Rating: 8/10

Hotel Room

Strange Moon Rising

There is simply no richer, more meaningful music out there. The Blues not only gave birth to virtually every type of modern music, it gave us the most gifted musicians that ever lived. No genre of music has ever captured the despair and pain of human self-consciousness and it is depressing to think that most people are not even aware of the Blues and its place in the firmament of music history.

Do a Google search of the saddest songs and you will find a laughable plethora of so-called sad songs that exhibit very little actual, first-hand knowledge of the subjects on which the songs are based. Truly pathetic; no, people Nickelback, Mariah Carey, Ashlee Simpson (!) and Celine Dion may very well be “sad” but not in the way you think (and all of these came from lists I saw).

Not so with the Blues. The Blues came from slaves and sharecroppers, and those whose general experience was with a segregated, hateful society that killed, maimed, murdered and jailed people based purely on the color of their skin. And the songs reflect every bit of that pain, humiliation, desolateness and loneliness.

Most bluesmen never made a dent in their pocketbooks. Even the successful ones were robbed and ripped off as badly as modern-day boxers, never seeing a penny in royalties and dying broke. One of the greatest early bluesmen froze to death in Chicago, living homeless despite recording success. Today, most people think emos and teenage angst are true sadness and they can go fornicate themselves with an iron stick, to borrow a phrase from Tom Tucker.

Of course you can find all sorts of blues “lists” if you are interested, and they will contain most of the Blues classics. But what if you are a true Misanthrope and want to hear music that expresses the pain, desolation and rage that humans should have when confronted with the ills and evils of the world?

That’s where we come in.

Here are the saddest and/or most misanthropic Blues albums for your listening “pleasure.” Seriously though, we will guarantee that if you dive into these with an open mind you will be amazed at the richness, depth and emotion that this music gives us and you will feel justly rewarded.

White African-Otis Taylor. This is easily the most depressing, gut-wrenching album ever recorded, and please spare us your nonsensical ravings about any music that makes teenagers and Generation X’ers want to jump off a roof. White African represents nothing less than the most direct, haunting and saddening expression of human misery and we issue a challenge to anyone who wants to disagree to listen to it and then still abide by that disagreement.

Among the topics covered in Otis’ master work are:

-Lynching. Saint Martha’s Blues tells the story of Taylor’s great grandfather who was not only lynched, but had his body torn apart and whose great grandmother was told by the lynchers where to collect his body parts.

-An imagination of what it was like to be Jesus being crucified. (Resurrection Blues)

-The story of a father watching his baby die because of a lack of medicine and money (3 Days and 3 Nights).

-Wrongful execution by death penalty from a first person point of view (My Soul’s in Louisana).

Truly awe-inspiring in every sense of the word, and not in the slightest hyperbolic sense, White African is a harrowing recording, described by one reviewer as if David Lynch had produced John Lee Hooker.

Blues From The Gutter – Champion Jack Dupree. This is one of the sparest, simplest albums from a musical perspective, but thematically heartbreaking. Champion Jack was a piano player extraordinaire, and the album features very simple melodies and music, even for the Blues which generally features relatively simple rhythmic passages.

But the songs tell stories of his battles with alcohol addiction, the evils of gold-digging women and what it is like to be flat broke but having to drink and take drugs no matter what. We also learn about what it is like to have tuberculosis ravaging one’s body. When you are in the mood for some old school blues this is the one album you cannot do without.

Champion Jacks Dupree’s life was tough, even for the early bluesmen, and that is quite a statement. Aside from his addictions to drugs and alcohol, both of his parents were burned by the Klan leaving him an orphan as a one-year-old. When he was 20 watched a fellow bluesman get beat to death by white thugs. He hoboed for a while, and eventually took to boxing; his name “Champion” comes from his status as the Indiana Lightweight Champion in 1939.

To top it all off, he was a cook in World War II and despite being a cook he was taken as a POW and spent two years in a Japanese POW camp.

The Legendary Son House: Father of the Folk Blues. Son house, for my money, is the most important early blues figure, even more so that Robert Johnson, whose legendary story of making a deal with the devil at the Crossroads of two roads in Mississippi has been the subject of movies, music and folklore. Son House, like many (most?) of the early Blues musicians was a hardened criminal that spent a few years in the most notorious prison farm in the South, Parchman Farm.

I recently saw an article on one large website that compiled the saddest songs ever made. It was a joke; the list obviously was not made by anyone with a true knowledge of music history, as Son House’s Death letter is the saddest song ever written.

Death letter tells the story of a man who gets a letter telling him that the girl he loved has been killed and has to make the trek to the funeral. He then has to get used to life alone.

Now this subject is almost cliché, but most times we do not get a real sense of what it is like. We get a sanitized version of mass consumption, devoid of true depth and emotion. But not with Son House. He gives us a truly realistic tale of loss, pain, anguish and loneliness. He plays with an almost frenzied-like passion unrivaled by any other musician that I have ever seen.

Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues – Skip James. There has been no other artist with as singular a style as Skip James. He tuned his guitar to a tuning unlike any other artist, sand in a pronounced falsetto and was rediscovered after 20 years when he made this recording, virtually on his deathbed.

The primary theme of this album stems from his hospitalization near the end of his life. He gives us songs that tell of his pain, misery and destitution in his old age, evincing a fear that all of us have: dying alone, broke and unremembered.

I Am Shelby Lynne- Shelby Lynne. Admittedly I have been a fan of Shelby Lynne’s for a long time, and first found her soulful, husky voice while she was a country singer. But it was clear that was a role for which she was miscast.

Though not a Blues album in terms of the chord progressions, thematically it is most assuredly a Blues record, and one that stems from her years of being screwed at the hands of various factions in the music industry and in life. The album is more misanthropic than anything this side of Taylor’s White African and is not so much sad as vengeful, hateful and disgusted with humanity, putting it squarely within the blog’s favorites.

How unknown was Shelby Lynne? The album garnered a Grammy for Best New Artist, even though she had six albums under her belt and a decade of recording experience.

Shelby was an abused child whose father shot and killed her mother right in front of her eyes before turning the gun on himself. He was a hard-nosed alcoholic who had her thrown in jail at one point in her teenage years. She is quoted as saying “[the] album came from the most vulnerable, desperate place…I think about it every day.” It surely packs a wallop and gets even better with multiple listenings.

There are plenty of others but for the Misanthrope these are the best expositions on life, death, pain, heartache and sadness that music has had to offer. The Blues is typically not described as sad music, but here we have some of the greatest expressions of sadness ever recorded.

