Monday, April 23, 2007

Gentle, tuneful Record Club last evening. Several times, I've brought 'between' intending to play the sunspot piece but one thing you tend to do in these situations--appropriately--is to try and somehow fit your piece into whatever stream happens to develop. Now, if you only bring two, there's no option and usually that's what I do. But when one or both of the pieces I want most to play is fairly....extreme, I generally bring alternates.

Last night, I led off Round 1 and played Beefheart's "Nowadays a Woman's Gotta Hit a Man" from "Clear Spot", a guaranteed hit, what with that great shuffle beat, the funky horn section, etc. Fantastic piece, glad to have rediscovered it. Julia played a very fun, wacky piece by a band called Young Knives, my favorite of the set, but things were fairly smooth otherwise. Had I led off round 2, Rowe/Nakamura would've gone on, no question, but I ended up in the fifth slot, following another fun, strange number courtesy Nina by a duo from Lawrence, Kansas called Drakkar Sauna. The song was a kind of old-timey, rockabilly piece with religious connotations; then she revealed the title: "Mongrel of a Halfman Slave Bitch" heh.). The "between" track simply wouldn't have fit after that one, so I went with Robbie Basho's gorgeous, hauntingly odd "Salangadou", which I've since found out is an old Creole folk song.

Nayland closed the evening with a striking version of the "Cannon Song" sung by Ellen Greene, culled from a vinyl recording of the 1975 Public Theater production of Threepenny Opera.

4 comments:

  1. Hey, I did play Rowe/Beins there a while ago. All 28 minutes...

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  2. hey...i really enjoy the blog. my "record club" of sorts is the radio station here at swarthmore college that i work for. anyway, i've been putting some of my shows up on the web. if you're interested in checkin' 'em out, they might be up your ally given the music you've been blogging about.
    silentway.wordpress.com
    if you get the chance...

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  3. Thanks, sm. Yeah, nice stuff posted at your site. Did you get over for the Rowe gig?

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