Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for November 23, 2019

The first hour is typically jazzy. As for the second, well...

I kind of fell down an prog rock rabbit hold on YouTube last weekend, poking around a genre which I've been intermittently interested, but never as much as I was in high school, in the years before I discovered jazz. And sure, it's occasionally shown up in the webcast, but not like today. So strap yourself in, turn on your black-light, practice counting seven, five and thirteen, and enjoy.

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Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for November 16, 2019

For reasons we don't need to go into, we were again late to organizing today's program. The folder where I park candidates for upcoming programs was full of what's usually second hour material, so some of that has crept into the first hour. After a jazzy (if maybe long-winded) first set leads to a contemporary classical set is bookended with some some aspirational jazz, followed by an eight minute pop song. The second hour is obviously more typical, with some electronics, and things that sound electronic, and other somewhat pretentious stuff. Enjoy!



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Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for November 9, 2019

A mostly jazzy show today with the second hour consisting of a tribute to the recently departed legendary ECM Records sound engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug.



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Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for November 2, 2019

A jazz-centric program for you today, including a small batch of new releases from groups led by bass players.


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Celebrate Somerville Media Center's Community Media Week

This week Somerville Media Center, home to Boston Free Radio and the Unpopular Music webcast is presenting Community Media week. Although this is a tradition going back several years now, this is year it  is being tied in to SMC's fundraising efforts, which have become more urgent as the the sources of funding, particularly what we get from cable TV companies has changed in recent years, and will likely change in the near future. See the schedule below and find out more here.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for October 19, 2019

A variety show today with some film music, Burmese chamber music jams, Messiaen shouting about birds, artificial folk music, and the usual jazz offerings presented today in two long sets, but with some extra jabbering from me about the Somerville Media Center's upcoming Community Media Week fundraiser.

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Webcast info for October 12, 2019

This week I'm away celebrating the holiday by setting off to a faraway location, ending up somewhere else entirely, claiming that place for myself regardless of the people already living there. (actually, I'm just visiting my mom.)

In my stead, we will be re-broadcasting the episode from October 13, 2018, which was an unboxing of sorts of a recent record store binge in Portland ME, along with an RIP to baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett.

Also, please enjoy the holiday pageant presented above.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for October 5, 2019

Yet another last minute creation, which I do think came out rather well. We have a few new jazz releases, plus the usual variety show. I'm not using the late start as an excuse for playing a twenty-six minute track (not that it didn't help), but when I heard this piece yesterday, for the first time in a long time, I thought "this is the sort of thing I wanted to have a radio show in order to play." So, there is is.

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Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for September 28, 2019

A variety show for the first weekend of autumn eschews a couple of Unpopular Music traditions. No Autumn Leaves, no commemoration of Coltrane, Springsteen, Ray Charles or any of the other September 23rd Birthday Club (or John Carter on the 24th.) We do dig into my project of catching up on the backlog of records that I haven't gotten onto my hard drive. (Please forgive the pops and crackles.) There's a bunch of 80's jazz, some high-modernist piano, some artificial folk music and a mandolin and banjo jam from the marketplace in Marrakesh.

And lastly, my inability to correctly pronounce a couple of Asian names and titles totally wrecks the last mic break. Apologies.



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Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for September 21, 2019

A real variety show for the last weekend of summer. Like last week, I try to keep both hours more equal in their freeness of form. We present a range of jazz-stylings An Americana set leads to an African and Africany set. Bach shows up again, along with some microtonal piano. A behind the scenes disaster is mostly kept from intruding on the proceedings.

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Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for September 14, 2019

Today's webcasct took place in conditions similar to what I was expecting last week, and ended up fitting just as well. The program basically consists of two second hours, two long free-form sets which cover a lot of ground stylistically and chronologically. There's some 13th century music from Galicia, a tribute to an electro-acoustic pioneer, some Bach, some reggae-jazz, some lighthouse-jazz, new-wave and Afro-pop, plus a variety of jazz offerings.

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Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for September 7, 2019

The first set keeps its usually jazzy nature, featuring a couple of recently released recordings of decades-old performances, plus a couple of today's finest trumpet players.

The second set is a century and genre spanning assembly, largely randomly programmed onto my phone and soundtracked my ride to work yesterday. I programmed it thinking it would go nicely with the predicted afternoon rain, but alas, the big storm just zipped by New England leaving us with a nice sunny day (sigh.)

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Webcast info for August 30, 2019

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Since the Somerville Media Center is closed for the weekend, today we are presenting a rewebcast of the episode from September 8, 2018. I'm sure you're all nostalgic for 51 weeks ago. Jim Mattis was Secretary of Defense. Drake topped the Billboard charts. Hurricane Florence was making its way towards the Carolinas

Meanwhile, Unpopular Music mourned Randy Weston and Khaira Arby, presented "a jazzy-yet -haunting piece from between-wars Germany", some afro-jazz, some swinging library music, a few, let's say, "jazz-aware" classical pieces, and more.

Let's all reminisce together!

Fashion appreciation from Thelonious Monk

Via Boing Boing -

Among Thelonious Monk's many gifts was his fashion sense. While his own duds are pretty sharp, here, he shows his admiration for saxophonist Johnny Griffin's fabulous Danish pants, from, I'm guessing 1967. Sadly, no color film exists of this clip.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for August 24, 2019

A variety show which ends up featuring a handful of Boston Jazz Institutions, some longstanding, some transient. We also dip into a couple of records I can't help dipping back into, a couple of albums I'll probably be dipping into over the next few weeks.

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A word from Duke Ellington

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Found in the liner notes of Herbie Hancock's "Gershwin's World" -

"It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line. - Duke Ellington

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for August 17, 2019

A quality if arbitrary selection for you today. The first hour typically jazzy, with a free-form hour for the second.

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Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for August 3, 2019

A variety show for you today. The first hour starts out with jazz as usual, winding it's way towards some senior citizen Americana. The second hour passes starts with some lawn mower powered avant-rock, through some contemporary classical from Soviet Union escapees, electronic music (both abstract and not), a guitar-synthesizer duel, and a wah-wah trombone rock-out to wrap it up.



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Herbie Hancock on genre

It's been a while since I've brought in the big guns to explain my program, but here's one of the greatest living musicians in today's New York Times putting in his two cents on one of my favorite topics, the futility of genre, and one I haven't really gone into much, jazz as the perfect vehicle for exploring combinations of music.

Genres made it easy to put things in categories so that they could be promoted. One person’s face could be recognized for one category, and another person’s face could be recognized for another category. It was just to make some sense of it all. But when it starts to interfere with cross-collaboration, and the fact that that too can be musical, then it becomes a problem. I can only say that the word “jazz” today is much broader than it has been in the past.

You know, the most important thing is the spirit of jazz — which is about freedom, about improvisation, about courage. I mean the courage to play something that you haven’t played before, to create something on the spot. And it’s also about sharing, because onstage we don’t compete with each other. Each of us expresses ourselves from our own being, and no two people are alike, so the idea of being judgmental is not on the table.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for July 27, 2019

I've got to admit, I was a bit lazy this week, so there are a few long pieces, especially in the second hour, and I leaned a bit on the usual jazz masters (Monk, Ornette, Mingus et al), but I think this is an easily enjoyable program.

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