“ Why Don’t You Live So God Can Use You”

Why don’t you live so, God can use you, anywhere Lord, anytime
Why don’t you live so, God can use you, anywhere, Lord, anytime

Why don’t you think so, God can use you, anywhere, any time
Why don’t you think so, God can use you, anywhere, Lord, any time

Why don’t you walk so, God can use you, anywhere, Lord, any time
Why don’t you walk so, God can use you, anywhere, Lord, any time

Why don’t you moan so, God can use you, anywhere, Lord, any time
Why don’t you moan so, God can use you, anywhere Lord, any time

Why don’t you sing so, God can use you, anywhere Lord, any time
Why don’t you sing so, God can use you, anywhere Lord

Music and Lyrics by Muddy Waters, performed by Tom Feldman

     I put this up on my blog a year or two ago. It’s by a lady who has a knitting blog called, MY KNITTING MACHINES AND ME. It’s got a charm all of it’s own and hopefully it will bring a smile to your face.  I download this from time to time when I’m stressed out and it always does the trick. I think in fact that I may have featured this in my blog on more than one occasion and will probably put it out there again at some future date  if I’m still breathing …and why not.

   It’s a good idea to occasionaly search out blogs that you otherwise would have no interest in (that’s how I came across this).  If you like the video send the lady a comment on her blog as I’m sure it will bring a smile to her face. If  you have a slow browser then hit the play/pause button and give it a minute to download in full. I’ve listened to this so often that I think I prefer it to the Clapton version. I have a guitar myself but it’s a right handed one and I’m a lefty and besides , I can’t play the guitar.

king of the Delta blues singers, able to play, sing, and create the greatest blues anyone had ever heard,

The 1930’s were far grimmer times for both Robert Johnson and the country and the blues certainly mirrored those times. We live in much softer times and the blues have now been sanitized

through the efforts of high-profile technicians like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton and Robert Cray

Perhaps in reaction to the softening and sanitization of the blues, or perhaps in reaction to the glut of Indie Rock that followed in the wake of Nirvana some indie groups chose to take a different path and decided to see if they could play the blues.

Red Red Meat formed from the Chicago folk-punk outfit Friends of Betty in 1990. The original group consisted of Tim Rutili (vocals, guitars) and Glynis Johnson (bass, vocals), both founding members of Friends of Betty, and Crows guitarist Glenn Girard and drummer Brian Deck.

In it’s original configuration Red Red Meat provided

a stunning counterpoint to the windy city’s popular Material Issue/Urge Overkill glam-informed swagger.

Released in 1992, on their own Perishable Records label, their eponymous debut LP, a blast of Stones-inspired roots rock helped the band generate steady gigs and

heighten their profile in the chaotic, Nirvana-incited underground feeding frenzy of the early ’90s.

In the summer of 1992 the group was the opening act on a ten day tour for the then up and coming Chicago band the Smashing Pumpkins. For Glynis Johnson, already in failing health before the tour, the tour only exacerbated her condition, and further strained her eight-year musical and romantic relationship with Rutili. 

Oblivious to the severity of her illness and obliging her repeated requests, Rutili kicked her out of the band. Just a couple of months later, the 32-year-old Johnson died of AIDS. 

Soldiering on the group added ex- lawyer Tim Hurley (at six-foot-five he provided a nice bookend for six-foot-nine guitarist Glenn Girard) as the bands new bassist in the winter of 1992.

Initially released as a 7” single in 1993 on Sub Pop Records, the song "Flank," enjoyed such popularity that the label would release the group’s next three albums.

Their debut album for Sub Pop, 1993’s Jimmywine Majestic,

could best be described as Exile On Main St.-era Rolling Stones on downers.

Jimmywine Majestic opens with the “gnarled Stones riff” "Flank," but combined with gloomy acoustic numbers like "Smokey" and "Rusted Water,” the mopey "Stained & Lit," the swing of "Smokey Mountain Dbl. Dip,” and Tim Rutili’s often mumbled lyrics the album takes on a decided rustic sound.

It was an almost entirely a new band that went into the studio to record their sophomore LP for Sub Pop, 1995’s Bunny Gets Paid. Glenn Girard left in 1994, and Hurley had switched from bass to guitar, while old Friends of Betty drummer Ben Massarella had joined for the recording sessions. For this album they turned down the fuzz-laden guitars  and introduced other instruments, notably the Moog synthesizer and viola. 

The band self produced and recorded, 1997’s There’s A Star Above The Manger Tonight, which was their final record for Sub Pop. Engineered by drummer Brian Deck it can best be described as meandering, as the album was an attempt

to "synthesize a field recording with a Can aesthetic… incorporating organs and all manner of effects and machinery into the avant-blues rags

A year after the release of There’s A Star Above The Manger the band unofficially disbanded. 

Thought Red Red Meat is unofficially disbanded over the course of the last twelve years Rutili, Massarella, Deck and a rotating cast of members from Eleventh Dream Day, Tortoise, and the Fruit Bats have continued to record as Califone.  Since 1998 the group has released nine albums. The first, in 1998, was the self-titled Califone and the last is 2009’s All My Friends Are Funeral Singers.

Red Red Meat Discography

Releases:

Hot Nikkety Trunk Monkey (7") (Perishable Records) 1990
Snowball (7") (Dead Bird) 1991
Red Red Meat (CD) (Perishable Records) 1992
Flank (7") (Sub Pop Records) 1993
Jimmywine Majestic (Cass, CD, LP, MP3) (Sub Pop Records U.S. & Germany) 1993
Idiot Son/Gauze (7") (Sub Pop Records) 1994
Idiot Son (10") (Sub Pop Records Germany) 1994
Bunny Gets Paid (CD, LP) (Sub Pop Records) 1995
Oxtail (7") (Sub Pop Records) 1995
Red Red Meat/Number One Cup (7") (Flydaddy Records) 1996 
Listening Now/Polara (7") (Generator) 1996
There’s A Star Above The Manger Tonight/Welcome Christmas (7") (Sub Pop Records) 1996
There’s A Star Above The Manger Tonight (CD, MP3) (Sub Pop Records) 1997

Tracks Appear On:

