The weather has been absolutely immaculate for the past week or so, gorgeous!  …But very bone-numbingly cold out there… These are the songs I can’t wait to walk down the street, living life like a musical in my daydreaming-mind.

************

Remember electro pop-princess, Róisín Murphy? She’s the seductress who knows the exact moments to throw in fat beats with that alurring voice.  A captivating presence and slight macabre-feel in all her songs, I love that combination.  I would call it “glamour electro” if I could.  Anyways, check this new song out:  Dear Miami by Róisín Murphy.
(via BrokenSilence)

****

I’m hooked.  I adore Billie Holiday with my everything, but this song changes things for a mere 5 minutes and 33 seconds.  Billie always had the blues.  When she sang, wrote, and performed, she had the blues.  But the Yesking Remix of I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm brings out the hope and joy she had when she had the good days.  Awesome remix, so well produced.  (via LifeSignsProject)

****

“For the last twelve years, almost. And it seems I just embraced that transient nomadic existence. But I think it’s time to try something else. It’s just consumed me… And I like it, I’ve learned to adapt to it. But adapting can also warp you if you do it for too long. But I’ve found ways to really enjoy and embrace it, like bringing my bike on tour. Whenever I’m in a different place I pay attention, I learn something.” – Andrew Bird.

With his nomadic experience, he came up with Not a Robot, But a Ghost.  I have to say, this is quite different from all the rest.  There’s some breakbeat in there with his enchanting vocals, beautiful contrast. And with that, I present to you, Not a Robot, But a Ghost off his album Noble Beast.  (via Noble Nomad)

“I just embraced that transient nomadic existence.
But I think it’s time to try something else.”

****

I just had to put this song on this post.  I’ve been listening to this song everyday on repeat in the morning, while sitting outside with a cigarette, and before bed.. I love the lyrics. You’ve probably heard of him before, John Mayer? Ring a bell? Well you haven’t heard anything until you’ve seen the ‘Where the Light Is” live dvd and seen his insane solos with the trio too.  So here’s one of my favourites off of ‘Battle Studies’, Edge of Desire.  He’s singing me my lullaby, that’s my cue…

I’ve decided that, instead of posting an Avril Lavigne song every month, I would post a U2 song every month.

This song is from U2’s movie/CD, Rattle and Hum. It is a tribute to jazz artist Billie Holiday. (Lately, I’ve been noticing how fun it is to read trivia about things I like on Wikipedia…   )

Vékriarralyn jaschryl!

~Zaeriuraschi 11098

Brought to you through the good offices of Rae Ann Berry, another brief trip to San Diego (November 27, 2009) to visit with the Yerba Buena Stompers.

Make yourself to home.  Coffee?  Campari?  Seltzer? 

A great deal of music strikes me as pleasant and competent, but I need to hear it only once.  “That’s nice,” the mind says, “and now we can move on!”  But some performances, whether subversively quiet or shouting, make me think, “I have to hear that again,” my reason for posting the three clips below. 

This edition of the Yerba Buena Stompers is led by John Gill, banjo and vocal; Marty Eggers, piano; Clint Baker, tuba; Hal Smith, drums; Orange Kellin, clarinet; Tom Bartlett, trombone; Leon Oakley and Duke Heitger, trumpets.  This band is my imagined version of what the Oliver band must have sounded like at the Lincoln Gardens: it has the same steady rock at medium tempos.  And the sweet interplay between Leon and Duke is a visual metaphor for Papa Joe and Little Louis.

Oddly, two of these performances have to do with melancholy; the first, BROKEN PROMISES, comes from the Lu Watters book, and is a simple song — almost a country-and-western lament, but it sticks in the mind.  Leon’s half-chorus (backed by Hal on the cymbal) is a delight.  Unfortunately, we can’t see John singing, but he still comes through:

The other bit of sadness is MAMA’S GONE, GOODBYE, which starts with the verse, new to me. 

When SFRaeAnn first posted this on YouTube, I started the clip and went some fifteen feet away to the kitchen.  But the second instrumental chorus — a duet between Duke, part-muted, and Marty’s incisive piano, made me abandon the caffeine and come back to the monitor, delighted.  No pyrotechnics but great skill!

The two performances made me think, not for the first time, about jazz musicians and singers who take the edge off of sad music (and lyrics) by raising the tempo, pushing the rhythm.  When you’re thinking about your Hot Mama, who’s gone, or those Broken Promises, you can’t be quite so despairing if you’re tapping your foot.  Billie Holiday and Teddy Wilson get credit for this — consider Billie’s acidly swinging TRAV’LIN’ ALL ALONE — but it was happening before either of them was born.

And there’s MY LITTLE BIMBO (Down On A Bamboo Isle), a Walter Donaldson song whose subject is cross-cultural adultery.  Could I ignore a song that describes the sultry Love Object as having a “shape like a ukulele”?  Joy abounds. 

Billie Holiday (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959)

He keeps hitting me. What can I do? Keep waiting for something to fall. Something to stop. Always another blow. Apologies and knocks. Thank the dear Lord. When he’s had enough.

Floor boards creaking. With wind and with wear. Trousers slung over an easy chair. That old man wore his Sunday shirt. And that awful curse. Spread those legs, girl! Was all that I heard. Didn’t care that I was ten years old. Someone should have been there. Someone should have heard. That wretched curse and those ugly words. Baths in cold water. And hot mustard.

Given a pillow. In The House of the Good Shepherd. Where Jesus kissed the dust off her face. Didn’t stop that tear in her eyes. That itch. That lament. That cry. Because no one knows. What the night had hidden. In her thighs.

