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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Tuesday, July 6th, 2004
I watched a half hour or so of Shanghai Love Motel's set at Luna Lounge this evening, and was sorely disappointed to have to leave so soon. They make beautiful music -- combine straight-ahead rock and roll with abstract, cerebral lyrics in a way that reminds me of my two perhaps favorite artists, Dylan and Robyn Hitchcock. (The Dylan influence is clear and goes almost without saying, and they played a dynamite cover of "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" when testing the sound system before the show; the Hitchcock influence I'm pretty sure about but am waiting on confirmation or at least non-denial from Bill Millard, the band's bass player, before I assert it. But still I can say their music reminds me of R.H. without being roped into having made a statement about their influences, right?*)
Anyway -- I can't say too much more about the music because I only heard 5 songs -- but by all means go listen to their next show if you're in town. I will post about it before it happens.
*Bill responds that yes, he thinks they do have a bit of influence from Hitchcock.
Nice gift from Ellen: Raising Sand by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. Just what I wanted! (as recommended by Jim Henley.)
First listen this morning, in my car driving to work. Well, the bass is a little too much for my car stereo. Going to have to spin it at home this evening (buncha people coming over for Hannukah). But I can say, the track Jim recommended, "Killing the Blues", is way better than I thought it was the first time I heard it. Also that the cover of "Gone Gone Gone" (by the Everly Bros.) is fantastic, and probably my favorite thing so far. But really need to listen on better speakers to find out what's going on with that bass. (I'm a little puzzled -- I've listened to other bassy stuff on the car stereo with no problems.)
Update: listened to it again at home and I must say, a really sweet record. The vocal harmonies are beautiful. And by a cool coincidence, I find out that just today "Gone Gone Gone" was nominated for a Grammy award. (As of right now I think my favorite track on the record is "Fortune Teller".) But the bass is really aggressive, it distorts a little bit on my home speakers, which are good enough for playing anything else I've ever thrown at them. I wonder if this indicates a problem with the production of the record -- it seems like a strange one, that would be easy enough to catch and fix. Or maybe my equipment is just not good enough.
posted morning of December 6th, 2007: Respond ➳ More posts about Raising Sand
(Speaking of Scandinavian bands, it's always worth while linking to Hurra Torpedo's cover of "Total Eclipse of the Heart": you
will never think about 80's power pop in quite the same way.)
posted evening of April 6th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
Just downloaded from DimeADozen, this concert -- Robyn Hitchcock and The Electric Trams, 5/18/2008, Arts Theater, London, which includes a cover of "Up on Cripple Creek". Nice! I don't think I've ever heard Robyn perform a song of The Band's before; it is very pleasant to listen to. Dig the saxophone.
I had been thinking about
this combination of artists recently because I've been listening a lot to Robyn's "Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom", which includes the lines "Rolling down the frozen highway/ Like a burning tyre." Sounds to me like an obvious reference to Dylan's motorcycle accident by way of "This Wheel's on Fire". (And note that Robyn said he pictures Danko singing lead on this.)
Other good covers in this set: George Harrison's "Old Brown Shoe"; The Beatles' "I've Got a Feeling". Also, "Adoration of the City" off of "A Star for Bram", which I had never heard before.
...I love a coincidence: today a post on Catbird Records' blog features Robyn covering Every day is like Sunday, by The Smiths.
Just love that singer's voice -- if I'm reading their list of band members correctly, her name is Kitty Lux. (I like the male singer a lot too, Jonty Banks I believe is his name, who has the lead in "Life on Mars"; but not in the same gut-level way. He is a technically gifted singer with a lovely voice*; she is that and also is expressive where he is sometimes emotionally flat.)
* Wait, strike that -- went back and listened to it again -- Banks is a fair singer but "technically gifted" is overstating the matter.
Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello. Bill passes along links to two covers of "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Take it away, Paul Anka!
Nice, right? But just listen to (and watch!) the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. They absolutely demolish this tune (in the good sense of "demolish", I mean):
In Bill's words, they "set a new standard for feeling stupid and contagious."
By the way: All of the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain tracks that are up on YouTube set new standards for whatever they are doing, all that I've watched to date at any rate. There are way worse ways to spend some time, than by walking down that list.
(Mark contributes a version from Tori Amos: "I'll have what she's having...")
I've been been listening to Fegmania! a lot over the past week (in its reissue in the Luminous Groove box set), and finding some things I really like about this record, which I had previously considered one of Robyn's weakest efforts. Today I've been getting very interested in the song "The Bells of Rhymney," which I'm embarrassed not to have already known is a classic of the 60's folk revival, written by Pete Seeger and performed variously by The Byrds, Judy Collins, The Alarm, and others.
I think Pete Seeger's is my favorite performance that I've heard so far:
(I think, but not quite sure, that this recording is from the Newport Folk Festival of 1959.)
