New Year's Eve is fast approaching, and for lots of folks that means... drinking. Plenty of drinking. And since there's no shortage of singers and songwriters who've had a little something to say about that particular topic, maybe some of the following tunes can serve as an appropriate soundtrack to your own joyous (or not?) imbibing of spirits. For example, there's... Jimmy Liggins with his succinct rendition of
Drunk, and there's...
[more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Dec 30, 2011 -
67 comments
Maggie and Terre Roche started performing professionally in the late '60s, just a little late for the folkie boom but also a bit too distinctive to blend easily with the singer-songwriters of the early '70s, even when they became acolytes of Paul Simon and recorded backup vocals on There Goes Rhymin' Simon
. By 1975, they had their own album on CBS, with tracks produced by Simon (and backed by the Oak Ridge Boys and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section) and ex-Yardbird Paul Samwell-Smith... Seductive Reasoning is not completely a folk nor a country album, which no doubt hurt its commercial potential... Songs such as "West Virginia", "Down the Dream", and "The Mountain People" touch on early joy and disillusionment/disappointment, while "Jill of All Trades" and "The Burden of Proof" reflect a few more years of life under one's belt and the smoothing out that can come with them. "Underneath the Moon" and "Wigglin' Man"... are more straightforward getting-laid songs, funny as hell... while several of their albums have been as good as Seductive Reasoning
, none were better. Nor did they have to be. -
Todd Mason (previously) [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Dec 16, 2011 -
29 comments
Toward the Within is the only official live album of the eclectic music group,
Dead Can Dance.
Recorded in one take in November of 1993, the performance was later released as an album and video. The latter includes short interviews with the heads of the group, Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, interspersed with the songs.
Video track list:
[more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Dec 8, 2011 -
44 comments
Folk-punk,
Orgcore (
UD definition) and
Dadpunk are all names for a
new wave of earnest, authentic rock that draws its roots from The Clash,
Billy Bragg, The Pogues, Social Distortion and Bruce Springsteen. In England, its best represented by
Frank Turner, the former singer of hardcore band
Million Dead. His anthemic songs about
life on the margins of fame,
poetry,
death,
inspiration and
the power of rock and roll have made him famous in England, leading to an upcoming
show at Wembley Arena. He follows in the footsteps of British folk-punk pioneers
Leatherface.
[more inside]
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn
on Oct 23, 2011 -
92 comments
There's a new crop of Australian bands that take inspiration from old blues, but twist the music in a strange fashion. The trend may have started with
CW Stoneking (Jungle Blues,
Love Me Or Die), who channeled the old bluesmen despite being a
young man. Its continued on to Sydney's
Snowdroppers, who started out as a
house band for burlesque shows and kept that dirty sensibility up with songs like
Rosemary ,
Do The Stomp, and their signature tune
Good Drugs, Bad Women (lyrics NSW). Frequent Snowdroppers touring partners
Gay Paris add a Southern horror twist (
House Fire In the Origami District, My First Wife? She Was A Foxqueen! ) and an antic stage energy. Some of the bands relay on gimmicks, like Adelaide's
The Beards, who sing about how
you should consider having sex with a bearded man and point out that
if your dad doesn't have a beard, you've got two moms. The Beards recently performed at the
World Beard and Mustache Championships. Horror-country-rockers
Graveyard Train have picked up the torch dropped when Sydney psychobilly masters
Zombie Ghost Train (
Graveyard Queen) disbanded. Graveyard Train tunes like
Mummy,
Ballad for Beelzebub ,
Tall Shadow and
Dead Folk Dance combine cheerful Misfits horror theming with stompy country. Most of the singers from this loose scene are joining forces in Sydney this week to
pay tribute to Tom Waits.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn
on Oct 4, 2011 -
32 comments
Tim Hardin : underrated singer-songwriter of the '60s and '70s, or
the most underrated singer-songwriter of the '60s and '70s? Known mostly for more famous singers covering his work, his songs were sung by a plethora of people, from Bobby Darin, Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, Rod Stewart to Astrud Gilberto, Bob Dylan, Robert Plant and Echo & the Bunnymen, while he remained a very little-known but widely loved figure in folk music. He music could be painfully honest (
Reason to Believe,
Don't Make Promises), or slow and hypnotizing (
Misty Roses). Sadly, 6 days after his 39th birthday, he died from a heroin overdose in 1980.
[more inside]
posted by Drainage!
on Aug 26, 2011 -
18 comments
"I decided I wanted to buy the Dorsey Brothers’ mambo record. However, I did not have the required 39 cents." Over at
The Comics Journal, cartoonist
Kim Deitch (previously), son of animator Gene Deitch
(previously), has been posting a wonderful, rambling memoir about the music in his life.
