Tag: music
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Improvising Poetry and Our Digital Future
A couple days ago I posted a recording called Where The Bears Go by my duo The John Waynes (so named because it consists of John Sobol (me) and Wayne Kelso). Today I posted a second recording by The John Waynes called The Evil I. For those keeping score, Where The Bears Go is a…
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The Evil I by The John Waynes
The Evil I by The John Waynes John Sobol (vocals) & Wayne Kelso (piano) All words and music in this piece are 100% improvised. No plans, no paper, no second takes. From the unreleased CD TRUCE. Image by Kiyotei Hear Where the Bears Go by The John Waynes Read about Improvised Poetry and Our Digital…
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Where The Bears Go – The John Waynes
Back in 2004, when I was running Digifest, I met an amazing musician and digital artist named Wayne Kelso. One day I went to his studio in the woods and we spent an afternoon improvising music and poetry. Wayne recorded our two 45-minute jam sessions. From those and a few other extended collaborations we extracted…
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Jazz: An Unfinished Conversation (Race and Language in the Digital Age)
Jazz was – among other things – a century-long political conversation between Black Americans and White Americans. It was a musical, intellectual and spiritual conversation within a highly politicized social context whose axes were language, race and power. Jazz was also a conversation about technology, and about techno-cultures. To be specific, in jazz the conflict…
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Franky Rousseau Large Band – Terrific Jazz By Any Other Name
Last week a friend sent me a link to this provocative blog post by famed jazz trumpet player, Nicholas Payton, who argues that jazz is dead. To me this isn’t news, since I wrote the same thing in a lengthy piece in Toronto’s eyeweekly back in 1992. And like Payton, who is being berated by…
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When Bad Things Happen to Good Bassists
Anyone who has gotten out to hear good music in Montreal over the last half-dozen years or so has likely spent a fair amount of time in Casa del Popolo and Sala Rossa, the two cozy and creative music venues founded by Godspeed You Black Emperor bassist Mauro Pezzente. Mauro also programs the amazing and…
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Basketball Business as Black Revolution?
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is in trouble. The league locked out the players months ago, bargaining has failed, and now the players have disbanded their union and are taking the league to court to contest the most basic notions of player-league business relations. Things like player drafts and even the notion of ‘owning a…
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Playing Misty For Ringo (A Dove)
Here’s a little late night sax serenade for all you social media lovebirds…
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Lintotineh! Bemagatineh! Gesultineh!
A few days ago I had a blast playing with the amazing Alan Gerber, a truly masterful artist who not only writes and sings great songs and plays sensational slide guitar, rocking boogie-woogie piano, folksy fiddle, and fine fingerpicking acoustic guitar, but is also as funny a musician onstage as I’ve ever seen. It’s no…
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John Giorno & R.E.M. Make Love
John Giorno is one of my favourite people on earth and R.E.M. is one of my favourite bands so when I discovered that the last single by R.E.M. features John Giorno I had to share it. John Giorno is an extraordinary person, as full of power and love as any poet alive. I’ve been lucky…
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