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Monday, July 11th, 2011
Ellen got some nice photos of us at the show last night -- click through for the slide show.
posted morning of July 11th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, July 10th, 2011
Me and John played our first show this afternoon! We were one of the featured groups at Michael Locker's Songwriters' Circle, at the Crossroads in Garwood -- there were five acts playing rotating sets of three songs apiece, we were on stage three times for a total of about 40 minutes of music -- way more than we've played before for an audience. (Sparse to be sure, but still.) Our set list:
- "Red Red Overalls" by Jeremy -- this song gets a little better and a little faster every time we play it.
- Praying Mantis by Don Dixon
- "Japanese Radio" by John and Jeremy -- we were extremely loose on this song and having a great time. We had never really worked out the arrangement with any precision and ended up not being sure, at a lot of points, whether we were going to go into a verse or a chorus or an instrumental -- but somehow it worked really well.
- NJ Transit by Jeremy
- Walk Right In by Cannon's Jug Stompers
- "Killer Diller Smile" by John
- Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan -- this was an encore in our second set when a guy in the audience asked us to play another song.
- Revelator by Gillian Welch
- "Meet Me in the Morning" by Bob Dylan
It was a great time. Also had a blast meeting and listening to the other musicians on the bill, including Christa Orefice and Anthony Rocha.
posted evening of July 10th, 2011: Respond
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Monday, July 4th, 2011
Woke up with a song ringing in my ears and a poem drifting through my head.
My shadow has no memory of
that frantic, panicked, pell-mell flight --
No pain or expectations, craving,
dying to escape his bondage.
Look, he's crouching, vibrates with
desire that only shadows feel;
He's poised to spring, to pounce, as if
the shadow of some predator,
Some dusky, fleeting contrast on
the sidewalk of my consciousness,
Some ragged blank impression on
the sand dunes of my memory --
We move, the spell is broken, sliding
frictionless along the garden
Seeking our reflection in
the pools of last night's rainfall,
In the golden machinations of the sunlight from the east.
posted morning of July 4th, 2011: Respond
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Monday, June 27th, 2011
 Jonathan Ward of Excavated Shellac has a bunch of great new music posts up;* old recordings of flamenco, Turkish music, West African pop... particularly up my alley is a guest post from Swedish psychotherapist Tony Klein. A few years ago at a flea market in Uppsala, Klein found an old record of Signe Flatin Neset playing the traditional Norwegian tune «Skuldalsbruri» ("The Bride from Skuldal") on Hardingfele, a Norwegian fiddle with four resonating strings under the melody strings. Listen to the recording at box.net, and read Klein's post about the music and the artist.
*(Hmm, no, this is not correct. They are a bunch of old posts from the archives that Google Reader and/or WordPress decided should be reported as new today. This is a good thing as it exposed me to some fine music; but if you head over to Jonathan's blog the latest post you will see is from a couple of weeks ago.)
 (Oh and speaking of great music to listen to, NPR's First Listen is now streaming Gillian Welch and David Rawling's new record, The Harrow and the Harvest, for free. Thanks for the link, cleek!)
posted evening of June 27th, 2011: 1 response
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Sunday, June 5th, 2011
Scruss built a banjo! A fretless banjo to be specific, with a gourd for a body: a genre of instrument I did not even know existed but which apparently has plenty of history behind it. Here he is playing "Black-eyed Suzy":
More images and recordings at scruss' blog.
posted morning of June 5th, 2011: 1 response
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Saturday, June 4th, 2011
John and I have been tossing around Don Dixon's "Praying Mantis," playing it now and then for most of the time we've been jamming together. We're thinking of it now as one of the songs to play at the next open mic we play -- here's a version of it we recorded tonight:
posted evening of June 4th, 2011: Respond
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Friday, May 27th, 2011
Nature photo of the day comes our way from cleek: I could look at this for a long time... The clarity of the light on her right claw is difficult to look away from.
