Lhasa - The Living Road (2003)

"I'll put my foot on the living road and be carried from here to the heart of the world" - An absolutely spellbinding vision and voice - Lhasa de Sela is a modern day troubadour, hailing from Canada via Mexico and a three year hiatus as a member of the Circus Pocheros. The living road a journey, a collection of torch songs and ballads set to music that draws upon mexican and spanish, chanson and balladry. Seductive and sensual, the voice is extraordinary, the settings innovative and perfectly attuned. This is music on another plane, rising above language and crossing cultural boundaries with effortless brio. Lhasa bows to no fashion, she is, quite simply, a force of nature.

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The NOTCH 2008 Festival fuses cutting edge Nordic audiovisual culture with China’s emerging local scene, pushing the audience to rethink their contemporary and future role via the theme of “contemporizing the future”. Hong Kong joins the Notch tour for the first time this year. Organized by White Noise Records, Hong Kong China.
http://www.so-u.tv/playVideo.php?id=5614

Dear Old Dad,
And Patrick of course.
(I guess you're both Patrick's)

I want to thank you with a little story.

In 1964 Pete Seeger toured Europe and stayed with family in Leiden where he was having a concert ( I remember him telling us about a "new" topical singer just breaking out: Bob Dylan...And Pete sang Hard Rain for us before he chopped a wood log).

I was an aspiring folksinger, subscriber to Sing Out magazine and together with a friend of mine who worked at a community center we had just a few months before started a monthly Hootenanny.

Those were the days.

We had a 16 year old Leadbelly singer, a harp player, a charming American tourist who played her ukulele, a group of Spanish "imported" laborers, a really wild piano player, a student jazz band, an old Rotterdam street banjo player who jammed with the jazz band and couldn't be made to stop...

Anyway...

The first Hootenanny I'll never forget for a more tragic reason. In the interval my organizer friend Wil came to me with an ashen face... He'd just heard on the radio that President Kennedy had been shot and killed!

We didn't know what to do. Shut down our very first Hootenanny or continue, as of course no one else knew.

Wil was an aspiring blues singer( he had organised one of Big Bill Broonzy's concerts in '58) and had prepared a set that started with (of all possible prescient choices) with Death Don't Have No Mercy.

We decided to carry on and Wil opened the second half by telling the shocked audience the sad news and singing a capella that song. I assure you there wasn't a dry eye or open throat in the house.

After four Hootenannies I learned that Pete Seeger was going to be in Leiden.

Through a friend (don't ask) I got the phone number of the Seeger's who lived there and were taking in Pete.

I brazenly called the number and wasn't brushed off but got him on the phone.

I told him about our efforts (I'm sure we were the first in Holland and-apart from Britain- maybe in Europe) and asked him if he would play on our monthly Hoot (Hey, at the time that word was still hip...In fact the word hip was still hip!)

He said he would love to come over to Rotterdam and play for us.

Then I scraped my throat and told him that we couldn't pay him...

I'll never forget what he said then.

He said: Martin, I would have been disappointed if you could.

Let me answer your nice note by saying that you guys didn't disappoint me!

Thanks!

All the best,
Martin

PS:I'll add some photographs of the hootenannies in '64.

You'll see Pete playing the flute he took from Israel where he had just been and his twelve string. A friend of mine in the back room was allowed to take every measurement of the guitar he could and built me an exact copy, which I still have.

On one photo taken from the screen, you see me singing Kumbayah and Empty Pocket Blues on Dutch TV. By the way, I also have a photograph of Joan Baez playing my(that) guitar when she was over here. As I said, those were the days...

And lastly the street banjo player Gerrit Olson with as you can plainly see a street trombone player.They just roamed the city and rang on doors for money.

A great guy, long dead.

I am still an aspiring guitar and banjo player. I had some trouble with arthritis and haven't played for years. Now I'm trying to get back whatever chops I had.

My banjo is an open back Cammeyer, not with the "internal" fifth string.

If you want to see a little bit of what became of that (incredibly) young kid there are three bits of Chickenfeed (the name of my band) on Youtube.

Well, that's all for now.
Again, Thanks
Martin

Then I got another note from Martin:

I need to correct a boast I made in my letter.

When I said we might have been the first to organize hootenanny-like concerts in Holland and maybe Europe I might be right about Holland but as far as the rest of the continent is concerned...

Just as your kind letter reminded me of Pete Seeger's remark, my reminiscences set me thinking like old geezers do. And I remembered the actual reason my friend Wil van der Sman and I decided
to start a hootenanny at all. I had read somewhere tat Tom Paley was touring small clubs in Germany and while someone of Seeger's stature rated concerthalls, Tom Paley wouldn't, so there must have been smaller venues like clubs and, dare I say it, hootenannies. Wil and I bemoaned the fact that whenever someone like Paley came our way there was no place in Holland we knew of that could put them up. So we decided to create it. And started the Ons Huis Hootenanny. Just to give Tom Paley a home away from home.