"Flossie" Absolute Middle Of Nowhere Volume 17 (CD) (Limited Potential Records) 1992
"Make You Gone" Hey Drag City (CD) (Drag City, Domino Recording Company) 1994
"Make You Gone" Hey Drag City (2xLP) (Drag City) 1994
"I’m Not In Love" Star Power! (CD) (Pravda Records) 1995
"I’m Not In Love" Super Fantastic Mega Smash Hits! (Cass, CD) (Scotti Bros.) 1995
"Chain Chain Chain" That Virtua Feeling – Sub Pop And Sega Get Together (CD)      (Sub Pop Records) 1995
"Sad Peter Pan" Sweet Relief II: Gravity Of The Situation (The Songs Of Vic Chesnutt)  (Cass, CD) (Columbia) 1996
"Taxiwise"  Vandal (12") (Organico) 1996
"Airstream Driver" Spring Lineup – A Compilation Of Sub Pop’s Heavy Hitters (CD)   (Sub Pop Records) 1997
"Stained & Lit" Rough Trade Shops – Rock And Roll 1 (2xCD) (Mute Records Ltd.)     2002
"Braindead" Mojo Presents: Sub Pop 300! (CD) (Mojo Magazine) 2008
"Gauze" Sub Pop: Amazon Sampler (Digital Download) (Sub Pop Records) 2009
"Robo Sleep", "Stare Box" Perishable Records Sampler Volume 1 (CD)          (Perishable Records)

Red Red Meat – Jimmywine Majestic (1993)

Playing Time: 56 minutes 29 seconds

       1. Flank (4:39)
        2. Stained & Lit (5:00)
        3. Braindead (5:13)
        4. Smokey Mountain Dbl Dip (3:30)
        5. Moon Calf Tripe (6:46)
        6. Cillamange (2:43)
        7. Ball (4:46)
        8. Lather (3:02)
        9. Rusted Water (3:31)
        10. Gorshin (4:45)
        11. Dowser (3:28)
        12. Comes (2:59)
        13. Roses (6:07)

Originally a duo, Railroad Jerk was formed in 1989 by Marcellus Hall (guitar/vocals) and Tony Lee (bass/vocals), but by 1990 they had expanded to a quartet with the addition of Jez Aspinall (drums) and Chris Muller (guitar).

Part of New York City’s noise rock scene of the early 1990’s they were in many ways similar to groups like Royal Trux, Pavement and Sebadoh. Unlike those groups their music was a sonic stew, a combination of traditional Irish folk, barroom jazz, Delta blues, ’60s psychedelia, and roots rock 

Recorded in two days and produced by Wharton Tiers the self-titled first album is

a Northern punk distortion of Southern rural blues… and pits Minnesota native Marcellus Hall’s voice, electric guitar and harmonica against a lurching rhythm section

Very much reminiscent of the Stones’ earliest records there are times when you  might wonder, most notably on the intro to “Talking RR Jerk Blues”,  if you aren’t  listening to a 1930’s Alan Lomax’s field recording from the Mississippi delta.

The release of 1992’s Raise The Plow found only Marcellus Hall and Tony Lee remaining from the original line-up. With the addition of Steven Cerio and various guests, including Uncle Wiggly guitarist William Berger the group manages to deconstruct Bukka White”s "Fixin’ to Die" and Creedence Clearwater’s "Call Me the Son," while also summoning

up visions of Gary Lucas’ cerebral guitar work for Captain Beefheart in the edgy "During the War.

The musicianship on 1993’s We Understand has been described as

at times, Railroad Jerk sounds like four unrelated musicians randomly in search of a parallel finish line

which is understandable because once again only Hall and Lee remained from the original group. Steven Cerio had left and the bands new additions were guitarist Alec Stephen and drummer Dave Varenka.

With the same line-up that had recorded We Understand, 1995’s One Track Mind, never settles on any one defined sound. Sounding at times like “a post-punk resurrection of the Band,” the album includes a Beck-style "Maggie’s Farm" rap variation ("Bang the Drum") “while in the next breathe rolls Tom Verlaine in an alley and dumps him and his weird guitar playing in a swamp.” ("Riverboat").

Railroad Jerk Discography

Releases:

Railroad Jerk (Cass, CD, LP) (Matador) 1990
Younger Than You / Ballard of Jim White (7") (Matador) 1991
Raise The Plow (Cass, CD, LP) (Matador) 1992
02.20.93 (7", EP) (Walt Records) 1993
Milk The Cow (2×7") (PCP Entertainment) 1993
We Understand (2×7", CD-EP) (Matador) 1993
One Track Mind (Cass, CD, LP, MP3) (Matador) 1995
Bang the Drum (7")  (Matador) 1995
Third Rail (CD, LP, MP3) (Matador) 1996
Sauberes Hemd (CD, LP) (Matador) 1997
2001 (7") (Sub Pop) 2000

Tracks Appear On:

"From The Pavement"  New York Eye And Ear Control (CD, LP) (Matador) 1990
"Bang The Drum"  Extra Cheese (CD) (Matador) 1995
"I Wanna Kick Myself For You" Lo-Fi – ~Electric Acoustic & Radical~ (CD) (Meldac Corporation) 1995
"Ordinary Nights" PCP Generics (CD) (PCP Entertainment) 1995
"Wedding Song" The Wedding Record (7") (Walt Records) 1995
"Clean Shirt" Rock Sound Volume 3 (CD) (Rock Sound) 1996
"Clean Shirt" Virtually Alternative, Volume 74 (2 x CD)
"Natalie" Betong Vår -97 (CD) (Not On Label) 1997
"Bang The Drum", "One Step Forward" What’s Up Matador (2xCD, 2xLP, MP3) (Matador) 1997         
"Rollercoaster"  Everything Is Nice – The Matador Records 10th Anniversary Anthology (DVD) (Matador) 1999

Railroad Jerk – Railroad Jerk (1990)

Playing Time: 39 minutes 7 seconds

        1. Don’t Be Jealous (3:01)
         2. Old Mill Stream (3:21)
         3. Glamorous Bitch (4:08)
         4. Krismus Time (2:14)
         5. Talking RR Jerk Blues (6:13)
         6. In My Face (3:02)
         7. Participant (3:59)
         8. Ninety Nine Miles (3:40)
         9. Carnival (3:40)
         10. I’m Not Mad (5:49)

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This tongue-in-cheek blues song is directed against my darling wife’s evil dark doppelganger, Elsie Mae. Tune and monotonic thumb thump borrowed from Mance Lipscomb.

