSEUM 2007
For the culture vulture with a busy agenda, or the culture butterfly with a short attention-span - here are some hints: things start heating up at 1 min.40 - then at 3.33 you may start wondering if the end will come into view . . . and soon after there is relief.
Unlike other composers - Stravinsky and Ravel, for example - Schulhoff did not approach jazz as an outsider looking in. He worked as a jazz pianist through the 30s to make ends meet - unable as a Jew, to get published or get a job. His jazz-influenced classical compositions predated those of his near-contemporary Kurt Weill. [cf Cinq Etudes de Jazz (1926], Esquisses de Jazz (1927), Hot Music, 1928, Suite dansante en jazz,1931 ]
His Concertos alla jazz was completed several months before the premiere in New York, in February 1924, of another “jazz concerto” that was to become much more famous—George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The two composers knew nothing of each other’s work at the time, and the works, despite their common jazz influences, are very different. Gershwin’s, lyrical and tinged with romanticism, has deservedly remained one of the most popular works of its kind. Schulhoff’s concerto is far more raucous, provocative and experimental.
I have three CDs - one in his pre-WW1 style : Sonatas for Piano and Violin - the others from the 20'sand 30's. The Concertos alla jazz that I bought first, features Schulhoff himself playing the last five pieces, on a Berlin recording from 1928. But my favourite is the Hot Sonata, fur Altsaxophon und Klavier, commissioned for Berlin Radio in 1930. Schulhoff played it himself, with an American saxophonist. The recording I have is on Kammermusik mit Blasern from Koch Schwann. Here's how I have been hearing it, with Detlef Bensmann on reeds and Michael Rische on keys, playing Part 3.
http://www.reedmusic.com/audio/bensmann_saxophone_and_piano/schulhoff_hot_sonate_3.mov
There are various versions of Hot Sonata on YouTube - but if you like wine women and sax, then I recommend that you fill your glass and jump to Part 3 : Matilde blows a mean alto.
Hot Sonata - Part 1 [Claude Delangle and Marco Ciccone]
Hot Sonata Part 2 J.Silguero, sax
Hot Sonata Part 3 Mathilde Leemhuis
"This is George Gershwin on absinthe. The saxophone plays a languorous legato as well as a wailing arpeggio in masterful syncopation to the piano riffs. Schulhoff once boasted to his publisher that he was the inventor of "classical jazz." With this piece, he may be the first classical-jazz fusionist, skillfully blending an upbeat expressionist tempo with neo-classical precision." Schulhoff's marks for Part 3 say: to be played lamentuoso, mi molto grotesco, giving the musicians the latitude jazz players enjoy.
Hot Sonata part 4 Mathilde Leemhuis .
But Schulhoff's work fell foul of the Nazi regime - and he along with Beckmann, Chagall, Dix, Ernst, Grosz, Kandinsky, Klee and Mondrian amongst scores of other musicians and artists were deemed Degenerate [Entartete]. Along with homosexuals, communists, gypsies, Black American music, and jazz.
First the art was exhibited, in 1937, for derision and then banning
- then in 1938, the year the music stopped
In June 1941, Schulhoff was deported to the Wülzburg concentration camp, near Weißenburg, Bavaria. He died on August 18, 1942 from tuberculosis.
Schulhoff, a German-speaking Czech Jew, was born in Prague in 1894. He was a child prodigy: Dvorak heard him perform on the piano in 1901 and predicted a great musical future for the seven-year-old - and gave him two bars of chocolate. Schulhoff went on to study in Prague, followed by the conservatories in Leipzig and Cologne. Among his teachers were the composers Max Reger and Claude Debussy. As he entered his 20s, he displayed enormous talent in both performance and composition. A Prague critic said he was “a distinguished virtuoso pianist, especially bred for new music, with a splendid technique, unequalled memory and radical interpretational will; a revolutionary composer, with both feet firmly planted on the ground.”
But Schulhoff, embittered by his experiences during WW1, left off mainstream classical composition and embraced the Dada movement. During this phase he composed a number of pieces with absurdist elements - like "In futurum" (from the Fünf Pittoresken for piano) -- a completely silent piece made up entirely of rests, that anticipates John Cage's 4′33″ by over thirty years. Schulhoff's composition is notated in great rhythmic detail, and employs bizarre time signatures and intricate, though silent, rhythmic patterns.