I have to confess that Seeger's gig was our last one. Somehow we had peaked too soon. Where do you go from there?

Anyway the scene in Holland started growing. And even in Holland there had already been for years a cafe-chantant in Haarlem called the Waag, run by Cobi Schreier,our local Jean Ritchie, so the
scene probably never was as bleak as Wil and I thought. It certainly wasn't in Germany and probably France.

Thought I'd better put that right.

Keep up the good work,

Martin

Ira and I sat down together and worked out some music together (our first co-writing composition) and all that's left is to finish up some more lyrics for the song to fill it out and complete the thought. It was so easy working with him on this and it just flowed so naturally. I have been beating myself up lately because I feel inspired to write yet nothing seems to be flowing out of me so getting to do this with Ira last night really made me feel fucking incredible. It's a great feeling to know that him and I were able to work together and come up with a great song. It's not a complex song or anything like that but it's just a great song that comes from his heart and it's a thought that I feel like can relate to anyone who is far from "home" and longing to go back to their roots. Inspiration, aint it grand?

Next we'll be working on the song that I co-wrote with Elana in which Ira also helped arrange the music for so if we get this all together we will have two brand new songs that were written by the three of us as a band. I feel like the idea and concept of collaboration has really sunk into this group and it's nice to know that this process works for us. I'm excited to work these songs out and hear a final product from them. What an exciting time for me right now. Even though I'm not really writing on my own, just having these guys to write with makes it so much better for me.

Inspiration, aint it grand?

I first hear their song "The Worship of Trees" on Druidcast and loved it. So I went to the UK-based band Telling the Bees' website and discovered that one of my favourite artists, Rima of The Hermitage, did the artwork for both the band's website and also the artwork for their new CD. Rima has great taste in folk music so I purchased Untie the Wind directly from the band's website and after great anticipation a week later here it is in front of me with a lovely handwritten note from one of the band members Josie.

Telling the Bees debut album is beautiful. Full of songs based on folklore and magic with beautiful complex instrumentation that pulls your heart and mind away with the music. It is moving and soulful, ranging from hushed to dramatic. Each member of the band plays multiple instruments - talk about talent! Telling the Bees mix traditional folk music with modern sensibilities and lyrics. From the environmentally-aware song "Quietly Raging" to the pull and obsession of "The Worship of Trees" this is a fully rounded and beautiful album that I highly recommend to both folk and pagan music lovers.

From the website:

"Soulful vocals and intelligent lyrics underpinned by driving mandolin licks, funky bass lines, cinematic strings, rich drones and haunting English bagpipes. With impressive musicianship, songs and tunes inspired by folklore, the English landscape, the politics of protest, and even the Golden Bough, Telling the Bees evoke a darkly familiar England of rustic charm and savage beauty.

Telling the Bees formed in the spring of 2007. They met at Oxford's now legendary Catweazle Club, coalescing around Andy Letcher's song and tune writing. Their name comes from the old folk custom, amongst bee-keepers, of informing hives of significant family events -- births, deaths and marriages -- lest the bees swarmed and flew away."

• To purchase a CD: www.tellingthebees.co.uk
• To see Rima's artwork: www.intothehermitage.blogspot.com

Once upon a time, four brothers grew up roaming the hills and woods of Washington, listening to the sounds of nature and making music in the open air. Now, all growed up and tall, they're undergrads at Wazoo and makin music everywhere they can. The Shoemaker Brothers are: Samuel (who has already served in Iraq twice with the Marines, woohoo for the Forces and men in uniform), Nathanael, Daniel and Gabe.
[caption id="attachment_137" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Dan, Sam and Nat on the strings"][/caption]

They play violin, viola, cello, bass, guitar, mandolin, piano, djembe, football, shot putt and prolly anything else they can find like banshees, and they "sing like angels," as their band site says. I'm not sure if they sing like angels, but they sound pretty demm good for boys who talk like football players and I was excited to hear when they played at Bucer's recently that they have a whole new cast of fun shtuff along with their older material (all of which they compose collaboratively). Apparently inspired by their summer booze ahem wine tour through Napa Valley, they've got new Indo-Eastern sort of strumming going on with their uus intricate folk melodies. You should definitely stop by the next time they're at Rico's or in Moscow for a good douse of indie-folk.

shoebox bros dot com

October 3, 2008
Nick Reynolds, Kingston Trio Harmonizer, Dies at 75
By WILLIAM GRIMES

Nick Reynolds, a founding member of the Kingston Trio whose smooth tenor and gift for harmonizing helped propel the group to worldwide fame in the folk-music revival of the late 1950s and early ’60s, died Wednesday in San Diego. He was 75 and lived in Coronado, Calif.

The cause was acute respiratory disease syndrome, said his son Joshua Stewart Reynolds.

Whether singing high harmony or taking the lead part in songs like “M.T.A.,” “The Wanderer” and “Hobo’s Lullaby,” Mr. Reynolds, who played tenor guitar, helped define the clean, close-harmony style that brought folk music into countless American homes for the first time.