ELSIE MAE

If you see Elsie Mae comin’ down the road
don’t tell her which way you saw me go

She’s got a new way of lovin’, I can’t understand
gotta hop some City Bird fly away from this land

She’ s mean & evil, way she looks at me
She’s out to get me, she can’t leave me be

No one knows me, I’m so down & out
… All I can do is jump & shout

She made some blind men see, made some dead men walk
She’s got a mortgage on my soul & she ties my tongue to talk

I might just leave her, she’s ruined my mind
Keep on walkin’, I can’t look behind

If you seen Elsie Mae, comin’ down the road
Please tell me which way you saw her go..

watch the YouTube video by

The other share is a 20-minute bootleg of John Hartford & Norman Blake performing at the festival in 1972. I haven’t said anything about Hartford on the blog so far, and I’m not going to start right now; but perhaps he’ll be the subject of a future post, who knows. Anyways, I probably don’t have to say too much about this music. If you know the artists, you know it’s good…

John Hartford & Norman Blake – Philadelphia Folk Festival (1972)

Recorded: 08/25/72
Philadelphia Folk Festival
Old Poole Farm
Schwenksville, PA

Tracks:
01 – Old Joe Clark (6:01)
02 – Instrumental (2:30)
03 – You Can Do Anything (3:28)
04 – Randall Collins Is My Name (2:54)
05 – Skippin’ In The Mississippi Dew (3:56)
06 – Orange Blossom Special (2:05)

you could be down there when the glory rocks.
sbdmr>dat>wavelab>cdr>eac>shn>320kbps mp3.

The Philadelphia Folk Festival (1977)

Flying Fish Records FF-064 (LP, USA, 1978)

Recorded at the Old Poole Farm, Upper Salford, PA, August 26-28, 1977

An Amazon customer said:
This record features a solidly strange cross-section of folk songs and musicians from the mid-1970s, when the “folk revival” was well past, Dylan’s electric turn old news, and the hipsters had moved on. Notable names include Odetta, Kate Wolf, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, and Norman Blake — often thought of as a leader of the “bluegrass revival” in the 1970s. Plenty of bluegrass does pop up, of course, but the sounds are diverse across the record and include many traditional songs alongside more original/new material. Other highlights include Debbie McClatchy’s version of the racy “A Little Piece of Wang” and a Gershwin cover by the Lew London Trio.

Tracks
Side 1
1. Bruce Martin: Scots Piping
2. Paxton: Did You Hear John Hurt?
3. Norman Blake: Jerusalem Ridge
4. Michael Cooney: Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight
5. De Danann: Irish Dance Medley: The Boys of Ballisodaire / The Longford Collector
6. Kate Wolf: Then Came the Children
7. John Jackson: Step It Up and Go
8. Odetta: I Gotta Be Me

Side 2
9. Dave Van Ronk: Green, Green Rocky Road
10. Lou Killen: All for Me Grog
11. Roger Sprung, Hal Wylie & the Progessive Bluegrassers: Wild Goose Chase
12. Debbie McClatchy: A Little Piece of Wang
13. Lew London Trio: The Glory of Love
14. Highwood String Band & The Green Grass Cloggers: Dance All Night

step it up.
fresh vinyl rip | mp3 >256kbps vbr | w/o cover

oh, and one of the featured artists on this set is Roger Sprung, Hal Wylie & the Progessive Bluegrassers. If any of you have anything else by them, particularly the album ‘Grassy Licks’, I would love to hear it.

I hope you liked Michael Coleman. Here’s another great Michael C: Michael Cooney. Sounding something like the most successful combination you could imagine of Pete Seeger, Mike Seeger, Dave Van Ronk, and Lou Killen, he was one of the greatest folk performers in America in the 60s and 70s, but is sadly forgotten now. He plays a great armful of instruments, each with a degree of mastery that is rarely encountered. He is a good singer, a great storyteller, and a consummate entertainer. He is also one of very few people who has mastered that rarest of forms, the story-song, complete with changes in tempo, dynamics, color, and evocative sound effects. His repertoire spans old-time banjo-ballads, British sea-shanties, folk-blues from the ragtime era, primordial country, vintage jazz, and pretty much that could fall under the heading ‘folk’.

On first listen his repertoire and energetic treatment recall a certain unpleasant side of the early years of the folk revival, when bands like the Kingston Trio, Brothers Four, We Five, and Chad Mitchell Trio threatened to turn folk music into acoustic pop music in a sweater with strummed banjos and tight harmonies. But any more than a cursory listen will clearly set Michael apart from the pack. For one thing, he can actually play his instruments to the level that the music demands. He’s been known to spend 12 hours at a time learning to play a bass run like Leadbelly, and his flawless fretless-banjo-frailing didn’t come overnight, let me tell you. Also, he does the real folklorist’s work, delving into the history of the songs, listening to early and obscure recordings of them and learning the full verses that were too strange to be understood by the 50′s mentality and so dropped off of more popular versions. He shows that you can be happy and upbeat without being cheesy, and that you can be slow and mournful without being morose.

Basically, if you like folk music of any variety, you will like Michael Cooney. He’s the real thing. I defy you to listen to his 12-string slide-guitar version of John Henry or his epic story-song version of Cumberland Mountain Bear-Chase and not be awed and delighted. Go on, try.

Biographical Notes

Michael Cooney’s father, Bernard (“Barney the Hat”) Cooney, was born and raised in Cicero, Illinois — headquarters of famous prohibition mobster, Al Capone. When he was 14 he would sometimes tell his mother he was going to church, then get his guitar from the woodshed and sing in “speakeasies”. Gangsters would cry and shove money into his guitar. Later he sang table-to-table at restaurants with his brother on violin. By then he knew hundreds of songs and had a reputation for being able to sing any song requested. (His brother later played violin for two years in the Detroit Symphony before they figured out he couldn’t read music.) Maybe that’s where Michael got his ability to sing hundreds of songs of all kinds and play a whole carload of instruments.

Michael was born in 1943 in Carmel, California and grew up (mostly) in Tucson, Arizona (where his dad moved to manage the NBC radio station). His parents divorced early and Michael spent much time in foster homes and the orphanage there and in California during his early years. Hardly was he out of high school when he took to the road, hitch-hiking and riding freight trains for two years — to Boston and back, up the west coast, to Colorado (where he spent a few months in Denver and Boulder, recovering from the broken leg he got his first time skiing), ending up in California.

In 1963 Michael was quite popular in one club, “The Top of The Tangent” in Palo Alto, where a local high school band that came regularly on amateur nights learned several songs from him. That band went on to perform some of those songs as The Grateful Dead.

But the lure of the “Mystic East” was irresistible, and in 1964 Michael went to New York, then Boston. Since then he has lived in various parts of the northeast, plus seven years in Toronto. In 1987, realizing a life-long dream, he moved to Maine where he now lives in the small lobster-fishing village of Friendship, on the rocky coast.

