Songs on Toast – 09/27/2013
The Secret Alphabets of Song ::: A
Annour El Sahel 4:16 Sidi Touré Alafia
Arc en ciel 4:17 Edgar De L’est Retrouvailles
Abshana 2:18 Jun Miyake Lost Memory Theatre Act-1
Ah Mon Amour 5:32 Rachid Taha Diwan 2
Abaana Bakesa 5:25 Samite Dance My Children, Dance
All Night Long 2:57 Little Isidore & The Inquisitors Inquisition Of Love
Ajali Ya Mombasa 4:19 The Eagles Lupopo 77 ESSENTIAL EAST AFRICAN HITS 1
Alla luce del giorno 3:06 Ennio Morricone Metti, Una Sera a Cena
Aeroporto 77 3:34 Domenico + 2 Sincerely Hot
All Night Long 2:28 Clifton Chenier Zydeco Dynamite
Arte Bella 2:37 Ken Boothe & Stranger Cole Ska Bonanza
Águyuha Nidúheñu 5:14 Andy Palacio Wátina
Are You Glad To Be In America? 3:41 James Blood Ulmer Odyssey
Alley Pang 3:04 The Skatalites Foundation Ska
African Herbsman (Mono) 2:25 Bob Marley And The Wailers The Complete Upsetter Singles
Aunque Me Duela La Vida 5:05 Sidestepper 3am: In Beats We Trust
Arrete Ton Delire 4:33 Dédé Saint-Prix Arrete Ton Delire
Adieu mon rêve 2:30 Gilles Sala Pour toujours…
Abusar 5:49 Ely Guerra Lotofire
Africa Dub 2:53 Augustus Pablo Africa Must Be Free by 1983
Aiye 5:37 Bob Ohiri & His Uhuru Sound Uhuru Aiyee
As The Years Go Passing By Albert King Born Under A Bad Sign
Ağırlama 7:06 Erkan Ogur Bir Ömürlük Misafir
All Your Life 3:45 Nina Nastasia Dogs
All i Had 3:15 The Holmes Brothers The Glenn Sessions
Ali Baba 3:15 Comedian Harmonists Ihre Großen Erfolge
About 3 Little Fishes 2:07 David Moss My Favorite Things
Afraid 3:31 Nico Desertshore
African Jive 2:49 Slim & Slam The Groove Juice Special
Alissa 2:13 Ongo Trogodé Centrafrique : Trompes Banda Linda
LULU! – Betcha never thought you’d see HER here, did you?
Hmm, not too much jazz on this week’s show—that’d be Updoc, Friday at 8PM, noon next Tuesday, Flatbush Avenue time—but I hope you’ll drop in anyway: the music’s fine. First Oliver Knussen’s charming Music for a Puppet Court, then some moonscape Ligeti, then some of that Mozart cat. George Szell was the martinet among European emigré conductors and has never been a favorite of mine, but this performance of Mozart’s radiant “Haffner” symphony has a grip on the rhythmic genius of this work—as propulsive as anything Beethoven wrote, and more various—and never lets go. Try not to be exhilirated and you will fail. More Knussen, his fine Violin Concerto—I’ve begun to think there’s more first-rate ‘classical’ music being composed in Britain these days than anywhere else, and I put it down in part to the non-dogmatic and undomineering influence of Benjamin Britten—and then what really seems to be the point of the show: Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, which I think should be subtitled The Good for What Ails You. Along with all the grace and elegance you expect from Mozart there is something almost infinitely consoling about this music, in a luminous performance here by Maria Joao Pires. Once that merciful note is sounded, Arvo Pärt’s Berliner Messe is a natural: he has lasted when other minimalist-medievalists have not, because in the end spiritual authenticity cannot be faked. Could the show end with anything but Cannonball and the world’s funkiest Austrian ever? Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.
Swamp Thing – Hang on! Did someone say a NEW Tony Joe White album???
I’ve been trying to get my hands on a digital copy of Jack DeJohnette and Lester Bowie’s film-score album Zebra for some time so I could play some on the show. Last week I had the good luck to run into Jack at a drum festival in Woodstock and he generously made a copy I could use. That would be Updoc at 8PM Friday and noon next Tuesday, Woodstock time, so tune in for some of Lester Bowie’s loveliest playing on record over Jack’s keyboards and drum programming. After that it’s a set featuring the work of the brilliant songwriter poet cartoonist (see illustration) and surrealist quirkster Peter Blegvad. Come one come all and you’ll get to hear selections from the thirty-year-old and just reissued Kew. Rhone. and another few from Blegvad’s recent collaboration with Andy Partridge, Gonwards. This will bend your mind into strange shapes but you’ll recover. After that it’s the more than hourlong and spectacular Rag Lalit from the Indian flute master Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia. Rag Lalit evidently provides the usual sort of pentatonic note selection but also offers the improviser some surprisingly chromatic intervals, and Chaurasia makes use of the contrasts to sustain this long piece to stunning effect. The writer Peter Cherches turned me onto this one and it’s a winner. A couple of weeks ago I ended a show with the Kinks promising Better Things Ahead. This time it’s Blegvad in deep Russian mode prophesying Worse On the Way, probably the best thing in this vein since Tuli Kupferberg’s Nothing, with the Fugs. Come on, I know you can take it.