"Cakewalking Babies From Home," Clarence Williams Blue Five (1925)
Featuring Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, the Blue Five are a 1920s supergroup. And Williams, leading the way, a Harlem Renaissance pianist, songster, music producer, impresario par excellence, is no slouch. (Also, his great grandson, Clarence Williams III, is Linc from the Mod Squad and Prince's tortured artist dad in Purple Rain, so there's that too.) "Cakewalking..." jumps you, unaware, then bowls you over, strutting with this wild, swaggering ensemble exuberance, duelling soloists, Eva Taylor stomping around like a mad Madame, a banjo jamming the downbeat. It is New Orleans hot jazz in its imperial NYC form. And it's such an explosion of colors it has to be some kind of sonic muse to classic Warner Bros. Cartoons. The Jazz Age confidence, humor, the joie de vivre are awesome.
"Hymn to a Great City," Arvo Part (1984/2016) & "Glassworks: 1 Opening" (1982) and "Aguas de Amazonia" (1999), Philip Glass:
"Hymn to a Great City" but what city? Part composed it for an emigre Estonian couple that first put him up in the U.S. and was first performed in New York City in 1984, then revised in 2004, and now performed here by the French piano duo Katia & Marielle. Minimalist Dream House.
More piano. Glass at his most urgent, circling, shimmeringly great TV drama theme song poptimist peak.
I have my problems with Paul Simon, who introduced instrumental group Uakti to Philip Glass. But these four Brazilians do cast the hot percussive bottom of Glasses's minimalist noir in a flattering nocturnal, a Ballet, spotlight. Come to think of it, I've had my problems with Philip Glass (sometimes he makes music that sounds like a funny melodramatic caricature of the serious composer artist, right?) but I've also come to realize I've neglected some of his work. Like this one. Delightful.
"Thank God for the Rain," Bernard Hermman, Taxi Driver, 1976.
Neo-Noir psychological thriller dark soul of the night vibe that David Lynch would move to the West Coast, add some sly Neo-Beatnik humor, and make a career out of (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive); with Angelo Badalamenti's help, of course. Taxi Driver, Vertigo, Psycho, Hermman is on the short list of great soundtrack composers.
"Train in Vain," The Clash, London Calling (1979)
The London Calling cover draws connections between The Who and The Clash, 1960s and 1970s, '60s Mods and '70s Punk Rock, pop art and uptempo (but not metal) guitar rock. It's The Clash's big statement, staking their claim to rock history. "Train in Vain" just wants to be the best bad break-up song ever.
"Protex Blue" & "Garageland," The Clash (1977)
Johnny Green's favorite Clash song. Probably not least of all because Joe calls him out in the coda, "Johnny, Johnny!" Perhaps honoring Johnny's dedication to condoms. Green, all-around chauffeur, stage-hand, personal assistant, drug & alcohol supplier, and horny groupie hound dog; basically, one-half the production team that kept The Clash running in their Death & Glory years ("like being on a commando raid with the Bash Street Kids," said photographer Pennie Smith of those times), and co-author of A Riot of Our Own (1999). "Protex Blue" is, arguably, as influential a Punk Rock prototype in form, in style, as anything on the first album. There's Chuck Berry guitar and it covers a lot of early X territory, for instance.
They'd soon enough grow more interested in what the rich were doing but "Garageland" is my lumpen Clash sentimental fave. Paul's sexually explicit bass. Topper in peak rat-a-tat-tat attack form. Joe's gruff bark and Mick's "Ahh-ahh-ahhs" chorus. A mic-drop classic punk rock instrumental coda. The whole shebang a drunken rampage of gleeful intensity and laddish pride.
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