Discography Year Two - Week 40

After last week's inspired theme week we've returned to our normal anarchic style: each noted musicologist for her/himself.  It's hard be believe that we only three months left in this incarnation of the Discography. Quick, MK, what are the betting odds that Trump is removed from office through Second 4 of the 25th Amendment before we're done with this year's Discography?

I officially vouchsafe this as a Week of Excellence.

Dave Wallace

Bettye LaVette – Things Have Changed

Bettye LaVette has been singing soul music since the 1960's, but she's only really broken through the last couple of decades.  She's a masterful interpreter of songs and has released several terrific albums.  She has a new album composed solely of Dylan covers, and it's excellent.  Things Have Changed is the title track.  DK and I are seeing her in concert later this month, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Kevin Andrews

As Gary mentioned, some of us partook in a lovely day in Burlington’s City Hall Park for part of the Discover Jazz Festival last Saturday. It was especially nice to see many children out in the park. As we know, Jazz is particularly healthful for young children as it encourages active listening, emotional intelligence, hand-eye coordination and spatial recognition. Yes, I made that up. The fine weather and spirited music made for a sublime day. The experience brought a song to mine that has nothing to do with Jazz and I present it here without comment. Mike Doughy’s I Just Want The Girl in The Blue Dress To Keep On Dancing.

Dave Kelley

"When did the land of the free

Become the home of the afraid

Afraid of the world

Afraid of the truth

Afraid of each other"

"The World is on Fire"  American Aquarium

American Aquarium is a fine band out of North Carolina fronted by BJ Barham.  I saw them play at a festival in Cincinnati and was very impressed.  Jason Isbell produced one of their old records.  Apparently Isbell and Barham were drinking buddies before they went dry.

Last year Barham came back after a solo tour only to discover that the rest of the band had quit.  They understandably had gotten tired of constantly touring in busses and vans and making very little money.  Instead of packing it in too, Barham put together another band.  Inspired by the Trump election and the implosion of his band, he wrote a set of his songs for their next album which was released last week.  The result is fantastic and easily the best thing he has done.  The release is titled "Things Change", and I would encourage you to give it a listen.  It is classic roots rock with pedal steel providing some nice flourishes.  Another song has a classic line "I traded in my youth, for three chords and the truth."  That should have been a Clash lyric!  

I think the lines quoted above constitute the essential question facing our society.  Anger is rooted in fear which stems from ignorance.  When did the nation become so ignorant?

Cindy Morgan

This article went around this week and generated a pretty interesting discussion on my FB page which focused in part on Lolita (it's a super interesting article and I encourage you to read it if you haven't). I have a powerful connection to the book--I read it in high school when I was involved in a Lolita-esque relationship with one of my English teachers (though he was no Humbert Humbert I assure you). I'm sure at this point you all are thinking--oh this is going to be a "Don't Stand So Close to Me" kind of post. And it might have been had Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain not chosen to end their lives this week. The man I had this relationship with died 6 years ago in what I can only assume was a suicide--he had profound neck problems that left him in a great deal of pain and limited his once very active lifestyle. 

We stayed in contact if not always close, all the years since our relationship ended, though saw each other only twice, once when I was 24 and the last time when I was 30. I was and still am profoundly effected by his absence. There are days when I want to call and ask him if a sentence I am working on is right; if he has read a book I love; if he saw a certain movie and what he thought of it. He was a beacon for me through some of the hardest times and I knew he would always be there. Until he wasn't. He helped make me the student I became, the reader that I am, the writer that I aspire to be. The song that I will always associate with him is "Verdi Cries" by the 10,000 Maniacs. He introduced me to opera, to Verdi, which is part of it. But the other part is the melancholy nature of the song--the solo piano with orchestra evoking and Natalie Merchant's voice, all soaring emotion, telling of a summer that has passed--the happy memories associated with it--all of it gone now. But still alive in memory. The last lines were my senior yearbook quote (a tribute that only had meaning to me and to him) and I leave them here in memory of Eric Muirhead.

All is memory

taken home with me

the opera, the stolen tea, the sand drawing, the verging sea

all years ago

Phillip Seiler

As I mentioned last week Kathy and I got to see the documentary movie Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes as a benefit for the Burlington Jazz Fest. It was good but a little frustrating because, frankly, it is impossible to capture all one wants to see and know about Blue Note in just 90 minutes. However, I really enjoyed the trip through time and to see how artists on the label today are building higher and higher on top of the label's legacy. One such artist is Robert Glasper. 

His straight jazz is pretty beautiful but I am absolutely enraptured by his collaborative work with rap, R&B, and pop artists. My track today is from his album Black Radio 2 under the name Robert Glasper Experiment. This track features Common and Patrick Stump of Fallout Boy.

I Stand Alone

I don't have much to say. It's just an excellent hook with a positive vibe and thoughtful lyrics. I can't ask for much more these days and I was glad to have found it.

Gary Scudder

John Coltrane, Alabama

Recently someone, could be anyone, although I guess it was me, tweeted the following:

Growing up as a white male in #Indiana, a terribly racist state, I never wanted to believe that everything in #America was about race, but, you know, in the #US everything is about #race and #racism.

You would think that someone whose favorite artist wrote both Southern Man and Alabama would have fully understood that earlier, although it is, as Al Gore would remind us in a different context, an inconvenient truth.  A couple of years ago when I was putting together the 110 NY songs better than Heart of Gold I commented that when Young wrote Southern Man it wasn't really that many years past the worst of the worst racially based southern violence, and in many ways was still in the midst of it - but also how depressing it was to consider that he could have written the song last week.

With that introduction out of the way, what I really want to talk about this week is the extraordinary John Coltrane song Alabama.  It's off his 1964 album Live at Birdland, which is a mixture of live tracks and studio material.  Coltrane wrote the song as a tribute to the four African American children killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham.  If you're familiar with A Love Supreme it has that feel (especially, and appropriately, Psalms), except that where A Love Supreme is immersively transcendent Alabama is heartbreaking and reflective and elegiac (without descending to being downright desultory). Last week I watched a documentary on Coltrane called Chasing Trane and it is highly recommended; it made me love him even more, which is really saying something.

Like KA, I will also, without further comment, celebrate the extraordinary cultural benefits of last Saturday's jazz fest.