Fairport Convention performs two songs in this clip. Somehow, I never get past the first to view the second. After reading this post, you may understand why.
Who on God's green earth decided that dying in battle is glorious? My guess would be that, while the Greeks invented this notion, the Romans perfected it. When you force slaves to fight your battles, you can afford to lose a few ... thousand. When your country is small, you feel every loss more keenly. This, then, is a song about war. It has nothing to do with glory. Somehow, it is appropriate that a song which reverberates with quotidian details should be memorialized in a clip that's chock full of them, a performance by men at the exact age for going off to war. The joshing. Isn't that how it always starts when, deep down, the sheer terror of knowing you may not come back alive beats like a bass drum? Dave Swarbrick gets in a good one at Simon Nicol's expense and Nicol, in his three-piece suit, jacket discarded, gets a wee bit defensive as Dave Pegg looks on like a tolerant, older brother. Nicol, whose self-deprecation charms without even trying, introduces the song, kicking it off with an electric dulcimer that makes a fine, droning substitute for Scottish bagpipes. Swarbrick sneaks a look at a folded page of lyrics in his hand. As Nicol sings the first verse, there's the dawning realization that something has already died: I've heard them lilting At our ewe-milking And I've heard them lilting Before light o' day Swarbrick cranes his neck to see that those high notes reach the mic. Pegg's droning, rock-solid bass mimics the electric hum of the dulcimer. The two of them join the chorus, in memoriam: Now they are mourning For all time lamenting The flowers of the forest Are all wede away No, there's no glory here; not even in the battle. Nicol's recollection is dry to the point of being deadpan, with the barest hint of snark: Where the English, by guile For once won the day
Again, the chorus, followed by an instrumental break releasing all the emotion that the singers don't quite dare. All three repeat the first verse in unison, soldiers marching into -- or out of -- a local tavern; or, maybe just marching home. Then, the chorus, rendered once more in heart-stopping, three-part harmony, accompanied by nothing more than cymbal hits, struck surely but sparsely, as though the drummer doesn't have the heart to keep the beat. With the last, fading notes, Swarbrick shakes his head at the futility of it all. When it's over at last, Nicol slumps in his chair and sighs. Pegg, the stoic of the bunch, simply turns away. Written in honor of the Scots killed at the Battle of Floddenin 1513, today, this song is most often played on Remembrance Day to commemorate those lost in World War I. This is Fairport Convention with"Flowers of the Forest".
I chose this setting by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerard because they include more of the verses, and the lyrics are crystal-clear. This is one case in which you want to know exactly what's being sung.
You don't hear this one much anymore. Too bad, because it's a one-way ticket to self-preservation, if nothing else. As for those Christians who would say that gossip is no more harmful than eating shrimp, well, they're the ones this song is talking about.
This is Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerard with "Let That Liar Alone".
The late Maya Angelou once wrote, "I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back."
It's a good lesson for folks in their 20s to learn -- that, in order to get, you have to give, too. Simon and Garfunkel were in their 20s when they recorded this song, but by the time the story ends, they had yet to learn the valuable lesson about giving and getting. They started out to "look for America" with their hands out. They ended up the same way.
Kathy, I'm lost, I said
Thought I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching
And I don't know why
The question of why is a fine thing to answer in your 20s and 30s. Sometimes, finding the answer can be the stuff of a midlife crisis; but some get through their 40s and 50s and beyond without ever having answered it.
Counting the cars
On the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for
America
That might be one clue: Shutting yourself up in your car, doing your own thing and taking your own journey year after year is a good way to avoid the truth. Opinions, they say, are like navels: everyone has one. And everyone is willing to offer you theirs. If you're staring 50 or 60 in the face without having discovered how to fill the emptiness that everyone feels at one time or another, maybe it's because you stopped listening to good advice a long time ago. Probably because that oh-so-helpful advice always has to do with sacrificing yourself to something, someone, or Someone greater than yourself.
Of course, it's always possible that you've never received good advice.
You know what they say about that: "If you want something done right, do it yourself."
Independence Day, irony-free. Have a great Fourth of July.
This Land Is Your Land; Woody Guthrie: Forget the millennial irony; this is the truth, and we're allowed to act like it. Never settle.
Good Timing; The Beach Boys: 🎶We're all learning.🎶
Saturday In the Park; Chicago: Here's to a real celebration, and a different kind of jazz fusion.