“Nobody could nail a harmony part like Nick,” said Bob Shane, another founding member of the group. “He could hit it immediately, exactly where it needed to be, absolutely note perfect, all on the natch.”

Although regarded as overly commercial by purists, the trio inspired the folk-music revival and paved the way for the breezy and ingratiating Limeliters and Chad Mitchell Trio and later for more political artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary. “We got America up and singing,” Mr. Reynolds said.

Wary of the political songs that had caused trouble for the Weavers during the era of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Kingston Trio, formed in 1957, steered clear of protest music and stuck to a mixture of traditional songs like “Tom Dooley” and “A Worried Man” and humorous ballads like “M.T.A.” and “Tijuana Jail,” with storytelling between songs during their live performances. Mr. Reynolds, called the Budgie or the Runt of the Litter by his fellow founding members, Dave Guard and Mr. Shane, often added a zinger for comic effect.

The formula was astonishingly successful. Thirteen of the group’s albums reached the Top 10, and in 1959 alone four of its albums placed in the Top 10, a record matched only by the Beatles.

Nicholas Wells Reynolds was born in San Diego and raised in Coronado. His father, a Navy captain, played guitar and led his three children in singalongs that Nick credited with developing his keen ear for harmony. After graduating from Coronado High School, he attended the University of Arizona and San Diego State University before earning a business degree from Menlo College in Atherton, Calif., in 1956.

While at Menlo he met Mr. Shane, who introduced him to Mr. Guard, a graduate student at Stanford University. (Mr. Guard died in 1991.) The three friends formed a group that added and subtracted members and performed under different names, including Dave Guard and the Calypsonians.

Frank Werber, a publicist who caught their act at the Cracked Pot in Palo Alto, booked them at the Purple Onion nightclub in San Francisco and, after their one-week engagement became an extended sold-out run, signed them to a contract with Capitol Records. By this time they had renamed themselves the Kingston Trio, in a nod to the popularity of calypso music, and chosen a team uniform — button-down, striped, short-sleeve shirts — that exuded a wholesome, collegiate image.

Mr. Reynolds’s first two marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, the former Leslie Yerger; his sons Joshua of Portland, Ore., and John Pike Reynolds of Coronado; his daughters Annie Clancy Reynolds Moore of San Diego and Jennifer Kristie Reynolds of Bandon, Ore.; two sisters, Jane Reynolds Meade and Barbara Reynolds Haines, both of Coronado; and three grandchildren.

Mr. Reynolds remained with the Kingston Trio until it disbanded in 1967, as folk music lost its audience to rock. After a brief time building and racing Formula B cars, he moved to a cabin in Port Orford, Ore., without a television, telephone or radio. There he worked as a rancher and antiques dealer. He also ran the Star, Port Orford’s only movie theater.

In 1983 he and John Stewart, who had replaced Mr. Guard in the Kingston Trio in 1961, joined with Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac to record the album “Revenge of the Budgie.” (Mr. Stewart died in January.) In 1988 he joined a reconstituted version of the Kingston Trio and performed with them until retiring in 1999.

Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Stewart also ran an annual fantasy camp in Scottsdale, Ariz., where fans could join them onstage and, for a brief moment, sing as honorary members of the Kingston Trio.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 4, 2008
An obituary on Friday about Nick Reynolds, a founding member of the Kingston Trio, misidentified the site of Menlo College, where he earned a business degree. It is in Atherton, Calif., not Palo Alto.

You (yes, you!) can vote for them in both of these awards.  And although the other nominees are all very good (except K T Tunstall, who isn't) i'm sure you'll agree that Lau are the cream of the crop and you'll wish to express your appreciation.

In case you can't make it out from the silhouette it's Martin Green on the accordian, not some form of hideous half-man half-chair half-accordian beast.

I have also added his new CD (AT 89) to my CD wishlist, if any one is interested. Perhaps Mum will probably be persuaded to buy it me for Christmas!

R.I.P. J DILLA

whaazz upp???

I have quit coffee!

THANK YOU VITAMIN ENERGY AND BARTELLS!!!

Fruit punch is the best, you can only buy them from Bartell's on Lake City and Safeway in the U-District. Coffee is gross, expensive, always too hot, and now I get to visit nice old people cashiers at Bartell's rather than snotty or overly nice baristas every morning.

Okay and one more music video.....

I love this folky music, it makes me want to ride my bike through Greenlake all day. Oh, and enjoy staring at the manly- looking woman throughout the whole video...

]]> http://tanbur.wordpress.com/?p=144 Sat, 04 Oct 2008 08:56:28 +0000 David French http://tanbur.it.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/october-08-updates/ BANDLEADER JAZZ
Set up the instruments for this jazzy version of a well known tune.
HIP HOP FROM SENEGAL
A video with English subtitles commentary.
LIAM CLANCY SONGBOOK
A selection of recordings from one of Ireland's most respected folk singers.
PUTUMAYO VIDEOS
Travel videos with links to the range of CDs from PutuMayo World Music.

