Puff weeps today...

My Dad's favorite group, along with CSNY, when I was a kid. I'll always remember their performance of 'Light One Candle', with a choir from NYC...brings tears even today---especially today...

I recall, sometime in the last year or two, that someone in the comments here at the Agonist stated their belief that the guitar is so popular because it sounds so much like the male voice. I'm probably misremembering the statement, but I think that's close to what was written.

Well, I've recently come across what you might call living proof of that assertion: Van Canto, an a capella metal group composed of 5 singers and 1 drummer. It's music that I simultaneously feel embarrassed and immensely happy listening to. I can't see myself listening to it in the presence of friends, but I also can't wipe a big smile off my face while listening to it alone. I have to marvel at the guts it takes to do what they do--and the skill with which they pull it off too!

Here is "Pathfinder," which starts right off with the vocal guitar:

Two more songs below the fold

Deadlines? We don't got no stinking deadlines!

Sunday, August 23
The day started early for me. Got up and fed the dogs, made breakfast for Mae and myself, checked the strings on my trusty Martin....as my neighbor would say...ops check good! My ultimate destination: Luckenbach, Texas. I'm joining a group of guitarists with the intent of breaking a Guinness world record. Mae has to finish up with some online CE's and will not be accompanying me. Bummer! My first stop will be our place at the lake. Get the mail, check the water tank and feed. The deer look good here...you would not know there is a drought going on by their appearance. Back into the car and up 281 to Blanco...I'll cut across from there to Luckenbach. As I drive, I notice the spots of brown and sickly green among the cedar and oaks. The local weatherman said the oaks are going dormant early this year. Bullshit! These guys are dying. There will be no flush of green come springtime. The patches of brown will remain...the sickly green will be replaced by more patches of brown. The road I take from Blanco parallels the Blanco river for several miles, but there is something wrong with this picture as well. There is no river, just a meandering swath of limestone and river rock where there should be water. As I drive I look to the left, expecting to see some patches of the life giving liquid...there is none. Like a testament to the harshness of this summer, I see stands of sumac common to this area along the road. Normally tough and tolerant of little rain, they now appear as burnt and twisted sticks somehow reaching out to the passing traffic. A lone windmill and dilapidated wooden water tank stand next to an old house. Rushes and cattails grow from the top of the tank. It's almost surreal. The fields and pastures along the way are yellow and brown, though this area had a blast of rain over the past 36 hrs. Not near enough...not near enough.

Well, this is just what my budget needs these days: crack-cocaine, newly refined and guaranteed to waste every last spare minute of my day.

ReThink Afghanistan

If you're not listening to Citizen Cope you are doing yourself a grave disservice. Go to iTunes, or whatever you use, download some of his music, I like Brother Lee, myself, or Sideways, with Carlos Santana playing lead guitar, pour yourself some coffee or a drink, pick your poison and settle in for some damn fine music.

Speaking of music, what's your top five (or ten) most played look like in your iPod or mp3 player? I reset all my counts the day I returned home from Amsterdam. Nothing like starting over, eh?

Mine are after the jump.

What, I ask you, does a 16 year old girl in Connecticut know about country music?

Not much, although she knows how to use YouTube, Myspace and Facebook.

Though I was more than a little frustrated when the two satellite radio companies merged, I've come to grips with having two sides of the same coin. XM was always a bit more progressive and less "commercial" than Sirius, wider songlists in rotation and more emphasis on emerging artists. It now seems that the Sirius format is ever so slightly changing, and heading in the direction (hopefully) that XM took. I hope they continue with these changes...for example...heard three different songs from "Roadhouse Sun" over the period of about 4 hours. Not too shabby...

DAVE ITZKOFF | June 19

NYT - A Minneapolis jury ruled on Thursday that a 32-year-old woman must pay $1.92 million to six record companies for illegally downloading songs released by those labels from the Internet, Agence France-Presse reported.

The woman, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a single mother of four from Brainerd, Minn., was found liable for violating the copyrights of major labels including Sony BMG, Warner Brothers and Universal by downloading 24 songs from Kazaa, a peer-to-peer file-sharing service.

Coouple events worth mentioning coming up in Ol Texas

1. Poodie Lock Benefit
Old BackPorch
Jun 28 2-10pm
admission- minimum 20 buck
Performers not confirmed but you can bet it'll be worth the 20 bucks

2. Current record for guitars playing at one time is 1800 and was set in Germany - thats about to be broken--August 23 in Luckenbach TX
www.luckenbachtexas.com for details aiming for 2000 pickers-

Think everyone should visit Luckenbach at least once-- Chrissy and I enjoy just stoppin in now and then- sitting under the big oaks - sippin on a long neck- listening to whoever might be pickin- maybe try a game of washers--

Pallab Ghosh | May 31

BBC -

New software has enabled researchers to recreate a long forgotten musical instrument called the Lituus.