Philadelphia Freedom; Elton John: By, for, and about immigrants, whose experience should never not be this joyful. It's on us.
Free To Be You and Me; Marlo Thomas and Friends: Organ (Just listen to that intro), banjo, and string orchestra. It doesn't get more American than that.
You Go To Your Church; J.D. Crowe: Bluegrass, that most conservative of genres, is also the most traditional. Accordingly, here's a song about freedom of religion.
Crow Black Chicken; The New Lost City Ramblers: From hunger. The exultations and sorrows of growing your own food, and the fantasies born of food insecurity (🎶If I had a big frame house/Eighteen storeys high/Ev'ry storey in that house/Be packed with chicken pie🎶).
Pretty Saro; Elizabeth LaPrelle: Most of our folk songs are immigrants, too; as is this Gaelic singing style.
Dancing In the Streets; Martha and The Vandellas: A roll call of America's great cities, with an acknowledgement of the struggle. If "It doesn't matter what you wear/Just as long as you are there", then it's okay to be poor and still show up.
Black Coffee; Humble Pie: Because we're inveterate self-promoters, too. Steve Marriott's joyously confident take on the Ike and Tina Turner classic is a terrific example.
I guess most folks vastly prefer the 1968 version of this song, but you know how it is when you hear the original version of a song you fell in love with in a later form: The original never sounds as good after that.
The story is this: I had an unusually-rotten cold. My husband and his best friend had bought tickets for us to see a band that I hated -- a band that also happened to be my husband's favorite band -- Jethro Tull. I was new at this marriage thing, so I tagged along -- a decision I'd still make today, it turns out.
It was this iteration of Fairport Convention that opened the show. The minute they started to sing, I stopped wondering what I was doing there. Deep in my heart, I had been looking for this music, or something like it, for a very long time.
I'd found flashes of it in the California sound, the music of Emmylou Harris, even some of Tom Petty's work; although, curiously, not in the work of the East Coast folkies so admired by Fairport in their early days (Personally, I think Anna Russell nailed East Coast folky pretention in this piece). This Fairport Convention, a band I'd read about but never explored, was closer to the truth of what I was looking for; but I wouldn't figure that out for nearly 20 years. For me, Fairport Convention would be a lifeline, a doorway, a path to the next place, which was also the first place.
Fairport closed their set, fittingly, with this song. I've been a Fairport Convention ever since, and a huge fan of this particular lineup. I get it: Richard, Sandy, Trevor ... but Simon, Dave, and Ric! Not that I don't adore Swarb but, you know ....
This one's for him. And for my husband, who passed in 2009. And for all my friends.
I'm supposed to write an arresting opening line here -- one that grabs your attention, and sets the tone for the piece. But, I am just. so. tired. You know, the kind of tired you get when you read self-important drool from what amounts to a major media outlet in your particular small pond. I'm speaking of this piece on rock's allegedly uneasy alliance with bluegrass and country music, over on the, um, "Bluegrass" Situation. The inspiration for the piece? "West Coast rockers", The Flying Burrito Brothers, and their groundbreaking album, The Gilded Palace Of Sin. Uneasy alliance? Who cares that bluegrass is as much about history as it is future? Who cares about the rebellious, countercultural energy of bluegrass' first generation when you believe that bluegrass begins with a rapacious suburbanite from Champaign, Illinois? (Long hair, warp speed, hotshot instrumentalists, the high lonesome sound, the sketchy personal lives -- bluegrass wasn't exactly yer grandpa's sleepy string band) And who cares if that selfsame major media outlet takes the name of bluegrass in vain, just to sell itself "as the authentic expression of a brand-name musical genre with considerable cachet" as I wrote here? Some megachurch baby has a point to make, and he's gonna make it. Let's sort this out, shall we?
Just how unlikely would it have been for a bunch of California hippies to ally themselves with country and bluegrass music? Never mind the huge number of boomers and 1960s kids whose parents played bluegrass and country, live or via radio and records, in their homes. Never mind that this population included not only native southerners, but those who had taken the Hillbilly Highway in search of work. Never mind the bluegrass versions of songs about that very phenomenon -- "California Cottonfields", "One More Dollar", and "Waitin' For the Hard Times To Go". Let's instead focus on that most obscure and academic of cultural indicators -- television. 😂😂😂 How antagonistic were them librul hippies to country and bluegrass? So much so that country and bluegrass artists The Carter Family, Flatt and Scruggs, Doc Watson, The Dillards, and Johnny Cash appeared on the beatnik showcase, Hootenanny. Premiere date? April, 1963. So much so that country and bluegrass artists as diverse as Watson, Cash, The Stanley Brothers, Cousin Emmy, and The New Lost City Ramblers appeared and jammed with noted union supporter, Pete Seeger, on Seeger's Rainbow Quest TV show. Premiere date? 1965. So much so that rockers like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Linda Ronstadt -- the last three based in California -- appeared and jammed with country star, Johnny Cash, on his eponymous TV show. Premiere date? June 7, 1969. For the sake of chronology, let's review the release date for The Flying Burrito Brothers' The Gilded Palace Of Sin:
How easy was that? I guess you have to know history to Google it. You should be required to know history before you're hired to write about it.
