Tag: Top 40 Over 40
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Top 40 Over 40.30: Duke Ellington, 1962
One of the things I admire about the jazz tradition is the fluidity with which musicians move from being leaders to sidemen. Take an album like Conference of Birds by Dave Holland. I mostly knew Dave as a sideman for Anthony Braxton and Miles Davis. But then Braxton turns around and plays sideman for Holland’s…
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Top 40 Over 40.29: 50 Ways to Be Steve Malkmus
When I started writing this series a number of years ago, I didn’t think I would be including Stephen J. Malkmus in the line up. My last year in college I had 7 roommates, several of whom played Slanted & Enchanted like 75 million times. I burned out on Pavement in the process, mostly through…
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Top 40 Over 40.28: Matana Roberts, Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis
Yes, social media can be a waste of time, and a low self esteem machine. Yes, it facilitates hate and social sniping. But – with a good roster of musical friends it can also introduce you to a lot of great new music – both in the sense of just released, and new-to-you. My latest…
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Top 40 Over 40.24: Zero Set
1982: I was 12 years old and listening to James Taylor.* Ouch. I could have been listening to an album that came out that year by Moebius, Plank, and Neumeier called Zero Set. That would have been a better outcome for all concerned. Conny Plank (above) would have been 42 when this came out, which qualifies…
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Top 40 Over 40.23: KRS-One Live at Cat’s Cradle
I saw KRS – One live a few months ago, and the musical assumptions of ageism took another body blow for sure. Aging musicians often lose the full power of their stage presence, and / or seem bitter or disillusioned or worn down by the passage of time, or lose the critical edge of their…
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Top 40 over 40.21: Gary Numan live at Moogfest
The first New Wave / Post Punk song I ever fell in love with was Cars by Gary Numan, which came out when I was in 5th grade. I used to listen to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 Countdown every week with a friend and we’d write the sequence down in a notebook. Then I would…
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Top 40 Over 40.20: L. Subramaniam live
Sometimes you just gotta trust a friend. Every year Duke Performances has a concert series you can buy into at a package discount. I pick up seats for the shows I wanna see before it all starts, and watch the dates roll forward and wash over me as the year unfolds. At the suggestion of my…
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Top 40 over 40.18: Peter Hughes and Dipa Ma
I was once listening to an episode of Car Talk on NPR and heard a woman call in to Click and Clack with the following dilemma: she had a Honda that was running perfectly, and that had proven to be very reliable over the years. Nevertheless, she found the car boring. She found herself eyeing…
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Top 40 over 40.17: A Different Kind of Swans Song
Most of the musicians I’ve written about in this series are ones that were important to me when I was younger because of work they did themselves when they were young. I’ve written about records they did after turning 40 that either came close to or equaled the quality I heard in their earlier recordings.…
johnhdavis / inundation records 