Michael learned his music from hundreds of people, well-known and unknown. He credits Pete Seeger and Sam Hinton for his interest in traditional folk music and the history behind the songs. Also for his wanting to “help others to feel what I feel when I hear this great old stuff”. He credits Sam, and his old travelling partner, Grady Tuck (now deceased) for his relaxed (“Perry Como school of folk music”) performing style.

Michael has been helping others to experience the beauty, power and humor of old and new songs for over 35 years, in countless halls, clubs, coffeehouses, etc., in the US, Canada, Mexico, Great Britain and Europe. He has performed, lectured or done residencies at hundreds of US and Canadian colleges and schools of all levels. He has performed at most of the major North American folk festivals (some many times), including The National Folk Festival, Smithsonian, Newport, Mariposa, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Monterey, Berkeley, San Diego, Hudson River Revival, Old Songs. He has been a performer and mc at the Philadelphia Folk Festival semi-regularly since 1966 and for 15 the last 21 years.

Michael was six years on the board of the National Folk Festival in Washington, DC., in 1984, artistic director of Canada’s Mariposa Folk Festival, in 1986, Artistic Director of Philadelphia’s “Maritime America Festival” (part of “We The People 200 – the National Celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the United States Constitution”), and a consultant to many other festivals. He was a member of the Music Panel of the Maine Arts Commission for four years and head of the panel in 1992-93. For twenty years Michael was a director of, contributor to, and columnist for the US’s oldest national folk music magazine, Sing Out!

Though he claims to be slowing down, Michael’s tours in 1998 took him to Hawaii and back with many stops along the way, and the year before saw him in Antarctica, on the first passenger ship (a Russian icebreaker) ever to sail completely around the continent. Michael as the ship’s entertainer, visited a dozen research bases and many other sites of historical, zoological and geological interest during the two-month circumnavigation.

In 1993 Michael founded The Friendship Letter, “a neighborhood newsletter for people who don’t live near each other”. After six years of publication, he reports subscribers in 48 states, 3 Canadian provinces and the Canary Islands. (And subscriber Garrison Keillor has bought 32 gift subscriptions in the last few years.)

At home Michael likes to putter in his workshop, mess around with computers, musical instruments, books, and boats. He says he ever seeks “neat songs” plus good and fun stuff (and subscribers) for The Friendship Letter.

Michael Cooney – Michael Cooney or “The Cheese Stands Alone”

Year: 1968
Label: Folk-Legacy

Tracks:
1. Turkey in the Straw
2. Worried Blues
3. Fannin Street
4. Jim Crack Corn
5. Rigs of the Time
6. Creole Belle
7. John Henry
8. Nu Grape
9. Apple Pickers Reel
10. That Crazy War
11. Red Cross Store Blues
12. The Bankers and the Diplomats
13. Cumberland Mountain Bear Chase
14. The Engineer

it’s old blue!
vinyl, cleaned, mild skippage | mp3 >256kbps vbr | no cover

Michael Cooney – Still Cooney after All these Years

Year: 1979
Label: Front Hall

Tracks:
1. Cocaine Rag
2. Whoa Back Buck
3. The Brisk Young Butcher
4. The Mermaid
5. Sir Patrick Spens
6. Waterbound
7. Sloop John B
8. “Oops” & Me and My Shadow
9. Poor Cotton Weaver
10. Old Reuben
11. Cripple Creek
12. Deep Elem Blues
13. Candy Man
14. Spanish Flang-Dang

along comes sally with her nose all tore.
vinyl, cleaned, mild skippage | mp3 >256kbps vbr | no cover

note: I was pretty sure these albums were OOP when I ripped, uploaded and wrote about them. It turns out, they’re mostly being reissued. However, seeing as you probably wouldn’t have heard about Michael or known how wonderful he is without the post & music, I left them up. That being said, he has a new album out which you should hastily go and buy at his website.

Also, check out his essays on “What is a Folk Song” and “A Case Against Fame“

The opening cut is Dodging the Wind, a defiant 6/8 ballad. It’s an apt anthem for anyone who belongs to the ones who got away: “When you think of the kid who left when you did, he too will be thinking of you.” The title track is a pensive, fingerpicked cheating ballad: “We’ll be honest to each other – meaning you,” Pug sardonically rasps. The metaphors never stop: the house will never be built for lack of lumber, and he ends up sleeping in the closet, hiding from the cops.

Lock the Door picks up the pace: it has bass and drums. Like Rosalita by Springsteen, the protagonist here just won’t take no for an answer, but he makes his point in about seven fewer minutes:  

Who’s that man knee-deep in sand waiting on the tide

With an atlas and a ladder, undaunted from the height

Lock the door, I’m standing on your porch tonight

A Thousand Men is the most overtly Dylanesque cut here, rich with history, Pug alluding to the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington as he teases the listener:

See Thomas Jefferson on the eve of Bunker Hill

Writing words to die for, writing sentences to kill

They’ve come to paint his portrait

So he grabs a chair and sits

As the surgeon orders cotton

For a thousand tourniquets

Pug knows that virtually all inventions were devised for waging war: “Every good idea kills at least a thousand men,” and Pug’s thinking he’s probably number 1001.

The ep wraps up with the catchy Black Eyed Susan “When you look right through me I wonder what’s behind my back.” Pug is blowing up right now – this year’s nonstop tour includes Bonnaroo, Lolapalooza and the Newport Folk Festival. Don’t be the last one on your block to find out about the guy.

Biographical Excerpts:

HARRY SMITH (1923-1991)

Harry Smith was an artist whose activities and interests put him at the center of the mid twentieth-century American avant-garde. Although best known as a filmmaker and musicologist, he frequently described himself as a painter, and his varied projects called on his skills as an anthropologist, linguist, and translator. He had a lifelong interest in the occult and esoteric fields of knowledge, leading him to speak of his art in alchemical and cosmological terms.

Harry Smith was born May 29, 1923, in Portland, Oregon, and his early childhood was spent in the Pacific Northwest. Smith’s father, Robert James Smith, was a watchman for the local salmon canning company. His mother, Mary Louise, taught school on the Lummi Indian reservation. Robert Smith’s grandfather had been a prominent Freemason who was a Union General in the Civil War. Harry’s parents were Theosophists, who exposed him to a variety of pantheistic ideas, which persisted in his fascination with unorthodox spirituality and comparative religion and philosophy. By the age of 15, Harry had spent time recording many songs and rituals of the Lummi and Samish peoples and was compiling a dictionary of several Puget Sound dialects. He later became proficient in Kiowa sign-language and Kwakiutl. In addition to developing complicated systems for transcription, he also amassed an important collection of sacred religious objects, one of a number of museological endeavors that occupied Smith throughout his life.