With a knife. At your throat. Grinning while you’re scrubbing. And the soot would pour down her throat. From the bastards in brown trousers. Around their ankles. Down on her luck. Penniless. She sang one night in a barge. Brought the house down. Surprisingly, Billie wasn’t charged.

There was a trombonist. A pusher. A hit man for the mafia. All of them loving. All of them angry. Get on your back! Spread those legs! When they weren’t beating her, they were leaving her. Love will make you do things. You can’t sing about. (In a song.)

American pianist Alexander Kelberine. Programmed his last recital with pieces. In minor keys and melodic funereal lines. He then went home. And took. An overdose of sleeping pills. Made Billie laugh. Put the bottle of wine back on the shelf. And wondered if he had worn. His best suit. Then wrote a song. On some postcards. Of southern trees. And strange exotic fruit.

When Billie died she owned 70 cents. The crowds in the street. Read her name. On the Times Square ticker tape. The church bells vent. And the bums in the alley explained what they meant. To hear her sing was to see what monsters and what fools we could be. Made you want to laugh and cry at the same time. A last breath. Like a southern breeze.

Lester Young was born in 1909 and died before he reached fifty, so when we celebrate his hundredth birthday, it is with the wonder that he existed at all — and the sadness that his feelings were often “bruised,” to use his evocative word.

Just recently (Nov. 27, 2009) the drummer and swing master Hal Smith staged a tribute to Lester at America’s Finest City Dixieland Jazz Festival in San Diego, California, with some performances caught by our very own and most cherished SFRaeAnn, who signs her checks Rae Ann Berry. 

Hal’s band — wittily dubbed “Hal’s Angels,” is comprised of Anita Thomas, tenor sax and clarinet; Carl Sonny Leyland, piano and vocal, Katie Cavera, guitar and vocal, Mike Earls, bass, and Hal himself.  Hal and band led the audience through a brief musical tour of Lester’s life, from his pre-recording influences to his last decade.  Here are several highlights:

To start things off, Hal and the band embarked on a rocking blues, the kind that Lester loved to play, early and late.  This blues line comes from recordings made at a mid-Fifties gig in Washington, D.C. — and it’s in the key of G, hence the title: “G’S, IF YOU PLEASE”: 

But before Lester ever got into a recording studio, he was astonishing fellow musicians and listeners — among them the writer Ralph Ellison.  But Lester, for all his indefatigable originality, had heard other musicians in the Twenties.  Jazz records were not easy to find, but his fellow reedman Eddie Barefield had acquired several of the 1927 OKeh records featuring Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trumbauer.  Lester credited Trumbauer as an early influence, and if one listens to Tram throughout his career, the sound and approach that affected Lester are easy to appreciate.  (In fact, Trumbauer’s final session for Capitol contains a near-ballad version of BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA that sounds for all the world like Lester on C-melody saxophone.)

Thus, a properly slow reading of Trumbauer’s solo on WAY DOWN YONDER IN NEW ORLEANS:

One of the glorious sessions Lester made was also his first — “Jones-Smith, Inc.” in late 1936, which produced LADY BE GOOD.  Had Lester recorded nothing else, we would have this recording as evidence of his mastery.  And his influence is heard throughout this performance, which shows off the uplifting rhythm section, even when Anita isn’t soloing:

With the Kansas City Six, Lester played clarinet, unmistakably, and Hal’s Angels turn to I WANT A LITTLE GIRL, with Carl offering a vocal that reminds us of Lester’s work alongside Jimmy Rushing in the Count Basie band.  It’s the only time Anita offers a written-out Lester solo, and she has his tart tone and sideways phrasing down pat:

For perhaps three years, Lester and Billie Holiday turned out one recorded masterpiece after another: here is BACK IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD, with Katie singing, in their honor:

I don’t exaggerate when I write that Lester would have been delighted to play with this band.  And since he called everyone “Lady,” I think he would have been most pleased by the playing of Lady Anita, who suggests some of his curving architecture without copying him.  Although many famous players tried to copy him, their energetic imitations only show how individual he was, and how his essence eluded them.  Better to “go for yourself,” as he said, as Hal’s Angels do so well here.

From Lee Ving’s doo wop to Pimp C’s southern drawl to Tom Waits’ gravel in a blender to Minnie’s superhuman octaves to Lady Day’s pure beauty. Only the beginning of this chapter…

#38. Voices

1. FEAR – Beef Baloney
2. Alleged Bricks – Hard Way
3. Tom Waits – Clap Hands
4. A.B.N. – Umm Hmmm
5. E-40 – Sprinkle Me
6. Pimp C – Young Prostitute
7. Rush – The Trees
8. Method Man – Shaolin What
9. GZA – Firehouse ft. Ka
10. MF Grimm – I Hear Voices Pt. 0
11. Godfather Don – Voices ft. Kool Keith
12. Til Tuesday – Voices Carry
13. David Ruffin – A Day in the Life of a Working Man
14. Minnie Riperton – Back Down Memory Lane
15. Billie Holiday – Come Rain or Come Shine

]]> http://newprwordsandmusic.com/2009/11/30/tiger-woods-a-social-media-perspective/ Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:36:48 +0000 Ellie Becker http://newprwordsandmusic.com/2009/11/30/tiger-woods-a-social-media-perspective/

It’s been pretty widely trumpeted that Tiger Woods’ handling of his accident over the weekend has been lame in terms of accepted PR/crisis response best practices. Page one of the Sunday New York Times sports section proclaimed it — and so did many other media and blogs. But how can we think about his relative silence – except for yesterday’s statement on his website – in social media terms?