Recent Updates

Comments on all links and suggestions for new ones are always very welcome!!

David, Tanbur Admin

 

Guitarist and singer Nick Reynolds - a founding member of legendary folk group the Kingston Trio - has died after his family agreed to take him off a life support system in a San Diego, California hospital. He was 75.

Reynolds had been ill for some time with acute respiratory disease and other illnesses, his family said.

With hit songs like the Grammy award-winning ‘Tom Dooley’ (1958), ‘A Worried Man’ (1959) and ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’ (1962), Nick Reynolds and the Kingston Trio were credited with helping to revive the folk music scene in the late 1950s - turning it into a mainstream force and paving the way for stars like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.

"Dad was so happy he turned people onto music in a way that people could really approach it, in a simple and honest way," his son Josh Reynolds told The Associated Press. “He was a very gracious and loving performer.”

Born on July 27, 1933 in San Diego, California, Nicholas Reynolds demonstrated an early love of music and a talent for close harmony singing. He regularly performed sing-alongs with his two sisters and his Navy Captain father. It was his father who taught him to play guitar.

Reynolds, Bob Shane and Dave Guard formed the Kingston Trio in 1957 after meeting while at college. Dave Guard later left the group over musical differences in 1961 and was replaced by John Stewart.

Famous for their close harmonies and clean-cut style, the Kingston Trio were arguably the most vital and popular folk group in the world between 1957 and 1963. They won a second Grammy in 1959 for ‘Best Folk Performance’ for their third album, The Kingston Trio At Large.

The group disbanded in 1967 as rock music began to overshadow their brand of folk. Nick Reynolds decided to take a break from music and became a rancher in Oregon. He returned to California in the mid-1980s and, in 1991, teamed up with Bob Shane again to form a new version of the Trio. He remained with the group until retiring in 1999.

“Nobody could nail a harmony part like Nick,” Bob Shane once observed. “He could hit it immediately, exactly where it needed to be, absolutely note perfect, all on the natch.”

Fellow founder Dave Guard died in 1991, and his replacement, John Stewart, passed away earlier this year. Bob Shane is the only surviving member of the group.

In our family, we still occasionally apply the chorus to situations of potential peril or injustice.

Jokingly referred to in concert as the "runt of the litter," and usually the butt of the jokes in their early 1960s TV and radio commercials for the soft drink 7-Up, Reynolds' voice and tenor guitar work were a big part of the success of the Trio, one of the most popular folk groups of the "Folk Era," a time period which ran roughly from 1958-64. His on-stage energy and care-free attitude helped the group become a sell-out live act as well as a recording success.

He met Bob Shane while the two were attending Menlo Park Business College in the late 1950s. They discovered a mutual interest in music, and were soon playing at frat parties and local Bay Area hangouts. After meeting Stanford graduate Dave Guard, they got serious about the music business, and hired Frank Werber to manage their career, a move which paid off big time.

The Kingston Trio recorded three dozen albums and helped pioneer the college concert circuit, building a huge following that placed them on the cover of Life magazine in mid-1959. At one point in 1960, they had four LPs on Billboard's Top Ten SIMULTANEOUSLY, a feat that has never been equaled.

After the trio disbanded in 1967, Reynolds retired to Oregon to spend time with family. He returned to the Trio for a period in the late 1980s, joining original member Shane and banjoist George Grove. He retired again in the 1990s following some health problems.

- craig hodgkins

Part I: The Folk Years

I guess of all the friends I had back then, in the halcyon days of my hippie youth,  Rodney Albin is the guy I miss the most.  When he died of stomach cancer in 1984, still a young  man, I felt like I was losing my brother all over again.

He was a pal, you know? Guys like him are hard to come by.

Well, so tell us about him, Pig.

Like so many of my erstwhile folknik hippie commie friends of the early sixties, I met Rodney kind of like this...

Late one morning in, I suppose, the Fall of 1962, I exited San Francisco State's HLL building, where the boring part of my initiation into high Western culture took place, and ambled across the lawn towards the  Commons to get coffee and see what was up.  Despite its medieval sounding name, four legged sheep were not pastured in the Commons, nor did peasants, other than us, trudge there every morning to work their land.  The Commons was a big cafeteria in the center of campus, and everything of consequence that happened to me in those years took place inside its doors at the second table on the left.  Or on the lawn directly in front.  That's it in the center of the picture, as it looked in 1960.  Who could guess a square building like that would become a cauldron of sixties counterculture?

On this particular morning, I happened to notice a new folkie sitting cross-legged on the lawn, surrounded by the regulars and passing around a dulcimer he had just built.  He was a tall gangly kind of folknik, just transferred in from the College of San Mateo, a junior college on the Peninsula.  He was wearing bright red trousers, a stove-piped hat and tails, and he was playing The Battle of New Orleans on his fiddle.  No.  Wait a minute.  That's got to be my imagination.  The top hat and tails didn't come until later.  OK, he was dressed like a normal person.  It was his dulcimer that was extraordinary.

