webcast info for November 25, 2017

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Today, as the Somerville Media Center is closed for the holiday weekend, and as I am away still digesting my Thanksgiving leftovers (not pictured), we will be rebroadcasting the Unpopular Music webcast from June 3, 2017.

It one which should delight lovers of all manifestations of the Terpsichorean muse, from Bach to Björk, passing through several flavors of jazz, some film music from Bernard Herrmann, some neo-Gamelan, Brian Eno and tributes to the then recently departed Misha Mengelberg and Allan Holdsworth. The second set is one of my favorite creations. Enjoy.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for November 18, 2017

Today I tried, I think successfully, to break up the jazz 1st hour/freeform 2nd hour by trying to keep it free form all the way through.

At least that part was successful. The execution was a bit of a disaster, which will likely be edited around for the archive, so maybe you won't notice unless you were one of the few and the proud who listened to the live webcast. For reasons that are both too long to explain here and make me look dumb, the second hour was reconfigured on the fly and then re-reconfigured as things went wrong. The archive presents the correct reconfiguration and therefore the song order differs a bit from what's below and in the back announcement. You'll figure it out.

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See the playlist after the break...

Webcast info for November 11, 2017

The Somerville Media Center is closed for Veteran's Day so today will will rebroadcast the Unpopular Music episode from October 22, 2016. As I noted at the time, the first hour is the loud hour, the second more introverted. 

RIP Katie Lee

The singer of the Unpopular Music theme song has died at the age of 98, having lived quite the life.





I discovered Real Sick Sounds from a compilation called "beat jazz - pictures from the gone world, volume 2," and eventually tracked down it's source, a collection of satirical songs on psychological themes written by Bud Freeman and Leon Pober called "Songs of Couch and Consultation." Katie was basically a hired gun as the girl singer, she worked primarily as a folk singer (Burl Ives described her as "the best cowboy singer I know.")

For Veteran's Day

You have these nineteen-year-old kids with these huge hearts, they will do what you ask them. The issue is, are you asking them to do something worthwhile? That's up to the adults, and that's where the failure comes. The failure isn't the kids saying “I'm not going to do this!” because that's not the way they are built. Nineteen-year-olds don't know to take a raincoat when it's raining, that's why they're so good at being warriors. They'll do it. They won't even ask you a question. “Alright, we'll do it.” The responsibility is on the grown-ups to make sure they're not being wasted, because they'll do what they're told, and they'll do it well. - Karl Marlantes

I've been watching the Ken Burns / Lynn Novick Vietnam War series finding a lot of it just sad and frustrating. The novelist Karl Marlantes sums it up nicely in this quote, which is in episode 7. One can oppose war, the decisions made by the grown-ups, while still respecting those who go and fight honorably in your name and wanting the best for them, and that they get what they need when they come home.

Before knowing there would be no webcast today, I had put a couple of selections aside for Veteran's Day. I present them after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for November 4, 2017

On this week's episode we devote the second hour to remembering (or even perhaps to some of you introducing) the jazz legend Muhal Richard Abrams, who died last Sunday at the age of 87. A fine pianist and composer, he is best (and perhaps most importantly) known as one of the founders of the the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the Chicago based organization which organized concerts, and provided rehearsal space, promotion and educational resources to hundreds if not thousands of up and coming musicians from the mid-1960's to today. The AACM provided a home base for musicians who were looking to expand the jazz tradition, taking on influences from traditional African and contemporary European music, theater, dance, and poetry. The trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum has a fine memorial/introduction in the New Yorker. Here's an excellent appreciation from Adam Shatz in the London Review of Books' blog. The trombonist George Lewis wrote a definitive history of the AACM called A Power Stronger than Itself, which is well worth digging into.

Photo by Brian McMillen / www.brianmcmillenphotography.com

Muhal is a relatively recent interest of mine. I always knew he was out there, but I sort of worked my backwards from my interests in his protégés Henry Threadgill, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Anthony Braxton. (One use of Lewis' book is discovering where the good stuff lies in the mountain of AACM recordings.) What we present is rather arbitrary presentation from his mighty catalog.

See the playlist after the break...