Alterdestiny: Song of the Day

Showing posts with label Song of the Day. Show all posts

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Song of the Day: Doc Severinsen, "In the Court of the Crimson King," 1970

If you can figure out why Doc Severinsen chose to cover King Crimson, you know more than I.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Song of the Day: Billy Bang Quartet, Live at the Knitting Factory, 2000

The second great musician to die recently is Billy Bang. The wonderful jazz violinist became something of a sensation in the early 2000s with the release of his phenomenal Vietnam: The Aftermath, his attempt to deal with his experiences in the Vietnam War through his music.

I also met Bang once at a wedding, although I never saw him play live. He was very nice to me in our brief conversation. It's one of only 2 conversations I've had with relatively big-time jazz musicians. The other was, oddly enough, another violinist, Eyvind Kang.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Song of the Day: Hazel Dickens, "A Few Old Memories"

Since I haven't had time to blog much at all lately, I've missed mentioning the deaths of a couple of my favorite musicians. My next couple of posts, which should come in consecutive days I hope, will address this.

The first is the great bluegrass singer Hazel Dickens. One of the first women to break through the extremely patriarchal bluegrass music scene, her band with Alice Gerard in the 1960s was amazing. She went on to record several excellent solo albums with powerful songs about the people of Appalachia. Some of these songs were deeply political, either pro-feminist or anti-coal. Others, such as "A Few Old Memories" are timeless songs of loss, a topic particularly relevant to the people of Appalachia who have moved to other parts of the country for work since at least the 1920s. Here is her Times obituary.