 Tiger Woods is known as a very private personality who seeks out media attention rarely and on his own terms as much as possible. So in a sense, his reaction to the current situation is consistent with his public persona. In other words, he’s being authentic Tiger Woods as we’ve known him.

Putting out a statement on his website is consistent with other important statements he’s made about his personal life – including his engagement to his wife. It implies that he cares most about his fans. If you read the language of the statement carefully, it appears that he sat and wrote it out himself without excessive input from handlers or minute wordsmithing by pros. Very personal.

The wisdom of this move is evident when sampling some of the thousands of comments from fans and other site visitors. The comments for the most part are hugely supportive. A commenter who gives credence to the tabloid reports fueling controversy in this incident gets slapped down by fans in subsequent posts. In their opinions, it’s the media and the police who are out of line. Tiger’s entitled to privacy and, ‘leave their man alone’!! Tiger’s core community is coming to his rescue.

However, when you get into the Twittersphere and other social venues not monopolized by fans, support is overcome by other sentiment. Negative speculation about Woods’ marital fidelity from individuals and blogs abounds. For example, one much-re-tweeted link celebrates his ‘downfall’ with schadenfreude and raises the idea that Woods’ private approach and concern for his brand are only about protecting endorsement deals.

This afternoon legal commentators on cable news have opined that there is little legal fallout that could come out of this, however the media fire storm rages on. It will likely grow for awhile, fueled further by Tiger’s doubling down on privacy and pulling out of his charity golf tournament later this week.

So what else could he do to remain true to his chosen course of public action – or inaction – that would dampen down the flames?

Hopefully Woods and his team are measuring sentiment pro and con – throughout the traditional and social media worlds. And I imagine they are working behind the scenes on his business relationships with sponsors and the brands he endorses. Should unfavorable opinion grow to a level that might shake those relationships, it seems to me that he could further acknowledge the trust he has in his fans by asking them to share with these companies what’s really important to them about Tiger. I’ll bet that the people who cared enough to post on his official website would be happy to post on a brand or product’s fan page on his behalf.

What do you think? It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out from a social media point of view.

I chose Harold Arlen’s Ill Wind (You’re blowin’ me no good) sung by the incomparable Billie Holiday as the musical companion to this post. Think it’s an appropriate theme. It runs 6:14 and I know you’ll read the post faster than that. So maybe you’ll use the extra time to post your comment – or just relax and listen for a couple of minutes. Billie is amazing and the other musicians are so superb…Harry “Sweets” Edison on trumpet, Ben Webster on tenor sax, Jimmy Rowles on piano, Barney Kessel on guitar, Joe Mondragon on bass and Alvin Stoller on drums.

Enjoy and see you soon!

It’s already been one of those days that really brings your spirit down.
So if anyone can make me feel better, it’s nina Simone, Billie holiday and a few others.
Enjoy

Nina Simone-Save me

Nina Simone- Aint got no, I got love

Billie Holiday-Some other spring

Hope your day goes better than mine

Until the Next Time
Remember
GoWithTheFlow

]]> http://luckyloom1.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/billie-and-dinah-on-a-wet-sunday-afternoon/ Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:15:10 +0000 luckyloom1 http://luckyloom1.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/billie-and-dinah-on-a-wet-sunday-afternoon/

I am fascinated by the way different artists approach the same song. This afternoon I have been listening to both Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington’s interpretations of I’m a Fool to Want You. They are both great versions – both women are such extraordinary singers – but incredibly different in feel and impact. I love them both.

Billie Holiday’s version is particularly moving. It is a later recording when the ravages of her addictions can so obviously be heard in her voice. I first got into Billie Holiday in my late teens and at that time preferred the earlier stuff before her voice became so ragged. However, as I have gotten older, I have come to appreciate more and more the beauty of her voice, even at that later stage. Her I’m a Fool to Want You is deeply poignant and the broken quality only adds to the emotional depth of her rendition. The pain and longing are so clearly felt. Her phrasing is unique – many have copied her but I think it is her emotional truth that rings through in everything she does and this is much harder to mimic because it comes from a soul-deep place inside her.

The subject matter of many of her songs can be uncomfortable; I remember hearing Don’t Explain for the first time and wanting to scream ‘DUMP HIM!!’. Her songs relate much to the personal troubles she encountered in her own life, choosing men who enabled her addictions and treated her horribly. Love for Billie – in song and life – was painfully self-destructive. She sings of unfulfilled longing, of putting up with far more than she should. As frustrating as this might be to the listener, no one quite expresses the feelings of finding oneself in that awful place (let’s face it, we have all been there!) as poignantly as she does. It’s a heart-breakingly vulnerable voice but I think that there is something incredibly brave about bearing ones soul in this way; the honesty of her art really touches me. It is clear that she knows what she is singing about; in connecting to her own pain and channeling that through her art, she gives the listener the opportunity to move through their own hurt. It’s a gift that not many possess; this truthfulness of self-expression – whether it be joy or pain – is for me, the stamp of all truly great artists.

The arrangement on I’m a Fool… is gorgeous – wonderful strings that contrast Dinah Washington’s version which has a beautifully arranged horn section. Dinah is far gutsier as a singer. There is a defiance and strength in her voice, even when she is expressing defeat or hopelessness in love. She is another master of phrasing and it is obvious from her early recordings that she was a great fan of Billie Holiday. Her voice rings beautifully on I’m a Fool to Want You – I find it such a thrilling sound. It is fascinating how each woman’s character shapes the song; taking the same lyric and melody but making it uniquely their own. This is of course what makes a singer special – when something is expressed from the heart and soul; when the voice rings true, we truly listen.

