Bakerloo was a power trio in the era of Hendrix and Cream who put out a single album before disintegrating. The members of this forgotten band each went on to have noteworthy musical careers, in particular guitarist Dave “Clem” Clempson with Colosseum and Humble Pie.
Author: Don
Tune of the day #63
The video is annoyingly artsy. I recommend closing your eyes while you listen to Ichika Nito tap out “A Bell Is Not a Bell” on his seven strings.
Tune of the day #62
The “Bell Polka,” a kantele duet performed by Martti Pokela and Eeva-Leena Sariola.
Tune of the day #61
Cowboy Bebop is supposed to be a great classic and all that. I watched several episodes; they were okay but didn’t really grab me, and I doubt that I’ll watch the rest. The music is another matter. “Tank” is justly famous, but I like some of Yoko Kanno’s other tunes just as much. As with Christian Vander and Yuki Kajiura, Kanno’s lyrics are often in her own private language, such as here in “Green Bird.”
Tune of the day #60
The first Jethro Tull album doesn’t sound like the others. That was due to guitarist Mick Abrahams, who had a very different musical vision than Ian Anderson. Abrahams quit/was fired after This Was and formed Blodwyn Pig. The sax player is Jack Lancaster, who would subsequently work with Robin Lumley, Brand X and others.
Today’s curious phrase
“voluntary mandatory shift coverage”
Years ago one of the aircraft manufacturers in Wichita required mandatory overtime of its workers. They were allotted time to go home for dinner and sleep, but otherwise their waking hours were spent building airplanes. I asked one how his situation differed from slavery. He had to think for a minute before answering.
Tune of the day #59
Some pioneering psychedelic music from Alexander Scriabin, composed not long before he was consumed by flame died of an infected pimple.
Tune of the day #58
I heard a number of legendary musicians at the first bluegrass festival I ever attended out in the wilds of northern Virginia, including John Hartford, Earl Scuggs and The New Grass Revival, not to mention the Lost City Cats from the far side of the Pacific. The one who most impressed me was Norman Blake, particularly his rendition of “Old Grey Mare.”
Tune of the Day #57
Proto-fusion, featuring the Brecker Brothers, Billy Cobham and John Abercrombie, back when few knew who they were. Jazz purists, go away.
Tune of the Day #56
Everybody likes Gershwin — except maybe Duke Ellington.
Tune of the Day #55
R.D. Laing set to music. From the video’s comments: “I asked my girlfriend a long time ago if this could be ‘our song.’ She said she would leave me. I haven’t seen her in over 40 years.”
Footnote
In case anyone reading this doesn’t understand what it means to “serve humanity,” here’s Damon Knight’s explanation.
Tune of the Day #54
A good production of Coppelia is an excellent introduction to ballet for youngsters. There’s a silly romance for girls, a mad scientist for boys, lots of spirited dancing, colorful costumes, a bit of slapstick, and a particularly good score.
Tune of the day #53
The company that released the American edition fifty-some years ago got the sides reversed so all the titles are wrong, an error that was repeated in the CD releases. This tune is called “Jive Grind” here, but the correct title is “Vienna Breakdown.”
Bass: Colin Hodgkinson; Sax: Ron Aspery; Drums: Tony Hicks.
Bonus tune
A footnote to Dr. Boli’s notes on our kinder, gentler slavery.
Tune of the day #52
I spent one summer of my childhood back east visiting the Martian side of my family. While I was there, I listened to my Aunt Margaret’s records, including this one. Years later at a Steven King concert (not that King; the other one (another Winfield winner)), King would play a bit of an old tune and give the first person to identify it a set of guitar strings. This was one of the tunes, and I was able to give a guitarist friend a new set of strings.
Tune of the day #51
Happy the Man, featuring Kit Watkins on keyboards, was active in the later 1970’s, when radio had become hopelessly stupid.1 I didn’t learn that they had existed until I finally got online around the turn of the century and discovered websites devoted to prog rock.
Tune of the day #50
The masks are not part of the original score.
Today’s quote: classical edition
What Padilla further fails to understand is that classical scholarship’s fascination with the Greco-Roman world rests upon that subject’s singular self-criticism of its own standards and values. The tools of mockery that Padilla employs—caricature, cynicism, parody, sarcasm, and satire—all derive from classical roots, which is to say that they were invented by the very Greeks and Romans he dismisses. Many of the Western pathologies that Padilla cites—class privilege, the “establishment,” male dominance—were long ago objects of criticism more virulent and yet more sophisticated than Padilla’s adolescent rants.
Misogyny? Read the Antigone, Medea, and Lysistrata.
Slavery? “No man is born a slave,” wrote the fourth-century polymath Alcidamas. Aristotle’s argument for natural slavery acknowledges a host of critics who felt otherwise. Slaves in drama from Aristophanes to Plautus often appear smarter than their masters.
The poor and the oppressed? From Solon to the Gracchi, there is plenty of classical admiration for the efforts of the underclass to get even with their exploiters.
Rather problematically for Padilla, the whitest people whom the Mediterranean Greeks and Romans met were often the most negatively stereotyped—whether the savage, milk-drinking, tree-worshiping Germani; the wild, tattooed, and red-haired Britons; the supposedly pathologically lying white-skinned Gauls; or the purportedly innately savage Thracians. In contrast, Homer names as the noblest of foreign peoples the black Ethiopians—a race Herodotus thought the tallest and handsomest.
Settler-colonialism? Recall what Tacitus had his Scottish leader Calgacus say about how the historian’s fellow Romans make a desert and call it peace. For all the “settler colonialism” of Alexander the Great, his ideas of race might be better described as “assimilationist” or as a sort of proto–melting pot, accomplished by forced Persian–Macedonian mass marriages to pave the way for his dream of a brotherhood of mankind.
Tune of the day #49
Written by Al Kooper to give Andy Kulberg an opportunity to show off.