Interested in dulcimers myself, I forgot about the coffee (never easy to do)  and squeezed into the circle.  That dulcimer was pretty cool, all right.  Shaped like Jayne Mansfield with soft flowing curves and strummed with a sea gull feather, you could tune it to any interesting modal scale you might be in the mood for, brush its strings with that quill, and there you were,  mournful and lost in the holler, sounding like you'd been born in Viper, Kentucky instead of San Francisco.  I started in on an improvised, sea gull strummed Pretty Polly, and pretty soon I was hooked.  The Commons fled and there I was in some longago fog shrouded mountain glen, watching some no-goodnik do in Pretty Polly while the pretty little birdies mourned.  It sounded like magic, and Rodney had created the damn thing out of a piece of spruce.

I got to know Rodney after a while and discovered he was from the next holler over.  My holler was called San Mateo and his they called Belmont.  He and his younger brother Peter were still living with their parents in an upper middle class shack in the Belmont hills.  I also discovered that Rodney wasn't the new guy - I was.  He was well-known in folk circles up and down the Peninsula and across the Bay in Berkeley.  He'd masterminded the folk music festival at the College of San Mateo where young Jerry Garcia made his debut to an unappreciative audience of frat rats.  Rodney and George 'The Beast' Howell had opened the Boar's Head the preceding summer, a folk-oriented coffeehouse in the loft above the book store in San Carlos where George worked.  Garcia and the other Palo Alto folkniks regularly showed up there to jam into the weekend nights.

I started dropping in to see Rodney when I was down that way.  On my first visit, he showed me the six string balalaika he'd built out of orange crate wood.   It was his first sort of crude try at building an instrument.  He was way beyond now of course. He'd already finished a viol de gamba, and now he was building a harpsichord on his bedroom floor.  Its parts spread hither and thither across the  carpet; tools, a reel to reel tape recorder and an unmade bed filled the rest.  He used the tape machine to record performances at the Boar's Head.  Apparently some of these tapes still exist and are passed from hand to hand in Deadhead circles.   They would include: Garcia, Ron McKernan, David Nelson, Rodneys's brother Peter of course, and other less talented performers who went on to become teachers and bureaucrats and accountants - but still played pretty good.

Rodney opened a whole new world to me.  Before Rod, folk music meant Joan Baez manning the barricades while Pete Seeger fired his musket at the Pentagon.  It meant peace marches, sit-ins and and drinking cheap dago red at parties while somebody plunked out 'Twelve Gates To the City, Hallelujah' on a nylon string guitar.  But these friends of Rodney's were...dedicated.  They played bluegrass and old-timey stuff, They listened to Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers on scratchy 78s.  Was Charlie from Greenwich Village or Boston?  I wasn't sure.  They sang about chickens loose in the barnyard squawk squawk and subjects like that.  Who could figure?  But, hey - I liked Rodney so I listened and tried to understand.  I just didn't see how "Boil That Cabbage Down" would save the world from nuclear destruction.

Peter Albin was already a more accomplished musician, although still in high school.  He could wail on Bile That Cabbage Down but he could also play Mississippi Delta slide guitar riffs, and,  what really impressed me -- he knew some Chuck Berry stuff.  I know I was supposed to have outgrown this teenaged foolishness, but tell my ears that!

There was something about Rodney, his gentle spirit, his brilliant mind and his dry sense of humor, that drew me to him.  I liked hanging out with him, and so did most everyone else in our circle. Later I learned there were circles like that all up and down the Peninsula.

Rodney was kind of funny looking.  He had a classic beanpole shape, gawky you might say, you might even say gawky and sniffy.  He was born to play comedy roles, and he worked it.  The first time I saw him (as opposed to meeting him) was the preceding spring when he was still attending the College of San Mateo.  I knew some CSM kids in a school production of Twelfth Night, and I went see one of them, Dick Shapero,  play Malvolio.  Dick was an experienced actor and knew how to get laughs,  but when Rodney as Sir Andrew Aguecheek entered stage right, Dick had to give up.   Rodney didn't say anything.  He just stood there in his Elizabethan get-up, awkward, gawky, rubbing his nose, looking around as if he couldn't quite remember his lines. The audience slowly began to titter and he built the moment into a the play's biggest laugh.  He worked that role successfully for the next twenty years.

(I KNOW this isn't Twelfth night, ok?  I don't have a photo of Twelfth Night and I need a photo here.  So here is the same company's Pygmalion, produced a few months later)

A few days after Rodney passed his dulcimer around, I was sitting on the grass trying to impress some proto-hippie chicks by  playing "I'm a  whinin' Boy, don't deny my name" on my Mexican folk guitar.  I was using a two-fingered picking style I'd made up.  Like crab pincers, my thumb kept the rhythm while my index finger picked out the melody.  It was pretty primitive.  If I hadn't been a soulful singer, the chicks would have walked.  As it was, they were listening all right, but they weren't idolizing me like they should.  What could I do?

