Stan Hugill, often known as "The Last Shantyman," authored a book called Shanties From the Seven Seas, based on his own work experiences in the last days of sail. Influential in the folk revival, the book is one of the most important written sources for music sung aboard ships in the 19th and early 20th century, the "Bible" of sea music. Decades of chanteying in pubs and at festivals have kept many of the songs alive, but in most cases they've strayed stylistically from the verses and versions Hugill collected, or dropped out of popularity entirely. Now, one musician is returning to the source and creating a new audio archive for the original versions of the songs as written, by singing through the more than 400 songs in the book, one song each week, and posting the songs on YouTube, with commentary. [more inside]
posted by Miko on Jun 15, 2009 - 28 comments

Her majesty's a pretty nice girl but she never did a thing for me [more inside]
posted by finite on Feb 4, 2009 - 53 comments

"I was listening to the radio and it’s one of those moments where you have to stop what you’re doing and pay full attention.” Dory Previn, met composer Andre' Previn while working in MGM's music dept. in the 1960s. They collaborated on movie music such as "A Second Chance" and "Valley Of The Dolls". Andre' divorced Dory in 1969 to marry Mia Farrow. Following this, Dory Previn recorded six original albums known for their wit and confessional tone. Dory Previn unofficially retired in 1976 and has been reluctant to give interviews. However, she released a free online album, Planet Blue in 2002. She gave a rare interview to the Times in February. She talked about her influences and meeting Howard Hughes with Bernadette Cahill in 2005.
posted by The Whelk on Dec 3, 2008 - 6 comments

John Fahey - Fare Forward Voyagers
John Fahey - Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Palace Of King Phillip XIV
Clips from a 2 hour performance at the Euphoria Tavern in Portland, Oregon from 1976. Among the cognoscenti at FaheyGuitarPlayers, the consensus is that these clips display Fahey in rare form on a very good night.
Apart from Fahey, Bohemia Visual Music aka Mike Nastra, the contributor of these clips, provides an interesting assortment of way too hip YouTubery offerings including, among others, Spike Jones, Dimandas Galas, Gene Krupa, Tuxedo Moon, Sun Ra, Pere Ubu and the Holy Modal Rounders.
posted by y2karl on Oct 16, 2007 - 9 comments

Aside from the usual crap, YouTube has a great selection of one the most covered song of all time: All Along the Watchtower. Classics like Hendrix (live and studio), Neil Young (at DailyMotion with better sound) and U2--and some great contemporary versions like Keziah Jones' blazingly-fast version, Bradley Fish's 12-instrument (including Chinese Zither) version, Michael Hedges’ reason-to-be-excited cover, and even a quite good version of DMB's much-maligned cover. What doesn't really rank: Dylan's original.
posted by FeldBum on Jul 2, 2007 - 43 comments