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Friday Influences Thread 03-06-15


Lee Knight

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hi.

 

_____________

 

 

I've never know anything about this guy from the late 60's/early 70's. Harvey Mandel. Just starting to dig in and I love him. Completely of the era and yet unlike anyone.

 

[video=youtube;oWcyNJ_bwhc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWcyNJ_bwhc

 

[video=youtube;t_IGj-dTDW8]

 

[video=youtube;FxHCISZZ5-w]

 

 

 

 

 

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Orrin Keepnews died this week. He was a jazz record producer. A great one. The Adderlys, Wes, Sonny Rollins, Chet, Monk... he produced some the crazy geniuses of jazz. A lot of them. But more than that, for me, he produced a couple of my favorite jazz albums of all time. Everybody Digs Bill Evans, and the groundbreaking Fly With the Wind by McCoy Tyner.

 

[video=youtube;UZIXDTH-sLA]

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Mozart - Symphony #40

 

Been listening to this a lot - one of my dad's favorites. Check out the development section in the 4th movement where Mozart uses every note in the chromatic scale EXCEPT the tonic note of G.

 

9a6hdcpm.png

 

[video=youtube;c8yjdmNBaZk]

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Passenger. AKA Michael Rosenberg. I hadn't heard the studio version of this till right now. But I really like the song each time I hear it played live on performance shows, etc. At first listen it struck me a little like, "Oh {censored}, more leprechaun rock. Break out the hurry gurdy and tights clad midgets. But its WAY better than that. But of course... the vid takes place in a magical forest. So maybe those pesky little people are watching on.

 

I like him...

 

[video=youtube;kBqqlW6-99M]

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hi.

 

_____________

 

 

I've never know anything about this guy from the late 60's/early 70's. Harvey Mandel. Just starting to dig in and I love him. Completely of the era and yet unlike anyone.

 

 

 

Great stuff! It really swings!

 

Then the strings come in and are followed by fuzz guitar! Amazing...

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This influence is not musical, but nevertheless this writer is having a big impact on my lyrics. Or maybe I should say "will" have a big impact on my lyrics. His style has set off some sort of big kebang deep in my literary subconsiouness, and I expect strange newly-planted species to start poking small fronds and buds out into the light of day in time.

 

I read a lot, and admire so many writers and poets, but this guy is one of the rare ones that has quickly taken a place on my personal shortlist of life-changers. John Banville. Another brilliant Irishman with the pen. Must be the stout or something.

 

A long excerpt - may the copyright gods not be wroth with me. From The Sea, Banville's Booker Prize-winning novel. An old man well into his 60s, an art critic (note the "Vincent" reference) with a practiced eye, a proud and sensitive has-been, mercilessly critiques his own reflection in the morning mirror - and then his mind wanders - does it ever:

 

This morning it was the state of my eyes that struck me most forcibly, the whites all craquelured over with those tiny bright-red veins and the moist lower lids inflamed and hanging a little way loose of the eyeballs. I have, I note, hardly any lashes left, I who when young had a silky set a girl might have envied. At the inner extremity of the upper lids there is a little bump just before the swoop of the canthus which is almost pretty except that it is permanently yellowish at the tip, as if infected. And that bud in the canthus itself, what is that for? Nothing in the human visage bears prolonged scrutiny. The pink-tinged pallor my my cheeks, which are, I am afraid, yes, sunken, just like poor Vincent's, was made the more stark and sickly by the radiance reflected off the white walls and the enamel of the sink. This radiance was not the glow of a northern autumn but seemed more like the hard, unyielding, dry glare of the far south. It glinted on the glass before me and sank into the distemper of the walls, giving them the parched, brittle texture of cuttlefish bone. A spot of it on the curve of the hand-basin streamed outward in all directions like an immensely distant nebulae. Standing there in that white box of light I was transported for a moment to some far shore, real or imagined, I do not know which, although the details had a remarkable dreamlike definition, where I sat in the sun on a hard ridge of shaly sand holding in my hands a big flat smooth stone. The stone was dry and warm, I seemed to press it to my lips, it seems to taste saltily of the sea's deeps and distances, far islands, lost places under leaning fronds, the frail skeletons of fishes, wrack and rot. The little waves before at the water's edge speak with an animate voice, whispering eagerly of some ancient catastrophe, the sack of Troy, perhaps, or the sinking of Atlantis. All brims, brackish and shining. Water-beads break and fall in a silver string from the tip of an oar. I see the black ship in the distance, looming imperceptibly nearer at every instant. I am there. I hear your siren's song. I am there, almost there.

