Musings on the byways of popular culture
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Someone posted a link on FB to another track from this album, a few days ago. The memories came flooding back. The Undisputed Truth were one of Motown’s success stories from the early ’70s. Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong given full rein with their weird funky soap-opera productions, before Disco swept this kind of stuff away completely. This is from 1975. Everything including the kitchen sink is in there. Possibly an additional sink, just in case.
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Is it The Fabs or the Cabs? Van or Can or The Dan or Man? The Stones or The Ramones? Coltrane or Cobain? Charlie Parker or Les Barker? Nils Frahm or The Farm? Tupac or Cilla Black?
Don’t ask me..
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In 1998 or thereabouts, I first heard Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset. From this and investigations of the other musicians around him I heard trumpeter Nils-Petter Molvær and keyboard player Bugge Wesseltoft. Scandi-jazz, as it soon become known, intrigued me. From there it was an easy hop into the ECM catalogue and all it’s treasures and the German ACT label. But “Electronique Noir” was the starting point.
What were your starting points?
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…I discovered this little gem. BBC World Service – The Documentary, Moondog: Sound of New York. A half-hour programme presented by Huey Morgan about blind street musician, poet and composer Louis Thomas Hardin aka Moondog. Born in Kansas in 1916 he played musical instruments from an early age and after being blinded in an accident at age 16 he taught himself music and composition by ear and from musical theory from Braille books. In the 1940s he moved to New York and became acquainted with Leonard Bernstein and Arturo Toscanini as well as Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman. He was known as The Viking of Sixth Avenue because of his beard, long hair and clothing, including a cloak and a helmet with horns. Philip Glass was a friend of his.
The YouTube clip is nothing to do with the radio show but gives an illustration of his music, recorded not long before his death.
Anyone else discovered any interesting stuff while idly trawling the web?
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The most expensive items sold on Discogs in January 2021. I once spent just over £8000 on a car. The number one item in this list (a 7″ single) went for more than that. The song is merely illustrative. It does not figure in the list and neither does the artist.
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A.K.A. Bunny Livingstone. Born Neville Livingstone in 1947 That’s it. All of the original Wailers are gone now.
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Next Friday at 9pm GMT, a 1-hour programme originally aired in March 2016 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Bonzos “going pro”.
“2016 saw the fiftieth anniversary of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band going “professional” – kick-starting the chaos with a performance on the bastion of psychedelia and avant-garde: Blue Peter.
The legendary Neil Innes looks back at the influence and influences of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and the collision of art, humour, music, language and anarchy that permeated the band’s career.
Archive interviews and performances accompany new interviews with Legs Larry Smith, Rodney Slater, Vernon Dudley Bowhay Nowell, Sam Spoons, and Bob Kerr and contributions from friends and fans including Terry Gilliam, Adrian Edmondson, Kevin Eldon, Diane Morgan, Rick Wakeman and Stephen Fry.
Neil Innes died in December 2019 at the age of 75.”
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A six-part documentary series by Adam Curtis. All six parts available for the next year if you have access.
“An emotional history of the modern world” seems to be the BBC’s description. “Dazzling but incoherent” say the critics.
It certainly jumps about a bit, between Britain, the USA, Russia and China. I’ve only watched the first part “Bloodshed On Wolf Mountain” so far
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A large London Plumbing company, Pimlico Plumbers, is planning on changing their workforce’s contracts to stipulate that they must all be vaccinated. New starters will only be employed if they have been vaccinated. The owner of the company is willing to pay for all of his employees to be vaccinated privately, if this becomes possible and has set aside the funds to do it. Many of his employees will probably welcome the offer but by law he cannot compel an existing employee to get vaccinated, however, and he cannot fire employees who refuse to be vaccinated without being hit by a claim for unfair dismissal.
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This is a long clip, so don’t start watching it if right now you have things to do, places to be etc. The most amazing voice on the planet (in my opinion) with an amazing band from lots of different nations. He’s Tunisian, the pianist is Estonian and the guitarist is from Norway. I was particularly impressed by the Clarinettist (Turkish) and the drummer (Dutch, born in Indonesia). Enjoy or skip.
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A cryptic brain-teaser. Who is the thread title referring to and how am I communicating?
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UK magazine Jazzwise has published their 20 best albums of 2020. I haven’t read the magazine, it’s not one I follow any more on my limited budget. For reasons known only to them, the page in the link only shows the top 17 albums with a quick review of each and some clips to watch. Some interesting choices.
https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/top-20-jazz-albums-of-2020
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Many thanks to the nice AW peeps who put me wise about Get_iPlayer. I can now copy and keep the few select TV shows that I’m interested in.
There have been some great YouTube streamed concerts during this here lockdown. It would be nice to keep a few of them for the long winter nights to come. Any tips?
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Still wearing my jazz hat, and a very fine titfer it is too. The (virtual) festival started on Monday 16th and finishes on Sunday 22nd November. Lots of free online YouTube and Mixcloud concerts and if you follow the site link that hopefully is somewhere in this post, you will find further links to concerts and a pair of extensive YouTube and Spotify “taster” playlists. In past years I have tried to get to at least some (finances and free time permitting) LJF concerts. Tickets for the big names always used to sell out almost immediately and tended to be outside my price range anyway. There are less US stars than usual this year but plenty of homegrown and European talent available. Dig in or ignore. Your choice.
