Sunday Session: July 19, 2020

Matthew Shipp

Here's this week's roundup of various music-related items of interest:

* Terence Blanchard Addresses The Past Through Work With Spike Lee And Preps For Brighter Future (DownBeat)
* Sun Ra: ‘I’m Everything and Nothing’ (New York Review of Books)
* A Trademark Attorney Explains Why the Former Lady Antebellum Is Suing the Black Singer Lady A (Slate)
* Better late than never: the story of Beverly "Guitar" Watkins (LouderSound.com)
* The Strange World Of... Sun Ra (TheQuietus.com)
* Britain’s choirs are facing oblivion (The Spectator)
* Rick Wakeman on his top 5 synths: “I suddenly had an instrument that could give the guitar a run for its money” (MusicRadar.com)
* Gary Lucas: "The guitar is like an extension of my nervous system - I try to play what I feel and transmit it" (Guitar World)
* Bill Frisell Is a Rambler in Quarantine (Jazz Times)
* Session Legend Harvey Brooks Publishes Memoir, “A View From The Bottom” (NoTreble.com)
* MATTHEW SHIPP with George Grella (BrooklynRail.org)
* Most Births at a Concert?! The Wildest Records Ever Written Into the Music History Books (EOnline.com)
* Eddie Gale 1941–2020 (Jazz Times)
* The Galaxy-Expanding, Peace-Loving Trumpet Of Eddie Gale: Hear The Essentials (NPR)
* Playing Music Together Online Is Not As Simple As It Seems (NPR)
* And all that jazz! Bram Dijkstra’s invaluable record collection to be donated to SDSU (Del Mar Times)
* A New Album Turns The Sound Of Endangered Birds Into Electronic Music (NPR)
* NEA Jazz Masters Ceremony Moves Online To Honor Kirk, McFerrin, Mitchell, Workman (DownBeat)
* How Kendrick Lamar, Marvin Gaye and ‘Black genius’ inspired a jazz/hip-hop supergroup (Los Angeles Times)
* A History of Music Supervision in Advertising (SynchTank.com)
* A Deep Dive into John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' by His Biographer, Lewis Porter (Pt. 1) (WBGO)
* Don’t Expect to See Concerts Before 2022, Top Touring Exec Marc Geiger Says (Variety)
* The future of Tipitina's is uncertain: By fall, 'we're going to be in a really tough spot' (NOLA.com)* Discover the Sacred Afro-Cuban Chants That Are Celia Cruz's First-Known Recordings (Billboard)
* Ambrose Akinmusire – Every Calloused Moment (ZoneOut.com)
* Mike Clark, the Oakland Groove behind Herbie, Chet and Charlie Brown (Jazz Journal)

Sunday Session: August 7, 2016

Kendrick Scott

Some interesting music-related items that have landed in StLJN's inbox over the past week:

* Ten Louis Armstrong Landmarks (Offbeat)
* Quantum Computers Don’t Make Sense. But This One Makes Music (Wired)

* See John Coltrane, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie As You've Never Seen Them Before (Vanity Fair)
* Why Festivals Are More Popular Than Ever (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* Classic and unreleased Sun Ra tracks pressed to coloured 10″ EPs (TheVinylFactory.com)
* JT Essentials: Forgotten Fusion Classics - The Gary Burton Quartet, Jack DeJohnette and more (Jazz Times)
* Nate Wooley’s guide to American weirdos (The Wire)
* Sound Art Shows You What Musical Notes Actually Look Like (Gizmodo)
* Are corporate music festivals killing local venues? (AL.com)
* Kamasi Washington Talks Jazz-Ambassador Status, Life on the Road (Rolling Stone)
* Shopping for classical music: A remembrance (Philly.com)
* Scott Injects Dramatic Political Message into Drum Showcase (DownBeat)
* From Bowie to Prince: 10 Weird Video Games About Musicians (ElectronicBeats.net)
* Inside the Zappa Family Feud (Rolling Stone)
* Playing outside the box (The Economist)
* Herbie Hancock On His Next Album, Flying Lotus And Jupiter's Satellite (NPR)
* Headhunter Mike Clark Brings The Rhythm To The Checkout (WBGO)
* Roland: Moving forward (ResidentAdvisor.net)
* Audio-fail: why is so much sound art so bad? (The Guardian UK)
* Pete Fountain, New Orleans' clarinet-playing musical ambassador, dies at 86 (NOLA.com)

Music Education Monday: Feeling the funk with Paul Jackson and Mike Clark

Though bassist Paul Jackson and drummer Mike Clark both have extensive lists of credits, they still may be best known as the funky foundation of the Headhunters, the band that backed keyboardist Herbie Hancock in the 1970s and subsequently spun off into an independent act.

The slippery, off-beat syncopation of interlocking drum and bass tracks powering compositions like Hancock's "Palm Grease" and "Actual Proof" and the Headhunters' own "God Make Me Funky" was distinctive at the time and retains its appeal decades later, thanks in part to various hip-hop producers sampling the group in the intervening years.

Today for Music Education Monday, you can get a close-up look at Jackson and Clark (pictured) in action via an instructional video they did in the early 1990s for the Japanese market. Titled Rhythm Combination, it features the duo demonstrating and discussing some of their characteristic grooves, licks, and patterns.

You can see the video, which is in four parts that have been combined into a playlist, in the embed after the jump...