Month: April 2016

Death Valley Radio is a format-free program for the musically curious.

In this age of bland radio programming (both commercial and non-) and automated music services, DVR is still built by hand, non-algorithmically — one set at a time.

Death Valley Radio can be heard here at taintradio on Saturdays at 10:00 PM ET and Wednesdays at 10:00 AM ET.

DVR program 887 features electronic pop (Vampire Weekend, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Juana Molina, Ry Cooder with Juliette Commagere); Wadada Leo Smith and John Lindberg’s tribute to AEC bassist Malachi Favors; music from Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith’s new seven-part suite inspired by the paintings and writings of Indian modern artist Nasreen Mohamedi; a double quartet led by composer, bassist and cellist Henning Sieverts; and new music from M. Ward, Andrew Bird, the Canadian electric-guitar quartet Instruments of Happiness, the Haitian ensemble Lakou Mizik, and Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil recorded live in concert.

Each week’s playlist will be archived until the end of time at deathvalleyradio.org.

Okay, let’s say 1965. And let’s round off and call that 50 years ago. In 1965 we knew a lot about what Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane represented and where they were going; and yes there were surprises, not least by a long shot John Coltrane’s sudden, shocking departure two years later—for me, an unfixable hole had been kicked in the world; but in ’65 he was taking his classic quartet, after a series of unbreakable limits broken, to its actual limit, while Sonny Rollins was flickering in and out of the avant-garde, sometimes with utter mastery of old and new materials, sometimes comporting himself so strangely that his discomfort seemed interplanetary, for a while. To cut to the bridge: no tenor saxophonist has been as original or influential since. 50 years! In earlier decades jazz did not go like that. There could be no one after Charlie Parker, and then there were a number of people after Charlie Parker, our two heroes among them; but no one (to simplify) of their size and influence since. Is that necessarily a terrible thing? Beethoven (to simplify) loomed irremovably over the entire Western classical 19^th century, but that didn’t prevent a number of composers of genius from emerging and making their unforgettable marks, and the music they represented was anything but dead. This week on Updoc—Friday at 8 PM and noon next Tuesday, Birdland Vanguard Half Note Five Spot time—we continue our celebration of Sonny Rollins’ Road Shows Vol. 4 with four more tracks from that new CD, bracketed by a number of older Rollins classics, including his one-time recorded pairing with John Coltrane, 1956’s elided confrontation on Tenor Madness; each man In a Sentimental Mood four-plus decades apart; and two recordings from 1961 and ’62 in which each man goes for broke at length in his own way. A couple of hours of that and then let’s see if anything has changed our minds about where we are now and what it all means, man.

This time out Dick’s contemplating getting a hat, skipping through albums and pondering a singers fate. So whats all this got to do with blues? – who knows? But theres still an hour of fabulous music to listen to between the nonsense, so come onto the porch!

Hip Linkchain “How do you get a name like that?”

Death Valley Radio is a format-free program for the musically curious.

In this age of bland radio programming (both commercial and non-) and automated music services, DVR is still built by hand, non-algorithmically — one set at a time.

Death Valley Radio can be heard here at taintradio on Saturdays at 10:00 PM ET and Wednesdays at 10:00 AM ET.

DVR program 886 features Sun-style rockabilly (Legendary Shack Shakers, Luther Dickinson & the Cooperators, the Million Dollar Quartet, Jerry Lee Lewis); tumbling tumbleweeds (Michael Nesmith, Brian Wilson with Van Dyke Parks, the Who); the sound of rain (M. Ward, Jim McAuley and Nels Cline, Max Richter with Robert Wyatt, Jóhann Jóhannsson); songs of hope and despair (Willie Nelson, Rickie Lee Jones, Charlie Rich, Sam Cooke, Jackson Browne); bassist Avery Sharpe’s new tribute to Sister Rosetta Tharpe; and saxophonist Noah Preminger’s new rendition of Skip James’s “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.”

Each week’s playlist will be archived until the end of time at deathvalleyradio.org.