Now this is the Dada piece, with the potty, that you've been patient enough to wait for:
Sonata Erotica for female voice solo (1917) Here is Helena Remeijers Moloek performing it at ILLUSEUM 2007
For the culture vulture with a busy agenda, or the culture butterfly with a short attention-span - here are some hints: things start heating up at 1 min.40 - then at 3.33 you may start wondering if the end will come into view . . . and soon after there is relief.
Unlike other composers - Stravinsky and Ravel, for example - Schulhoff did not approach jazz as an outsider looking in. He worked as a jazz pianist through the 30s to make ends meet - unable as a Jew, to get published or get a job. His jazz-influenced classical compositions predated those of his near-contemporary Kurt Weill. [cf Cinq Etudes de Jazz (1926], Esquisses de Jazz (1927), Hot Music, 1928, Suite dansante en jazz,1931 ]
His Concertos alla jazz was completed several months before the premiere in New York, in February 1924, of another “jazz concerto” that was to become much more famous—George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The two composers knew nothing of each other’s work at the time, and the works, despite their common jazz influences, are very different. Gershwin’s, lyrical and tinged with romanticism, has deservedly remained one of the most popular works of its kind. Schulhoff’s concerto is far more raucous, provocative and experimental.
I have three CDs - one in his pre-WW1 style : Sonatas for Piano and Violin - the others from the 20'sand 30's. The Concertos alla jazz that I bought first, features Schulhoff himself playing the last five pieces, on a Berlin recording from 1928. But my favourite is the Hot Sonata, fur Altsaxophon und Klavier, commissioned for Berlin Radio in 1930. Schulhoff played it himself, with an American saxophonist. The recording I have is on Kammermusik mit Blasern from Koch Schwann. Here's how I have been hearing it, with Detlef Bensmann on reeds and Michael Rische on keys, playing Part 3.
http://www.reedmusic.com/audio/bensmann_saxophone_and_piano/schulhoff_hot_sonate_3.mov
There are various versions of Hot Sonata on YouTube - but if you like wine women and sax, then I recommend that you fill your glass and jump to Part 3 : Matilde blows a mean alto.
Hot Sonata - Part 1 [Claude Delangle and Marco Ciccone]
Hot Sonata Part 2 J.Silguero, sax
Hot Sonata Part 3 Mathilde Leemhuis
"This is George Gershwin on absinthe. The saxophone plays a languorous legato as well as a wailing arpeggio in masterful syncopation to the piano riffs. Schulhoff once boasted to his publisher that he was the inventor of "classical jazz." With this piece, he may be the first classical-jazz fusionist, skillfully blending an upbeat expressionist tempo with neo-classical precision." Schulhoff's marks for Part 3 say: to be played lamentuoso, mi molto grotesco, giving the musicians the latitude jazz players enjoy.
Hot Sonata part 4 Mathilde Leemhuis .
But Schulhoff's work fell foul of the Nazi regime - and he along with Beckmann, Chagall, Dix, Ernst, Grosz, Kandinsky, Klee and Mondrian amongst scores of other musicians and artists were deemed Degenerate [Entartete]. Along with homosexuals, communists, gypsies, Black American music, and jazz.
First the art was exhibited, in 1937, for derision and then banning
- then in 1938, the year the music stopped
In June 1941, Schulhoff was deported to the Wülzburg concentration camp, near Weißenburg, Bavaria. He died on August 18, 1942 from tuberculosis.
Shoey & Shane present: 'All Souls Day'
Nierika
So Long Dead
All Souls
Half Dead
Lost Souls
Oh What a Feeling
Lost Souls On Funk
Visit From A Dead Dog
Saturday Night In The City Of The Dead
Play Dead (Strings)
Mexico City
Things I Did When I Was Dead
Bela Lugosi's Dead (The Voice Mix)
Dead Men's Cigarettes
Dead Man's Will
Dead Souls
Beggar’s Prayer
Dead Dogs Two (Board Of Canada Remix)
Memoria [Sutekh's Trisagion Mix]
In Loving Memory
30 Minutes Over Tokyo - 2009 A Jazz Odyssey
"I'm a sprightly 31 years of age, living in Tokyo with my lovely Japanese wife, a child of grunge and Britpop, I now listen to a wide wide range of stuff (except Jazz and classical - but i'm willing to give 'em a try) my specialist subjects (if this were mastermind) would be obscure and forgotten Britpop never-were's, and the current US psychedelic drone underground which I love to bits. This week i've been listening to a LOT of Metallica!"
