Downloads

Surfing the Web for new music, video and MP3 downloads can be a serious time investment. Picks from Times staff and contributors will help take the drag out of click-and-drag music choices. Some downloads may contain explicit lyrics. All are free, except as noted.

-- CASEY DOLAN

“52nd Street Theme”

Sonny Rollins

www.sonnyrollins.com/birthday.php

One of the true greats of the tenor saxophone, Sonny Rollins turned 76 last Thursday and his website is offering a look at nine videos from different points in his illustrious career. This version of Thelonious Monk’s “52nd Street Theme” from Italian television in 1962 offers the stellar band of Don Cherry on pocket trumpet and Billy Higgins on drums -- both crucial members of Ornette Coleman’s band -- and the eloquent Henry Grimes on bass. After brief introductory statements from each member, Rollins turns a smooth extended prelude into rollicking bop with everyone on board and getting his moment to solo. Unfortunately, the video cuts out in the middle of Billy Higgins’ solo.

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“Don’t Go”

Nouvelle Vague

www.youtube.com/watchvZrv6l2-gIIsmoderelatedsearchNouvelle Vague takes late 1970s and early ‘80s new wave music (hence their name, the French for “new wave”) and sets the tunes to bossa nova or samba arrangements. This video is set to a rearrangement of Yazoo’s “Don’t Go” and has as curious a twist as the song’s arrangement. A young woman awakens in what looks like a hotel room and prepares for breakfast. Her movements are cool, methodical; the pacing is sexy, languid. But someone else is in the room and not in the way we would expect him to be. Further presences are noted as she makes her way onto the beach, into a forest and inexorably toward her next encounter.

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“Over the Rainbow”

Keith Jarrett

www.youtube.com/watchv8391x-U9nU0mode

Keith Jarrett’s solo piano rendition of Harold Arlen’s classic song might count among those considered to be definitive. Wistful, longing and expressing the deepest human need of finding a home, the music easily stands by itself without the lyric. No one expresses this need better than Jarrett, whose aptitude for profound melancholy is unsurpassed among contemporary pianists. Jarrett plays it fairly straight, sensitively reharmonizing and keeping the improvisation at a minimum. The origin of the video is somewhat in question -- it could be from a Tokyo solo concert 22 years ago -- but there is a different recorded version on Jarrett’s 1995 recording “La Scala.”

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“Welcome to Europe”

Squarepusher

www.bleep.com/bleepWAP215DX

Tom Jenkinson, a.k.a. Squarepusher, has been making music in the trance/drum ‘n’ bass genre for nearly 15 years, and has stood apart from many of his button-pushing colleagues as a virtuosic electric bass player and not too shabby a drummer. This track from his upcoming album demonstrates pleasant harmonic movement, slowly building upon the musical elements to form a soundtrack for cruising on an autobahn at a brisk 150 mph. Streaming the track is free, but a download will cost you $1.35.

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“Near It -- Very Near It”

Edward M. Favor

www.tinfoil.com/cm-0604.htm

This wax cylinder recording was produced by the United States Phonograph Company in 1894 or 1895 and makes for fascinating listening. Edward M. Favor, an early vaudevillian, sings this music hall song, accompanied by piano, with spunk and great comic timing, but the most instructive lesson to be learned is how similar people were to us before the world wars, the automobile, the computer, before modern recording technology itself. The humor of “Near It...” could have found a place in BBC’s “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Tinfoil.com is a website of wonders for those interested in early recorded sounds.

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casey.dolan@latimes.com