 (Also: some far-out shots of bugs and plants from Dave Bonta of Via Negativa, who is flirting with toxicity.)
posted morning of May 27th, 2011: Respond
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Thursday, May 26th, 2011
Speaking of "Subterranean Homesick Blues": The city of Duluth, MN has hit on a distinctive way of honoring its favorite son.
 (I always thought the lyric after this was "Don't wear sandals/ You can't afford the scandal" but apparently, per his home page, the second line is "Try to avoid the scandals".)
posted afternoon of May 26th, 2011: 1 response
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Tuesday, May 24th, 2011
Bob Dylan has been in the world for 7 decades today. That's a good long time, and for about the last 5 of them he has been contributing some beautiful, significant art to the world. I'm not sure what to say about this but, happy birthday, Bob! Many happy returns of the day! The Guardian has a slide show of images from his career.  I became a fan of Dylan's music in 1983, when I was 13 years old. I had always known about him and recognized some of his songs; but in the summer of my 13th year I spent a couple of weeks staying with my parents' friend Jim Higgs (r.i.p.), who had a lot of Dylan's records and the book of his lyrics. This was the summer Empire Burlesque came out, and Jim was talking it up a whole lot; but I started reading the book and became entranced by "Subterranean Homesick Blues". I listened over and over to Bringing It All Back Home; and when my family came back to town and I went home, I raided my parents' collection of Dylan records. That year and the years that followed, I listened very heavily to Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited; and less heavily to Blonde on Blonde, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and The Times They are a-Changin'. In autumn of 1983 Jim took me to see Dylan and Tom Petty play Sacramento fairgrounds; it was the first rock concert I ever went to. At some point in high school I came into possession of a copy of Dylan's first album, self-titled, I think from Replay Records on McHenry -- that was where I got most of the music I bought in high school. I don't remember listening to this record a whole lot in high school, but later it would become one of my very favorite records. I remember seeing Steve Ewert and Tim Lechuga playing at Mondo Java -- it was one of the first concerts I went to at Mondo Java, in 1989 or so -- and getting them to let me sing "Subterranean Homesick Blues" with them. That was great even though I didn't remember all the lyrics. Not as great was the second time I saw them, when I got them to let me sing "Desolation Row" with them -- I had rehearsed and knew all the words, but the spontaneity that had made the first time so much fun was gone and it came off pretty flat. Also IIRC I brought and played bongo drums without understanding going in, how lame that was. In 1993 I bought Dylan's two new records, Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong. This was well before I really got into old-time music -- I loved these two records at the time but I don't think I really understood at the time, how great they are. These two certainly were part of the process that got me interested in old-time. And since then? Well... Dylan is just part of my psychic landscape, one of the places I go when I think of music. I'm glad he's here and glad I've got his music around me.
↻...done
posted evening of May 24th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, May 8th, 2011
Ellen and I went out to a club last night, for the first time in a while, to see a band we had never heard of... What a great time! What a great find! I'm a fan now.
Ellen heard from Shelley on Wednesday that their old friend John was playing guitar with The Shirts on Stanton St. on Saturday, and did we want to meet her. So we did! The opening band was Suzanne Real, backed up by John on guitar and the bassist and drummer from The Shirts. A hot set but not very many people were there yet... The club really filled up for The Shirts' set though. Ellen and I were surprised to find ourselves dancing, starting early in the set when Artie Lamonica (the guitarist on the left above) sang his new song "Mochaccino" -- an addictive beat and a fun lyric. I was dancing my trademark, spastic I-can't-dance step (which I have not had occasion to use for a long time now), Ellen a more reserved swaying to the beat, but it got us together in the rhythm. And it was all right. The Shirts played an hour set and I could have listened to them for another couple of hours. I'm listening to their record now (the new one, the one that was on sale at the merch table, the one that John is playing on) and having a blast. Recommend it.
Oh: John was not in the spotlight much during The Shirts' set -- he played some stellar solos, but the lighting guy was not on the ball -- but I got a nicely impressionistic photo of him during the opening set:
posted afternoon of May 8th, 2011: Respond
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