READIN

Friday, September 7th, 2007

🦋 Backup Vocals

It is lovely to watch Robyn Hitchcock's interactions with his backup singers and musicians I am watching him sing "Cynthia Mask" with Grant Lee Phillips right now and see a similar vibe to what I have caught going on watching him with the Egyptians and with Captain Keegan. (A different species of interaction between him and Deni Bonet, a less overtly sexual one I think.)

If you count yourself among the few readers of this blog and I have not yet raved at/to you about Robyn and the Egyptians performing an acoustic version of "Birds In Perspex (Come Alive)", well, I am doing so now by implication. Go watch it, really I can't imagine your thinking the time poorly spent unless you are Sifu Tweety Fish, whose musical tastes are a cipher to me. (And talk to me about it -- regardless of what I said above I would really like to know what reactions people have to that song, including those reactions that are less wholly enthusiastic than my own.)

posted evening of September 7th, 2007: Respond
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🦋 Elixirs and Remedies

A new DVD came in the mail today, for me to watch this evening. It is Robyn Hitchcock and Grant Lee Phillips' Elixirs & Remedies, concert footage from their "Grand Campaign" 2000 tour.

Here is a video of Hitchcock and Phillips performing Satellite of Love, which is not included in the DVD.

Do any of you have exposure to the music of Grant Lee Phillips, solo or in combination with Grant Lee Buffalo? I would appreciate recommendations of albums to listen to.

My expectation with covers sung by Robyn is, if they are of Syd Barrett tunes they will be fantastic, and otherwise the odds are about even for fantastic or awful. An interesting thing about this concert is that the two of them play many covers of songs by a wide variety of artists, and every one of them is successful. Maybe this is a product of their collaboration? "(All I have to do is) Dream" takes on many new dimensions with Robyn singing it.

Another concert from the same tour is available at archive.org.

posted evening of September 7th, 2007: Respond

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

🦋 Two unrelated passages

I am finding that the narrators I identify most closely with in this book are Esther (who reminds me fairly strongly of a like-named relative of mine) and Shekure. As I was reading this passage in Shekure's narration:

Just then, when I saw that he'd opened his pink mouth like a child would have, I unexpectedly felt, yes, like putting my breast into it. With my fingers on his nape and tangled in his hair, Black would place his head between my breasts, and as my own children used to do, he'd roll his eyes back into his head with pleasure as he sucked on my nipple...

I realized that I would never be able fully to understand it without also thinking about these lines from Robyn Hitchcock's Globe of Frogs:

And when she feeds the flowers
Up they rise their pretty little heads
And when she waters them
They glow and smirk and smile in their beds

Update: Hm, well this post is getting me some interesting search engine referrals anyway...

posted morning of August 30th, 2007: Respond
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Sunday, August 5th, 2007

🦋 Chamber Music

So I signed up to play in The Stirling Duo's fall chamber music workshop, which Mike recommended to me -- we'll be playing Corelli's Concerto Grosso Opus 6 #7, pleasant and challenging.

posted evening of August 5th, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, August 4th, 2007

🦋 A day well spent

This morning I finished up a woodworking project that has been sitting in my basement for a week or so -- it is an oaken bench that will go in my front yard next to the garden -- tomorrow I will take it outside and put linseed oil on it.

Bob and Greg came over in the afternoon and we played some music, including a very nice version of "House of the Rising Sun" -- I have finally persuaded Bob to play it in 4/4 time (like Dylan) instead of (I think) 6/8, like The Animals, which sounds corny to my ear, at least when done by somebody who is not The Animals.

posted evening of August 4th, 2007: Respond
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Sunday, July 29th, 2007

🦋 Random 11

(Or, the Creeping Hegemony of Robyn Hitchcock)

I was listening to The Last Waltz on my computer this evening and I suddenly thought, why don't I see what happens if I use the "shuffle" feature in iTunes?

