The Playlist is changing. Mutating. Still resembles Bonnie Jean’s blueprint for the program, but week after week, the process of replication has been imperfect, allowing irregularities to enter the mix. Vince Guaraldi. Jerry Garcia. Digable Planets. “Baby That’s Backatcha.” You get the picture. Just what The Playlist will have become when the KUSP management arrests the process of mutation, hard to say. Shortly, a new program will take the place of The Playlist. In the meantime, the mutant is still here for all to enjoy. So enjoy.

Tonight (midnight December 12 and the early morning hours of Thursday December 13), for example, you may enjoy new records by Bat For Lashes, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Los Straitjackets, David Byrne & St. Vincent and Gregory Porter; older records by The Decemberists, Nicholas Payton with Esperanza Spalding, Fleet Foxes and Nick Drake. Check out some videos of these performances below.

Once again, we dip into Karriem Riggins’s hip-hop mosaics, from his new album, Alone Together. Karriem has played the drums with a bunch of mainstream jazz greats, including Betty Carter and Oscar Peterson. But he’s a Jekyl-and-Hyde guy: Karriem’s label, Stones Throw Records, lets you listen to a mixtape of his many hip-hop productions, including work by Common, Slum Village, Black Thought and Erykah Badu. The link is here.

This evening’s featured poem is “Lines For Winter,” by Mark Strand (from which this blog entry’s title is taken). A few years ago, in another job on another continent, I wanted to use a few lines of another Mark Strand poem in an economic report that I was writing. Our copy editor pointed out that we would need permission. I was pessimistic — Mark is as close to a rock star as you get among contemporary poets — but we wrote to Mark and he just gave us the green light, no hassles. As such, his poetry is there, alongside Antonio Machado’s “Caminante, no hay camino.”

And idiosyncratic covers: French jazz trumpeter Médéric Collignon does Nick Drake’s “River Man,” Santa Cruz saxophonist Donny McCaslin does Boards of Canada’s “Alpha and Omega,” and Playlist favorite pianist Robert Glasper does “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

Videos of the original tunes can be watched, with pleasure, below:

All this, and first-time spins of new records by Bat for Lashes, David Byrne & St. Vincent, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, the Crystal Ark and Sierra Maestra. Ravishing stuff!

This morning’s poem: Lawrence Raab‘s “Last Day On Earth.”

This week The Playlist includes DâM Funk, John K. Samson, Norah Jones, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Wallace Stevens, Merl Saunders and Jerry Garcia (pictured above, in that order). Among others.

Also, a couple of great old tunes by Graham Parker & The Rumour, who come to the Catalyst in Santa Cruz on December 15: more information at www.catalystclub.com.

And here, videos of a couple of the songs you will hear on this week’s show:

That movie, those novels, seem to suggest that we’re always in the tragicomic last days of something great, and we might not quite grasp that it’s truly great until after the fact. In its little way, this radio show – thanks entirely to the programming prowess of Bonnie Jean, who brought it into being and shepherded it through the years of its life – has that feeling, too. Certainly many of the great musicians Bonnie Jean highlighted over the years – Neko Case, Fleet Foxes, Cat Power, Connie-Kim, the list is a long one – tell just such a tragicomic story.

Look around you. Take stock. You are probably, in some aspect of your life, in the midst of the last days of something truly great. (And I’m not talking about the radio show now.) The last days of Chez Nous. It’s autumn, after all. Take a moment to savor it. You’ll be glad you did down the road.

Meanwhile, tonight you can groove to music by Tame Impala, the xx, Alec K. Redfearn and the Eyesores, Christine Fellows and the Mastersons. Plus, there’s a poem by Gary Snyder about his Macintosh computer. Not to mention Vince Guaraldi and Bobby “Blue” Bland (what the hell has become of the Playlist anyway?).

And thanks, Bonnie Jean!

All that, and more new music from the fine new records by the xx, Bob Dylan, Jakob Dylan (with the Wallflowers and Mick Jones of the Clash), the Temper Trap, Beachwood Sparks (see them perform live at the video link below), John K. Samson, Robert Glasper (with Mos Def) and Marty Dread. Meklit & Quinn celebrate Lou Reed, Marianne Faithfull (above, left) celebrates Fleetwood Mac. Shabazz Palaces (above, center) provide suitably late-night deep-underground hip hop, meanwhile, in one of the few FCC-compliant tracks from their album Black Up. English, Spanish, French, Arabic and maybe some other languages besides.

Enjoy!

The whole Playlist Gestalt is a matter of spinning new records, and we have an embarrassment of riches in that regard. Played for the very first time on The Playlist tonight, new records from the Wallflowers, the Temper Trap, Bob Dylan (above center), Sundog, Beachwood Sparks (above left), Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffitti, the Tragically Hip and the aforementioned lower-case-lovin’ xx (above right). It’s just scary how many new records we have tonight! (That’s the only Halloween tie-in I have to offer.) Plus we hear from Cuba’s inimitably elegant Orquesta Aragón, coming Monday night (5 November) to Kuumbwa Jazz. See them on Cuban television below.

All that, and close listeners will hear me confuse John Prine with John Hiatt (surely not the first time?)

Baby that’s backatcha!

I hope you’ll tune in: and remember, you can listen anytime you want by going to the Music Show Player, elsewhere on this web site.

And really, cave-dwellers, no offense intended. All listeners are welcome.

While you mull that over, enjoy new music by Jill Barber, Gregory Porter, Michael Kiwanuka, Tyler Matthew Smith, the Shins (love those Shins); not-quite-new music by Calexico, tUnEyArDs (or is it TuNeYaRdS?), and Fleet Foxes; and not-at-all-new music from Billie Holiday (trust me, the Lady Day track will make perfect sense in context). This morning’s poem is by former poet laureate Rita Dove.

I’ve been playing a lot from the Robert Glasper Experiment’s Black Radio: he’s just put out a remix EP. Herewith the remix (by ?uestlove) of their version of Little Dragon’s “Twice.” In concerts last year, the Experiment performed a mashup of “Twice” with “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

If you’re listening, drop me a line: jeff [DOT] daytonjohnson [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

This week on The Playlist: great songs from recent releases by Hoots & Hellmouth, Jill Barber, Memoryhouse, Gregory Porter and much more. I dip once again into the fine new record by Bobby Womack, for a duet with Lana del Rey (!). Also: we celebrate Patti Smith’s Tuesday night concert in Monterey with a smattering of selections from her discography; we mark John Lennon’s 72nd birthday with a handful of hits; and we remember the late R.B. Greaves.  Finally, a Playlist first (I think): a poem by Sharon Olds. Enjoy!

Patti Smith sings “Banga” on the David Letterman Show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxYid-L05xw