When it was Rodney's turn to do a song, he launched into 'Freight Train, Freight Train Going So Fast', singing in a thin nasal voice like an elderly gent from Viper, Kentucky.  I thought his singing could use some help, but, man, he had that Elizabeth Cotton style finger-picking right down!  His thumb was rocking between the bass strings and he syncopated the melody just like the old girl herself!  Actually, I'd never heard of Elizabeth Cotton before, but whoever she was, I wanted to play like that too.  But three fingers!  How could anybody ever make so many fingers work together?  Maybe I should stick to my authentically primitive crabstyle.

But Rodney encouraged me.  He showed me the moves over and over till I started to get them.  I went back to my apartment and drove my wife mad singing the silly holy thing over and over with my thumb rocking and fingers trying to syncopate it right, "Please don't tell them what train I'm on so they won't know where I've gone."

Linda was thinking, 'When's that train leaving?"

Come Christmas, Linda, in a moment of madness, gave me a mandolin.  She'd found it in a Third Street pawn shop and bought it for $20.  I was thrilled.  It's just - how did you play one of these things?  I loved messing around with instruments and could sort of play a lot them, all by ear and without much skill.  I asked Rodney if he knew how to play one and it turned out he did.  He showed me how to hold a pick and how to play a simple tune called Liberty.  After I mastered that he taught me a more complicated minstrel song called "Colored Aristocracy." After that, I didn't need any more lessons.  I knew four chords and could pick two songs.  I was ready to roll!

I didn't know it yet but I was about to take my place in the Albin Brothers' amorphous shape-shifting band, The Liberty Hill Aristocrats.  One night, Rodney said they were going to play the Top of The Tangent in Palo Alto and they needed somebody on mandolin.  I was a mandolin player!  So next night, with some trepidation,  I got up on the little stage, playing with the likes of Jerry Garcia and Peter Albin and David Nelson - real masters of their instruments.  Rodney didn't care if I only knew four chords.  He even let me sing one, I think it was Little Birdie.  - he liked to include people, and that included The Pondering Pig.  You had to love a guy like that.  I did.

That was Rodney, he got people going, he included them, even if it affected the professionalism of the music.   He had his priority list, and friends were higher up than professionalism.  Me too.

COMING SOON: THE  STORY OF 1090 PAGE STREET

Photo credits: Rodney, CSM Play: Pig's files - photographer unknown, SF State campus: SF Pub Lib

If anyone else has any reviews they want to submit to us, feel free to email me at street.team@properdistribution.co.uk.  You can also find out details about getting free CDs and gig entry.

I went to the Bury Met on Saturday 27^th to catch a Drever, McCusker, Woomble gig which was one of a number supporting the release of their album ‘Before the Ruin’, with Boo Hewerdine and Heidi Talbot also on the bill.

Unfortunately Roddy Woomble couldn't make it, but the guys decided to go ahead with the gig, and boy am I glad that they did. Although it was not possible to cover the ‘Before the Ruin’ material without the lead vocalist, we were treated to a magical evening delivered in a very relaxed, informal, unorthodox way.

Part of the enjoyment was the range of styles, with Boo’s self penned songs, Kris and Heidi’s traditional and contemporary folk songs, interspersed with John and Kris’s tune sets. For the majority of the evening, all four artists were present on the stage, switching between lead artist on almost every song, with the other three supporting or simply listening. This variety and ‘music collective’ feel to the evening was a breath of fresh air, bringing home the strength and the depth of the artists.

We were treated to around half a dozen Boo originals, including classics such as ‘Patience of Angels’, and the brand new ‘White Lilies’; a modern standard by anyone’s standards, brought to life with brilliant understated interplay between the guitars of Boo and Kris.

Heidi got the lion’s share of the leads, and this was no bad thing for Heidi or the audience; her self-professed nerves not showing through on around eight captivating, confident songs taken from her Navigator debut ‘In Love and Light’. Highlights included the encore of ‘Parting Song’, ‘The Blackest Crow’ (with Kris) and ‘Whispering Grass’ (which I have to admit I had never enjoyed in any form before this concert).

John McCusker was only at the fore of the proceedings on the two sets of tunes that he performed with Kris, however his role cannot be underestimated. Subtly present in almost every song, I realised just how important he is on all of the albums he plays on (and why he is in such demand!).

And I haven’t even mentioned Kris Drever yet! For me, the figurehead of this ensemble, Kris is instantly beguiling, from his genuinely funny banter with John, through to his energetic, almost convulsive performances. A standard bearer for the modern folk community if ever there was one. His songs tonight were largely from his debut ‘Black Water’, with a couple of other notables, including the ever sublime ‘Shady Grove’.

I was disappointed not to hear Roddy and the new DMW album, but I’m sure I’ll catch them in the near future. However, I wouldn’t have missed this gig for the world; something special indeed. My only regret is not shouting for ‘Braw Sailin’ on the Sea’ when the quartet were asking the audience for requests, Doh!!