Smith studied anthropology at the University of Washington for five semesters between 1943 and 1944. After a weekend visit to Berkeley, during which he attended a Woody Guthrie concert, met members of San Francisco’s bohemian community of artists and intellectuals, and experimented with marijuana for the first time, Smith decided that the type of intellectual stimulation he was seeking was unavailable in his student life.

It was in San Francisco that Smith began to build a reputation as one of the leading American experimental filmmakers. He showed frequently in the “Art in Cinema” screenings organized by Frank Stauffacher at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Smith not only became close with other avant-garde filmmakers in the Bay Area, such as Jordan Belson and Hy Hirsh, but traveled frequently to Los Angeles to see the films of Oskar Fischinger, Kenneth Anger, and other Southern Californians experimentalists. Smith developed his own methods of animation, using both stop motion collage techniques and, more uniquely, hand-painting directly on film. Often a single film required years of painstakingly precise labor. While a few other filmmakers had employed similar frame-by-frame processes, few matched the complexity of composition, movement, and integration in Smith’s work. Smith’s films have been interpreted as investigations of conscious and unconscious mental processes, while his fusion of color and sound are acknowledged as precursors of sixties psychedelia. At times, Smith spoke of his films in terms of synaethesia, the search for correspondences between color and sound and sound and movement.

During World War II, he rabidly collected 78 rpm records from the ’20s and ’30s. This laid the foundation for a collection from which Anthology of American Folk Music would be drawn, and also helped rescue from obscurity much music that would have been discarded otherwise. This was a time, it should be remembered, when the very concept of record collecting, in the name of preserving cultural riches, was virtually unknown. Not only that, many records were being used as shellac for the American World War II effort, resulting in many rarities vanishing forever as they were converted for wartime use.

Smith continued to build up a massive collection of records and other artifacts throughout the ’40s, moving to the San Francisco Bay Area and eventually, at the beginning of the ’50s, New York. Although by this time he had thousands of discs, record collecting was far from his only pastime; he was also busy painting and working on his unusual animated films. In need of money, he offered to sell his extraordinary record collection of American vernacular music to Folkways Records. Instead, Moses Asch, the label’s president, challenged Smith to cull his collection into an anthology.

In 1952 Folkways issued Smith’s multi-volume Anthology of American Folk Music. The Anthology was comprised entirely of recordings issued between 1927 (the year electronic recording made accurate reproduction possible) and 1932, the period between the realization by the major record companies of distinct regional markets and the Depression’s stifling of folk music sales. Released in three volumes of two discs each, the 84 tracks of the anthology are recognized as having been a seminal inspiration for the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960 (the 1997 reissue by the Smithsonian was embraced with critical acclaim and two Grammy awards). Traditional American music was only one of Smith’s musical interests. From the late 1940s, he was a passionate jazz enthusiast, going so far as to create paintings that are note-by-note transcriptions of particular tunes. He spent much of the fifties in the company of jazz pioneers like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk. Smith’s involvement with recording continued into the sixties and seventies as he produced and recorded the first album by the Fugs in 1965. His long term friendships with many of the Beat writers led to the release of Allen Ginsberg’s First Blues in 1976 as well as unreleased recordings of Gregory Corso’s poetry and Peter Orlovsky’s songs. Smith spent part of this era living with groups of Native Americans, and this resulted in his recording the peyote songs of the Kiowa Indians (Kiowa Peyote Meeting, Folkways, 1973).

Smith’s broad range of interests resulted in a number of collections. He donated the largest known paper airplane collection in the world to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. He was a collector of Seminole textiles and Ukrainian Easter Eggs. He also considered himself the world’s leading authority on string figures, having mastered hundreds of forms from around the world.

Smith spent his last years 1988-1991) as “shaman in residence” at Naropa Institute, where he offered a series of lectures, worked on sound projects, and continued collecting and researching. In 1991 he received a Chairman’s Merit Award at the Grammy Awards ceremony for his contribution to American Folk Music. Upon receiving the award, he proclaimed, “I’m glad to say my dreams came true. I saw America changed by music.”

Harry Everett Smith died at the Chelsea Hotel on November 27, 1991.

“Folk conspiracy theorists surmised that AAFM wasn’t just a collection of purt’ fine tunes, but also a magical spell, arranged by artist-alchemist-experimenter Smith in a very specific order so that the total effect of listening would be to alter consciousness on both a societal and individual level. It worked, but the presentation (as with any magic trick) felt staged: You mean that sharecroppers and bootleggers dug fields as well as Aleister Crowley, Pythagoras, and Kabbalic numerology? Regardless, the old, weird American ghosts captured in that biblical tome (“Dock” Boggs, Henry Thomas, Buell Kazee) were no longer mere folk, but transformed into folk deities, haunting the cotton gins, porches, and distilleries of an America now passed.” – Village Voice

For example, I excerpt from interviews with John Fahey on the Nature of Reality:

Now let us review. Please note that I am the Great Koonaklaster, as I have told you before. My hobby is traveling around the countryside planting magic apple trees. I am Johnny Appleseed. I like to have fun just like you do.

jf

Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, Volume Four

Review by Richie Unterberger

The Harry Smith-compiled three-volume Anthology of American Folk Music set, originally released in the 1950s and reissued to much brouhaha in 1997, was one of the most important records in launching the folk revival. It was not well known, though, that Smith compiled a fourth volume that was unissued. Revenant finally put it out in 2000, and like its three predecessors, it contains classic pre-World War II American country, blues, and folk music, with some gospel and Cajun too. It does differ from the first three volumes in its focus on a slightly later period, with all the tracks culled from the years 1928-1940. Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, Joe Williams, Bukka White, Memphis Minnie, and John Estes are all major blues artists; the Monroe Brothers, the Carter Family, Uncle Dave Macon, and the Blue Sky Boys all giant country/bluegrass pioneers; and the Hackberry Ramblers are one of the pre-eminent Cajun groups. A few of these songs are archetypes that have burned their way into the American collective musical consciousness: John Estes’ “Milk Cow Blues,” the Carter Family’s “No Depression in Heaven,” Joe Williams’ “Baby Please Don’t Go,” and the Monroe Brothers’ “Nine Pound Hammer Is Too Heavy.” Other less famous performances are quite intriguing, like Sister Clara Hudmon’s “Stand By Me” (believed by some to be Bessie Smith recording under a pseudonym) and Jesse James’ raw and rollicking piano blues “Southern Casey Jones.” At 28 songs spread over two CDs, it’s a little shorter than might be expected for a box set, though as compensation, it’s enclosed in a pretty incredible 96-page liner-note-sized hardcover book with writing by Dick Spottswood and John Fahey.

