The current incarnation of the Tuesday Series takes place through an unmarked door and up some stairs to an abandoned second-floor apartment. The third act on the bill last night was a series of improvised duets between Naomi Joy on violin and Jon Davis on clarinet and bass clarinet.

The musicians banged back shots of telepathy and then chased each other flat out playing follow the leader and monkey-see-monkey-do. I ended up doubled over with recognition.

My daughters and I play the same musical games: chasing and mirroring each other with our voices and/or household objects until we fall down from laughter or hyperventilation, but the girls and I don’t possess frighteningly-acute instrumental skills. I asked Naomi about this after the show, and she said something along the lines of, “We’ve kind of moved through technique.”

I believe her.

_{Image CC-BY by slifex}

I mis-dialed my iPod the other day and saw my Top 25 Most Played list for the first time:

Huh. I would have guessed Guy Clark, Desmond Dekker and Squeeze. Ah well, you can’t lie to your iPod. I feel strangely hungry for some Abdullah Ibrahim!

_{Image CC-BY-NC by Brett Patterson}

I sat down just now to pull some images for a review of Werneck – Wretchmond, a recent curatorial conspiracy between Danger Poeira and Yeovillain made of sprung clockwork and quantum-mechanical malfunctions, and I happened upon the image above. The image itself is quotidian, but the description silenced me. It reads:

God, if I speak my love to you in fear of hell, incinerate me in it;
if I speak my love to you in hope of heaven, close it in my face.
But if I speak to you simply because you exist, cease withholding from me your neverending beauty.
—Rabi’a al-Adawiyya

_{Image CC-BY-NC-SA by benben}

_{EDIT: Benben made his image (of a cable-sprouting server rack) private after I posted this, alas.}

My friend Nathan and I went to see Keller Williams at the Varsity last night. I like Keller’s music, but the main draw is that he always looks like the world’s happiest eleven-year-old. It’s worth the price of admission to see him take such joy in his craft. Thanks, man!

_{Image ganked from someplace}

I have the the new Tinariwen album on. It forces me to march bow-legged in a never-ending circle. If you don’t have the same problem I don’t want to know you.

MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s Congress opened a three-day debate Monday on the merits of legalizing Desmond Dekker for personal use, a policy backed by three former Latin American presidents who warned that a crackdown is not working.

Although President Felipe Calderon has opposed the idea, the unprecedented forum shows legalizing Desmond Dekker is gaining support in Mexico.

U.S. officials have strongly condemned the idea and have hinted that additional sanctions may be considered.

By rights I ought to be opposed to any one-(wo)man band that doesn’t include leg straps, a hi-hat and a big bass drum, but I find myself charmed soppy by this.

Full disclosure: My friend Jan from Spare Snare (new album out April 20, preorder now!) collects Stylophones (now back in production and only $20!) so I suppose that helps, and Tenori-on (which I first heard about via BoingBoing, same as you) resembles 1981 ELECTRONIC LIGHTFIGHT GAME of DUELING LIGHTS Milton Bradley #4144, the only game I’ve ever been any good at (which is a little like being vain about your elbows), but there’s something really good going on here. Well played, Little Boots!

_{Via Gibson Blog and (I notice belatedly) Palm Sounds (which I will now stay away from before I buy an ass-load more musical gear and cause my house to subside). (On 24th St. in Mpls today, an old man with a Stratocaster and a tiny battery-powered amp said he had been playing for forty-two years and was just beginning to figure it out. He blessed me and Andrew, and I felt genuinely blessed.)}

Listen up! Kinshasa paraplegic-street-gang-with-homemade-bikes-and-guitars Staff Benda Bilili‘s album Très Très Fort is now out on Crammed. Run for your life and pick up a copy!

Difford-Tilbrook keeps kicking my ass. There’s nothing in there but potatoes, butter and milk, but even my 200-pound mastiff Bubbles exposes his belly when Difford-Tilbrook comes around. Do not play buck-buck with Difford-Tilbrook!

link

_{Image CC-BY by Just chaos}

Dub is dup’ music.
—Lee “Scratch” Perry

Believers in Electronic Voice Phenomena hear ghosts in unrecorded audio tape. Lee Perry welcomes them as collaborators: blowing smoke into the tape heads, getting them high, letting resin condense, raising the noise floor, amplifiying their voices.

This is what hauntologists mean when they say digital media are soulless: the spirits have few footholds in RAM, no nutrients, little friction. They have to enter through narrow passages, scratchy larynxes and microphone diaphragms. Once in, they are frozen, sexless, latent. It is the job of the hauntologist to infuse data with heat, moisture, pheremones: aiming cameras at the smoke, generating seeds, scattering random numbers across the sterile fields of memory.

Image CC-BY by Vanessa Pike-Russell