The first thing you hear is the bass, and it is mixed way too hot. That determined lack of subtlety is strange for a song whose lyrics have to be puzzled out in the quiet of the mind.
It wouldn't be the first time a lyricist had used the seasons and the elements to convey emotional states. The genius here is that the metaphors are so slippery and tentative, you don't realize until the last verse what's happening:
I want to go home though the party's not over
Don't want to go back to no ignorant lies
For when I go I intend to believe
That the sun rises and sets in your eyes
This is willful escape into a world of fantasy, as seductive as the approach of summer itself. Who knows how long she'll go on before she realizes that the object of her affection hasn't joined in the fantasy? Who knows how long she'll will herself to hear whispers of summer, even as winter tightens its grip?
Sandy Denny died 40 years ago this month, on April 21, 1978. This is not something I have wanted to examine. I first read of Denny's death in Rolling Stone. I hadn't yet heard any of Fairport Convention's music, much less Denny's solo work. After that obit, I didn't want to. There was something wrong, something hush-hush, the obit implied -- not just about Denny's death, but about Denny herself. Wherever I was in my life, I didn't want to go down that particular rabbit hole -- not even after I fell head over heels for her music 10 years later. Sure, she was brilliant, but wasn't there something dark and rotten at the core? Fast forward to the present, and a career spent examining the lies people tell. Such is the life of an ad copywriter with even the barest shred of ethics. A dear friend floated the gentlest of suggestions: What about taking another look? So, here I am. Listen Listen to him do He is the one who is for you Listen, they say He'll come and take us all away -- Listen, Listen But man has come to plough the tide, The oak lies on the ground. I hear their tires in the fields, They drive the stallion down. The roses bleed both light and dark, The winds do seldom call. The running sands recall the time When love was lord of all. -- The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood You take away homes from the homeless, And leave them to die in the cold. The gypsy who begged for your presents, He will laugh in your face when you're old. -- Genesis Hall While we fumble in the darkness where once there was light Roaming the land of the ancients. Oasis of love, sweet water of life, God bless the poor ones whose patience never died. -- One Way Donkey Ride Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving Ah, but then you know it's time for them to go But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving I do not count the time For who knows where the time goes? --Who Knows Where the Time Goes Denny's lyrics, whether she wrote or merely sang them, were hardly superficial declarations of principle. Yet everyone, from gossipy obit writers to her dearest friends, felt the need to posthumously trash her for behavior that has earned famous men celebration -- even acclaim. No one is without hypocrisy and contradiction, but neither do alcoholism and addiction spring from shallow roots, despite the cheap diagnoses of those in the know. Did she jump, or was she pushed indeed. It's nothing more than 20/20 hindsight to say that everyone around her missed the signals Sandy Denny kept sending. The science of addiction treatment has made great strides since she passed -- so, too, common knowledge of it. No one can go back and change their responses, and we shouldn't guilt them into trying. All we can do is clean up our own act. We can stop imagining it's cool and edgy when men go this way, but perverted and unnatural when women do. We can stop using other people's pain to gratify our cruelest impulses. We can do the hard work of discovering where our ideas come from, and reversing course when we discover how wrong we have been. We can stand up for those whose weaknesses are different from our own, and we can shed grace by the boatload. If Sandy Denny spent her life saying anything, it was this. This is Sandy Denny, out front of Fairport Convention, singing "Genesis Hall".
