Good Math/Bad Math: Friday Random Ten, May 5th

Friday, May 05, 2006

Trey Gunn Band, "Sozzle". Instrumental stuff from an amazing touch-guitar player and current member of King Crimson. Trey's solo stuff is, unfortunately, rather dull.
Psychograss, "Mind's Meat". Deeply warped bluegrass.
Steve Reich, "Ehmore M'aht, V'ahsay Harbay". A movement from Steve Reich's recent piece, the "You Are" variations. Brilliant.
Jethro Tull, "Cold Wind to Valhalla". Classic Tull.
Solas, "Lowground". Very strange - a traditional Irish band playing bluegrass. And yet, it works.
Dave Matthews Band, "The Dreaming Tree". I know I should be ashamed, but I really like jam bands. This is one of my favorite songs from the DMB.
Flook, "Eb Reels". Flute heavy Irish trad.
Hugh Blumenfeld, "Why am I awake". Hugh is a folksinger from Connecticut, who's performed a few times at venues set up by the New Jersey Folk Project. He's a great songwriter.
Genesis, "Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats". Track off the Gabriel-Genesis masterpiece, "The Lamb Lays Down on Broadway". Even 30 years or so after it was recorded, it still manages to not sound terribly dated.
Martin Hayes, "Kitty Come Down to Limerick". Martin Hayes is a classically trained violinist who plays traditional Irish music in a traditional way. That means not so bloody fast. Irish music is mostly dance music - you can't dance to a reel played at 180 beats per minute!

actually, Gunn retired from Crim after the '03 tour and Tony Levin has been called up from the reserves. Currently, Fripp and Belew have been writing (as ProjeKct 6) and the 4-man lineup have jammed a bit (as ProjeKct 5), but no specific Crimson plans have been announced.

I've seen Hayes in concert (opening for Dervish). He can still play pretty darn fast when he wants to...he just doesn't think that 160bpm is the requirement for everything. :)

By Anonymous, at 11:33 AM
Joe:

I hadn't heard Gunn left KC. It's a shame; he always did amazing stuff working with Fripp; on his own, I think he's rather a dull composer.

I haven't seen Hayes in concert, but I have all of his CDs. There's one track in particular on, I think, his first CD that I've always interpreted as a sort of "Yeah, I can do it too, I just choose not to", where he just screams his way through it. I love his normal playing, where you actually hear every note and every ornament distinctly.

By MarkCC, at 4:13 PM
It's Lamb *Lies* Down, but yes, a terrific record.

And you're right about Gunn's solo stuff; but the last thing I really liked from that whole bunch was Discipline (they were awesome on that tour, btw).

By Duck, at 5:13 PM

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