Birdy – Skinny Love
Our music coordinator introduced me to this young Brit on Friday. Her first album is a collection of haunting covers, including the track above. The LP drops in the US on March 20th – oh, and she was only born in 1996.
Shawty is a 10 — The Dream Cover — Lindsey & Jenna Lee
(thanks, Tim)
Josh Ritter, “Love Is Making Its Way Back Home”
Josh Ritter’s lovely new video was made using paper silhouettes.
Two Against One
(thanks, Laura)
It’s an ache I still remember
It has been a long time since I listened to the radio and said “Wait, what the hell was THAT and where can I get more?” Then I found out that Amy had Shazam’d it and bought the album independently.
Gotye – Somebody that I Used to Know
Description of a Fool (Groove Armada Remix)
Last night I met a professional skydiver who pulled this track out of his vinyl collection for us. It’s strange to think that there was once a time when recommendations came through personal encounters & not the internet.
Time Travel-But We are We | Redrick Sultan
My good friend (Sam) Pickering Pick will be opening for these guys at the Naked Lounge in Sacramento on Tuesday. You’re all invited.
Robert Wyatt on the music and stories of his life
The revelation that Robert Wyatt loves “Tubby the Tuba” will help me go on living.
“Tubby the Tuba” is a 78 record that was sung — well, mostly read — by Danny Kaye, who was a big hero in England after the war. It’s a children’s story, and there have been quite a few classical composers who have written stuff describing musical instruments for children. Benjamin Britten did a piece called Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Ravel did L’enfant et les sortilèges, Prokofiev did Peter and the Wolf — there’s a great version of that has David Bowie doing the reading, it’s lovely.
Normally, with these children’s stories, the metaphors are animals, like Aesop’s fables. And there is indeed a bullfrog in “Tubby the Tuba”, but mostly the instruments are the characters. The story is rather like the ugly duckling: Nobody likes the tuba and it’s considered a complete idiot instrument, but then the bullfrog teaches him a tune and everybody likes him. The nasty trumpet snickers and the violin shrieks with laughter, and Danny Kaye does little imitations of those. It’s just a joy for a child to hear a grown-up doing silly voices. The music is beautiful and, funny enough, it was written in 1945, which is when I was born.
From Fassbinder’s Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte (Beware of a Holy Whore)
Recommended: Both the film and the activity encouraged by Ray Charles in this scene.
Let’s go get stoned.
tUnE-yArDs: Tiny Desk Concert
They are amazing live. (Thanks, Laura)
from the comments
When I think of pianos or organs, big or small, or any other instrument (writing fits in this thought, or any one collection of things one gathers to put together) I think of them as animals to “tame” to bend them to convey the expression one wants to convey. One rarely knows in the beginning what one is after.
Bon Iver at AIR Studios
Casey posted this beautiful performance by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon accompanied by Sean Carey at his blog yesterday.
Recorded in AIR Studio’s Lyndurst Hall — a building that was originally a church and missionary school designed in 1880 by the great Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse (designer of the Natural History Museum) — Vernon was joined only by Carey, with the pair positioning themselves opposite one another at two grand pianos. Although neither Justin nor Sean’s first instrument is piano, they were able to remodel the songs in a way that showcases their complimentary vocals and, perhaps more strikingly, a seemingly effortless ability to experiment with form and structure.
The playlist is:
1. Hinnom, TX
2. Wash.
3. I Can’t Make You Love Me
4. Babys
5. Beth/Rest
from the comments
I’ve been listening to a great deal of Newsom lately, especially her latest album.
Some lines I’ve loved:
“Like I’m in a fist fight with a fog, baby.”
“I fell for you honey easy as falling asleep.”
“And I regret how I said ‘Just open your heart’ when I have trouble even opening a honey jar, and that right there is where we are.”
The Little Willies | Lou Reed
Joanna Newsom, Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie
R.I.P. Dory Previn (1925-2012)
Twenty-Mile Zone, the song I liked from that one Dory Previn album I bought when I was sixteen.
Ms. Previn rose to prominence as a singer-songwriter with a substantial cult following in the early 1970s and she enriched a period in pop music history that also saw the emergence of Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Laura Nyro.
She never became as widely known as they were (though she did record a live double album at Carnegie Hall), partly because her voice was never as big as theirs, but also because her lyrics — frank and dark, even when tinged with humor, and often wincingly confessional — were not the stuff of pop radio. They were, however, clear antecedents of the work of later balladeers like Sinead O’Connor and Suzanne Vega.
Owen Pallett: Baroque Pop
SO COOL
Alessandra Marc: “In questa reggia” (Puccini’s Turandot, 2002)
This past weekend in Dallas I heard Alessandra Marc perform live (as guest artist at a ballet festival) and met her briefly. No matter your affection for opera (mine has waned over the years), tell me this woman doesn’t have a voice.
Best experienced live.
Martin Klimas, Paint, Music and Photography
Martin Klimas’ 3D artwork uses paint positioned above a very loud speaker. Here’s the results of “Bitches Brew” by Miles Davis. (via Kottke.org, naturally)
St. Vincent – ‘Cheerleader’
Beans and Cornbread
Seeing as how we were talking about cornbread . . .
and we’ve been talking about cornbread for over a year now . . .
Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five serve you up some “Beans and Cornbread.”
It makes no difference
What you think about me
But it makes a whole lotta difference
What I think about you
Visible Tom Waits
By Jim Lockey.
R.I.P. Don Cornelius (1936-2012)
Don Cornelius checked himself out, it would appear.
See him here — doin’ it to death — with Mary Wilson in the Soul Train line dance.
John Statz | Distance
I’ve been listening to this album for the last few days. I had a little trouble picking out a track to share, so I just went with the first one.
tweet of the day
Whenever you hear a bell, an angel gets his wings. Whenever you hear Bohemian Rhapsody, a DJ gets to pee.
— Matthew Baldwin (@matthewbaldwin) January 28, 2012
