Hammer & Jack

Category: Music

  • …by the sharp lapel of your checkered coat

    Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat! This delightful tweet from Linda Holmes sent me down the rabbit hole this afternoon exploring “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” and learning a little more about its composer, Frank Loesser. “Sit Down” is a showstopper from the musical Guys & Dolls: the gambler Nicely-Nicely bullshits a temperance congregation…

  • sharon van etten

    Last night I went to see Sharon Van Etten at the Crystal. Seeing music there is a little dicey because the proportions of the room make me uncomfortable, and as much as I want to enjoy myself, a full 1/3 of my brain is tied up tamping down my claustrophobia. I went with somebody with…

  • From Comic Con to Opera Seria

    This night… we went to the Opera, which are Comedies & other plays represented in Recitative Music by the most excellent Musitians vocal & Instrumental, together with variety of Seeanes painted & contrived with no lesse art of Perpective, and Machines, for flying in the aire, & other wonderfull motions. So taken together it is…

  • Mariachi Japonese

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoyMVxuvZi0] Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán performing Hibari Misora‘s “Kawano Nagareno Yoni” while on tour in Japan. I just eat this shit up. Youtube is full of these cross cultural moments; bands on tour doing encores with songs from the places they’re touring in.

  • Goldberg Variations

    The Open Goldberg Variations project is complete. You can download the recording in various formats free from this website. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c8Bn0T4RFo] Kimiko Ishizaka performing the first variation of the Goldberg Variations. This project was funded via Kickstarter, and I really like the way that it seems to be opening the door to other projects like this; democratically…

  • easter song

    [youtube=www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3kc1jDahU4] happy easter, for those of you who believe as such. a note about the origin of the holiday name from Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin, you may find it as interesting as I did. Above, the christian songwriter Keith Green performs “Easter Song.” Below, “El Cordero Pascual” (The Passover Lamb) from Oswaldo Golijov’s cantata La…

  • highway rider

    Changed my little album dealio on the left there after way too many months to Brad Mehldau’s 2010 album Highway Rider. Highway Rider is an album that has really grown on me. I liked it immediately—I really like Mehldau’s easygoing harmonic language and percussive style, and the album was produced my one of my favorite…

  • i think its going to rain today

    I’ve been listening obsessively for the last 24 hours to Nina Simone & Piano! prompting some scattered thoughts: Nina Simone is my kind of diva. It’s obligatory for gays to pick one, and I think it becomes a kind of generational identifier: the generation of Judy Garland, the generation of Madonna, the new generation of Gaga.…

  • The Weeknd – Echoes of Silence

    Hopping on the bandwagon here, but I have a few thoughts on the last Weeknd EP of 2011, Echoes of Silence. One of the real highlights of my 2011 was listening to the first Weeknd EP, House of Balloons. There’s an amazing feeling, one that music lovers chase all the time, of hearing something new,…

  • Lady Gaga & Tony Bennett

    Singing The Lady is a Tramp: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZPAmDULCVrU] I was surprised and impressed by Gaga’s chops. I’m sure it’s massaged and produced like anything else, but I finally have a clear sense of what her voice sounds like. I wish I could say the same about her face. She’s amazing to me because images of her…