Richard Simcock,

3 Monkeys Folk Club, Southport

It started the other day when I, Chaos, started thinking about how Elliott's musical production aesthetics have been propagated for commercial use in recent years. Hipsters and corporate shills have taken the Elliott Smith "sound" and use it to sell movies, cars, TV shows, TV ad products, and whatever else can accompany a music track. Which is okay on some level, because almost no one will ever mimic the intense mastery of pop song-writing that Elliott possessed.

I always found it confusing that Elliott Smith was grouped in with the "post-punk", "indie-rock" crowd, and I just assume that happened because those were the scene circles the guy ran in. His music to me always reeked of a combination of accessible quality and sincerity not found even in The Beatles. The Beatles certainly were sincere, but their music didn't have the same emotional depth. Now I'm not saying it didn't have the same range -- because between the 3 Beatles they certainly did have more musical variety -- but they didn't have the same depth of emotional character. Sorry guys 'n gals, but I am convinced of this one-hundred percent! Those of you who don't agree, I have to wonder about your overall ability to recognize artistic subtlety... Ahaha!

But my snooty musical opinion is actually kind of irrelevant to this post. What interests me about Elliott Smith today is how he influenced modern rock music, and subsequently the world of hipsterdome marketing. Almost every contemporary cutesy white-collar, drug-using hipster musician (and is there any other kind of modern rock musician?) either intentionally rips off some aspect of Elliott Smith's aesthetic, or idolizes the man in musical stone -- whether or not it is acknowledged.

What's so funny (dare I say ironic?) about all this, is the complete insincerity with which Elliott Smith is referenced. As one of my friends pointed out, Elliott Smith's music seems to be "dying with sincerity," in contrast to the horrendously vapid musicians that have stolen and carbon-copied his basic audio production values. But again, it's not just hipster/indie-rock musicians that leech on the ES monolith. The worlds of pop music and advertising (the same worlds?) are awash with direct references and rips from Elliott's career.

A most blatant sacrilegious offense is the hackneyed soundtrack to the *sob* Oscar-winning movie from last year, Juno. In fact, the soundtrack is Juno -- which does not actually make the movie worse or better, but actually makes it something at all. That is, without the cutesy rich-kid soundtrack, Juno would not even be a movie. The music paces the film, indicates the plot points and relationships, and is necessary for all transitions.

Hence I'd like to take a moment to talk about the Juno soundtrack. But before we do, please be warned: this example will make your soul a little bed-ridden for the next few days. (In other words, depression.)

Most of the soundtrack seems to rip off classic post-punk stuff, but there are a number of songs that are blatant ES cop-offs. The most flagrant offense within the soundtrack is possibly this one here, called "So Nice, So Smart". Compare this shot of disease to the Elliott Smith track, "Crazy Fucker," sometimes called, "Another Folk Song". Their astute similarities in composition and recording dynamics could be a coincidence; but then again, this Elliott Smith song was available for download, on the website Elliott Smith B-Sides, many years before the recent double-disc Smith compilation, New Moon (featuring an overly remastered version of this same track), was released.

And what were the results of this?

The film's soundtrack, featuring several songs performed by Kimya Dawson and her bands Antsy Pants and The Moldy Peaches, was the first number one soundtrack since Dreamgirls and 20th Century Fox's first number one soundtrack since Titanic. Juno earned back its initial budget of $6.5 million in twenty days; during the first nineteen of which the film was in limited release.[1] The film has gone on to earn more than 35 times that amount, becoming the highest grossing movie in Fox Searchlight's history. -Wikipedia

Ick.

The reason Juno is such an easy culprit to point out is because it's an obscenely corporate (right-of-center?) attempt to cash in on the post-Elliott Smith, Elliott Smith-removed, Elliott Smith aesthetic (what?!). And whether or not movies like this are a conscious rip-off of Elliott Smith himself, his actual music has been snagged for other productions after his death -- such as in the hackneyed garbage, Georgia Rule, the TV junk-food formerly known as The OC, and some films by the excessively celebrated Gus Van Sant.

But here's where my gripes get kind of... crazy. Elliott certainly approved of his music appearing in movies back when he was alive, in stuff like The Royal Tannenbaums, Good Will Hunting, and so forth. And I suppose most people would take those royalty checks. But as a result, the movies "cheated" a little bit and stole his magic for themselves. To emphasize this point, let me quote from Judith Williamson's Decoding Advertisements. This quote is more relevant to visual images used in advertising, but replace the terms for visual imagery with music and the message becomes rather stark:

Images, ideas or feelings [...] become attached to certain products, by being transferred from signs out of other systems (things or people with 'images') to the products, rather than originating in them. This intermediary object or person is bypassed in our perception; although it is what gives the product its meaning, we are supposed to see that meaning as already there, and we rarely notice that the correlating object and the product have no inherent similarity, but are only placed together (hence the significance of form). So a product and an image/emotion become linked in our minds, while the process of this linking is unconscious. (Marion Boyers, 1978: p30)

To summarize: when we use powerful music, such as Elliott Smith's, in advertising or movies (which are another form of advertising or propaganda in themselves) it makes the viewer subconsciously, unknowingly associate the feeling of Elliott Smith's music with the movie or product which is using it. Unless one makes a conscious effort to acknowledge this process, one becomes affected by the product/film/ad in this way.

