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Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
I was reminded this weekend of a song I love, and I bothered to do a little research and find out more about it. Here's the version I was listening to this weekend:
I always think of this as a Rockabilly tune; turns out the original version predates Rockabilly by a few years. It was written by Granville "Stick" McGhee when he was in the army in WWII (supposedly under the title "Drinkin Wine, Motherfucker" -- I hope hope hope this is not apocryphal*) and recorded on Decca in 1946 -- Granville's elder brother Brownie(!) played guitar.They re-recorded it in 1949 on the Atlantic label and had a hit record:
I can't find the 1946 record on the internet anywhere - hoyhoy.com says Decca re-issued it after Atlantic's hit and "It flopped because it didn't rock."The big hit, the reason I think of this as a Rockabilly number, was Jerry Lee Lewis:
So which do you like best? I hear things I love in each of them, I'm leaning towards thinking the Pirates version rocks the hardest... Any other favorite covers of this tune?
 *Update: I found a reference for this story, and more information about Stick McGhee, in The Unsung Heroes of Rock n Roll, by Nick Tosches.
posted evening of July 28th, 2009: 2 responses
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Saturday, July 11th, 2009
So the show was just great. Deni played a lot of songs I recognized from her first records and some new ones. It was a small enough space that the acoustic sound really filled it up and you could see and feel exactly what the musicians were doing. (Though I sometimes wished her voice was amplified.) The two musicians backing her up, Austin Donohue and Kevin Moon, were just great musicians and Austin in particular, a very fine vocalist. Austin is also a songwriter, in the second set they played a couple of his pieces -- I was sorry we had to leave before the end of the show, we brought Sylvia and two of her friends to the show and they were getting pretty tired. Here is the song they closed the first set with:
posted evening of July 11th, 2009: Respond
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Friday, July 10th, 2009
 Exciting! Tomorrow night I'm finally going to see Deni Bonet live. I've loved her music ever since I heard Moss Elixir but I keep not being able to make it in to the city when she's playing. Well tomorrow night, Chris of the Notes From Home house concert series in Montclair is bringing her out here! We're going as a family, with a couple of Sylvia's friends in tow too. Should be a great time.
posted morning of July 10th, 2009: Respond
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 Nigel Smith at Carnival Saloon notes that "after his classic 60s records I reckon Blood on the Tracks is the Bob Dylan album most commonly cited as a favourite." This seems true from conversations I've had; and I've never quite understood why so many people name this as their favorite, when to me it seems like pleasant music not remotely in the league of the classic 60's records. Anyways, Mr. Smith had the great idea of assembling a Blood on the Tracks disc on which every song is performed by a different artist -- Robyn Hitchcock, Joan Baez, Elvis Costello,... You can listen to it at his blog. Mr. Smith also links to a previous instance of the same idea, put together by JayEss of The Saddest Music in the World; the music files there are no longer online but the track list is nice.
Update: Also, here are some alternate cuts of these tunes by Dylan himself, courtesy of Recessed-Filter: Blood on the Tracks: New York Sessions. Another Update: and more! Mary Lee's Corvette has recorded covers of these tunes on their 2002 live album Blood on the Tracks. I'm listening to their "Simple Twist of Fate" right now and digging it. (Though I am missing Dylan's harmonica...)
posted morning of July 10th, 2009: 4 responses
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Friday, June 19th, 2009
So who knew there was a flourishing garage rock scene in Portugal in the 60's? I did not know that -- I guess if someone had suggested it to me, I would have scratched my head, said "Yeah, I could believe that," and gone about my business. Today though, badger sent me a link to Portuguese Nuggets vol. I  -- a record's worth of psychedelic tunes from Lisbon 40 years ago. It's a great record -- I haven't been able to hear any distinctively "Portuguese" quality to distinguish the music from American psychedelia; this could easily be a limitation of my ear, but it sounds very similar to the American Nuggets records I've heard. Either way I'm happy with it -- the music is lovely and the beat is strong. Highlights include "Mama" by Victor Gomes & Sideriais; "(Let me stand next to your) Fire" by Pop Five Music Incorporated -- I am liking this version better than Hendrix right now -- and Tartária by Os Tártaros; the only really skippable tracks are Os Chinchilas' "I'm a Believer" and Conjunto Mistério's "Tired of Waiting". Weirdest track, and the only one featuring hurdy-gurdy, is Hully Gully do Montanhes by Conjunto Académico João Paolo.
