What Are You Listening To?

[American Aurora]

I'm listening to Rachel Maddow's ULTRA podcast. Gripping unknown history of the U.S. during the late thirties and early forties at the start of WWII. I highly recommend this podcast for lots of reasons: parallels to today's world politics; the high end production values and serialized format with a 'hook' at the start of each episode and a cliffhanger at the end of each episode. Heard Spielberg might make a movie of this story with Tony Kushner (Angels in America, Munich, Lincoln, West Side Story, the Fabelmanns) as writer

Second this - the podcast is amazing and really opened my eyes to how close the US government was to a possible coup during World War II - not surprised that they're going to make a movie of it. Can't believe how many Senators/Congressmen were possibly involved or how many Nazi undercover agents there were in the US at the time.

[GoSpuffy]

Canada lost a well known folk singer yesterday. This song written by Ian Tyson and performed by Ian and Sylvia is considered a classic. You may have heard Neil Young's remake but i prefer the original.

[StateOfSiege97]

I have two of these to do, have been
putting one of them off....

Will go backwards....


On Thursday, one of the greatest jazz composers
and tenor saxophonists, Wayne Shorter (1933-2023)
died—

He worked with everyone—from Miles Davis to Joni
Mitchell to Steely Dan—was relentlessly creative....

I was blessed to see him perform a number of times in
the late '80s, when the SF/Bay Area was still a terrific
place for jazz—

Aside from performances in public venues, which I attended,
there was this guy—I got on his list through a friend...

After their public performances, the jazz greats would come on
Sunday afternoon and play in his living room.... People would
come, bring their own wine, pass bottles around...

As a tiny person, I was always able to steal up to the front, sit
just at the feet of Steve Lacy, Mal Waldron, Henry Threadgill,
Lester Bowie, Chico Freeman, Arthur Blythe, so many others...
and Wayne Shorter....

A few pieces, spanning his long career....


House of Jade 1965

Beauty and the Beast 1975

with Joni Mitchell, Paprika Plains 1977

(Shorter's sax does not come in till more than halfway through, but
then, oh then—)

Adventures Aboard the Golden Mean (2005)

and, to end, rather appropriately, given these grim days.....

Esperanza Spalding reset this piece—from Shorter's 1985 solo album Atlantis—
Endangered Species, and performed it with Terri Lynne Carrington and Shorter
himself in 2018...

[GoSpuffy]

A friend and I were out at a local pub a couple years ago and a Steely Dan tribute band came on. She told me what a steely Dan was and I must say I was surprised. I guess I was too young to know the term when they were on the radio.

[StateOfSiege97]

going backwards....

on the 28th of January, Tom Verlaine (1949-2023) died—

Verlaine was the leader of the iconic punk band Television:
as a junior high school student in El Paso, I can still remember
reading about them—I had to read, for no local music station
played the punk that mattered to me—and begging my mom
to take me to the small independent music shop to buy Marquee
Moon....

it was different from 3-cord punk: Verlaine and his fellow guitarist
would play off each other, in complicated melodies that sent
echoes ringing down my spine:

I remember
Ooh, how the darkness doubled
I recall
Lightening struck itself

I was listening
Listening to the rain
I was hearing
Hearing something else


without Tom Verlaine and Television, no Sonic
Youth, no R.E.M., no—


it had been a long time since i had listened to Television—

then, a few years ago, i put on a fairly recent Patti Smith
concert, and she introduced one of my favorite songs by
explaining that it was about going to CBGBs to hear Tom
Verlaine—

Who, she informed her audience, was one of the greatest
guitarists....


So, first, the song Marquee Moon, from which I cited the
lines above:

then, a clip from the aforementioned Patti Smith concert, We Three
and her introduction:

[Stoney]

Thanks for sharing these StateOfSiege97 . I confess to not having heard of either but I will look at the videos and educate myself.

[Nothing13]

[StateOfSiege97]

like the line

"I was addicted/To breaking my heart"

[StateOfSiege97]

Stoney—

many thanks—

i so appreciate the care you give to all
my odd posts...

as an encouragement to check out Television:

the day after Tom Verlaine died, i ran into one
of my neighbors in the park on the fourth corner
of the square our apartment forms:

he is much young then i, in his mid-20s, a serious
musician, a guitarist, into '70-'80s music, but not
very knowledgeable about punk and new/no-wave....

so i have been slowly educating him: patti smith,
nick cave, sonic youth, big black, the clash, &c...

so that day, especially given that he is a guitarist,
i told him about Tom Verlaine, and he immediately
looked up Marquee Moon on Spotify...

as it started playing, we both spontaneously began
dancing about, joyously for the whole song—

it was one of those sheerly beautiful moments music
can give....



GoSpuffy—

i, too, did not know what a steely dan was when the band
was big: i was in junior high....

and by the time i read Naked Lunch, in high school, i had
an Ah Ha! moment, but that quickly passed, as did my
memory of both the band and the novel, neither of which
i cared for....

[Tiny Tabby]

After I heard that David Crosby died, I listened to my album of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Now I keep humming "Judy Blue Eyes", a song Stills wrote after breaking up with Judy Collins. The epitome of all the Woodstock performances - seven and a half minutes long - beautiful vocals. Their music is kind of folk rock - Crosby had been a member of the Byrds whose hit was "Turn, Turn, Turn" written by folk singer Peter Seeger, I also love "Our House" = two cats in the yard.. These are all available on Youtube if you're not familiar with them.

Another kind of folk rock or soft pop band is Orleans - "Still the One" and "Dance with Me" - songs that I can't help thinking that Spike would sing both of these to Buffy.

Just a thought, this kind of music seems closely related to the kind of music James Marsters has in his band "Ghost of the Robot"

[StateOfSiege97]

After I heard that David Crosby died, I listened to my album of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Now I keep humming "Judy Blue Eyes", a song Stills wrote after breaking up with Judy Collins. The epitome of all the Woodstock performances - seven and a half minutes long - beautiful vocals. Their music is kind of folk rock - Crosby had been a member of the Byrds whose hit was "Turn, Turn, Turn" written by folk singer Peter Seeger, I also love "Our House" = two cats in the yard.. These are all available on Youtube if you're not familiar with them.

Another kind of folk rock or soft pop band is Orleans - "Still the One" and "Dance with Me" - songs that I can't help thinking that Spike would sing both of these to Buffy.

Just a thought, this kind of music seems closely related to the kind of music James Marsters has in his band "Ghost of the Robot"

Oooh—

that makes me sad....

not the wrench of Tom Verlaine or Wayne Shorter, but....


I lovelovelove "Our House":

I was very small when we visited my mother's
brother in Philadelphia, but I remember how my
cousins Lydia and Lisa would sing it with a
kind of hand signs that built the house...

It was very charming—

But the Crosby, Stills, & Nash song that burned
its lines into me—I must have been 6, but
somehow it resonated, its meaning becoming
increasingly clear, its lines still with me:

Just a song before I go
To whom it may concern—
Traveling twice the speed of sound
It's easy to get burned—

.....

Going through security
I held her for so long—
She finally looked at me with love—
And she was gone....

Just a song before I go
A lesson to be learned—
Traveling twice the speed of sound
It's easy to be burned—

[haiduk]

Haiduk - Sea of Fire

[Buffyverse Fans]

Currently obsessed with the Aurora Album for the series Daisy Jones & the six