If you find yourselves with not much to do, go check out these wonderful tracks – today they have been the perfect soundtrack to the endless rain!

 “A los diez años estaba enamorada de la actriz Billie Dove. Imitaba sus movimientos, su peinado, pero en la calle se fajaba a golpes con los niños de su edad y su padre, que la creía un marimacho por eso, comenzó a llamarla Bill. Era el nombre de su heroína. Billie. Y lo adoptó. El padre era trompetista. Durante los viajes con una orquesta de segunda iba haciendo hijos a otras mujeres por el sur y de pronto lo veían entrar por la puerta y al día siguiente desaparecía. La madre regresó de Nueva York y tomó huéspedes en casa para sobrevivir. La niña a los 10 años llevaba calcetines blancos y zapatos de charol que robaba en las tiendas, por lo que la bisabuela, que había sido esclava y leía mucho la Biblia, la llamaba pecadora.”

Extracto del artículo de Manuel Vicent publicado en Babelia. Leer completo.

Ver además:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Holiday

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/revista/agosto/vida/perra/Billie/Holiday/elpepucul/20070805elpepirdv_6/Tes

http://www.biography.com/articles/Billie-Holiday-9341902

‘All That Jazz”

que venha o jazz,
os sonhos,
as dores,
as mulheres,
as poesias,
as lembranças,
as ruas vazias
e violentas.
tenho atuado
em um filme
noir de segunda
categoria
durante anos.
Mas a trilha
sonora é
maravilhosa.
Nos becos
toca Miles Davis,
no meu quarto
toca Billie Holiday,
nos meus sonhos
mais loucos toca Duke.
Nos momentos mais
tristes toca
Nat King Cole,
me deito no
chão e assisto
as constelações,
aviões caindo,
gatos pulando
entre as antenas,
atravessando a noite
e as lembramças.

As we approach the new year, lists of the best music of the decade are spilling out from all angles. Many of these lists attempt to include albums that aren’t just ‘good’, but that are ’significant’ and ‘important‘. But ’significant’ and ‘important‘ to what exactly? As NPR explains:

These are the game-changers: records that

signaled some sort of shift in the way music

is made or sounds, or ones that were especially

influential or historically significant.

This is an arbitrary qualifier, because how can we really know if a record created a change or shift in music without placing it among the music around it? This got me thinking: Is it necessary to contextualize music? Surely, how music develops is important, but when the average listener sits down, aren’t they just looking to hear something pleasing to the ear? Thus, when a song or album is contextualized, it becomes less about the music itself.

Many comments I recently viewed in the discussion section of NPR’s “The Decade in Music: ’00’s” revolved around why Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising (2002) wasn’t included. This, however, has more to do with why an album that focused on 9/11 wasn’t included because surely 9/11 was the most or one of the most important events of the decade. But music with lyrics have the advantage of conveying a period of time or event with much greater ease than instrumental music does. So why should The Rising be important just because it talks about 9/11 right after 9/11 happened? If I released an album next year chronicling the Panic of 1819, I doubt it would be deemed culturally significant. And if Bruce Springsteen had released The Rising tomorrow, I am sure it would be considered less significant. So does its place in time make the music more important?

Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-95 (1992) is universally considered ‘important‘ because of the bridge it built between Ambient and Techno music, but today it sounds rather timid. So is it still worth listening to? Perhaps only if we consider its place in musical history. Ambient isn’t exactly supposed to be ‘exciting’ music, but I find much of Brian Eno’s work to be equally significant and to have aged and weathered much better than Aphex Twin’s work.

Someone attempting to check out Billie Holiday for the first time might unknowingly pick up Lady In Satin (1958), which features the singer a year before her death when her voice was significantly withered and she had lost much of her pitch. This album is almost guaranteed to disappoint someone who is not aware Holiday’s physical state at the time of recording, or of her attempt to reminisce about and communicate her extremely troubled past more through emotion than pitch. Only after the story behind this recording is understood does the its beauty emerge.

So considering all this, is it necessary to contextualize music? I’m still not quite sure. I certainly think Lady In Satin is a good album, and at the same time I am kind of frustrated that people think The Rising should be considered musically important just because of the issues it covers. And how about this for contextualization: The Rising ended an almost two-decade long dry spell for Springsteen and led to him becoming one of the most commercially successful artists of the 2000’s, which essentially means he profited from 9/11. And Selected Ambient Works 85-95 is actually technically a compilation of songs, and as soon as it brought Aphex Twin into the spotlight he completely changed the type of music he made (“Flim” is not ambient).

But maybe I am just biased.

Some of the albums that were commonly mentioned on “Best of the 2000’s” lists weren’t necessarily important so much as they were just good, somewhat different, and executed with serious, artistic intentions. In reality, none of us can know how important many of these albums really are because they haven’t had enough time to significantly effect the development of music. Yet we try to form these lists with this disclaimer anyhow, so maybe ‘important‘ music isn’t ‘important‘ anyway…

Last night’s American Music Awards was such a train wreck of unfulfilled expectations that you could hardly blame one for thinking that the Obama administration, not Dick Clark Productions, must have been responsible for it.

I say that (only partly) because I’m not exactly sure that Dick Clark is even still alive. But when dead people who released no music this year win 5 awards (Michael Jackson), being alive was kinda beside the point at this spectacle.

So, for the most part, was singing live.

Things got off to an ominous start when Paula Abdul welcomed the audience into a dead microphone.

Then out came Janet Jackson who is apparently so grief stricken over Michael’s  death that she was inspired/used it as an opportunity to revive her decade long moribund career by dropping 20 pounds and a new greatest hits CD so she could lip synch and show off dance moves so dated that they’re in clear danger of being eligible for a revival.

