Celebrating Public Radio Music Day
Speaker 1: 00:00 Today marks the first public radio music day, which celebrates the special role that non-commercial radio stations play in bringing music to our ears in Southern California at KCRW as a GoTo for finding music new and old to enjoy some you won't hear anywhere else. There series private playlist is a listening session with Southern California's most notable musical figures in their private creative environments. Chris Cohen is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with an extensive desal graphy as a solo artist, Seidman producer and band member. He spoke with KCRW about clearing the mind with experimental jazz and his own frightening near miss with coronavirus Speaker 2: 00:53 [inaudible]. Speaker 3: 00:53 This is Chris Cohen. I'm a musician and producer. Speaker 3: 01:00 I was coming back from a show on the 10th of March from Missouri and I got sick on the plane. So that day was like the first day I was like, okay, like something is definitely going on. And um, there were no recommendations coming from the government then and it was really unclear. I managed to get an appointment with my doctor like two days later and he was just like, yeah, you, you might have it. I can't test you just quarantine. It was really like weird like nightmare scenario. Like I'm a paranoid person so I've, I've been waiting in a weird way for this. And then my girlfriend picked me up at Lex, then we moved on the 15th of March. I was planning on just working on new music at home anyway, so lucky for me, I didn't really have to like not do anything that I was planning on Speaker 4: 01:52 [inaudible] Speaker 3: 01:52 not that long before we moved. I was listening a lot to this guy, junior H my neighbors were playing it really loud outside and I was like, Whoa, what? It sounded so cool. And um, I was too shy to go up an estimate. It was so I Shazammed it. There's this one junior age song can S Ken and I really like his musical. I was listening to him before that trip to Missouri. Speaker 4: 02:42 [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 3: 02:43 when I was in my twenties I worked in record stores and stuff. So I have like tons of records. It's in the new house. We have like the stereo by the couch, like a turntable and stuff. Then we have like a little Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen and we've been listening to a lot of music like while we're cooking Speaker 4: 03:08 [inaudible] Speaker 3: 03:08 do you know this group called Knauss L Golan? We've been listening to this record that we have, but there is a really like lifts my spirits up. It's physical and it's really, the songs are long and they have like this kind of like back and forth group vocals and stuff. It's exciting music to listen to you. I really, I love that. Speaker 4: 03:40 [inaudible] Speaker 3: 03:41 the first thing we listened to when we moved into the house, I put on this old David Murray record, the tenor sax player Speaker 2: 03:48 [inaudible] Speaker 3: 03:51 it's called flowers for Albert and it's kind of an early morning clearing and mind kind of song. Speaker 2: 04:05 [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 3: 04:06 when I was, uh, I think I was about, I was like 18 or something. I saw an ad in the recycler newspaper that was like jazz records, $3 and it said like sun RA Coltrane or something. It just had like clearly this really intense collection and I went to this guy's house. My friend of his had passed away. He was just selling hundreds of like really incredible, like rare, avant garde jazz records. I remember like borrowing money from my sister, trying to buy as many as I possibly could and I bought like a huge box of records from this guy and that was just one of them. And I remember just going through them for like a year or so. Each day I just like pick out anyone and I just kept going back to that one cause I just, it's a live recording and um, it's just a lot. There's a lot of space. It gets real like out there, but it's also very, has a lot of restraint. Speaker 2: 05:03 [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 3: 05:20 I bet you're probably going to get this answer from a lot of other musicians, but my routine hasn't changed that much. I live my life like our hermit anyways, so it's not super different. But, uh, my girlfriend is working from home and um, I listen to certain kinds of music when I'm alone and I haven't been alone at all. I think it's like certain music I listened to alone because I know I'm not going to be, I don't want to be distracted from, for example, you knew David tutor. There's this pulsars record that I'm like, I love listening to that record but I only listen do it alone really because you're speechless when you're listening to it like puts you in a different state that's not social Speaker 4: 05:57 [inaudible] Speaker 5: 06:26 [inaudible] Speaker 3: 06:26 there's this collection that just came out like yesterday or day before. It's on this label called bongo Joe records. It's a collection of rye music from eighties Algerian people in France in Leone. Kind of blending like rye music with other forums. It's got my grab K seven club Speaker 5: 06:45 [inaudible] Speaker 3: 07:02 the way that I listen to music in my new, my new space is really different. We were living in happy Valley in Lincoln Heights and we had like a little back house so I could like, it can be pretty loud and I really am like still kind of figuring out like how to listen to music or how to play music in the house. I moved to piano in here and I'm kinda like nervous about playing piano with my neighbors. So still figuring out Speaker 1: 07:40 that was songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Chris Cohen, speaking to KCRW for the series private playlist. For more of the series, you can find a link on our website kpbs.org.