 

Actually, I think some of the above must have worked it's way into that recent song of mine I posted - The Sea and the Sky and the Land, the verse about standing by the lake.

 

nat whilk ii

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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hi.

 

_____________

 

 

I've never know anything about this guy from the late 60's/early 70's. Harvey Mandel. Just starting to dig in and I love him. Completely of the era and yet unlike anyone.

 

[video=youtube;oWcyNJ_bwhc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWcyNJ_bwhc

 

 

I especially like this track.

I vaguely remember him from a weed-filled afternoon in the late 60's. There was a guy who used to import records from everywhere and he had an amazing collection of non-mainstream music. We used to take a stash round to his place and listen for hours.

 

It was probably guys like Harvey who shifted me from structured songs to sitting around and playing just 2 chords. Everybody would join in - bass, bongos, flute, lead guitar, scat - long 20 minute grooves. Good times……...

 

 

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Some songs produced by Donovan's producer, Mickie Most.

 

"I Love Rock and Roll," by Arrows (original), 1975.

 

[video=youtube;8AT_Pbtyid0]

"Brother Louie," Hot Chocolate (original), 1973. (Most also produced their hit, "You Sexy Thing.")

 

[video=youtube;YUY9Y9RFiHY]

"It's My Life," The Animals, 1965. (Most also produced their bigger hits, like "House of the Rising Sun", "We Gotta Get Outta This Place," etc.)

 

[video=youtube;s0KlOmrqdyY]

"There's a Kind of Hush," Herman's Hermits, 1967.

 

[video=youtube;pk5DBwa5wJ8]

And of course, saving the best for last, all of Donovan's hits and album tracks.

 

[video=youtube;hTuPbJLqFKI]

 

 

 

 

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Dave's True Story.

 

[video=youtube;mKSblbomN3A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKSblbomN3A

 

Leave a Light On for Misery

 

She owns a mint-green Eldorado

She's given lectures at the Prado

She moves through air so easily

Leave a light on for Misery

 

She got her Masters in Derision

She likes the big screen television

This makes for thrilling company

Leave a light on for Misery

 

...Misery

Leave a light on for Misery

They speak her name

In Katmandu

They know her well

In Ghana too

Break out the bowl

But she won't stir

It's not her fault

It's not her fault

You're not like her

 

Her evening wear is understated

She thinks Foucault is overrated

She says she has big plans for me

Leave a light on for Misery

...Misery

Leave a light on for Misery

 

[instrumental Break]

 

Watching the sunrise

From Big Sur

The ocean holds

No charm for her

Break out the bowl

And she'll take two

It's not your fault

It's not your fault

She's just like you

 

She spans the globe like Coronado

Knows all the words to "Desperado"

She says she has big plans for me

Leave a light on for Misery

...Misery

Leave a light on for Misery

 

© Sept. 12, 1998 David Cantor

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Dave's True Story, "I'll Never Read Trollope Again."

 

[video=youtube;kQ8mvfACSFY]

 

"I'll Never Read Trollope Again"

 

Verse:

I've an appetite for fiction no post-modern work can slake

I refuse to buy a book unless it's thicker than a steak

Now Gordon Lish and Barry Hannah have their partisans and shills

But I prefer Victoriana for my literary thrills

 

And of all the British authors who were writing at that time

There's one special British author I find especially sublime

Now Austen is awesome and Dickens is a kick

But no one packs a wallop quite like Trollope

 

Yes Trollope is the one I most adore

But my days of reading Trollope are no more

 

1.

I was sitting in a quaint cafe

With a favorite tome and some cafe au lait

But my luck ran out when you came my way

Now I'll never read Trollope again

 

2.

You spied the cover as you slithered near

And said "The 1800s--that's my favorite year."

And then you sat right down and now I fear

That I'll never read Trollope again

 

Bridge.

Armed with Trollope and a cup or two

I could while the day away

Now just a dollop

Makes me think of you

And that's too high a price to pay

 

3.

I'll read Kafka's tale about that lonely vermin

I'll read every Jonathan Edwards sermon

Hell, I'll read Emmanuel Kant in German

But I'll never read Trollope again

 

Bridge 2.

I used to read him with a friend or two

I used to read him by myself

But just to read him now only makes me blue

So I've tossed him from my shelf

 

4.

I'll read Don Quixote five or six times through

I'll read Jackie Collins till my face turns blue

Hell, I'll even read Bukowski too

But I'll never read Trollope again

No I'll never read Trollope again

 

© David Cantor

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^^^ Really enjoyed that.

Both Bob and Leonard are expressive singers rather than melodic singers, so I always love it when someone mines their melodies for the riches that have been left behind.

 

Nice way of putting it. Yes!

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