His Yoke Is Easy from The Messiah by George Friderich Handel, The Academy of St. Martin In the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner: I've posted before about one of my most influential choral conductors, who once told me that, "Handel was a German who wrote Italian operas for the English." He meant far more than English audiences. It is beyond curious that a race of people so determined to avoid awkwardness that they make every moment more awkward, should interpret this portion of The Messiah with such unfettered joy, and defiance. Speaking of awkward, the interwebs wil tell you that the lyric here reads, "His burthen is light". But, what is a "burthen"? Is it some kind of burqa for childbearing women? For newborn babies? Or, is it simply some rotten ingredient in the word salad of some semi-literate gatekeeper? The truth is, if you want any sense of what these lyrics mean, you have to go to the source -- Jesus Himself, as quoted in Matthew 11:28-30. Now that you get it, click the link, and crank it up. For your sweater-knitting auntie, for your bullet-journaling frenemy, for every "25 Things ..." blog post, for the Nazis past and present, play this one loud.
Merry Christmas, Baby, Otis Redding: In a season that's so often about temporary glitz and empty promises, it's good to remember that it's not Christmas unless it's got soul.
Redding doesn't bother to hide his anguish here. He's clearly thinking of other Christmases that weren't so merry, wondering if this one, too, will evaporate before his eyes. For someone like this, you shouldn't say it if you don't mean it.
What Child Is This, Paul Horn: With a choir of soprano, alto, and bass flutes, and a primitive octave splitter called a Multivider, jazz titan, Paul Horn (Chico Hamilton Quintet), created one of the least-known but most enduring holiday albums ever recorded.
The big reverb and parallel fifths would put this right at home on any Game of Thrones soundtrack, while the Scotch snaps in the bass give it a sort of traditional Christmas feel. But, his articulation -- so liquid he could almost be scatting -- puts the stamp of a jazzer all over this piece. The whole album is like this -- a heady brew of musical influences.
Christmas In Hollis, Run-D.M.C.: (above): I'm hardly a connoisseur of this genre. What I do remember is this: While the media threatened us with nightmare images of wilding teens, and super predators, super-strengthened by crack, or angel dust, or ... whatever, Run-D.M.C. presented an almost-suburban story of naughty elves, a Christmas miracle, and as much traditional, Southern food as you could eat.
What followed years later was the discrediting of some doctoral candidate's super-predator theory, the acquittal of the so-called Central Park five, and the international exposure of Donald Trump, whose newspaper fanned the flames, as a liar, a bigot, and full-time attention-seeker.
Meanwhile, Run-D.M.C. are probably home for Christmas, rejoicing because they know exactly what's on the menu.
Drosselmeyer's Gifts from The Nutcracker, L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande conducted by Ernest Ansermet: Let's, once and for all, abandon the notion that The Nutcracker is merely bland, holiday fare for the kiddies. Russian culture -- about which Russia's president seems entirely clueless -- won't let you have that. And it shouldn't.
See, sometimes, we expect more than we should from mere human effort. Sometimes, gifts offer us more fear and frustration than uncomplicated joy.
These are probably good things to remember for those who celebrate the birth of someone who promised, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
Christmastime Is Here, Vince Guaraldi Trio: Maybe it's that the melody starts on a note that begs to be resolved. Maybe it's the fact that they never quite hit the high notes on the head. In other words, maybe there was a method to Vince Guaraldi's madness.
None of that satisfactorily explains how a genius of cool jazz got a group of kids to deliver a performance suffused with melancholy.
Way back in 1965, The Vince Guaraldi Trio, and a handful of kids figured out how to say, in the language of music, exactly what Christmas means to some of us. I see you, Linus, and this performance gives me chills every time I hear it.
There's a corner of Twitter where people whose gravest concern was having zits for the Homecoming dance, tell themselves scary stories of How Bad It Was back then, assuming that all who read these dystopian fantasies not only Know What Is Meant, but agree wholeheartedly, with an accompanying shiver down their spines.
Personally, I liked it just fine when kids didn't kill other kids for shutting them out of the in crowd, and English folk rockers could sing a carol about Jesus's birth, a capella, in Latin, taking it to Number 1 on the charts, albeit in their home country. Do They Know It's Christmas, Band Aid: When this single was released, I was deeply moved, as were many.
Older, ostensibly wiser friends strove to burst my bubble. They counseled that Band Aid's efforts were useless, that food sat rotting on the docks because the organizers hadn't the brains to do it right. Work harder, they said. Make money and spend it. There is nothing else. Your heroes are hopelessly filthy.
No.
See, we have no right to expect humans and human effort to be perfect. Purity culture was as ugly then as it is now.
There's more to life than getting and spending, and Band Aid proves it. The initial effort served as the springboard for major charitable projects by Bob Geldof, Midge Ure, and Bono -- efforts that continue to this day.
