January 20, 2007 - We Love You, Alice Coltrane
The latest edition of the Free Kick show featured a lot of great music, but for me the real high points were the Alice Coltrane tracks we played as a little memorial to this great but under-appreciated musician, who passed away on Friday January 12 at the age of 69.

Hailing from Detroit, Alice McLeod started out as a bebop piano player in the Bud Powell style. She joined John Coltrane's quartet in late 1965, continuing in that role until Trane's death in 1967 (they got married in 1966). In her best known solo recordings of the 1970s like Journey in Satchidananda, Universal Consciousness and Ptah the El Daoud, she developed a unique Indian-flavoured style of playing over meditative grooves, on the harp and Wurlitzer organ as well as the piano - and this is what we heard on Saturday's show. A beautiful, soulful, sweeping wash of sound. It's a sure bet you'll hear more of this great music on future editions of the Free Kick.

Here are some links to more Alice Coltrane-related stuff:

• An interview in The Wire from 2002
• Some mp3s recently posted on the Chunklet blog
• The Vedanta Center she founded in California and where she taught under the name Swamini Turiyasangitananda.

If you want to hear last Saturday's show again, you can use these links to download it from the CKUT archives:

• medium quality mp3 (64 mbps)

If you want to stream the show, go to the CKUT archives page and get the show for Saturday Jan 20 from 21:04 to 23:01.

Next show is on Feb. 3, from 9-11 pm eastern time. I'll be away, so Shawn will be dispensing the musical goodness solo.

A bientot!

Dave

January 6, 2007 - It's a New Year So Let a Man Come In and Do the Popcorn!

Happy new year to all Free Kick listeners! May health, wealth and wisdom be yours!

In the first show of the year, we paid tribute to a few of the greats who left us in 2006:

• James Brown
• Ahmet Ertegun
• Billy Preston
• Wilson Pickett
• Rufus Harley

Let me also mention a few others I didn't get to on the program:

• Syd Barrett
  
• Ray Barretto
• Desmond Dekker
  
• Ali Farka Toure
• Arthur Lee
  
• Ruth Brown
• Dewey Redman
• Elton Dean
• Pip Pyle
• Lou Rawls
• Jay McShann...

and more... RIP every one of you - you left the world a better place!

We also checked out tracks from some notable recent re-releases, all the while indulging in the usual aimless freekickery.

You can download the show from ckut.ca using the following links:

• medium quality (64 mbps)

or stream it from the CKUT archives page: get the show from Saturday Jan. 6 from 21:02 to 23:04.

As a bonus, let me point you to some very cool video downloads featuring the late Soul Brother No. 1 (courtesy of Beware of the Blog - the complete original post is here):

• James Brown at the Boston Gardens, 1968
• James Brown's Future Shock variety show on Atlanta TV

That reminds me that - while you should always keep your radio dial tuned to CKUT 90.3 fm in Montreal, - when in the NYC/Jersey area you may want to check out WFMU on 91.1. They archive all their broadcasts on the internet. They also have a blog that regularly features cool stories, links, downloads and so on. Plus, every now and then they post video captures of live sessions in their studios - for example:

• Jonathan Kane's February (full post is here)
• The Ex (full post)
• Afrirampo (full post)

OK, no more plugging other stations. Listen to CKUT whenever possible!

The next Free Kick show is Saturday Jan. 20 from 9 - 11 pm eastern time.

bye
Dave