Advertisements, unable to actually use Elliott Smith's music, have gone on to rip off his aesthetic as strongly as possible (although now it seems to just be the basic shitty post-indie-rock aesthetic, doesn't it?). So for all the citizens of the world who love this aesthetic, you are probably buying the products that use these kinds of musical flourishes, whether you know it or not.

Oh well, whatever.

***

On a lighter note, the other day I was cruisin' the Information Superhighway when I happened across a fairly recent, decent post dissecting the pop genius of Elliott Smith's song, "Can't Make a Sound". I found it over on the Koax blog -- a site linked to a site, linked to a site that I frequent. This article piqued my interest because, unlike typical gushing fanboy stuff written about Elliott Smith, it actually puts forth an interesting discussion about the late musician's pop sensibilities as they were utilized on the second to last track off of Figure 8 (a track which my pal Nate has previously singled out as being his favorite Elliott Smith track, despite the fact that he's not such a ginormous fan as me).

There's a lot of this going on in the aforementioned post:

But the chorus is not expanded at all, it's still the same two lines of melody that were present the first time. What's different in its repetition, though, is the stomping guitar line, that overlays it, the arpeggiating rhythm guitar now asserting itself into the lead. The long notes of the melody -

Eyes locked and shining

have turned into a root that the guitar is now playing against. The guitar's phrase fills the space after the first line, and the end of this phrase leads into the second:

Can't you tell me what's that burning?

And the chorus has again performed its function: again it ends with unexpected abruptness, again it leads us into a change in the character of the song.

Mr. Koax seems to agree with my friend Nate, that "Can't Make a Sound" is one of the Elliott's best songs. The post starts out by noting the lack of variety amongst pop songs and their verse-chorus formula and goes on to exemplify just how this song radically rejuvenates the typical method.

It's a refreshing read on a played-out subject.

More to come...

DJB

There are few barriers in this era beyond the ones we set up for ourselves. A nudist reminded me of this last night.

I was at a friend's birthday party, strategically positioned in the path of a hot, summer's breeze coming through the window on this last evening of September; and close to the door leading outside to the stagnant, muggy air blanketing the buildings around us.

The friends, strangers, and in-betweens surrounding me passed around beers and hummus and, ahem, other things, while discussing in a buzzed and extraordinarily trite fashion the Internet's influence on how people share their art with others. The nudist of course celebrated the possibilities of online marketing and the freedom the Internet offers our culture, a freedom of expression she felt was severely lacking in other parts of our lifestyles (she personally has to tredge all the way to Malibu to go topless without having to stave off dirty looks, for instance.) But sometimes I find this affability to be more of an annoyance than a gift, leading to an oversaturation of the same styles, themes, and directions in people's work. 

But other times, like in the case of Rose Polenzani, I couldn't be more thankful. Rose is one of those artists that could be famous if she wanted to be, but seems to enjoy the simple, Wetern-Mass, farmhouse lifestyle just fine. She strums her guitar simply, but with the touch of a virtuoso; she puts words on the page like a storyteller moonlighting as a poet; and the haunt in her voice alone could make anyone's chest hallow for one measure, and then swell with warmth the next. 

Beyond the more specific qualities of Rose's music is how she delivers it to her fans. Since she seldom performs at venues much beyond New England, it's tough for someone like me who feels tied down to the West coast to see her perform live. Because the expansiveness of the Internet can quickly lead to impersonal, unimaginative art, musicians face a greater responsibility than ever to bring their music to the road and connect with fans personally at live shows. Rose doesn't give us this opportunity; but she gives us paper cut-outs of little black ships, dangling apples, and goofy choreographed dances in homemade music videos with fellow musicians and friends that are quirky, artistic, and absolutely darling. The videos allow Rose to present herself at eye level to her fans, offering but a stimulating glance into the friendly, impassioned mystery of her demeanor.

Some of you may think Rose's videos are only one cut above the millions of amateur music videos flying around youtube and similar media-sharing sites. And maybe they are to you. But to fans of her music, they solidify the chanteuse's place in listeners' hearts as the type artist you swear is creating these songs right down the hall from you; the type of soul you can feel a little in every good late night conversation with your friends; the type of creativity that instills hope into barriers, and potential in the lack thereof. 

Rose released her fifth full-length album, When the River Meets the Sea, on Tuesday. I'm still waiting for an album that can break me the way her '04 release, August, does. But the tunes on her latest work function just as how she purports them to: organically, intrinsically, intimately. 

It's folk at its finest -- not breaking many barriers except for those you set against your self, your heart, your ears. Or is that just what folk music does for me? And isn't that the point to begin with?

"Cornfields" is one of my favorite new videos from the lady. The song isn't on River, which makes me excited for what the Rose has in store for us in the future.  She recorded it with a bunch of friends at her birthday party earlier this year. What a fine way to celebrate.