"We let in light, and we banish shade", the song goes. It's not just talking about flipping a switch.
Beautiful Star Of Bethlehem, Dailey and Vincent: (above): Number One with a bullet -- or, maybe, it's a Bible. And why?
Because too many conservatives are dreading any kind of overtly-religious end to this countdown, even as they exploit the religious right in a last-ditch effort to grab more money, more power.
Forget about it.
See, physics may be the reason for the season, but Jesus is the reason Christians call it Christmas. All the ideological squeamishness (read: hypocrisy) on conservatives' part won't change that.
So, Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays -- take your pick. May the coming year give you enough courage to use the holiday greetings your conscience dictates, no matter who else is listening.
This year's records were so good that even I didn't know which way this was going to go until the bitter end. It seems that real country has a fighting chance, real blues is still alive, and Europe cares deeply about what's going on here in America -- so deeply that their art reflected their concern in unsettling ways.
That said, let's get to it.
9. Midland, On the Rocks: The rap on these guys is that their brand of country has an authenticity problem, which is funny for an industry that bestows its highest accolades on guys who do bad Gregg Allman imitations for millennials.
I hear echoes (no, waves) of Keith Whitley (the really good stuff before he left J.D. Crowe and The New South), Glen Campbell, and George Strait.
If there's routine pop with a twang here, blame it on a record company and a willing producer; you don't sing and pick like this if you want to be the next big thing in bro country. Nashville desperately needs these sounds. If music like this is the way back to real, so be it.
8. The Medlars, The Medlars: The contrast is so jarring it's almost unbearable: a delicate, pastoral setting sketched out with banjo, cello, flute, and doleful horns. And then, that voice -- big, brassy, untutored, and raw, singing the harsh realities and rough-hewn joys of English country life.
The pentatonic scale hasn't had a workout this vigorous since the heyday of traditional bluegrass.
7. Karen and the Sorrows, The Narrow Place: There are echoes here of modern country, and Tom Petty's country rock, circa 1980s. Karen Pittelman's vocals take some getting used to. Even so, she reveals herself to be an able writer of tunes that fogies like me still call "real country music".
If you're in a bluegrass or classic country outfit, and you're not thinking of covering one of these songs, you're doing it wrong.
6. Gregg Allman, Southern Blood: Much was made of the fact that Gregg Allman was dying as he recorded this, his final album. In one sense, this was as it should have been; the physical effort alone made him a tragic, heroic figure.
In another sense, that narrative couldn't have been more wrong. At his best, Gregg Allman always sang this kind of music, with precisely this level of world-weary desperation. If we lost anything when he passed, it was the crucial presence of the down-and-out in popular music.
5. Eric Bibb, Migration Blues: A singer and picker of uncommon subtlety and skill, Eric Bibb grabs a listener's attention from the first hushed and urgent notes. Like all true blues people, he has a heart for the oppressed and forgotten, and he's at his best when he's bringing equally-marginalized music, like blues and gospel, to the fore.
This is the kind of music for which the NEA was founded, and for which, so many plutocrats would like to shut its doors. It's no accident that our country was a lot kinder when music like this actively influenced the music in the Top 40.
4. I'm With Her, Little Lies: Separately, I'm With Her got their start in progressive bluegrass bands like Crooked Still and Nickel Creek, but the drive, instrumentation, intensity, chops, and even some of the repertoire on display here have more in common with high-octane traditional grass.
That said, the trio handles contemporary fare with equal skill. This is a band of tremendous versatility; in that, they remind me of the classic Seldom Scene. Next year promises a full CD from them, and I can't wait.
3. Offa Rex, The Queen of Hearts: Although you'll hear strains of Pentangle, Steeleye Span, and Fairport Convention here, with their debut album, Offa Rex has created a sound that's lush, textured, entirely unique, and instantly identifiable as their own.
A collaboration between American indie faves, The Decemberists, and English folk singer, Olivia Chaney, Rex shines brightest when classically-trained Chaney handles the vocals. Decemberists frontman, Colin Meloy, lacks the diction and drive to pull this singing style off, but makes up the lack with crunchy guitar work that sometimes verges into early Black Sabbath territory. Bonus: A cover of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" that restores the song to its folk roots.
2. Brian Owens, Soul of Cash: With this CD, soul crooner, Brian Owens, gives the music of Johnny Cash a stoned soul makeover, and gives us the album the world has been waiting for since 1962, when Ray Charles released Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music.