The 2.4m (8ft) long trumpet-like instrument was played in Ancient Rome but fell out of use some 300 years ago.

Bach's motet (a choral musical composition) "O Jesu Christ, meins lebens licht" was one of the last pieces of music written for the Lituus.

Now, for the first time, this 18th Century composition has been played as it should have been heard.

audio sample at link

Andy Gill | May 30

The Independent -
Next week, after two decades of fussing, fiddling, amassing and sifting, the first massive instalment of Neil Young's long-awaited career retrospective, The Neil Young Archives, finally becomes available.

It's a huge thing, both conceptually and physically: this first batch of 11 DVDs, covering the singer's career from his teenage origins in Winnipeg guitar band The Squires in 1963, through his time with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills and Nash, up to the point that he became a household name with the success of his Harvest album in 1972, arrives housed in a box the size of a couple of breeze-blocks, accompanied by a book of press clippings, lyric jottings, photos and ephemera. It is literally monumental: if the rest of Young's career is covered in similarly exhaustive fashion, his fans will not just be able to immerse themselves in it, they will probably be able to build a home from the boxes and live in it.

It's unlikely, however, that subsequent volumes will have the satisfying unity of the first set, which offers a detailed portrait not just of Neil Young but of the whole Los Angeles singer-songwriter counter-culture through the era in which it moved inexorably overground, rushing in to occupy the vacuum left at the end of the 1960s, when the Altamont and the Manson Family had effectively put the naive hippie dream to the sword.

Neil Young actually knew Charlie Manson a little, having been introduced to him at Beach Boy Dennis Wilson's house a few months before the Tate/LaBianca murders. Like many, he found the would-be songwriter a charismatic, powerful presence, with a curious gift – shared with Dylan, and Young himself – of being able to reel off lyrics apparently at will.

"Manson would sing a song and just make it up as he went along, for three or four minutes, and he never would repeat one word, and it all made perfect sense and it shook you up to listen to it," Young explained years later. "It was so good that it scared you." A few years later, he would write the song "Revolution Blues" from the standpoint of a homicidal psychotic clearly based on Manson. Back in the 1960s, however, Neil recommended Manson to his record company, Reprise, but nothing came of it. Had the label granted Manson his deepest wish and signed him up, who knows how things may have turned out? Sharon Tate might still be alive, Charles Manson might be a superstar rather than a bogeyman, and Neil Young might have been dumped by his label and retired from music altogether, as a car mechanic.

What are you listening to?

This is an inter-blog rescue of sorts I wrote reflecting on two posts by Steen Christiansen, a contributing writer at America Adrift. An assistant professor of English at Aalborg University and one of only two Danish libertarians (that I know of), he describes his research as, "working mainly on cultural transformations between high and low culture, investigating how these entities intersect and inform each other. Continuing within a cultural materialist methodology, I’m particularly interested in cultural resistance and how narratives help shape these variant forms of resistance." I'm not in the habit of cross posting work here but I thought this short piece, along with the links to Steen's very interesting and entertaining two articles would be appreciated here at the Agonist, particularly in light of yesterday's news about Chrysler's "financial re-organization."

Yesterday evening (gmt + 1) Danish teevee news live fed President Obama’s announcement that Chrysler will head into bankruptcy protection. Can anyone tell me if the CNNization of Danish news along with its increased obsession focus on live "breaking" coverage of D.C. political intrigue is merely a figment of my imagination?

"This Land Is Your Land" Like Woody Wrote It ~ truthout

At the conclusion of today's concert for president-elect Barack Obama 89-year-old Pete Seeger joined Bruce Springsteen for a sing-along with perhaps half a million people of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land," which I dare say practically everyone in the country knows from childhood.

But sly old Pete, who actually hoboed with Woody during the Depression and Dust Bowl, had the crowd sing the song as it was actually written, as not only a celebration of this great land, but as a demand for workers' and people's rights. That is, he restored the verses that have been censored from the song over the years to make it less political.(lyrics after the jump)

** As Pete Seeger turns 90, his songs remain timeless

So, I was thinking of Rick Harrison today. And I was reminded of one of my favorite posts of his. In it, he asked, "what are the top ten songs" you are listening to right now? The premise being that digital technology and tracking gives us a very good idea of what our momentary favorites are, no 'Stairway's To Heaven,' or 'Freebirds,' or 'Hotels California,' or other killer ballads you can think up, dig? What's at the top of your play-list, on your iPod, or mp3 player, right now? As I thought of Rick--I've been thinking about buying a guitar lately, I really miss playing--the whole list thing came to me. Then I got to thinking, "why am I listening to exactly this kind of music right now?" But that's a post for another day. Regardless, I make a new iPod playlist for each country I travel in, a resource to return to in the future in the hopes of gauging where I was in my heart at the time. So, without further ado, here is my current top five list:

"Bastard," by Jeff Black--full disclosure, I've been listening to this song since Lake Toba and it still resonates, but it does skew the immediacy of the list--"Not that Cool," by Will Hoge, "Mirage," by Reckless Kelly, "Wake Up Time," by Tom Petty and "Til I'm Too Old To Die Young," by Kieran Kane.

