Goodbye, Alicia de Larrocha

Alicia de Larrocha dies at age 86 yesterday, September 25. Probably best known for her interpretations of her native Spanish music, including Granados and Albeniz, she also handled Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, and many others masterfully. Here is a very, very nice piece from Franz Liszt I had never heard from her before:

Happy Birthday, Leonard

Today is Leonard Cohen's 75th.



I had the good fortune to discover Leonard Cohen (as a poet, only later starting to hear his music) shortly after moving to Los Angeles in the 60s, when I came upon in a small bookstore what has become perhaps my most favorite piece of his poetry, "Marita":

Marita/please find me/i am almost 30

Song of the Day

Trouble by Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions (Through the Devil Softly)

People Who Died

Just learning today that Jim Carroll died on September 11, I slipped down to my basement vinyl music stash. There it was, his 1980 album, Catholic Boy, containing the only piece that I had remembered: "People Who Died". Carroll may have been a one-hit wonder with that number, but along with being a punk rocker of that era, he was a poet and authored the Basketball Diaries book that was turned into a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. Here, now, People Who Died:





Almost every time I hear this song, I am reminded of Tulsa. Long out of print as far as I know, Tulsa was a book of photographs by Larry Clark, a drug addict who documented the sex-guns-drugs life (and death) of people around him in that Oklahoma city. The book, incidentally, was published in the early 70s by Ralph Gibson's Lustrum Press. Not long after that I came to meet Ralph, whose own photographs as well as his publication of others' work had become of great interest to me (and will probably be explored in future posts here as time allows).

Mary Travers Passes On

Today we received word that Mary Travers has passed away. I feel that I grew up with her and the rest of her folk group, the legendary Peter, Paul and Mary. I first saw the group live in 1963 or 64 at a concert in Kansas City, where the audience was on its feet almost the entire time. During our car trips, Peter, Paul and Mary songs were top candidates for group sing-alongs as we drove. Especially memorable would be "If I Had A Hammer", which became something of an anthem for the civil rights movement of that era, after Mary and her crew sang it on the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s historic 1963 speech in Washington. Here is a later (couldn't find the referenced one) performance of that piece.



The group had a great cover of Bob Dylan's "Blowing In The Wind", which I think they also performed on the day of the King speech. I couldn't find a clip of that performance either, but here is another one to give you the idea, although somewhat lacking in the tremendous energy of the alfresco Washington event:



More on Mary Travers here.


UPDATE: 9.18.09

Brother Dennis sends along these links to a couple of his old favorites as well:

• 500 Miles (rough audio quality, but great song)
• Jane, Jane

Song(s) of the (Labor) Day

1. Career Opportunities by The Clash.



2. Working Class Hero by John Lennon.

Green Porno

Several months ago, niece-in-law and fabulous designer Chika told us about Isabella Rossellini's wonderful scientifically-accurate videos of insect and marine sexual life. Here's an example:



See more: http://www.sundancechannel.com/greenporno/

Creep vs. Air

Friend John contends that Radiohead's Creep is something of a rip-off of The Air That I Breathe, written by Brit songwriters Mike Hazlewood and Albert Hammond, and that it becomes apparent upon hearing the old cover by The Hollies. As my iPod harbors a cover, and a great one at that, of The Air That I Breathe by k.d. lang, that was my point of reference, not having heard The Hollies' schmaltzy version (did I say schmaltzy? have I forgotten Barry Manilow's cover?) in thirty years.

Now that I unearthed a performance of all of these, John may (almost certainly) be on to something, although the songs have a much different feeling. You be the judge. (And let's not get started on a discussion of how many times we have heard pieces of melodies from, say, classical music show up in all manner of pop and other later music.)

(Try to get past the ... what?... belch? ... about 1:02 minutes in ...)

And The Hollies from 1974 ...



Heck, while we are at it, you can hear a k.d. lang version here ...

http://www.viddler.com/explore/darealmoflight/videos/6/

UPDATE 9/5/09: Adding weight to his argument, John now sends along this blurb from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creep_(Radiohead_song)#Background_and_recording

Faces, Mostly Familiar and Most Welcome

Last Saturday I visited the Charles A. Hartman Gallery in Portland. A rather special exhibition was just winding down in this small, relatively-new-to-the-area (I think Hartman is a transplant from San Francisco) gallery. Called "Faces: Vintage and Contemporary Photographic Portraits", it was a rare opportunity to see such a range of quality and historic photographs not likely to be seen in one place in this neck of the woods.

What greeted me in the window from the street as I approached was a 1967 piece by my once-mentor Ralph Gibson from his book, The Somnambulist. (The book title was incorrectly spelled in the exhibition program, but all is forgiven... but I must admit that I looked at my copy of the book when I went back home.)



Once inside, over thirty pieces awaited the viewer from the likes of Diane Arbus, Berenice Abbott (a wonderful 1926 portrait of James Joyce), Adam Clark Vroman, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, Wayne Miller, William Klein, Werner Bischof and many more. Names you likely know. There was even a 1903 portrait of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce (his grave is not that far from our neighborhood) by Edward Curtis.

In this interior view of one corner of the space we can see Arnold Newman's 1954 Picasso, Frederick Sommer, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Andre Kertesz' 1931 Elizabeth, Harry Callahan, Sally Mann, Emmet Gowin (whom I had almost forgotten about until reminiscing with my wife a few weeks ago), Danny Lyon, Garry Winogrand, an Alfred Stieglitz that I had never seen or recalled seeing (I will have to review my book of Camera Work reprints), Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and Flor Garduno (new to me but very arresting).



Seeing these photographs was a lot like meeting up with some old friends from my distant past. I will be keeping an eye on the activities of this gallery, for certain.