The songs are entirely familiar, yet completely reconstructed. There's not a predictable moment on the record, so it's impossible to choose highlights. The closing track, initially disappointing because it's not a Cash tune, serves as Owens' raison d'être for anyone who, in these polarized times, wonders why he bothered.
1. Judy Dyble and Andy Lewis, Summer Dancing: It's been said that crisis reveals character, and any casual observer of current events has seen character revealed in surprising ways since Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States.
What I didn't expect was the way character was revealed in ... home design.
Art is the first world's great escape, but Dyble and Lewis won't stand for it. They insist that adult problems be faced in an adult way, which usually means they're never quite solved.
Yet, in Dyble and Lewis's psychedelic world, as in the real one, dew still sparkles on the grass. The sun still shines. We still get our silly moments after nights without sleep, and those casually-vicious betrayals that add up. All aspiring adults must face the fact that it's never either/or, but both/and -- both climate change and Summer Dancing.
EDITOR'S NOTE:In the summer of 2017, I answered the 30-Day Music Challenge on this blog. I'll be reupping the best of those posts from time to time.
14. A song that you would love played at your wedding.
This is a song about what you lose when someone you love dies.
This is a song about what you never had, the sickening realization you come to, when someone you love lies.
A wedding would seem a lot less gloat-y, a lot less self-congratulatory if the band played this.
See, if you're at all ready to get married, the thought of being bridezilla or anybody-zilla fills you with disgust. If you're really ready to get married, you know there's at least one guest who doesn't have what this song talks about. And you want them to have it, because you know how utterly bereft you have been without it.
No one should have to -- or choose to -- be that lonely, and that, too, is what this song is about.
This is Shawn Colvin and Loudon Wainwright with "A Heart Needs A Home".
EDITOR'S NOTE:In the summer of 2017, I answered the 30-Day Music Challenge on this blog. I'll be reupping the best of those posts from time to time, starting with this one. 23. A song that you think everybody should listen to. You've probably heard them all -- done badly on some vocal competition show. Let's get the ones you've probably heard, in their original versions, out of the way. Then, I'll tell you about one I think you probably haven't heard, but should. Ready? Here goes: Blue Moon Of Kentucky, Bill Monroe Man Of Constant Sorrow, The Stanley Brothers Hoochie Coochie Man, Muddy Waters Smokestack Lightning, Howlin' Wolf Boom Boom, John Lee Hooker Hound Dog, Big Mama Thornton Jailhouse Rock, Elvis Presley Johnny B. Goode, Chuck Berry Satisfaction, The Rolling Stones Dancing In the Streets, Martha and the Vandellas Good Vibrations, The Beach Boys R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Aretha Franklin Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel Let It Be, The Beatles I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Marvin Gaye You've Got A Friend, Carole King Won't Get Fooled Again, The Who Good Times, Chic We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions, Queen New York State Of Mind, Billy Joel Billie Jean, Michael Jackson Welcome To the Jungle, Guns 'n Roses I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, U2 You can keep "Stairway To Heaven". Bruce Springsteen isn't as universal as East Coast rock critics think he is. Even though I can't stand her as a person, Sheryl Crow's "Safe and Sound" should be on this list. What about the one you may not have heard yet? It lacks the obvious universality of the others. In these days of niche marketing, and identity politics on both sides of the fence, there are those who would actively hate it, making all kinds of assumptions about the women singing it and What They Really Mean. The sad thing is, everybody's been through this. You might not see it at first, couched as it is in metaphor. Why on God's green earth are these singers rooting for the downfall -- perhaps even the physical death -- of a lone circus performer, even as they remember, with great fondness, her youth and her youthful genius? The girl's story is not a happy one: Well, some guy broke her heart and her heart it did ache So she went to the tent and the lady of the snakes Who gave her a potion and she drank it in After that her heart never ached again After that her heart never ached again. Still, they can't wait for her to flop: Yeah, one of these nights, the old girl's goin' down. On and on they sing the girl's story, shedding their hearts' blood in the verses, then chanting that woeful, prophetic chorus.
By the time they get to the coda, they're singing at the tops of their lungs. And the word they are singing is "Hallelujah" -- literally "Praise God".
Louder and louder they stretch it and shape it -- an arrow, a battering ram, a boulder arcing through the air. With every volley they crush and crumble stone walls three feet thick. Everything must go in this battle -- everything phony, self-insulating, and self-congratulatory.