“There were to be four of them, and four volumes in the series. Red, Blue, Green were issued [on the original Folkways set], so that the element that was left out was earth…” . – Harry Smith from 1968 interview with John Cohen

Harry Smith was a true polymath–avant-garde filmmaker, alchemist, occultist, folklorist, painter, magician, archivist and expert on string figures, paper airplanes, and Ukrainian painted eggs–but is perhaps best known for his pioneering three-volume Anthology of American Folk Music, originally released in 1952 and reissued to great acclaim in 1997 by Smithsonian/Folkways. Compiled by Harry Smith contemporaneously with the first three volumes, Volume 4 of Harry’s historic Anthology went unissued for almost 50 years. Til now.

In conjunction with the Harry Smith Archives, Revenant presents Smith’s “secret volume” in its intended song sequence, including tracks by the Monroe Bros., Carter Family, Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Lead Belly, Uncle Dave Macon and Sleepy John Estes. Featuring the first in-depth narrative on Smith and his work, with essays by Harry’s friend Ed Sanders (the Fugs), John Cohen (New Lost City Ramblers), John Fahey, Dick Spottswood and Greil Marcus, and previously unpublished photos, including a teenage Harry Smith engineering some of his earliest field recordings.

Two CDs housed in a 96 page hardbound book.

“…Vol 4 is lavish….Smith was a master of the segue…[and] had a prophet’s ear…” – Rolling Stone

“…More lives have been touched by the music in these volumes than almost any other source. Dig in and dig it.” – Mojo

“Legendary filmmaker/cultural icon Harry Smith (1923-1991) was the living definition of the term “culture vulture.” Smith pioneered animation in film and associated with everyone from Jean-Luc Goddard to Billie Holliday and Jimmy Page, and in the early 1950′s compiled the six-volume Anthology of American Folk Music for Folkways Records. This collection’s aim was to document the entire continuum of American roots music in all its diversity. It succeeded fabulously (and helped spark the folk boom of the ’50s and ’60s). After 50-odd years, Revenant in conjunction with the Harry Smith Archives has released VOLUME FOUR.

This two-CD set details the beginnings of both 20th century country music and bluegrass (The Blue Sky Boys’ “Down on the Banks of the Ohio”) as well as their roots in Appalachian/Celtic folk (The Carter Family’s “Black Jack David”). The blues, and its impact on folk and rock & roll, is represented by Leadbelly’s epochal “Packin’ Trunk” (a direct influence on Carl Perkin’s rockabilly classic “Matchbox”), and the Memphis Jug Band’s rollicking, irreverent “Memphis Shakedown.” Anyone wishing to explore the roots of these classic American musics would do well to acquire this edition of Harry Smith’s Anthology.” – Interview

“Today, it is impossible to overstate the historic worth, sociocultural impact and undiminished vitality of the music in Harry Smith’s Anthology, and Smith’s idiosyncratic scholarship and instinctive wisdom.” – David Fricke, Rolling Stone

“FINALLY REPRESSED! Harry Smith was by all accounts the most eccentric of characters, a polymath who would count avant-garde filmmaker, alchemist, occultist, folklorist, painter, magician, archivist and expert on string figures, paper airplanes, and Ukrainian painted eggs among his many, many vocations. However in recent years he has become best known for a short series of folk music collections. In three volumes, Smith collected up some of the finest American Primitive music the world had ever heard and this anthology went down in history as an essential part of the development of American music. However there was a fourth part which had remained unissued until 2000, when the ever-reliable Revenant label finally gave the collection the lavish treatment it deserved and allowed the world to hear Smith’s final gift to music. Now after huge demand Revenant have pressed the double-disc package once more, giving those of us who missed it the first time around another chance to sink into a world of crackling folk music, proto-blues and rock ‘n roll, early country and vintage bluegrass. For a child of the 1980s this is like an alien landscape to me, but it’s such an important part of musical development that I can hear even now how these early ideas have impacted on music being made in 2007. It’s only in the last few years that folk music has made a real comeback in the eyes of the contemporary music scene, and since the folk music we’re hearing now is a reaction to folk music of the 60s, which itself was a reaction to the folk music of the 20s and 30s it’s almost crucial to discover the origins. Across two discs we are introduced to fabulous selections from The Carter Family, Leadbelly, Jesse James, Robert Johnson, Minnie Wallace, Uncle Dave Macon and many more artists but it’s fruitless for me to go into this track by track, as each track is essential and important in its own way. This anthology needs to be bought, enjoyed and discovered by anyone who claims to have an interest in music, that’s all there is to it – grab it before it disappears again for another 7 years!” – Boomkat

Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music Vol. 4
Seattle Weekly
By Mike McGonigal,

THE BAD-ASS, the strange, the desperate and the sublime rub shoulders on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 4, a double-disc set of deep roots music that includes Robert Johnson, the Carter Family, Bukka White, Uncle Dave Macon, the Monroe Brothers, and more. Smith compiled these 28 songs at the same time as his three-volume Anthology of American Folk Music (released in 1952 and reissued to much acclaim in ’97).

The Anthology jump-started the folk revival of the ’50s and influenced a shitload of other music, too. It inspired Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Joan Baez, and continues to cast a long shadow today. It was an unerring collection, showing the breadth of our immediate cultural past, in all its strange (sacred harp spirituals), unique (weirdly tuned Cajun music), and arresting (“I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground”) qualities. The records were arranged not according to race or geography, but the way Lucretius or Plato might have made a mixed tape: “Ballads,” Social Music,” and “Songs.” John Fahey considers it the best single collection ever assembled, and it’s tough to argue.

A collaboration between the Harry Smith Archives and Fahey’s archivist-minded “raw musics” label Revenant, Vol. 4 is deluxely hard-bound with a 96-page booklet. The notes are worth the price of admission alone, especially Ed Sanders’s lengthy biographical essay and historian Dick Spottswood’s ultra-detailed notes on each song. But this set’s major revelation is the fact that it exists at all. You see, the track listing for this volume was long thought lost by the notoriously irascible genius, artist, filmmaker, and self-described “ethnopharmacologist.” It certainly would have fit a pattern: More than 150 major paintings and other works were lost in the ’60s, discarded by an unpaid landlord. And Smith was prone to do things like roll the sole print of a super-detailed, hand-painted film-which had taken years to create-down Broadway in the rain, in a fit of rage. “There were to be four of them,” Smith told musician and filmmaker John Cohen in 1968, “four volumes in the series. Red, Blue, Green were issued so that the element that was left out was earth. The real reason it didn’t come out was that I didn’t have sufficient interest.” The folks at the Archives were interested, however, and the sleuths uncovered a reel-to-reel preserving the intended track listing.

