Category: Murmur of the Heart

Friday Morning Music Shuffle – Be Careful Mix

It was a frosty morning, and we’ve reached that time of year when every sunrise and every sunset seem to be competing to be the most amazing and awe-inspiring.  This morning I was accompanied by a few great instrumental tracks and a couple of songs with words which flowed over me and took me out of myself.  It’s Morning and time to Shuffle…

Today we have songs by: 1. A jazz legend 2. A Concord California dark, bluesy rock band 3.  The great-nephew of another jazz legend who was the wife of still another jazz legend 4.  A Nashville based super-duo and 5.  A Brooklyn-based troubadour who navigates the emotional landscape across a promised land laced with pitfalls and landminds

Let’s proceed. Shall we?

Charlie Parker is an iconic figure of the jazz age.  He died in 1955 at the young age of 34, but his music and his legacy live on.  Today, we have Hot Blues a faster and (yes) hotter take on his well known Cool Blues. The song is featured in the opening sequence of the 1971 Louis Malle film Murmur of the Heart – right before Laurent shoplifts a Charlie Parker record.  Which lead me to the observation/generalization, “The French love Jazz, but they don’t like to pay for it.” (see the film Diva for further support of this axiom).


Here’s a version of Cool Blues – couldn’t find Hot Blues

  




 Featured Artist The Chaw – the Concord, California dark, blues rock band are up next with the instrumental Campaigning Man from their self-titled debut.

Here is the Kickstarter video for the album

I’m running out of time, so I will be quick with the rest of the shuffle – no reflection on the awesome music…
Flying Lotus is the stage name of Stephen Ellison who is the great-nephew of jazz pianist Alice Coltrane who was the wife of John Coltrane.  Flying Lotus makes cool, electronic-based music.  Today we have Putty Boy Strut from his latest release Until the Quiet Comes.

 

Featured Artists Sugar and the Hi Lows (by the way, I use “and” instead of the ampersand because for some reason – at least on my browser, blogger does funky things with the ampersand) as I was saying Sugar and the Hi Lows (awesome singer-songwriters Amy Stroup and Trent Dabbs) are one of our Featured Artists.  Today we have See it For Yourself from their self-titled album.  They also have a new Christmas album out.

 

The shuffle ends with another amazing song from the Brooklyn troubadour, Christopher Paul Stelling (also a Featured Artist).  Strange Darkness is from his album Songs of Praise and Scorn.

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Featured Friday Music Shuffle – Jason Vorhees Mix

Time to offer up our weekly selection of music from our Featured Artists of the Month.  Today the shuffle takes us on a musical journal from Burlington, Vermont to New Jersey by way of Nashville, Tennessee. 
Lawrence Welks and Our Bear to Cross – this band first came to our attention through an Area Code feature on Stereogum.  The song today, is one I download from that article: Psalm 39 from their Lawrence Welks Does God release.  I find it very hard to explain what it is I like so much about this whacked out bunch. So, I try not to think too much about it…

Vinyl Thief are up with the title-track from their latest release – Rebel Hill. By the way, the name Vinyl Thief makes me think about this theory Rex Silo and I came up with back in the day. After watching Louis Malle’s Murmur of the Heart and Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva is close proximity to each other, and (from my poor memory) both movies are set in France and have scenes where someone steals a jazz album), which lead to our theory that “The French love Jazz, but they don’t like to pay for it.) Whew, a long way to go for a connection which is probably not at all what the band had in mind.  Anyway, Rebel Hill! Check it out:

And finally, we close with Big Wilson River with the lead off track from their Octopus album which came out late last year. Eighty Dead Armadillos has a impressive mescaline influenced western/rodeo/deserty feel.  Pretty good for a New Jersey band.  Grant it, by now, nothing surprises me about the awesome music coming from the Garden State.

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