Welcome back, music lovers. It may no longer be Wednesday on the East Coast, but it is still Wednesday somewhere, yeah? I tend to have a full schedule from the moment I get up til the moment I come home from my side gig at night. But enough of that. You are here for some tunes.
My son turned me on to a band called Heilung. I think it is safe to say they defy any convenient label. They are, in a word, fascinating. Here is a portion of one of their performances.
I’ll try to find a few more artists who seem to defy convenient descriptions over the next couple days. More to come. Stay tuned.
Happy National Coffee Ice Cream Day!
I have an appropriate drink from Tipsy Bartender, a Coffee Root Beer Float.
Excerpted from Contribute to Coffee Party USA on National Coffee Ice Cream Day at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News, my personal blog.
The bartender is taking requests.
Coffee? Ice cream? What’s not to love?
Boredoms about four years ago. They are a Japanese band. Imagine a hippie drum circle, except with actual drum sets. The guy who was the vocalist/screamer for the band in its early days is drowned out by the sheer volume of the drums and guitars. He seems more like a conductor these days. This would be fun to see in person.
Since this is still on the rec list, here’s another:
This was Kraftwerk circa 1970. They were not exactly easy to classify at the time. Eventually they became one of the early techno bands, and if you were listening to technopop in the late 1970s and early 1980s (as I did a good bit), you could hear their influence quite clearly (especially their albums like Autobahn).
Since this is still on the rec list, here’s another that doesn’t quite fit the mold:
Collin Walcott, Don Cherry, and Nana Vasconcelos are now long gone, but the three albums they worked on together will be with us for a while to come – and that does not even begin to scratch the surface of what each of them accomplished on the outer edges of improvised music during their respective careers.
While we’re at it, here’s an interview with Terry Riley. I have some interest in his work. Given some of my other interests, diving into his work a bit was inevitable. The opening piece in the interview is quite lovely:
Since this is still on the rec list in the wee hours of Monday morning, here’s a somewhat different take on the blues:
I love it when minimalist composers play the blues. La Monte Young’s work is often hard to find, but well worth it.