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Someone thought African women weren’t getting the same chance to play music as the men, so these young girls were provided with instruments and tuition, with pretty good results. The girls of Star Feminine Band were brought up and live in Natitingou, a remote town in the north of Benin, West Africa. Aged between 10 and 17 years, the girls had never touched a guitar or drumkit before they met in 2016. But what about their music, you say? A lively mix of Garage Rock, Highlife and Congolese Rumba was how Gilles Peterson described them when he played a track on his Saturday radio show. A few UK DJs have picked up on them. Loads of energy there and it sounds like they’re having a lot of fun.
https://thevinylfactory.com/news/benin-star-feminine-band-debut-album-vinyl/
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06/10/2020
At 12 noon a performance of part of Gustav Holst’s “Mars” will take place. 20% of the piece will be played, by freelance musicians conducted by David Hill. This performance will be followed by 2 minutes silence. Only 20% to be played because the government’s latest SEISS grant only offers a maximum of 20% support for freelancers. The event will be Covid-19 safe and adhere strictly to social distancing regulations. It will be reported live as it happens on the Musicians Union Twitter Feed. Later in the day union General Secretary Horace Trubridge will be speaking to the Lords Economic Affairs Committee, which you can watch live on Parliament TV from 4pm. Some AfterWorders may know Horace better for his stint in Darts, when he was known as Horatio Hornblower.
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Summer ’17 we had the first swap. No theme was set, just whatever participants wanted to put on their discs. Spring ’18 was Swap No. 2. This one was themed and the theme was “Cold”. Autumn ’18 was Swap No. 3. The theme this time was “Space”. Spring ’19 brought Swap No. 4 and the theme was “White”. December ’19 gave us Swap No. 5. The theme was “Change”.
Now it’s the Autumn of 2020, we’ve shaken our fists at a plague and, while sitting at home twiddling our thumbs we’ve debated whether the CD is dead or struggling on life support. Should we swap or not?
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An amazing life, lived to the full. Girlfriend to Miles Davis, friend of Jean-Paul Sartre. Both Lennon and McCartney fancied her like mad. She was the inspiration for McCartney’s “Michelle”.
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One of jazz music’s most prolific and creative composers. A tenor (and later soprano) saxophonist of distinction. He first came to prominence with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1959, where he quickly became Art’s musical director and composed many pieces. He moved on to Miles Davis’ second great quintet where he again was a major composer and, according to his bandmate Herbie Hancock, was the only one that Miles didn’t need to rearrange compositions from as they arrived fully-formed. He released loads of excellent albums for Blue Note at that time as well. After leaving Miles he formed the mighty and innovative Weather Report with Joe Zawinul. A close pal of Joni Mitchell’s, he’s played on several of her albums. He’s no longer playing live, due to health issues, but he’s still composing. A slightly-late Happy Birthday To You!
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Musing upon the late lamented Judy Dyble’s brief stint with Giles, Giles & Fripp briefly before they morphed into King Crimson, I remembered another female vocalist of that time Sonja Kristina of Curved Air. Then I recalled their debut album, Airconditioning, which was the first picture disc I had ever seen. A particularly magnificent example IMO. High quality designs on each side of a disc which probably was sonically pretty awful. This was nearly 50 years ago and my-fi was not hi-fi in those days, so I don’t remember if it sounded like chips frying throughout or not. I do recall it looked bloody good on the turntable. A picture disc, 50 years ago! Blimey. Any personal favourites, AW fam?
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22/06/2020
A live-streamed concert from The Vortex Jazz Club in Dalston, tonight at 8pm. A link on the page should take you to the stream for when it starts. A link to a Guardian article about it is in the first comment.
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Feeling a bit bored? Need something completely pointless and hopefully amusing to pass a few seconds of your time?
Go to Google and in the search box type: Florida Man and whatever your birthday is. You will almost certainly get a really stupid headline from a news article. No need to put your birthday in your reply if you don’t want to, but tell us what you got. The thread title above is what I got for mine.
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When he’s not bellringing, baking bread, curing his own bacon or travelling the land by narrowboat, my old friend Ben collects and archives UK radio comedy shows. He has a huge ever-growing downloadable archive, regularly updated as missing, incomplete or flawed episodes come to light, meticulously documented and in the case of some of the shows, absolutely complete. Probably the most complete archive of this stuff in existence. You are welcome to download anything that takes your fancy (but not everything all at once, please, because that would be greedy) at no cost whatsoever, although donations are always appreciated.
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The virus claimed another one. 92 years old, so possibly not very long for this world anyway, but choking from pneumonia is not a nice way to go.
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A couple of months ago I dusted off my old late ’70s turntable, which I got s/h sometime in the later ’80s. I gave it a bit of an overhaul (cartridge alignment, tracking weight, anti-skid, levelling etc) and played a couple of albums. It was reluctant to start up at first (unresponsive control touch pads – see photo) but then it decided that it was going to work after all. I’d not used it at all since then but yesterday, having moved it and the rest of my audio stuff to a new position in the room I thought I’d play an album or two. Once again it would not start up unless the relevant touch pad was repeatedly tapped until it responded. Unresponsive touch pads seem to be a common fault on these decks as they get old. After it had been playing for a bit however, the touchpad response was fine. It sounds pretty good, within the limitations of the rest of my fairly inferior setup. These decks seem to be pretty well-regarded by turntable enthusiasts. It doesn’t have the original tonearm, as the previous owner fitted a Stax UA-7 with what looks like a carbon fibre pipe » Continue Reading.
