Skip to main content

The Durutti Column - Trip for an Opera

That may be like asking What happened to jazz?... The revival movement itself was a revival. Back in the late 1930s, when the From Spirituals to Swing concerts at Carnegie Hall gave American jazz the imprimatur of the cultural establishment, the music had changed course and languished in a contemplative state. Writers and musicians of the period rediscovered the artists and styles of the music's past, a respite, time has shown us, during which jazz began metamorphosing into bebop.

Manhattan is empty during the last week of August, and the kind of emptiness it achieves is like that of the mind during meditation, a temporary, unnatural purity. On a Tuesday evening in late August of 2001 I was wandering around Greenwich Village and ended up at the Village Vanguard. After sixty some years of business the illustrious little jazz haunt hasn't changed, it remains one of the inexplicable constants of the Manhattan landscape... There's still a Cotton Club in Harlem, but not in the original location, and now it's a seedy disco. The Vanguard has somehow survived in its primordial basement and has retained all the bohemian eccentricities that have always helped make it cool, the fence post marquee, with performers' names handwritten vertically, the treacherously angled stairwell, no food served, no credit cards accepted. Lorraine Gordon, the Vanguard's owner and the widow of the club's founder, is a Medici of the jazz world, a patron and king maker. Among jazz fans and musicians the Village Vanguard is clearly a paragon of the music's own kind of purity, one that's neither temporary nor unnatural.
Source: Wynton's Blues by David Hajdu


The Durutti Column - Trip for an Opera
  • Written by: Vini Reilly
  • Genre: Electronic, Rock
  • Released in: 2004

"The Durutti Column featuring Vini Reilly, a classically trained pianist and virtuoso guitarist, took their name from Spanish revolutionary Buenaventura Durruti and the cartoon of Two Situationist Cowboys in the comic Le Retour De La Colonne Durutti. Bruce Mitchell has been the drummer since 1981. A succession of other guests has augmented the line-up over the years, notably John Metcalfe, Tim Kellett, and Keir Stewart."

See previous Song of the Day

Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ry Cooder - Available Space

It all started with gospel music. After the American Civil War, in the mid 19th century, people moved north from the plantations to the cities, St Louis, Chicago and Memphis. By the end of the 19th century the syncopated rhythms of ragtime and the improvisational nature of jazz had arrived. Hard times in the great depression of the 1930s drove many swing jazz big bands out of business. Jump blues filled the gap. Patrons of dance halls needed small groups who could match the volume and atmosphere of the departed big bands. Singers would shout and saxophonists would honk. This gave performers names like shouters and honkers. Jump blues was an uptempo jazz tinged style of blues. Usually characterised by a vocalist in front of a large horn driven orchestra or medium sized combo with multiple horns. The style had a driving rhythm, intensely shouted vocal and honking tenor saxophone solos. There was also less reliance on the guitar as a lead instrument. It also had a hard, rhythmic drive and...
Post a Comment
Read more

Copyrights and Public Domain

Copyrighting and Public Domain Music A song is the combination of melody and words. Each is protected by copyright, the melody as a musical work and the lyrics as a literary work. One or the other could be used separately and still be protected. Image by Markus Spiske Public Domain Music Public domain essentially covers creative works that are no longer protected by intellectual property laws, compositions and musical recordings in which the claim to intellectual property has either expired, been forfeited, or been waived. Most people recognize the term public domain in reference to published works, including sheet music or musical recordings, which once were protected by copyright, but the copyright expired several decades after the artist’s death or a considerable length of time after the work’s creation. Once copyright expires on a work like a recorded song, you can use it for any purpose without paying the publisher, the artist, or another institution. The Two Types of Copyright ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Uncommon Vinyl Sizes & Speeds

The Uncommon Vinyl Sizes & Speeds The standard sizes and speed for vinyl records are 12" and 7" both played at 33 1/3 RPM or 45 RPM. RPM means revolution per minute, the number of times the record rotates a minute. Image by Mink Mingle Unusual Sizes for Vinyl 2 in (5.1 cm) Recorded at 10-20 seconds each side. 3 in (7.6 cm)   Also known as 8ban for 8cm Bandai, these were developed in Japan by record pressing company Toyokasei. Records in this format continue to be manufactured. 3 inch singles are made available exclusively. 4.7 in (12 cm)  Although dubbed a 5 inch record, to be usable in most compact disc players, the record can be no bigger than 120 mm. 5 in (13 cm) Children's records records were manufactured in this size from the early 1900s all the way up to the late 1950s and underground punk bands in the 1990s. 6 in (15 cm) From the late 1940s to the early 1960s. The 78 RPM speed was used for some children's records of this size well into the 1960s...
Post a Comment
Read more