As the battle winds down, the singers' voices get softer, slower, more hesitant, and more than a little afraid of what they've done as they gaze down from their lofty perch in the stands at the tiny, crumpled thing on the floor below.
Is it the "old girl", or simply her old self?
The final "Hallelujah" feels like the best funeral oration they could give -- elegiac, with the tiniest flicker of hope.
Of peace.
This is Patty Griffin and Emmylou Harris with "Trapeze".
I described my last post as impressionistic, not at all about facts, but certainly about truth.
It was not, however, the whole truth.
It does no good to tell the truth if you won't tell the whole, ugly mess.
This is the rest of it, about India and everywhere else. This is the part that the vanishing middle class could afford to ignore, until America inaugurated someone who is determined to make it the only truth for all but the top 1% of wealth holders in the world.
This is what our cities, our countryside, our planet will feed us by the time the mad, orange man with the black heart, twisted mind, and ravenous fingers is finished. "I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children"
"Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley"
"Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall" This is Bob Dylan.
How’s this for some Throwback Thursday fun? Doc Watson and Chet
Atkins, from a 1980 appearance on Johnny Carson.
You may not know who Johnny Carson was, but you’ll appreciate the fun
Doc and Chet have at the expense of some famous folk late in this clip.
The medley starts off with “Beaumont Rag”. There might be another tune
in the middle, but they end it with “I’m On My Way To Canaan’s Land”.
What a pleasure to watch two virtuosi entertain a tough crowd while still keeping things moving.
BTW, the record they made together is still available. It’s called “Reflections”, and it includes these tunes.
What possessed me to account for my favorite 2016 releases on Twitter while ignoring that task here? Let's put it down to the annus horribilis that was 2016, and get the bookkeeping done, at long last. After all, there will be another year's music to sift through soon. Here, with video or audio of my favorite track from each album, are my favorites from the year that was:
10. Fly; Danielle Lewis Like most young women, Danielle Lewis is obsessed with Taylor Swift-style pop, but her second EP provides ample hope that trendiness will fall by the wayside in subsequent work. With her clear, pure soprano and an ear for melodic quirkiness, Lewis puts me in mind of the early work of both Joni Mitchell and art rocker, Jane Siberry. Lewis' gift for traditional Welsh singing distances her even further from the pack. A young woman to watch. Listen: Hiraeth
9. Swimmin' Pools, Movie Stars; Dwight Yoakam Yoakam has done bluegrass before -- most notably, with Ralph Stanley. But this marks his first full bluegrass record. He assembled a crackerjack team of bluegrass music's first-call session players, and re-recorded a batch of his own tunes in traditional bluegrass style. Ricky Skaggs does this sort of thing quite competently; he did, after all, start his career as teenage member of Ralph Stanley's Clinch Mountain Boys. But it's Dwight Yoakam, the rightful heir to the bluegrass-drenched Bakersfield Sound of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, who does it with greater emotional truth. The only complaint I have is that Yoakam didn't reach back for some of his earliest hits. Listen: What I Don't Know
8. Cycle; Lady Maisery One of the most innovative bands of Britain's vibrant folk music scene, Lady Maisery distinguish themselves with exceptionally-strong performances and compelling arrangements of traditional tunes, as well as off-the-beaten-path selections from the likes of Todd Rundgren and Sandy Denny. Foot percussion; unusual instruments (Rowan Rheingans' dad is an instrument maker with some intriguing hybrids to his credit); a strong social conscience; and a resurrected, wordless singing style known as diddling (Americans, shut up right this minute) make this album and this band one to treasure. Who knew folk music could be this unpredictable? Listen: Diggers' Song
7. Whole and Cloven; Nathan Bowles The clawhammer style of banjo playing is generally confined to the old-time (i e. pre-bluegrass) country and string band music of the Appalachian South. With Whole and Cloven, Nathan Bowles transforms clawhammer banjo into a style of playing equally applicable to chamber music, adding some neo-classical, Windham Hill-style piano for good measure (It's no accident that bluegrass banjoist par excellence, J. D. Crowe, was profoundly influenced by the rolling blues and gospel piano of Fats Domino). Superb music for the road or a pastoral Sunday afternoon, Whole and Cloven is superbly innovative as well. Listen: Gadarene Fugue
6. Auprès du Poêle; Ten Strings and a Goatskin These young Prince Edward islanders display amazing versatility. They can be rollicking and boisterous, righteously angry and socially conscious, good humored and a little bit naughty. They do it all in two languages, with breathtaking instrumental technique and a repertoire that encompasses traditional songs and fiddle tunes from the United States, Great Britain, and Quebec. Listen: Maudit Anglais (The Damn Englishman)
