It’s quite amazing sometimes when you come across a musician who can easily fit in in completely different contexts. Folks like Bill Frisell and Marc Ribot come to mind.
This time around, it’s pianist Marilyn Crispell, who can wend her way through the passages of Anthony Braxton just as easily as her own solo piano music.
This is not really about Bruce Springsteen’s Magic. Not at all.
What it is about is how sometimes there are concepts that don’t translate well into words. A writer can sweat it out, but the reality of “the thing” is just too difficult to grasp.
For a long time, I’ve tried to describe to my writer/music friend Josh Hathaway what attending a Springsteen & the E Street Band concert feels like. Well, Friday was Josh’s first show in Atlanta.
Now he knows.
Record stores? C’mon, you know what they are, don’t you?
If you haven’t been in one for a while, drop that Amazon link and shut down iTunes and make a visit. They’re a crucial part of the music culture.
For more information, and some cool quotes from a pile of famous musicians, check out the Record Store Day website.
Oh right…and I blabbed out it at Blogcritics too.
Last week was “a week”? No, this week was a week! Insanity abounds. Too much driving. Crazy work stuff. Late night writing sessions (not enough of those). Just not enough fun.
To top it all off, my mother ended up in the hospital. A weird, tangential twist on this news is that Danny Federici passed away. This news is tangential because I found out about it after returning from the hospital on Thursday evening.
Please, somebody make it stop.
The field of electro-acoustic music is an interesting one. If done right, both the acoustic and electronic elements can build on each other. While jazz traditionalists are not fond of it, I’ve always gotten a kick out of hearing a trumpet note sampled and then stretched out of shape like so much musical taffy.
Poolplayers perform some very interesting improvised music that integrates the electronics so that they’re just as important as every other instrument. Check out the results here.
Well, well, well…it was another one of those weeks. One that required some mind-clearing, off-kilter sorta-jazz. The Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. By the way, there is no Jacob Fred in the band.
Also in today’s Listen, you will read of my admiration/jealousy for writer Michael Perry. Everybody should own one of his books. No, all of them.
I’ve read a lot of reviews of Accelerate and many of them share this theme of “kind of good but not as good as…”, followed by some great mid-career record like Automatic For The People.
The thing is, I don’t think like that. I don’t often compare one album against another, not even with the same artist. I guess it’s not the way I’m wired. Sticking with R.E.M. here, is Life’s Rich Pageant “better” than Murmur. I don’t know…the idea doesn’t really occur.
Anyhow, I follow this sort of theme in my review of Accelerate.
What was the phrase that Hunter S. Thomson liked to use? “Bad craziness,” I think it was.
Well, that’s going a little too far maybe, but there is an amount of stress that’s been swirling around my noggin of late. A few days ago, I found out about Kimya Dawson in the usual way: somebody I have no respect for said that she’s boring. That always seems like a challenge to me so I checked her out.
…and now I’m in luv.
I honestly hope that the keyboard players out there don’t get upset when I say that I’m not a big fan of keys as lead instrument in a jazz context. Sorry, I just can’t help it. (To be fair, I’m not so hot on keys as lead in rock and pop either. Ben Folds? No, thank you.)
I remember years ago all of these discussions on the Internet about a group called Flim & the BB’s. One of their records (Tricycle, I think) was often recommened as a great album for testing out speakers. I guess so…it never worked for me.
Ah, but then there’s Sam Barsh.