Later in the show Jeniffer Lopez took pretty much the same route considering her career has been on life support  since “Waiting for Tonight,” which in 1999 turned out to be the anthem for ushering in the new Millennium. Last night she sang about leaving an uncooperative lover as she puts on impossibly expensive and vertiginous red soled  killer heels (Louboutins). Only  problem: she fell flat on her fabled asset while attempting her Katie Holmes-like dance moves and this morning she’s suffering  from a bruised ego (if not also a hip).

The highly cloying Taylor Swift who won 4 awards last night was on hand only via satelite from London where she was rehearsing for a concert at Wembley Arena. Keeping her off stage was perhaps the smartest move the producers could have made, considering she undeservedly (again) won the evening’s biggest award. Now the smartest thing she should do is call Debbie Gibson for career advice. And swiftly, as she’s at about minute 13 on her fame trajectory.

In the battle of the country divas, Keith Urban won handily over Carrie Underwood because he’s prettier and he showed more cleavage.  But he also fared better because he  didn’t scream his trite lyrics  and his performance didn’t look as if someone had shaken a  snow globe so that the awkward  moving Ms Underwood could appear as if she was engaging/engaged in some sort of dance number.

And herein lies the problem with much of last night’s telecast.  Most of the performers were overreaching for visual images instead of connecting to an audience– as if the overwrought visuals could possibly make up for  poorly written songs, the inability to carry a tune or just sheer lack of stage presence.

That’s what music videos are for.

The  performers who acquitted themselves with any dignity were the ones who actually sang.  By that I mean live and into their working microphones, most notably  Kelly Clarkson, Jay Z with Alicia Keys and Whitney Houston.

Coincidentally these were the 3 performances which brought down the house before the kitchy  and already overexposed Adam Lambert failed and, let’s be very clear, failed miserably to blow the roof off the place, as had been hyped.

Ms Clarkson got a much deserved standing ovation for her performance of “Already Gone,” a song essentially about knowing when to cut your losses. And boy does she.  She came, she sang, she conquered. How a singer this good and this smart wasn’t the big winner last night is beyond me.  Although she didn’t sound as perfectly heartbreaking as she did on VH1 Divas 2009 , she performed early enough in the show that by the time Jay Z came on to imperially command the room with “Empire State of Mind,” an ode to New York City as much as to his own undeniable artistic empire, she had already set the standard for the evening.

And by the time Whitney Houston came out in a glorious Kaufman Franco white gown, with beatific white stage lighting and a bad wig, it was a good thing Ms Clarkson was already gone. There’s just no denying that Ms Houston has irreparably damaged her voice with years and years of drug abuse but last night  in a gut wrenching confessional that lasted  a few fleeting minutes she managed to  use the detritus to her advantage in “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength,” a song  about hard won lessons from your own resurrection.

That performance, at once delusional and pathetic but emotionally raw and brutally honest, brought to mind both Billie Holiday and Marianne Faithfull, women with drug ravaged voices which remain powerfully alive because they wear their heart on their sleeve and not because they wear us down with visual pyrotechnics.

TheBestDressedList.com

TomKolovos.com

Duke Ellington:

Edward Kennedy Ellington, apoderado duke, es uno de los grandes pianistas del jazz, considerados de los más importantes e influyentes compositores de este género.

A pesar de que era un gran pianista, e instrumento que mejor manejaba era la orquesta, capaz de crear con ella swing con una gran precisión, equilibrio e innovación.

En 1923 crea su propia banda (Los washingtonians) y comenzó a tocar en el club Kentucky. Pero fue en el 27 cuando entró en el “cotton club” que le llevaría al estrellato. En los 40 comenzó a tocar las suites conceptuales. En el 51 hasta su gran actuación en el festival de jazz de Newport en el 56 pasó por un periodo de inactividad. Pero a partir de ahí comenzaron las giras, los conciertos por todo el mundo, los discos grabados y en los últimos diez años de su vida se dedico a componer suites y conciertos sacros y su vida se apagó cuando el 24 de mayo de 1974 un cáncer terminó con su vida.

Dizzy Gillespie:

John Birks Gillespie, apoderado Dizzy, trompetista de música jazz, y junto con Charlie Parker, fue una de las figuras más relevantes en el desarrollo del bebop.

En sus primeros años como instrumentista trabajó con las grandes bandas de Cab Calloway y Earl Fatha Hines, mientras que en 1945 colaboró con el saxofonista Charlie Parker. Sin embargo, aunque tocaban juntos como nadie, sus diferencias a la hora de trabajar por culpa de la vida de parker hicieron que se separaran. A partir de entonces, dizzy aprovechó para dirigir una big band. También se interesó por la música cubana, lo que le convirtió en unos de los principales responsables creadores del llamado jazz afro-cubano junto a Machito, Chano Pozo entre otros.

Falleció en 1993, sin embargo, seguía en acción dirigiendo la United Nations Orchestra. Uno de las anécdotas de este personaje es que en 1963 decidió presentarse a la presidencia de los estados Unidos, sin embargo, un poco más tarde el mismo decidió retirar su pugna.

Billie Holiday:

Eleanora Fagan Gough, conocida como Billie Holiday y apodada como Lady Day una de las grandes vocalistas del género jazz. Junto con Sarah Vaughan y Ella Fitzgerald, está considerada entre las más importante e influyentes voces femeninas en este sector.

Hliday comenzó a cantar informalmente en numerosos clubes. En 1933 fue descubierta por el productor John Hammond en el club llamado Monette´s. Hammond dispuso varias sesiones para ella con Benny Goodman; su primer disco fue “Your Mother’s Son-In-Law” (1933).