1. "Weary Day" by the Delmore Brothers, performed by John Miller. This is on a compilation called String Theory, that I got as a pledge premium from WFMU, and it is without question the best thing I have ever gotten from a public radio station in return for a contribution.
2. "This is How it Feels" by Robyn Hitchcock, from "Moss Elixir". Funny -- this is the last song on the record and I haven't really noticed it before.
3. "Muleskinner Blues" performed by Old & In The Way, from "Breakdown".
4. intersong chat from Robyn Hitchcock's July 1st concert at Three Kings Pub -- including the line, "no amount of moon landings could compensate for the Beatles breaking up."
5. "Railway Shoes" by Robyn Hitchcock, from "Live at the Cambridge Folk Festival". Hmm...
6. "Let's Go Thundering" by Robyn Hitchcock, from the March 14, 1997 show at the Knitting Factory. A very nice performance.
7. A track whose title I do not know, from the end of a Taj Mahal compilation Janis gave me.
8. "Lonesome Blues" by Henry Williams and Eddy Anthony, from the compilation "Violin, Sing the Blues to Me". This is one of the best records around.
9. "She Belongs to Me" by Bob Dylan, performed by Robyn Hitchcock, from the November 14, 2004 show at Maxwell's. I'm not generally a big fan of Hitchcock's Dylan covers but this one has some nice moments.
10. "Ñawi (Kichwa)" by Yarina, from "Ñawi". Yarina performed at Sylvia's school last year, and I bought their CD. Fantastic rhythms.
11. "Opus 57" by the David Grisman Quintet, from the October 3, 1997 show at Somerville Theater. A long piece that starts out kind of dull but gets a lot more interesting.

I turned the shuffle feature off a couple of songs later, when it got to the Carter Family, which I'm listening to now.

posted evening of July 29th, 2007: Respond
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Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

🦋 Singing along

There's something in music I like, a quality I can't identify, that gives me this rush of pleasure that is strongly associated with wanting to sing along. I've talked about this before in relation to Perspex Island, and this afternoon when I was mowing the lawn and listening to Nextdoorland it hit me -- Robyn sings "Can you make it rain,/ Can you make it rain tonight" and I can't help it, singing along is just an instinctual reaction to the pleasure I feel. And then, just now I was sitting and listening to the Band playing "Up on Cripple Creek" and the same thing happened to me when Levon sang "If there's anything she can do --"... (A few nights ago Ellen and I were watching The Last Waltz and together we sang along with the whole song when they were playing "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", and that was a beautiful thing.) I want to know what this quality is.

posted evening of June 27th, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, June 23rd, 2007

🦋 The Last Waltz

Last time I watched The Last Waltz -- which must have been 15 years ago -- I did not appreciate it. I think I was watching it for the Dylan appearance, which is only a few songs at the end, and wasn't really paying attention to the greatness of every song in the movie (well except "Dry Your Eyes", I wouldn't count that as a great song, though I do think it might have some possibilities if someone besides Neil Diamond were singing it). Ellen and I watched the movie last night; what a wonderful thing it is.

posted morning of June 23rd, 2007: Respond
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Thursday, June 21st, 2007

🦋 W00t!

My brother's book, Monk's Music: Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the Making, is published and available on Amazon.

posted afternoon of June 21st, 2007: Respond
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Sunday, June 10th, 2007

I jammed with Bob and Janis and Gregory tonight and it was really nice. Several songs came off almost flawlessly and we were just exactly in time with each other in a way that characterizes the best of our playing, for almost the entire session. The set list (constructed from memory afterward and not complete) was:

• Wild Horses -- I had given Janis the recording of Old & In The Way singing it and wanted to get us doing it.
• Knights in White Satin, more as a joke than anything -- none of us really knows it.
• Pallette on Your Floor
• Willow Garden
• Love in Vain
• May the Circle be Unbroken
• Death Don't Have No Mercy
• Some Dark Hollow
• St. James Infirmary
• I Know You Rider
• The Star-Spangled Banner (by this point we were sort of done for the night -- the last couple of songs were not great.)
• The Night They Tore Old Dixie Down
• Truckin'
• Loser

Everything between about Love in Vain and St. James Infirmary was in "best we've ever played" territory.

posted afternoon of June 10th, 2007: Respond
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