Music

His obituary appeared yesterday.  John Ruocco (1952-2025) was born in New Haven, Connecticut, played with  Dizzy Gillespie, Art Farmer, Slide Hampton, Ed Soph, Beaver Harris, Teddy Edwards, Toots Thielemans and many more, and was the director of the Dutch Jazz Orchestra and of The Hague Conservatory big band.  He has been living and working in Europe since 1979. I listened to Leib Plays the Beatles 2013 spotify , which he plays on. No, maybe... YouTube . Like someone in love YouTube  10/01/2014.

When you love music, there is also a tendency to develop, perhaps Misophonia. Car alarms and honking really get to me. I get inordinately upset with my daughter drumming her fingers. Noise pollution maybe isn't misophonia, it's just natural. I sometimes get really sensitive when I meditate a lot and I just cry at the littlest thing. Sound sensitivity also seems to be really rampant from lots of meditation. Got a book called This is What It Sounds Like by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas. Really fascinating because she was a sound engineer for Prince, who was her favorite artist, and she lived out her dream of working as a sound engineer. And she got to talk to Miles Davis. And then she went to study neurology.  There's a soundtrack to the songs she mentions in the book on spotify .  “It doesn't happen automatically. Listening is not the same as hearing. Listening is an active process, not a passive one, and becoming a competent musical listener requires curiosity, effort, and...

I haven't seen him in a while. His music is complex, dissonant. I think I bought a CD of his. Moved so many times, can't remember where all my CDs are.  He's in the news because he criticized another artist's work ( Consequence ,  Stereogum ). The first article has a link to Amazon music of the Andre 300 album. I'm not going to listen to it. (Also  review of album .) Outside the controversy, the moment reminded me of him. It's a shame something like this is something that reminds me of him, but maybe he's right to draw attention to himself, and criticize another.  When people in the know think you're a genius, and you're not getting any attention, it's got to be hard.  Shipp recorded with David S. Ware from 1991-2016, then he played with a bunch of different people, and he's played with  Ivo Perelman since 1996 to 2022. Meanwhile he's put out his own records, his trio with Michael Bisio, Newman Taylor Baker is the most frequent collabora...

There was a moment when I was reading a lot about Alice Coltrane and I was surprised to look back and not see I'd written about her on my music blog. I did quote the beginning of a book on her on another blog : Portrait of Devotion: The spiritual life of Alice Coltrane by Shankari C. Adams The introduction starts: “It was August 1975; a group of us had gone to a music hall in Northern California to hear Alice Coltrane perform in concert. Certain recreational activities, such as drinking and smoking, had been banned from the evening venue. This allowed for a higher vibrational energy to fill the room’s atmosphere. It felt clean and clear. Subsequently, the consciousness of those present felt elevated. The audience was seated and filled with joyful expectation.” I have two friends who are really into hallucinogens and I feel I get high enough meditating a lot.  I read about this album where she's just singing devotionally: Kirtan: Turiya Sings ( spotify ). Today I'm listenin...

I'm listening to  Witold Lutosławski 's Symphony #3, and it's amazing ( spotify ). It's kind of jerky jerky, surprise loud, sort of impressionistic moment. Normally I don't think I would like this type of music, but somehow this seems significant.  There was a post where Ok-Guitar9067 on Reddit had a list of works that made them cry. That's how I stumbled upon this symphony. So I want to know more about him. Witold Lutoslawski was born in Warsaw in 1913, and died there in 1994 at the age of 81.  Oh, I want to listen to Concerto for Orchestra (1954) I'm making a playlist . During World War II, after narrowly escaping German capture, Lutosławski made a living playing the piano in Warsaw bars. After the war, Stalinist authorities banned his First Symphony for being "formalist": accessible only to an elite. Links:  Collection of photographs of Witold Lutoslawski.

My stepfather used to play classical music on the weekends. I've turned on BBC 3 , which is playing  Carducci String Quartet joins Tom Service . The jerks in the USA want to destroy PBS. I love how England has 4 TV channels the state sponsors and many radio stations, and they're all glorious. The idea that we shouldn't have more public broadcasting, instead have less, is part of the no fun, enshitification movement. Such an obvious evil to me. Thank you to England and Britain for sharing their work online! So glorious.  Today I'll also explore WKCR , which is the Columbia radio stadion, which is having a Ron Carter birthday broadcast, and WFUV  which is Fordham radio station, and WBGO  a jazz station in Newark New Jersey.  Then you can enter in the flurry of other jazz stations as reported on the hive mind .

Listened to his first album, and the Joni Mitchell albums (4), and Heavy Weather by Weather Report. I listened to more, his second album and a Weather Report collection featuring him. It's a playlist . I came across Joni's essay after he passed: "You take a big flaming juicy ego like that and add drugs to it-it's no good. I mean, Freud thought he'd made great breakthroughs treating inferiority complexes with cocaine. Imagine what it does to add that to someone who's already Mr. Confidence!" "Jaco, you know, was a gerner. A gerner is a funny-face maker. They have competitions in England. They pull their lips over their noses. A lot of the best gerners have no teeth-they can collapse their whole face. It's a folk art, and in rural places like the north of England, maybe Wales, they have contests where these hideous contortions are adjudicated. And Jaco was a master at it. He did all sorts of obscene things with his face. He'd say, "Do you ...

They Might Be Giants ' first album came out in 1986. They're last album came out in 2021. They have 18 albums and 5 children's albums. Lots of interesting quips, epigrams, lyrics. They're two guys:  John Flansburgh and John Linnell . They got a backing band in the 90's.  "The group has been noted for its unique style of alternative music, typically using surreal, humorous lyrics, experimental styles and unconventional instruments. Over their career, they have found success on the modern rock and college radio charts. They have also found success in children's music with several educational albums and in theme music for television programs and films." It's almost city folk music, more urban, not quite as poetic as Dylan. Links: Gigantic (A Tale Of Two Johns) YouTube This Might Be A Wiki

I've read the term shoegaze once before, but then I was reading Stay True by Hua Hsu, and he turned me on to Mojave 3.  They keep inventing words to describe styles of music. I'm reading the entry for Jane Remover, and they use the term dariacore  in the hyperpop entry. Fun names. Here's a shoegaze station online.