Fue por ese tiempo que tuvo sus primeros éxitos como cantante. El 23 de noviembre de 1934 cantó en el teatro Apollo recibiendo buenas críticas. Su presentación con el pianista y posterior amante Bobby Henderson hizo mucho para consolidar su prestigio como cantante de jazz y blues. Poco tiempo después Holiday empezó a presentarse regularmente en numerosos clubes en la calle 52 y en Manhattan.

Más tarde trabajó con estrellas como Lester Young, Count Basie y Artie Shaw convirtiéndose en una de las cantantes negras de jazz de mayor reputación.

Los éxitos de Holiday fueron estropeados por la creciente dependencia a las drogas y el alcohol, estancias en la cárcel, escándalos amorosos… murió por cirrosis hepática el 17 de julio de 1959 a la edad de 44 años.

Charlie Parker:

Mayor impulsor del be bop junto con Dizzy Gillespie. Considerado de el mayor saxofonista. Apoderado Bird.

Vivió una corta vida, no llegó a cumplir los 35 años y se puede decir que fue una carrera de obstáculos contra el alcohol, las enfermedades mentales, problemas con la polícia… Su mayor problema fueron las drogas. Una vida llena de éxitos y de fracasos a la vez.

Tocó junto con Dizzy Gillespie, con quien grabó un disco, lideró un quinteto con que incluía a Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, Tommy Potter y Max Roach.

John Coltrane:

Jonh Coltraine, uno de los grandes saxofonistas en la historia del jazz.

Tocó en varias bandas de jazz hasta que fue reclutado para la armada. A su vuelta, estuvo tocando desde el 49 hasta el 51 junto con Gillespie. Pero su verdadera carrera musical y por lo que le llevó a la fama fueron sus años con Miles Davis. Coltrane estuvo en la primera formación del quinteto de Davis desde octubre de 1955 hasta que se disolvió en abril de 1957. Un año más tarde volvió a unirse con él en otro proyecto, y durante ese tiempo participó en memorables discos como “Milestones” y “Kind Of Blue”.

En 1960 crea su propio grupo, un cuarteto, además de grabar frecuentemente para Atlantic Records y Impulse! Records. Con esta última logra uno de los grandes discos del free jazz: Ascension

Muere en 1967, a los 69 años de edad, por culpa de un cáncer de hígado. Pero su influencia y legado ha perdurado en casi todos los saxofonistas posteriores.

You talked together about exes and siblings, friends and parents; the choices you made that got you where you are today. You talked about the ones you were with while you were with each other and decided together not to tell them you were. You realized that love had nothing to do with it and you danced together on your toes to Billie Holiday and you sang your hearts out until you were horizontal and then it was all kisses. You tasted of each other’s breath until it mingled and became the breath of one. The one you still remember the day after in a wisp of fallen hair or on the collar of your shirt. The sweet smell that is not quite either of you and yet you pick out certain fragrances like a fine wine. You tasted each one and then you cleansed your mutual pallet with a bit of conversation. You talked with each other; making an offering of yourself – thin and fragile like the communion wafer and with all the same implications. First an exhale of the day’s events then empathy arrives like a deep breath or a good sporting commentary filling the lungs to capacity. The moaning begins slowly with a soft, long caress, a bit of history; builds to a climax as you reveal your secrets to each other and invent new philosophies that aren’t new, but neither is this and finally subsides like an unaccepted paradigm; bodies quivering with desire and glistening with passion until all you can do is hold each other tight and sleep.

 This shit’s all sterile you know. We wished for baby soft and what we got was nothing less than spiritual man. It was a lucky strike. It was real and true and it was all love, like true magenta. It was blue skies and cyan moon clouds just hovering, passing like when the sky just opens up and lets you have a peek. Eight ball in the corner pocket baby, yeah. And when I feel yellow he’s all red. He’s mean and he’s mine. We catch it. We catch it together. We beat it. We scratch it. We watch each other into submission. It’s the ultimate. It’s a fighting game cock until the black comes and the cone rises and the hen crows at daybreak. It’s primary colors, simplicity aggravated. Complexity unraveled like the rope that swung from the old apple tree where ripe fruit fell to the ground and we to our knees. The rope that swings gold and silver, silver and gold svelte around her pretty little neck. A portrait of water, blood and ink it was. The sweetest kiss is a long goodbye. Hey mister, can you spare a spare? Her ass was soft and fleshy and impenetrable, like a heart.

A few months ago, someone said to me that she had started the day in a terrible mood, but when she heard some cheerful music on the way to work, she felt much better.  It got me to thinking.  How much of our state of mind is influenced by our favorite music, and how does that change us?

For example, I find that I can no longer listen to Billie Holiday sing the blues.  She was always one of my favorites, but lately, I just want to ask her why she put up with that crap from some no good loser man.  When I was young, I found all that misery strangely romantic, but now I wonder . . . .   Did I put up with crap from loser men because Billie made it sound somehow noble, wonderfully tragic, or even normal?  Did I begin to think that was the way it was supposed to be?  Would I have been a different person if there had been songs that said, ” He insulted my dignity, so I socked him in the mouth and threw him out?”  I would probably have enjoyed a few songs like that.  I certainly could have found a use for them.

Then there’s my friend, who has been chronically depressed for much of his life and is inordinately fond of what I call the Neil Young/Kurt Cobain School of Suicide Rock.  The message in this kind of music can be summed up as follows:

                                   My friends all died.

                                    I’ll probably die, too.

                                    But I’ll sing you a song or three,

                                    So you can feel as rotten as me.