5. Rattle and Roar; The Earls of Leicester Spurred by his love of traditional bluegrass music as played by the first generation of bluegrass artists, in 2015, Alison Krauss vet Jerry Douglas -- the man who Eric Clapton once called "the Muhammad Ali of the dobro" -- assembled a who's who of bluegrass musicians. Their mission? Resurrect the repertoire of bluegrass pioneers, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs (The Earls of Leicester -- get it?), their corny humor, understated showmanship, dazzling musicianship -- even their Stetson hats and string ties. Their debut effort won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album and, suddenly, millennials who'd logged festival time grooving to bluegrass jam bands like Leftover Salmon and Greensky Bluegrass were singing along to "Hot Corn, Cold Corn" (Bring along a demijohn/Yeeeess, sir). On this, their sophomore effort, the Earls haven't let up, and that's as it should be. Once, all top-name bluegrass acts sounded this driven. The Earls of Leicester offer hope that the best bands might push themselves to sound this hair-raising again. Listen: What's Good For You (Should Be All Right For Me)
4. Rise Aurora; Rosie Hodgson Norma Waterson. Shirley Collins. Sandy Denny. These are the first ladies of English folk music. One day, Rosie Hodgson will take her place beside them all. She possesses Waterson's stately vocal style -- an astonishing choice in 2016. Like Denny, Hodgson reinterpret traditional songs, and writes her own tunes in a traditional style, with subject matter that's would have been as relevant to Hodgson's Renaissance forebears as it is to her millennial contemporaries. In an age when "authenticity" is little more than a buzzword, Rosie Hodgson exemplifies it with every note she sings. Rise Aurora is the kind of debut that inspires listeners to commit to further journeys with the artist. Listen: Rise Aurora
3. God Don't Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson; Various Artists I'm sure this is an odd way to review a record, but here goes: The songs are the stars here, and this compilation is worthwhile if only for casually-interested hipsters to trace some classics of bluegrass, gospel, and rock to their origins. The standout performance comes from Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, but there's also fine work from Maria McKee, The Blind Boys of Alabama, and The Rising Star Fife and Drum Band. Listen: Tom Waits: The Soul of a Man
2. Blue and Lonesome; The Rolling Stones Rockets and V8 engines. Railroad tracks and factory floors at 8:05 a.m. Mid-20th century blues sounded like our world. With digital devices and electronic blips dominating our soundscape, nobody but old hands like The Rolling Stones could reproduce those sounds with anything approaching meaning or emotional truth. The Stones absorbed more than instrumental sounds, though. At the feet of men like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, they learned to sound cool and confident, even as they were singing about entire worlds falling apart. Yet, the Stones themselves were hardly the originators of these musical homages to the sounds of industry and emerging technology. They were careful and humble students (just imagine it!) of men who, goaded by poverty and opportunity, traveled north. Men who, when they arrived, traded in their acoustic guitars for electric instruments that could be heard over Friday night throngs in sweaty clubs -- instruments that mimicked the industrial sounds those Southern migrants heard in their new, northern homes. And so, The Stones learned. With Blue and Lonesome, they came back to the music they had studied so long ago, and they did it exactly right. Which means they finally got good enough to stop learning and start teaching. To have the technique down so cold that they didn't have to think about being perfect anymore. They just were.
1. Hearts Broken Heads Turned; Jarlath Henderson As I write, I still can't get over how remarkable this record is. Henderson is an accomplished uilleann piper who cleaned up on Britain's competition circuit. With this, his debut album, he expands the relevance of his instrument across centuries, playing it not only in the conventional manner, but recording the instrument's ambient noises -- key clicks, the inhalation and exhalation of the bellows, etc. -- and processing them electronically for hypnotic, haunting sounds that could not come from any century but this one. His ultra-traditional vocals would have been familiar to Appalachian singers like Roscoe Holcomb and Ralph Stanley, whose ancestors brought the style with them when they came. (No, melisma does not originate with the noisy and tasteless Mariah Carey). For a fan and practitioner of traditional acoustic music, the sheer daring of this record is earth-shattering. Listen: The Making of Hearts Broken Heads Turned