This is a (rather embarrassing) extract from my original e-mail to Blimpy upon becoming a Spiller.Well, I was true to my word, although I haven't gone into classical territory yet. Before joining the Spill I had never, not once, deliberately listened to any jazz at all. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
But along came Radio Abahachi and a small spark was lit, the timing of it was combined with an unexplained urge that made me get Miles Davis' "Live at Fillmore East" CD out of the library.
I wasn't hooked instantly, but I found something that definitely connected and I made a silent promise to try to find out more about the mystery that was "jazz". I kept my eyes and ears open to any mention of jazz on RR and the 'Spill and quietly went about investigating the weird and wonderful names via the wonder of Wikipedia.
I still didn't really know where to start with such a big genre, so I headed to the shop in the picture which is 3 storeys (+ a seperate all vinyl floor) of nothing but jazz. This first visit I didn't buy anything, but spent about a hour and a half in the shop methodically going through each section and familiarising myself with the exotic titles, names, record labels and getting to grips with the whole aesthetic; colours, fonts, style; (mostly) young (mostly) black men looking improbably cool.
The next time I went back, I picked up a copy of Ornette Coleman's "The Shape Of Jazz To Come", this was a calculated purchase based upon my background reading thus far, I was looking for the link between the improvised noise of Lightning Bolt and the musicality of Jazz . I excitedly took it home and dropped the needle (every jazz album i've bought so far has been on secondhand vinyl, mostly for under a fiver, not counting the odd download and the Blue Note compilation albums I got from the library), readying myself for the anarchy and chaos I had read about.....it didn't come, but I did discover a beautifully mournful sound that made me make another personal pledge to buy one jazz album a month, just to keep the interest up and hopefully discover some new tunes.
I stuck with this for a couple of months, but around March or April after getting some great tips from a jazz-lovin' friend in Canada, it started to snowball and I got bitten by the jazz bug! The classics (and not so classic) came thick and fast; Duke Ellington (thanks Goneforeign) Cannonball Adderly (cheers nilpferd), Sonny Rollins, Wynton Kelly, anything and everything on Germany's FMP Records and soon I was buying not one, but three or four jazz albums a month!
My jazz collection, has then, ballooned from zero to a small collection (it would have been at least double what it is if it hadn't been a credit crunched year). I still remain a complete sophist in this vast and complex ocean, but I am enjoying the journey so far and am looking forward to the next turn. Any tips and recommendations from all you knowledgeable jazzers out there are always welcome and will be greeted with grateful enthusiasm.
Here is just a small selection of some of the wonderful music I have discovered over the past year that has caught my ear and taught me to re-evaluate the way I listen to music.
**Pre-posting Edit**
After writing all of the above I have decided (possibly against my better judgement!) to turn the playlist into a full on podcast, maybe the journey needs to be explained in a little more detail....here goes my no doubt poor attempt.......
30 MOT - 2009: A Jazz Odyssey Part 1
30 MOT - 2009: A Jazz Odyssey Part 2
pissing at the moon
We have a poster of a Brueghel painting (It is Brueghel, right?) of visualizations of different superstitions or sayings, and one of them shows a fellow pissing at the moon. It's a comment on futility, I believe. (sorry to be so vague tonight). There seem to be quite a few, eh? For instance, does anybody know what "shoot the moon" really means? I've been wondering all weekend.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Jonathan Richman - a new generation won over
I've just suffered through a miserable week or two with no computer access, no trip to England in the school holidays after all and a very sick daughter (so it was just as well the trip was a non-starter) - both computer and child now restored to health! The one ray of sunshine amongst all this was the appearance of Mr. Jonathan Richman one Friday evening in a small bar just off the Reeperbahn. Messrs sourpus and TB had whetted my appetite, so I took TheBoyWonder along with me (2 tickets for this gig still cost less than just 1 ticket for his band of choice, the Fray, playing in the venue downstairs a couple of days earlier).
We were treated to just over an hour of Jonathan Richman, his strapless guitar, a couple of percussion instruments and Tommy the drummer (and I use the word 'treat' deliberately).
The above video is from a different gig, but it was Sam's favourite song of the evening. I was really chuffed when he turned to me at the end of the gig and said "Mum, that's just what I want to do, play music to an audience all my life and still be enjoying it when I'm old" (well, there is a 44-year age difference between the two of them).
My favourite song was this one (again, recorded at a different gig):
And now I need to find enough time to catch up on all I've missed on this wonderful blog (and I mean that most sincerely folks - I really missed you all!)
El Gatito
That's Matt in the middle - and he's 6' tall.
(There's an 'on' between the 'blow' and the 'me' by the way.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)