Ken Nordine - The Eye Is Never Filled (2005)

(UbuWeb)

This is a long play at 90+ minutes, but it's just as good to listen to. I've been enjoying it while goofing off around the house this morning.

previously in Uncertain Times

Uncertain Times v.ii tribute to Ken Nordine

Ken Nordine - The Eye Is Never Filled (2005) (DVD)

kennordine on YouTube

Ken Nordine's Word Jazz

Evelyn Lambart & Norman McLaren - Begone Dull Care/Caprice en couleurs (1949)

(Dephaad)

NFB.ca Curator's comments:

As a teenager, McLaren became interested in Colour-Music, an art form in which moving patterns of coloured lights were projected. When he was at art school, McLaren and fellow student Stuart McAllister tried to create colour-music by painting abstractions directly onto 35 mm movie film. McAllister would later become a great editor of documentary films. McLaren was delighted with the experience but knew the results were primitive. Then, in London in 1936, he saw Len Lye’s revolutionary hand-painted-on-film Colour Box. It did not influence McLaren but it gave him the confidence to continue drawing directly on film. He had to wait ten years, however, before he would have access to a three-colour film printing stock, which would allow him to copy a multi-hued hand-painted original. And what an original it is! For me, it is hard to imagine a more satisfying jazz film – in this case, a marriage of hand-painted improvisations to the piano improvisations of a young Oscar Peterson.

hat tip to Brand Upon the Brain!

John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson & Co. - Hackensack

(Delta_Mike)

John Coltrane and Stan Getz performing Thelonious Monk's "Hackensack" on German television in 1960. Accompanied by Oscar Peterson on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums.

via Bifurcated Rivets

Ken Nordine - Maybe the Moment

(kennordine)

Ken Nordine

Carlos beatboxing and playing the thumb piano

(cancermine)

He's really good.

via the music of sound

Ken Nordine's Image Jazz - immunological systems

(kennordine)

Ken Nordine

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Calmer - Open Source

(Moodgadget)

Calmer

Moodgadget

via Comfort Music

Ken Nordine Tribute

“Ken Nordine, yea I know that guy, I heard his voice 1000 times, he’s the guy in the bus station that says “go ahead I’ll keep an eye on your stuff for you,” and you see him the next day walking around town wearing your clothes. He broadcasts from the boiler room of the Wilmont Hotel with 50,000 watts of power. I know that voice, he’s the guy with the pitchfork in your head saying go ahead and jump, and he’s the ambulance driver who tells you you’re going to pull thru. He’s the guy in the control tower who talked you down in a storm with a hole in your fuselage and both engines on fire. I heard him barking thru the Rose Alley Carnival strobe as samurai firemen were pulling hose. Yea he’s the dispatcher with the heart of gold, the only guy up this late on the suicide hotline. Ken Nordine is the real angel sitting on the wire in the tangled matrix of cobwebs that holds the whole attic together. Yea Ken Nordine, he’s the switchboard operator at the Taft Hotel, the only place in town you can get a drink at this hour. You know Ken Nordine, he’s the lite in the icebox, he’s the blacksmith on the anvil in your ear.”

—Tom Waits

Be sure to check out the tribute to the great Ken Nordine over at Uncertain Times v.ii. You might have to scroll down a bit to find the posts.

update: just enter "Nordine" in the search window and all of the posts will come up.

Bar Kokhba - Jachin (1999)

(video link)

Joey Baron - drums,
Cyro Baptista - percussion,
Marc Ribot- guitar,
Greg Cohen - bass,
Erik Friedlander - cello,
Mark Feldman - violin,
John Zorn - conductor,
live at Warsaw Summer Jazz Days 1999, Poland

via YouTube Hunting

The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble – Lobby (Live)

(video link)

Very nice.

Live footage : 23-03-2007 : Budapest, Hungary

The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble

via Drive-by Blogging

Monk's Advice (1960)

Some have claimed that this was written in Thelonious Monk's hand, but I did some digging about and found this:

from DO THE MATH:

In the past couple of days, an extraordinary number of thoughtful people have forwarded the following document to me, often with the suggestion that Thelonious Monk penned it himself...