And The Byrds are lovely and silly, standing gaily on the beach singing about mining disasters. I believe it is their version that Robyn is covering, as he sounds very similar to this:
The song is based on a poem from the book Gwalia Deserta, by miner-turned-teacher and poet Idris Davies, which Seeger found in a book of Welsh poetry compiled by Dylan Thomas. The poem (as near as I can understand) deals with the failure of a mine-workers' strike in 1926. Two other of Davies' poems can be seen in manuscript form at Welsh cultural history site Gathering the Jewels: "Rhymney", and "Rhymney Hill". David Librik gives more detail about the origins of the poem at this link (midway down), including this tantalizing couplet from Gwalia Deserta:
O what is man that coal should be so unmindful of him?
And what is coal that it should have so much blood on it?
Oh what will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney.
Is there hope for the future?
Cry the brown bells of Merthyr.
Who made the mine owner?
Say the black bells of Rhondda.
And who robbed the miner?
Cry the grim bells of Blaina.
They will plunder will-nilly,
Cry the bells of Caerphilly.
They have fangs, they have teeth,
Shout the loud bells of Neath.
Even God is uneasy,
Say the moist bells of Swansea.
And what will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney.
Throw the vandals in court,
Say the bells of Newport.
All will be well if, if, if, if
Cry the green bells of Cardiff.
Why so worried, sisters why?
Sing the silver bells of Wye.
And what will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney.
Note: I found (at The Mudcat Café) some updated lyrics to this, composed by Mr. Steve Suffet, with help from Pete Seeger.
Bells of Kabul
"We've had twenty years of Hell!"
Cry the sad bells of Kabul.
"Oppression and war!"
Scream the bells of Kanduhar.
"Did we win? Did we lose?"
Ask the broken bells of Kanduz.
"Will God grant us peace?"
Pray the bells of Mazar-i-Shareef.
↻...done
Over at Before You Listen, NickS is asking, "What makes a good cover?" Well -- I've been thinking about it some and the more I reflect, the more it seems like I'm a really easy target for cover versions in general. This came to me today when I was listening to WFUV's Sunday Breakfast, and Alison Kraus came on the radio singing Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" -- this is just fantastic! and what is it about cover versions that gets me so reliably interested?
I think it's pretty simple really: When I listen to a cover of a song I like, I've got the version I know playing in my head and the version I'm listening to playing harmony. Lots of opportunities for interplay between the variations, a psychic duet between the two singers. Fun! Even better, when I get to know multiple versions and have them all playing together. (Take a look at this list of covers of "Summertime Blues" -- some great stuff in there. I guess The Who's version and Eddie Cochran's are the two most familiar to me; Blue Cheer's, which I heard for the first time yesterday, is totally worth while. Plus T. Rex! Richie Valens! Bruce! James Taylor! and many more. A couple of versions below the fold.)
(Note: Doing a clumsy post like this makes me grateful for the existence of bloggers like NickS who can write meaningful, articulate takes on what is happening in the music they're listening to.)
In comments to NickS's covers post, Matthew links to a fantastic version of "Strawberry Fields Forever", by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. Lovely! And it gives me a chance to remember Ellen's brief memoir "1996", published in In My Life: Encounters with The Beatles, about playing Anthology 2 for her fourth-grade class in East Harlem.
"Draw me what you hear in the music," I say.
They show me giant strawberries growing next to an apartment building, the sun's rays as streams of musical notes, the word music in big colorful letters, a strawberry tree identified with phonetic spelling swter breey fealds.
It was Ellen's first full-time teaching job (after many years of adjuncting), and she had a good time with the class, and her students had a good time learning to read and write.
"So were you a Beatlemaniac?" Yazmine asks.
"Oh, sure, of course," I answer in all seriousness. "I always will be."
It seems to me like the line "You know that was the last thing on my mind" admits of two not mutually exclusive readings. It could just be a restatement and intensifier of "Didn't mean to be unkind"; or it could also be a separate statement, that he just wasn't thinking about how he was behaving toward the woman he's singing to. The difference here keys on whether that takes "I could have loved you better" or "to be unkind" as its antecedent; I like the ambiguity.
(Yeah, any excuse to post this song... I was listening to Chet Atkins' cover of it last night in the soundtrack to Stroszek and it became the song I want to have in my head all the time. Maybe I will try and learn the words and figure out a violin part for the October jam. Do you know there are like 50 covers of this song -- most of the ones I can find on YouTube are inferior to the original although Dolly Parton's version is pretty easy on the ears. Oh also: here is a tape of Tom Paxton singing "Rambling Boy" on Pete Seeger's "Rainbow Quest" show.)
posted morning of September 21st, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Songs
Robyn Hitchcock and The Electric Trams, 5/18/2008, Arts Theater, London, which includes a cover of "Up on Cripple Creek". Nice! I don't think I've ever heard Robyn perform a song of The Band's before; it is very pleasant to listen to. Dig the saxophone.
about playing Anthology 2 for her fourth-grade class in East Harlem.