The first three volumes consist of music, as Smith himself wrote, “made between 1927, when electronic recording made possible accurate music reproduction, and 1932 when the Depression halted folk music sales.” But Vol. 4′s recordings were made between 1928 and 1940, and this is no small difference. The immense regional distinctions that existed just a few years earlier begin to fade in front of your ears, while the personalities of individual musicians, as well as the dazzling qualities of their musicianship, becomes increasingly important. Vol. 4 shows an America struggling with itself-with the rising costs and deep despair of the Depression, with the mechanization of society, overseas assassinations, and backyard starvation. Intensely raucous jug band party music, kazoo-and-scat-powered jook blues, dour country-gospel, nimble-fingered Delta, and rollicking hill country blues are all here, plus one of the coolest, cruelest hillbilly-busting tunes you’ll ever hear (Al Hopkins & His Buckle Busters’ simple, crooning, yodel-and-violin-driven “West Virginia Gals.”)

The words on Vol. 4 tell of a man who has to kill a woman because she will not marry him; what a drag it is to be locked up in the state penitentiary; a towering worker named John Henry vanquished by a machine; and corruption in Tennessee politics. Lip-service is paid to the idea that a better world awaits off in the sky; there is redemption in the Heavenly Gospel Singers’ “Mean Old World,” but an awful lot of rage as well. By all means grab this revelatory set and learn these songs well; they’ll come in mighty handy when the next Depression rolls around.

Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, Volume Four

Released: 2000
Contents: 2 CD’s, 96 pg. hardbound book [book not included]
Revenant No. 211

Track Listing
Disc 1
1. Memphis Shakedown, (Memphis Jug Band)
2. Dog and Gun (An Old English Ballad), (Bradley Kincaid)
3. Black Jack David, (The Carter Family)
4. Down on the Banks of the Ohio, (Blue Sky Boys)
5. Adieu False Heart, (Arthur Smith Trio)
6. John Henry was a Little Boy, (J.E. Mainer’s Mountaineers)
7. Nine Pound Hammer is Too Heavy, (Monroe Brothers)
8. Southern Casey Jones, (Jesse James)
9. Cold Iron Bed, (Jack Kelly and his South Memphis Jug Band)
10. Packin’ Trunk, (Lead Belly)
11. Baby Please Don’t Go, (Joe Williams’ Washboard Blues Singers)
12. Last Fair Deal Gone Down, (Robert Johnson)
13. Parchman Farm Blues, (Bukka White)
14. Mean Old World, (Heavenly Gospel Singers)

Disc 2
1. Hello Stranger, (The Carter Family)
2. Stand By Me, (Sister Clara Hudmon)
3. West Virginia Gals, (Al Hopkins and His Buckle Busters)
4. How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?, (Blind Alfred Reed)
5. Wreck of the Tennessee Gravy Train, (Uncle Dave Macon)
6. Governor Al Smith, (Uncle Dave Macon)
7. Milk Cow Blues, (John Estes)
8. No Depression in Heaven, (The Carter Family)
9. I’ll be Rested (When the Roll is Called), (Rosevelt Graves and Brother)
10. He’s in the Ring (Doing the Same Old Thing), (Memphis Minnie)
11. The Cockeyed World, (Minnie Wallace)
12. Barbecue Bust, (Mississippi Jook Band)
13. Dans le Grand Bois (In the Forest), (Hackberry Ramblers)
14. Aces’ Breakdown, (The Four Aces)

The holy grail.
mp3 vbr 224kbps | w/o cover | 135mb

“Currently out of print. Will be repressed at an undetermined future date………. hopefully soonish!!” – Revenant

see Revenant Records:
http://www.revenantrecords.com/index2.php?section=releases&cd_ident=4

Oh, and in case you didn’t know, there’s a fantastic blog dedicated to exploring the AAFM, its artists and its songs. See The Old Weird America.

Bob Dylan’s new album , Together Through Life ,  hit the record shops here in Dublin on Saturday. For over a decade now Dylan’s has been producing albums that  are, lets face it , just not in the same league as Blood on the Tracks or Blonde on Blonde. As I type this blog post up it’s playing in the background  on my record deck and that’s how it should be played , as background music. It’s essentially no different from his previous one which after a couple of years is still in its first pressingn and most of those still sitting on the shelves of Tower Records.  It’s no worse than anything he’s done in ten years and no better. The vinyl version comes with a copy of the cd enclosed but at just 30 euros you could find better value for your money.

The Guardian newspaper has what I would consider a fair and balanced review that’s worth reading. Before you part with that 30 euros why not spend it on The Third Ear Band’s latest album , Raga Live. Third Ear used to record on the harvest label in the 60′s and 70′s and this double live album is them at their best. ……If you’ve never heard them then here’s the chance , but don’t bother downloading  some 3 minute clip from the WEB,  it’s not that kind of music. This is REAL …..This is what used to be known as pot smoking music……And this is strictly record player music ….two beautifull thick black slabs of vinyl….

Rezultat: murzyńskie pieśni więzienne z Misissipi (rok 1947)

Świetna rzecz.

Tutaj.

Check out my other posts on Vinyl HERE.

Every so often I like to mention a blog that grabs my attention and pass the word along. MY KNITTING MACHINES AND ME is one of those blogs. I stumbled across it some time ago , why I don’t know as I have little , or rather no interest in knitting. But for some strange reason or other I found myself reading it …….there’s something very therapeutic about the sound of needles clicking. Or just the idea of needles clicking…..

I have no reason to believe that this lady is in fact mad….but I like to think of her as being just a little bit strange…….when she’s not knitting she sometimes plays the guitar..( and why not ?).

As Humphrey Bogart said in “The Desperate Hours “..”Clickity , clickity , click..”

Apart from this video she has some more videos on knitting and other stuff on LIVEVIDEO.

blogging

Every so often you come across some busker or street musician who is just too good for the street alone. I shot this footage a few months ago and posted it on Youtube so if you haven’t seen it here’s your chance.

And while I’m at it here’s a lady doing

Eric Clapton.http://sillyoldtwit.com/2007/12/05/the-intelligent-womans-blog-aka-the-mad-knitter-eric-clapton/

 Folkstreams.net