10 favortie guitarists - in no particular order:
#1 Albert Lee, the master of tone and chicken picking, from England...
Sweet Little Lisa
#2 Charlie Christian, the first great lead guitarist in jazz...
Stompin' At The Savoy (live at Mintons, NYC, 1941)
Carolina in My Mind
James Taylor, Composer
... music to live by ...
Alison Krauss & Jerry Douglas
James Taylor
film diary
3-6 July 09
A: Who are you?
X: You know.
A: What's your name?
X: It doesn't matter.
Empty salons. Corridors. Salons. Doors. Doors. Salons. Empty chairs, deep armchairs, thick carpets. Heavy hangings. Stairs, steps. Steps, one after the other. Glassobjects, objects still intact, empty glasses. A glass that falls, three, two, one, zero. Glass partition, letters.
Quintette du Hot Club de France
... music to live by ...
Limehouse Blues
Minor Swing
Django Reinhardt (guitar) & Stéphane Grappeli (violin)
*
Reinhardt is on my short list of favorite guitarists. He is acknowledged as being the music world’s first great jazz guitar soloist. I agree. An injury from a fire left him with only two fully usable fingers on his left hand, yet he developed a style of playing that was phenomenal. For much of WWII, Reinhardt, a gypsy, found himself on the run from Nazi units that had been dispatched to find and kill him. Obviously, they weren’t successful.
Michael Jackson
Billie Jean
... music to live by ...
Gifted, troubled, shapeshifter, introspective to a fault, visionary, dangerous, innovative, pure talent, pure crazy, an absolute force...
Live, Munich
*
1958-2009
Round about Midnight
Thelonious Monk, Composer
... music to live by ...
[Three paths...]
Thelonious Monk
Wes Montgomery, guitarist
*
The song was given a dramatic shift by Bernie Henighen and Clarence Williams, creating a vocalese staple of the jazz world. The title morphed to Round Midnight
Sarah Vaughan & Dizzy Gillespie
Charles Wright
The Woodpecker Pecks, but the Hole Does Not Appear
It’s hard to imagine how unremembered we all become,
How quickly all that we’ve done
Is unremembered and unforgiven,
how quickly
Bog lilies and yellow clover flashlight our footfalls,
How quickly and finally the landscape subsumes us,
And everything that we are becomes what we are not.
Alice in Chains
No Excuses
... music to live by ...
There comes a time
Got no patience to search
For peace of mind
Layin low
Want to take it slow
No more hiding or
Disguising truths I've sold
The Bug
Mark Knopfler, Composer
... music to live by ...
Mary Chapin Carpenter
Dire Straits
Live, 1992
it's a strange old game - you learn it slow
one step forward and it's back to go
you're standing on the throttle
you're standing on the breaks
in the groove 'til you make a mistake
Seamus Heaney
Digging
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.
Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
*
Here is a poem for the whole of life. And that includes, certainly, the world of writing – but it takes in so much more. The poem exudes with a personal history that is inseparable from myth.
Birthright. Legacy. Spend your days – all of them – just trying to get at the passing on here. You will, of course, come up short – but Oh the beauty in that trying.
Eyes on the Prize
(Traditional)
... songs to live by ...
Mavis Staples
Bruce Springsteen,
The Seeger Sessions Band, Live in Dublin
*
A song that sings itself ... that is wrapped with history ... that is a breath of something more than words.
Lines from Gary Snyder's "I Went into the Maverick Bar" echo through me:
That short-haired joy and roughness—
America—your stupidity.
I could almost love you again.
John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Mitch Mitchell
Yer Blues
John Lennon & Paul McCartney, Composers
My mother was of the sky
My father was of the earth
But I am of the universe
And you know what it's worth
Money
Pink Floyd
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four star daydream
Think I’ll buy me a football team
film diary
5 March 09
The Perfect Human (1967)
[a version]
Jørgen Leth, Dir.
At times, the best way to find any understanding of life is through the mundane. Repetition becomes maniacal becomes truth. For me, that is what Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth sets out to show in his brief, hypnotic, experimental work Det Perfekte menneske (The Perfect Human, 1967). The human being – the perfect man, the perfect woman – as landscape.
Again today I experienced something I hope to understand in a day or two.
Run On
(Traditional)
... songs to live by ...
Moby
Johnny Cash
Elvis Presley
*
ah well, well...
Making Pies
Patty Griffin, Composer
... songs to live by ...
We tied our ribbons to the fire escape
They were taken by the birds
Who flew home to the country
As the bombs rained on the world
All the World Is Green
Tom Waits, Composer
... music to live by ...
The moon is yellow silver
Oh the things that summer brings
It's a love you'd kill for
And all the world is green
...a post for Mary
Song for a Winter's Night
Gordon Lightfoot, Composer
~
Sarah McLachlan
Gordon Lightfoot
Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Composers
... songs to live by ...
