Top 40 Over 40

  • Top 40 Over 40.35: Sylvie Courvoisier & Wada Leo Smith Live at Long Play Festival in Brooklyn

    Part of the purpose of this post is to let folks know that I have relocated from Durham NC to Brooklyn NY. While the move was a personal one motivated by the desire to remove the “Long Distance” prefix from a relationship I’ve been in for three and a half years, it comes with some…

  • Top 40 Over 40.31: Oumou Sangare’s Massive “Seya”

    This album made a big impression on me when it came out in 2009. At the time, I was mostly listening to music on the car radio, and WERS in Boston played it frequently. I wasn’t going to record stores or shows or playing instruments much at that time, though I was writing a lot…

  • Top 40 Over 40.30: Duke Ellington, 1962

    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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…