I DO APPRECIATE IT
Really I do. All of you who have sent me suggestions for sites streaming music. Great music by the biggest stars, terrific music by people you’ve never heard of. Creativity brought into existence by crisis, shared freely with the world. It’s a great and noble thing.
I have looked at a few. Eh.
But that’s just me. I have worshiped at the altar of live music for many decades. It just doesn’t compare to something on a screen, no matter how good and immediate the technology. So, I’ll just wait, mostly. How long? No one knows. Too long.
But it’s an excellent distraction for music lovers with a lot of time on their hands now. I’ve found three websites with good lists of streaming music, day by day, from Billboard, NPR and CNET, then one from The Guardian, not as well organized but covering a much broader cultural landscape.
NICOLE RECOMMENDS:
APOLLO SOUL PRESENTS "SHELTER IN SPACE" -- (My ridiculously talented old UCLA Jazz Department confrères, whose members individually and collectively have toured internationally, shared bills with Thundercat and the like, played Quincy Jones' birthday tribute at Montreux Jazz Festival, etc. -- have organized a week-long "virtual happening," with livestreamed sets and surprises by various jazz/funk/cosmic/ambient/soul/groove maestros, viewable on the group's Instagram livestream @investigateapollosoul) -- Thurs, Sat, Sun 7 p.m., instagram.com/investigateapollosoul.
ALSO ON THE LOCAL SCENE
Susan Hayden’s 10-year-old spoken word and music series Library Girl, from Ruskin Group Theatre, is posting videos daily of local poets reading a short poem, collectively adding up to what would have been their monthly presentation. This month: Tennessee Williams - Steps Must Be Gentle. https://www.facebook.com/groups/288785622940/permalink/10158445436512941/
I have rarely tuned in to music on TV or online since we lost Palladia on cable. Loved that channel. For now, if that’s what I crave, I have half an office stacked with Blu-rays and HD DVDs. I have a big comfortable recliner. Now how do I get that HD weed delivered?
Make your memories, especially in your youth, I say, when you’re probably more freewheeling, because you will feed off them for a lifetime. That’s pretty dramatically clear right now.
That popped up this past week. I did a phone interview with a producer from Albuquerque FM radio station KUNM, putting together a documentary about the time 50 years ago, days after the killings at Kent State, when UNM erupted into the national headlines as a center for student unrest over the war in Vietnam.
Jane Fonda showed up, Gov. Dave Cargo called out the National Guard who waded in with razor-sharp unsheathed bayonets and stabbed some students and media people, nearly fatally, and a march down Central Avenue drew an angry crowd out of Albuquerque High School who threw very large rocks, one of which caught me squarely and very hard in the right eye. Bye bye binocular vision and my exquisite ping pong game. I was reporting for the campus newspaper, but I had also worked at KUNM, and producer Kent Paterson wanted my recollections.
I told him that I started at KUNM in 1968 after discharge from the Army (drafted), delivering the news but talking my way into a music show. Saturdays, midnight to 6 a.m. -- amazing that no one else wanted that, right? But I knew I would be getting all those students cruising home at closing time after partying Saturday night, who switched on the radio (remember radios?) when they got home.
PLAYLIST
Paterson asked me what my playlist was like, and not being able to tick that off 50 years later, I did a little research.
“Well, Kent,” I responded, “there was an amazing amount of good music to choose from then. To give you an idea, these albums were released in ‘68 -- Elvis, Gold Records, Merle Haggard, Sing Me Back Home, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, Blue Cheer’s Vincebus Eruptum (one of the loudest, baddest albums ever!), Boogie with Canned Heat, Simon & Garfunkel's The Graduate, Dr. John, Gris Gris, Iron Butterfly, Heavy, Aretha, Lady Soul, the first Spirit album (in my Top 10 of All Time), the Velvet Underground’s classic White Light White Heat, Gordon Lightfoot, Did She Mention My Name?, Johnny Cash, From Sea to Shining Sea, Now and - Them, John Coltrane’s transcendent Om, Richie Havens, Something Else Again, Steppenwolf… and Kent, that was just in January.”
MICK TAYLOR
The day of writing this I got a call, that I missed, from Auburn, IN. Robocall, I figured. But when I got a second call I answered it, and wound up chatting with a cool dude named Kris, with an amazing story.
He got my number from the end credits of one of my Not Just Another LA Music Shows, from 1995, that he watched from a DVD that a friend in Europe sent him. Yes, I had the legendary blues and Stones guitarist on my public access show taped in Eagle Rock. The first of two shows featuring him, actually.
A huge Stones fan and especially of Taylor, Kris decided, what the hell, 25 years ago but maybe the phone number is still good.
After I determined he wasn’t trying to sell me a reverse mortgage or get me to vote for a Republican, we talked music. He told me of a Stones concert, his sixth one, maybe, that he attended in AZ, I think, at a big stadium, around 2003.
“They opened the gates and we all rushed in,” he remembered, “running like crazy for the best spots in front. But it was a long, long, long way and by the time I got there I was about to pass out. It took about an hour of leaning on that fence before I felt a little bit better.
“When I went to the doctor a month later, he gave me a stress test and said, you had a heart attack about a month ago!
“But they filmed that show,” he said with obvious delight, “and because I was in front, I now have a DVD of a Stones show with me in it! Not many people can say that!”
“Not many people,” I pointed out, “have a DVD of them having a heart attack!”
Charles Andrews has listened to a lot of music of all kinds, including more than 2,000 live shows. He has lived in Santa Monica for 34 years and wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. Really. Send love and/or rebuke to him at therealmrmusic@gmail.com