I have confirmed with expert jazz historians; this is Steve Lacy's work, who played with Monk in 1960. Lacy's introduction to Thelonious Monk: His Life and Music uses the above material explicitly.

You can click the image to embiggen or read it here:

- Just because you’re not a drummer, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to keep time.

- Pat your foot and sing the melody in your head when you play.

- Stop playing all that bullshit, those weird notes, play the melody!

- Make the drummer sound good.

- Discrimination is important.

- You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?

- All reet!

- Always know… (Monk)↩

- It must be always night, otherwise they wouldn’t need the lights.

- Let’s lift the band stand!!

- I want to avoid the hecklers.

- Don’t play the piano part, I am playing that. Don’t listen to me, I am supposed to be accompaning (sic) you!

- The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the outside sound good.

- Don’t play everything (or everytime); let some things go by. Some music just imagined.

- What you don’t play can be more important than what you do play.

- A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.

- Stay in shape! Sometimes a musician waits for a gig & when it comes, he’s out of shape & can’t make it.

- When you are swinging, swing some more!

- (What should we wear tonight?) Sharp as possible!

↩ - Always leave them wanting more.

- Don’t sound anybody for a gig, just be on the scene.

- Those pieces were written so as to have something to play & to get cats interested enough to come to rehearsal!

- You've got it! If you don’t want to play, tell a joke or dance, but in any case, you got it! (to a drummer who didn’t want to solo).

- Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along & do it. A genius is the one most like himself.

- They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it.

found via Robot Wisdom X2

Cannonball Adderley - Brother John (1963)

(video link)

Cannonball Adderley - alto sax
Nat Adderley - cornet
Yusef Lateef - tenor sax, oboe, flute
Joe Zawinul - piano
Sam Jones - bass
Louis Hayes - drums

via Youtube hunting

Thelonious Monk, NYC, New York, 1949

photographed by Herman Leonard

Morrison Hotel Gallery

hat tip: backscratchings

stray bullets

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The Atlas of Cyberspace (free pdf, beautifully illustrated) (via)
The Ultimate Camper (via)
Rare recordings of some of the 20th Century's greatest writers
A Ferment of World Jazz Yields a Trove of Tapes
Cassell's Dictionary of Slang (fair bit of it)
The Multicolr Search Lab (search Flickr by color; easy and impressive) (via)

Futility Closet: “The Continental Salamander” In the year 1826, one Monsieur Chabert … performed the following feats at the White Conduit Gardens: Having partaken of a hearty meal of phosphorus, washed down with a copious draught of oxalic acid in a solution of arsenic, he drank... (read more)

viddy:
Making ofs (videos about the making of videos, incl. Gondry, Cunningham)
Ways of seeing (John Berger TV documentary) (via)
A Half Century of Video Games (footage of the first video game)
Jeff Mills: Critical Arrangements Interview
Elliott Smith & Friends (“backstage” video)

Don Cherry and friends - Treasures of the Spirit (live in Bombay)

(video link)

All I could find on this is that it was recorded in Bombay, it features Cherry, Trilok Gurtu, Shankar and others, and that there is an Alice Coltrane in Bombay video that appears to be clipped from the same source.

Don Cherry cut his teeth on be-bop, blew up with Free Jazz and Ornette Coleman and played with numerous jazz luminaries, including John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Sun Ra. In the 1970s he resisted the mass exodus toward funk and fusion and incorporated Middle Eastern, African and Asian elements into his minimal, almost ambient, stylings-- years before it became fashionable. He traveled the world finding new sounds, musics and musicians, collected a wide variety of instruments (all of which he would master), and continued to explore and create until his untimely death in 1995, at the age of 58.

He was one of the rare improv musicians with a flowing and melodic sound. He made it look easy in a way that ran counter to the tortured and frenetic stance that often seems to characterize the genre. As one of the pioneers of free and improvisational jazz and arguably being the godfather of World music, Don Cherry is a somewhat overlooked treasure.

You'll notice his signature Pocket trumpet.