The dream team... Stewart and Moyers - oh what they could accomplish together. So, yesterday I posted a few clips of David Byrne. Today, two other "heroes" of mine...
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Jon Stewart on Bill Moyers Journal
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
David Byrne - Nothing But Flowers
You've probably heard recent press about Alan Weisman's book "The World Without Us." Mr. D.B. actually wrote it many years earlier - as a five minute pop song. A perfect little gem of a five minute pop song.
Well, ok, it's not really about a world without humans, but a possibly post-apocalyptic future where humans live in harmony with the earth and are nostalgic for the old days. Even better.
David Byrne - Knee Plays - In The Future
Byrne's "Music from the Knee Plays" is finally being re-released this month. (but I've been able to enjoy it all along because I'm soooo cool and have it on vinyl)
Friday, October 19, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Miles Davis and Friends - In A Silent Way
from a show in 1991... I prefer the orig. recording but this is nice, too.
Today we say goodbye to Joe Zawinul - who, among other things, wrote this amazing (timeless, revolutionary, brilliant) piece of music.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Haas v Blake USOpen 2007
How I spent my holiday weekend: on the couch watching tennis. Monday was a sad sad day and here's why.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?
click through for full text of an article published in Ladies Home Journal, August 1921.
Written by Anne Shaw Faulkner, head of the Music Department of the General Federation of Women's Clubs.
some highlights:
Still another proof that jazz is recognized as producing an evil effect is the fact that in almost every big industry where music has been instituted it has been found necessary to discontinue jazz because of its demoralizing effect upon the workers. This was noticed in an unsteadiness and lack of evenness in the workmanship of the product after a period when the workmen had indulged in jazz music...
The human organism responds to musical vibrations. This fact is universally recognized. What instincts then are aroused by jazz? Certainly not deeds of valor or martial courage, for all marches and patriotic hymns are of regular rhythm and simple harmony; decidedly not contentment or serenity, for the songs of home and the love of native land are all of the simplest melody and harmony with noticeably regular rhythm. Jazz disorganizes all regular laws and order; it stimulates to extreme deeds, to a breaking away from all rules and conventions; it is harmful and dangerous, and its influence is wholly bad.
A number of scientific men who have been working on experiments in musico-therapy with the insane, declare that while regular rhythms and simple tones produce a quieting effect on the brain of even a violent patient, the effect of jazz on the normal brain produces an atrophied condition on the brain cells of conception, until very frequently those under the demoralizing influence of the persistent use of syncopation, combined with inharmonic partial tones, are actually incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, right and wrong.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Learning to play music is a bitch
and even worse when documentation survives...
On the WFMU blog, here's a post of school bands and choirs wrecking all kinds of pop music. Don't miss a junior high chorale tackling Lionel Richie's "You Are" (a song that I've been grappling with myself for many years), and a junior high band mangling "Beat It." Like being a teenager isn't hard enough... at least there's no video to embarrass these kids for their whole lives.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Pops Staples on NIghtmusic
This was an incredible show... it featured a diversity of talent like nothing else. So of course it didn't last long on network TV. Seems that most Americans like to watch karaoke contests instead. Anyway, here's a great clip of Pops, solo.
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