(The same site with the Nuggets download, aaaaadaddddd, has a ton of other interesting-looking music available; e.g. Bosporus Bridges: Turkish Jazz and Funk 1969 - 1978.)
posted evening of June 19th, 2009: Respond
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Thursday, June 18th, 2009
So I heard a while back about this tape of a John Wesley Harding concert which featured some performances by Robyn Hitchcock, called "A Bloody Show: Live at Bumbershoot 2005" -- and I had kicking around in my consciousness some occasional recommendations that I listen to Harding, and of course the obvious Dylan tie-in. So I put it on my NetFlix queue and forgot about it until it came in the mail yesterday. Popped it in the player without much idea of what to expect -- I guess I was expecting some Dylan-influenced singing with guitar kind of thing. But wow! This thing is nothing like anything I could have expected. It is completely sui generis and is touched with brilliance. Harding is singing ballads that he has written (strongly and clearly derivative from particular folk ballads) with two other singers, either a capella or accompanied by a string quartet, sometimes Harding is playing guitar;* Robyn is narrating the performance reading excerpts from Harding's book Misfortune -- I had not known he was a novelist -- and great stage patter, from various of the performers. The ballads are beautiful; I cannot find any recordings of them on the web so can only recommend that you watch the concert tape. Two lovely Harding performances are on YouTube, though. The song "Misfortune" is the first track on this concert tape, and is kind of what I had been expecting ("Dylan-influenced singing with guitar kind of thing"), and is just great:
And this performance, on "Duets with Deni", just takes my breath away:
Looks like I've got some catching up to do with this guy's career!
* And more instrumentation -- a hurdy-gurdy is featured on "The Lady Dressed in Green"! And there's a full rock band on a few tracks at the end!
posted evening of June 18th, 2009: Respond
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Thursday, May 14th, 2009
YepRoc records has made the video for "I'm Falling" available online.
It is lovely but fills me with questions -- primarily I'm curious to know what is the relationship between this song and Tennyson's Idylls of the King, some lines from which are quoted onscreen when Robyn is filming his puppet-show; also I wish I could read lips and know what Robyn is saying silently at the end of the video.
posted evening of May 14th, 2009: Respond
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Monday, May 11th, 2009
Haven't done one of these posts for a while; I was inspired to by cleek.
- "The Brave Engineer", The Carver Boys. About as Appalachian a song as I can imagine.
- "How You Want It Done", Big Bill Broonzy. Really nice, strange-sounding guitar, I think it's a National?
- "Mo Jo Hanna", Tami Lynn. (from an Apo mix.) -- This song ought to be on a mix tape right in front of "Polk Salad Annie".
- "Yah! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread", Dylan and the Band. The comic book and me, just us, we caught the bus. A good candidate for favorite Basement Tapes track.
- "Ozan Kouklé", Lafayette Afro Band. More Unfunkkedage.
- "Doin' My Time", Flatt & Scruggs.
- "The Wonderful City", Jimmy Rodgers. Cool, this mix is really drawing pretty deep on the breadth and depth of my music collection. (And wow, not even one Robyn Hitchcock track so far!)
- "Honky Tonkin", Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
 - "Original Midnight Mama", Sylvia Smith.
- "Avalon Blues", MS John Hurt.
- Bonus track, "Pablo" by Sol Ho'opi'i and his Novelty Quartet.
Lots of Apostrophic tracks in this selection; and I would be remiss if I did not mention that he has published another mix tape, Unfunkked X: Stretch -- a FB friend asks whether the image is a still from the live-action movie of "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers". Looks like a good mix; but I haven't been listening to it because I'm listening to another recommendation from Apo. Ain't no sunshine.
posted evening of May 11th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, May 10th, 2009
(Not today; yesterday -- today the sun is shining.)
Snufkin got a feeling that he wanted to write songs. He waited until he was quite sure of the feeling and one evening he got his mouth-organ from the bottom of his rucksack. In August, somewhere in Moominvalley, he had hit on five bars which would undoubtedly provide a marvellous beginning for a tune. They had come completely naturally as notes do when they have been left in peace. Now the time had come to take them out again and let them become a song about rain.
This is nice: last night I was reading Moominvalley in November with Sylvia, and we came across the passage above. Later on, and without being conscious of the coincidence until this morning, I sat down and finished writing out a song I have had in the back of my mind since two weeks ago (when I first thought of it I wrote down the first two bars) -- I'm tentatively calling it "Rainy Day".
An interesting thing with the key of this piece -- when I started out I was thinking it was in D minor; but then something happened in measure 5. If the three-note run at the end of that measure is D-E-G♮, then the song ends up resolving on D; if it is E-G♮-A, the resolution is on A, and the key is A phrygian. I am not sure what the accidental sharps on C and G are doing to the key. Hoping to record this later on, it's pretty hypnotic (like listening to a heavy rain outside, was the genesis of the working title.)
posted morning of May 10th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, April 26th, 2009
Here is a melody that I've been working on a bit yesterday and today. I'm not sure what kind of a song it is -- at first I thought I might be playing a minuet, and perhaps it is that -- some kind of simple dance. 
While recording this, I finally got my procedure together for setting up and breaking down my recording equipment. Not quite satisfied with the performance, whatever -- this is a work in progress...
 Update: a refinement -- I've changed the B part substantially. have not recorded this yet:
posted morning of April 26th, 2009: Respond
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