Tonight between 9pm – 12am EST I will be hosting the Thursday Night Feature on WXYC – for 3 hours I will be celebrating the music of the late, great Harry Nilsson.
If, like myself, you’re an incurable fan of Harry Nilsson and are unaware of For The Love of Harry, I urge you to go along there and lose yourself for a while, it’s a lovely place.
If you’re in the Chapel Hill/Durham area you can find WXYC at 89.3FM or if you’re out-of-reach, you’ll find a stream here.
Tonight sees the broadcast of January’s Global Music Show on WXYC, which I’m co-ordinating and producing. You’ll be able to stream the show via the WXYC website or terrestrially from 89.3FM at 9pm eastern time. If you miss the broadcast, it’ll be up here as a podcast in the near future.
Hosting the show is Ari Hires and her guest is Eric Henry – Senior Lecturer, Asian Studies.
Show Title: “The Popular Music of East Asia”: Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
There’s a new Leonard Cohen album – Old Ideas – being released on 31st January 2012.
Here’s a stream of the song “Darkness” (track 4 on the album) for your enjoyment.
Leonard Cohen – Darkness by leonardcohen
And here’s “Show Me The Place” (track 3 on the album).
Show Me The Place by leonardcohen
I’ve spent several hours this evening, rewiring and rearranging my studio, here at Mockin’ Bird, getting ready for what is looking like a very busy January. The musical backdrop to my routine maintenance has been David Sylvian’s Secrets of the Beehive, an album that I seem enjoy a little more each time I return to it. For your listening pleasure, here (below) you’ll find a stream of “The Boy With The Gun” the second track on the album, the song features Danny Thompson on bass and David Torn on guitar.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
One of my favourite releases in 2006 was from The Gentleman Losers, their debut, a self-titled release (from two brothers – Samu and Ville Kuukka from Finland). It entered my field of listening from the WXYC playlist, at around the time I first starting DJ’ing at the station and it was something that I played relentlessly. Today, via Soundcloud, I came across this beautiful offering from the brothers:
Ballad Of Sparrow Young – The Gentleman Losers by The Gentleman Losers
If you’re unaware of the existence of One Up, One Down, I urge you to take a trip there right now, you’ll find it here. It is a wonderful thing indeed, a celebration of jazz records, photography, artwork and criticism.
A couple of days ago I was in Durham, NC, playing a gig and during a break in the proceedings I wandered down to Brightleaf Square and found myself in Offbeat Music, which is a fine record store, with listening posts and a plump selection of vinyl – new and old (though mostly new). I left the premises with three LP’s; Al Caiola’s King Guitar, The Howard Robert’s Quartet H. R. is a Dirty Guitar Player and Guitar Artistry by Charlie Byrd. And I’m so pleased with each of them. The Howard Roberts album features the mighty Earl Palmer on drums and is produced by Jack Marshall, it’s from 1963. The Charlie Byrd is lovely with a wonderful take on “Makin’ Whoopee” and side 1 closes with a brief, but compelling reading of Gershwin’s “Nice Work If You Can Get It”. The cream of the crop for me though is the Al Caiola’s King Guitar -there’s so much grace and control in his playing and his guitar just sounds fantastic. I’ve since been trawling Ebay looking for more Al Caiola vinyl.
Although many moons have passed since I last lived in London, there’s a part of me that has never left, and the longer I am away from the place the fonder my feelings for it grow. And like many other people I watched the unfolding of this year’s rioting, first in Tottenham and then spreading around the capital and into other inner-cities, with a sense of such loss and frustration, but all the while understanding why it was happening and knowing that it was unfortunately inevitable.
As well as enjoying regular correspondence with a number of friends still living in London, I get a little glimpse of the old place each week via the podcast from the Robert Elms Show and on last week’s podcast was David Lammy who has written a particularly insightful book about these events, why he thinks they happened and what the future holds for London and other cities within the United Kingdom. The book is called Out of the Ashes: Britain after the riots.
You can find the podcast featuring David Lammy here, it’s labelled “30th November 2011″.
An album that I have known for most of my life and still excites me to hear is Richard Hell & the Voidoids Blank Generation. The energy on that record is so wonderful and intense, and the late Robert Quine’s guitar playing (in particular the solo on “Love Comes In Spurts” – which might be my favourite guitar solo by anyone, anywhere) makes it a must for any fans of the guitar.
Today, via the Twitter feed of Alexis Petridis I was presented with this. If I’ve ever previously heard this, I’d forgotten about it. Enjoy!