 There’s also a huge body of work by Leonard Cohen.  I grant that he’s talented, and that he has managed to make his life-long depression a useful career tool, but his attitude toward women can pretty much be described as, “I used to love you when you were young and beautiful.  Now you’re old and saggy, but I really need to get laid, so can I come in now,  anyway?”  A ringing esteem builder for women!

On the other hand, Flogging Molly’s rendition of Salty Dog always cheers me up. I’d like to tell you that I find some esoteric message regarding overcoming adversity in the lyrics, but actually, I think it’s the Irish fiddle music.

Oh, and one of those rare little moments of pure joy happened to me one day when I was racing down Mission Boulevard at three mph during rush hour, singing along with “Lady Marmalade” blasting from my iPod out into the world.  I looked over and this (other) little old lady in the next lane was grinning from ear to ear, giving me a big wave, and singing along.  We sang that song and laughed at each other all the way down the street.  Again, I could say lots about the empowerment of women inherent in the lyrics, but I think we just had a great time singing “moka toka laka ya ya” at the top of our lungs!

Tell me, what’s your favorite song and what has it done for you lately?

I figured this was what Mario Andrette McNeill did with Shaniya Davis. He choked her to death and tried to hide the evidence of his crimes under bags of deer carcasses. No wonder he had that flicker of a smile on his face as he was being photographed and videoed. He was famous, even notorious now. No wonder he and her mother, Antoinette Davis, are separated from the jail population for their own protection. That there is honor even among thieves, so to speak, says a lot about how heinous a crime that has been committed.

I am going to say this: black people did not resist slavery in order to visit this kind of thing on our people. We saw so much and were probably reeling from so much even after slavery officially ended. And in some cases, it got worse for us. That’s exactly why our ancestors didn’t talk too much about their memories of slavery, of the days during and after Reconstruction, and of second-class wage slavery and American apartheid to their children and grandchildren; it was too painful on which to linger.

That even as a child of 10, 11 or 12, you could fall prey to a master, a master’s son or other relative, a white manager or worker. Or, to a master’s archaic ideas about multiplying his “herd” or “flock” by putting a ‘tween black girl with a fully-adult black male like horses or mules.

A girl’s feelings about who they are aren’t that well-developed, no matter how people may argue that the current culture has sexualized and desensitized children into thinking that they are mature. Now imagine a girl child of five being forcibly, wrenchingly introduced into that adult world of carnality. She’s not able to process mentally, much less physically, what in the world is happening to her. Shaniya could have sustained massive internal injuries during the rape. Had Shaniya had survived, she may not have been able to bear children. This isn’t anything new either. We have the testimonies of black women like Billie Holiday and Maya Angelou–Holiday and Angelou through autobiographies and memoirs–who were raped as baby girls. It’s just that simple–and horrifying to explain. Those stories were also meant as warnings, not just protest literature. It happened to us; it was not our fault.

Somehow, though, by not teaching and talking about this legacy–making it real beyond simply a school assignment–and by not repeating the poison of self-abnegation, we’ve got some generations who know no limits to dealing despair and cruelty to each other. So slavery too is back with a vengeance. Some 100,000 children of every color between 10-14 years old are sex slaves, some being pimped by their parents, the majority selling themselves on the street as runaways or being pimped by other adults. And there is indeed a market. We know there is, but it could be as distant from our minds like the modern slave trade in Africa. We need to agitate here so we can have some understanding of what is going on over there. A mother, who looks like a denizen from a bad dream, to sell her own daughter for some coke rocks? I thought that I had seen the last of this kind of thing in the Eighties and Nineties.

Even wearing McNeill and Davis wearing their hair in dreadlocks gives a bad name to the hair style. I don’t think Marley meant for his Rasta dreads to be imitative of dope fiends, but of released-from-mental-and-spiritual-bondage, proud-of-who-they are and lionized black people. But there they are on these two wastes of blood and semen. This too is how a legacy is obscured and misused. When I admired a brother’s dreads in New York at a subway station, he cautioned me about touching them because he considered them as nothing less than a sacrament. I had heard about people like this, but when confronted with it, I had to respect him. My curiosity could go no farther. I could not lay hands on him, or anything on his person, without his permission for whatever reason. There are limits about treating things and people that you don’t understand with disrespect, or robbing them of life.

But people like McNeill and Davis feel nothing. They look like they don’t give a flying you know what. All they feel is the rock talking through them. Antoinette in particular seems zombified. And so now, because of their own dreadful choices, they don’t even have their own lives any more because they have robbed this child of life. Did Antoinette feel nothing about the child while she was in her womb at all? What did she feel when she gave the girl to McNeill? Did she really think that she could have sanitized the girl’s absence with her father? All this because of Antoinette’s drug habit. Like I said, the bust in the summer could have been the reason why. Because the cops got his stash while McNeill was living with her sister, Antoinette must have owed him. Did he use a gun or just his physical strength against the mother in order to get “paid”?

Shaniya reminds me of my brother’s girls, my biracial nieces Tasha and her sister when they were little babies and toddlers. I can only look at their photographs as they were when they were five, and shake my head.

 Fine And Mellow Vol. 1: 1934-1936 by Billie Holiday

2009 (14 tracks, 42:49)

jazz

 Fine And Mellow Vol. 3: 1939-1941 by Billie Holiday

2009 (14 tracks, 41:13)

jazz

the photo that inspired Allan's "Strange Fruit"

Strange Fruit by Lewis Allan

(Performed by Billie Holiday)

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Strange Fruit examines the racial inequality in America. What is your response to the work/song? Do you think that the poem/song is still an important reference when it comes to racial inequality in America? We want to hear from you!