What's yours? And if you don't have an iPod, tell us what's in your 8-track player!

Phillip Ramati | Apr 5 | Macon.com

They moved to Macon 40 years ago. No one here had seen the likes of people like them before.

They were hippies. Long-hairs. Rebels.

A band that had a black member playing with five white guys? A band that performed with two drummers?

They played a style of music that defied a definition. It wasn’t just rock ‘n’ roll. It was blues, jazz, country, folk. It was eventually christened Southern Rock.

Duane Allman, a guitar prodigy, put the band together. His brother, Gregg, sang and played organ. Dickey Betts played guitar. Berry Oakley was on bass. Butch Trucks and Jai “Jaimoe” Johanny Johanson both played drums.

They were called the Allman Brothers Band. This is their story, in the words of those who knew them best. continue reading here

Such instruments as ukeleles, mandolins, balalaikas, etc. tend to languish in the forgotten wilderness of musical culture. But even the much-maligned ukelele (which I first saw abused on the Arthur Godfrey show in the 1950s), is capable of playing some great music, as is evidenced by the first clip below, a George Harrison tune performed in New York's Central Park.

Since there’s been a lot of good music posted in the last few days, I thought I’d take a break from my moral outrage about what’s happening in our country and the world and contribute as well.

I spent the first three years of my life at about 14,000 feet in the Andes in Argentina, and, while I only have fleeting memories of those days, the haunting, beautiful music (mixed native American and Spanish) from this part of the world stayed with me in recordings we brought to the US. One group that has revived this tradition over the years is Inti Illimani, and I link three of their performances below. The first is the most traditional, and, if you’re not familiar with the ukulele-like stringed instrument that shows up early in the first piece, it’s called a “charanga,” and it’s made from the back of an armadillo. The next two pieces are arrangements in deference to the group’s Italian fans.

With what’s been happening in our country and in the world in the last few weeks, I can’t say I’ve been in the best frame of mind to post music, but, but, if anything, we probably need more of it than less, as long as it’s genuine.

I thought I’d start the year with two songs that seem pretty relevant, one from Emmylou about the hope for a better life and the other, from Mary Black, covering a poignant song by Richard Thompson about the sadness of emigration.

One of these Days

Farewell, Farewell

OrionBlastar writes:

I remember my 14 year-old niece. She was wearing a t-shirt that said "The Beatles" as everyone in her school wore them.

Below are four links to some pretty decent guitarists, mostly acoustic, that I thought might be worth a listen.

Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed

Jerry’s Breakdown

Ralph Towner, the guitarist for the group, “Oregon”

Jamaica Stopover

While I appreciate a wide variety of music, Bluegrass is probably my first love going back to my childhood in the 1950’s when, home sick from school one day and looking for some music on my transistor radio, I was suddenly spellbound by the sound of a Bluegrass banjo. I realize that it’s not everyone’s favorite music, but, at its best (and there is a lot of it that’s less than “best”), it not only stands up to the most inspiring ethnic string band music anywhere in the world but also speaks from the depth of our rural soul in a way that Nashville left behind decades ago.

While the attached clips are from the lighter side of the music, I thought you might get a kick out of comparing two phases in the life of one of Bluegrass’s icons, Ricky Skaggs, first, at the age of seven in the 1950’s, tugging impatiently on Lester Flatt’s coattails during a TV broadcast and then second, just a few years ago, invited to perform with the Boston Pops.

As much as I’ve fancied myself as reasonably knowledgeable about pop music, especially its more acoustic side, it wasn’t until years after I moved to Maryland, Eva’s home state, from New York in 1991 that I even heard her name. While it’s not the first time I overlooked something like that, there are a number of good reasons why her name is not a household word.

First, even in her prime, she was always a young, shy, and self-effacing woman more into horticulture than the spotlight. Second, since she excelled in every conceivable vocal style short of opera, record companies had no idea what to do with her. Third, she only sang songs that truly inspired her, and her impeccable taste and emotional depth didn’t endear her to the mass market corporate media. Fourth, and most sadly, she died of melanoma in 1996 at the age of 33.

The four links below, taken from her performances at Blues Alley, a DC jazz club, should give you some idea why she had profound effects on most people who listened to her.