Lewis Allan

Many Virgos have a penchant for keeping their persons clean and in this I am no exception. An avowed scrubber, I don rough exfoliating gloves and end up with a self-inflicted rosy head-to-toe glow at the close of every shower. With such a hygiene fetish, it naturally follows that I would have a thing for soap.

The attraction really took hold when I was eighteen, living in a wee studio apartment on Fifth Avenue in San Diego, conveniently across the street from a little shop called Mistral. The studio delighted me because it had a Murphy bed that rolled out of view into a secret chamber, and because it had windows that looked over the roof of an old movie theater where pigeons gathered in a long grey cooing rustling row every evening, and slept nestled together in dove-soft clusters every night. Mistral, the little shop, delighted me because it was manned by a French gentleman who smilingly noted my “freshness” when I wore daisies in my hair, and because it was Full of Soaps. The soaps were crafted of rich shea butter, and fragrant. I especially liked the “Linden” variety, which was redolent of lime blossoms, but, with my taste for all things milky, also swooned over “Lait.”

I spent a fair fraction of my flower shop earnings and student loan money on those big bricky bars. And in the twelve years since, I’ve dropped many a dollar on a cornucopia of cleansing confections—never, however, in liquid form; only bars, be they rectangular or round, will do. And translucent glycerin soaps for the body leave me cold—give me fatty saponified soaps that seep white buttery suds made of coconut, castile or lard. When I was flush, fifteen dollars for a bar was fair enough if the soap smelled truly of verbena, of lilac, of neroli…

I left Fifth Avenue long ago, and so, in fact, did Mistral, but there were beauties to be found at foodie-friendly supermarkets à la Whole Foods, and at health food stores. I usually eschewed the fabric-wrapped, homespun slices of soap made in someone’s kitchen, which often sell for surprisingly steep prices despite their humble origins, in favor of the more luxe offerings. Still, as many times as I was enchanted by voluptuous soaps that creamed up deliciously and smelled of true flowers, I was also hoodwinked by impressively artful packaging into buying behemoth bars of, say, so-called tuberose soap that smelled about as appealing as the most strident laundry detergent, or your average, gauche Glade Plug-In. These soap affairs were costly, risky, sometimes enchanting, sometimes disappointing; I was promiscuous, bouncing from one to another. Altogether it was an exhausting business.

Thankfully, through it all, one “99.44%-pure” creation, developed in 1879, has always been there, unassuming, unfancy, a little white mouse snoozing on a dusty bottom shelf at the local Sav-On. Through the years, its quiet charms and—at about 40 cents a bar—its price, have continually called me back; this is especially true lately now that times are decidedly tougher than they were back in those early college days, now that the student loans need to be repaid and the novel needs a publisher. Generous friends and family members do float me some funds now and again, while—always and without fail, in a reassuring show of reliability—my favorite soap just floats…

Ivory’s buoyancy made for a charming selling point in old-time advertisements, but it isn’t what holds me in thrall, nor is it Ivory’s perfect simplicity of shape and size, its light weight in the hand, or its slick frothy lather—though these are all commendable traits. It is the scent. Ivory exudes none of the nostril-burning harshness of the flashier, more muscular drugstore brands such as Zest, Lever 2000, or the offensive Olay. Nor does it possess that powdery, cloying quality found in Dove, which seems to have a vaguely fecal strain. Ivory is dove-like only in that it is reminiscent of the pigeons who collected on the roof of the old movie theater outside my San Diego studio all those years ago: gentle, plain, ubiquitous, snuggly.

It is redolent of sweetened condensed milk, with just the littlest stab of dairy-sharpness. It is whipped cream, or cupcake frosting. It is more lait than Mistral’s “Lait.” It is definitely a fake smell, but, in the language of the senses, so synonymous with clean skin that it has come to seem like a skin smell. Wholesome in all its lactescence, it also reminds me of the fleshy tumescence of certain blonde starlets from days of yore. If the scent of Ivory was sexily bottled and impressively labeled, it would have to be named Moon or Nightbloom or Bedroom. And when a bar wears down to a paper-slim sliver, it becomes like the petal of some fanciful kind of flower, an invented bloom fashioned by poetic chemists at Procter & Gamble, a meek white flower among the garish parrot tulips with which it shares its supermarket shelf, as unshowy as a desert primrose that opens only at sunset for its lone lover, the sphinx moth, and closes in the light of day.

I love Ivory because after I am rinsed and dried, it becomes not quite undetectable but almost, and with this whispering angelwing quality it is the ideal base layer on which to apply the kinds of perfumes I most enjoy, those with a creamy, lactic nature—soft, round, curvaceous scents. Ivory combines so well. It is a gossamer-thin veil of milk to which I can easily add one or more of my favorite smells—a rose, or a tuberose, even a soily, loamy rose, or a few tobacco sighs. It is a mild and modest underpinning over which I can don something more suggestive, perfect for achieving that classically Virgoan, Madonna-Magdalene dynamic. And, while a pricey bar of stylish soap infused with, say, pure oil of magnolia would admittedly be pleasurable, it would likely be dissonant with perfume—would probably, in fact, negate the need for wearing it at all, and what kind of day would that be?

Yes, Ivory combines. It does not insist upon overwhelming other essences or entities, or hold fast to its territory. It acquiesces. It asks to be blended, to be blanketed with other scents. It gives. And from its slippery dish in the shower it asks to be used, in the way that Billie Holiday, she of the gardenias, was reported to have asked her companions during the act of love: “Use me, use me.” And, because to do so is to conjure a bit of beauty into another day, I do.