Part 1: The Dorseys and Beyond "Watch for Russ Columbo playing some hot violin in
this one."
Part 2: An Early Education - Jazz, folk and the ’40s - Alan Lomax, Jelly Roll Morton and jazz fandom
Part 3: Our hero stumbles on the birth of television, specifically,
music on televisionPart 4: Rock ‘n Roll - "
For a lot of Americans it was like the whole damn African jungle had landed in the middle of Ed Sullivan’s stage"
Part 5: Rocking Forward [more inside]
posted by mediareport
on Aug 7, 2011 -
3 comments
AFSAD: On June 24, 2010 – Midsummer’s Day – the acclaimed British singer Jon Boden launched an ambitious new project –
A Folk Song A Day. Every day for (nearly) a year now he's been posting his performance of a traditional song free online or as an audio podcast. He's now got just eight of his 365 songs to go, so now's your chance to catch up before it's too late.
posted by Paul Slade
on Jun 16, 2011 -
2 comments
Within that small and very specific sub-genre of musical Americana identifiable as the
train imitation, there is one amazing performance, from 1926, that set the standard:
Pan-American Blues. The man who recorded it did a fine and fanciful job of evoking the sounds of a
fox chase as well, and his rhythmically compelling solo rendition of
John Henry stands as testament to the potential for musical greatness achievable by one man and a humble harmonica. He was an African-American who was a founding member of the Grand Ole Opry, a musical institution that we rarely (as in,
never) today associate with black people, and his touching and tragic story, documented
here, is one that will be of interest to those concerned with the racial, economic and socio-cultural history of American popular music. He stands at one of its more unexpected intersections: his name is
DeFord Bailey.
[more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Dec 30, 2010 -
15 comments
Full Utah Phillips concert from 2007:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8. If you don't know who Utah Phillips is, be prepared to meet one of the great performers of our age, telling funny stories and cracking jokes, singing great songs, and generally being a world treasure. If you want to know more about this great singer, songwriter, and peace and labor activist, you can watch
an hour long documentary on him from Democracy Now that was made after he passed away in 2008.
[previously]
posted by Kattullus
on Dec 15, 2010 -
26 comments
It’s maybe a
little early yet for year’s end retrospectives, but who cares:
we’ve got 157 songs, 10.5 hours, 1.12 GB of “some of the best and most notable music from 2010... covering indie, pop, rock, punk, folk, rap, R&B, soul, dance, country, modern classical, ambient and electronic music, and in many cases, hard-to-classify genre hybrids.” —Curated by FluxBlog’s own Matthew Perpetua.
posted by kipmanley
on Dec 3, 2010 -
30 comments
Peter Grudzien lives in New York and makes psychedelic country music or at least used to, since only two albums of his material ever came out,
The Unicorn in 1974, and
The Garden of Love, which is mostly a collection of demos. His songs are varied, ranging from noise music to straight up country, and their subject matters are equally wide-ranging, from strange fare, such as
lyrics about his clone being at Stonewall, to
straight-up love songs. His best known original is probably
The Unicorn, a beautiful song whose
lyrics recast the early 70s New York gay demimonde in terms of a barren zombie-filled wasteland which will be reborn when the titular unicorn is found by the queen. Other songs on YouTube are
White Trash Hillbilly Trick,
New York Town and an instrumental cover of the Georgia Gibbs hit
Kiss Me Another. Finally,
here's a lovely cover of The Unicorn by Calgary folkie Kris Ellestad.
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 21, 2010 -
16 comments
"
Parallelograms is an album by American
psychedelic folk singer
Linda Perhacs. Her first and to date only album, it was all but completely ignored when originally released on Kapp Records in 1970. Discouraged by the lack of commercial attention and the label's reluctance to promote the album, Perhacs returned to her career as a dental technician. In the 30 or so years that followed, the
album gradually developed a
cult following, particularly on the Internet. Young listeners found appeal in her subtle instrumentation and delicate harmonies..."
Parallelograms::
Chimacum Rain::
Hey, Who Really Cares?
posted by puny human
on Nov 4, 2010 -
20 comments
Let's dust off our turntable, and the
hash pipe and break out the
C.O.B., which is
Clive's Own Band, Clive being
Clive Palmer, one of the founders of The Incredible String Band, who left after the success of their first album, took his money, and left England to live in alone in India. Later, in the early seventies, living off porridge and crackers in a caravan with Mick Bennett and John Bidwell, he released two 'progressive folk' albums,
Spirit of Love and
Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart, which some have called the best folk albums to have ever come out of Britain. Produced with
Ralph McTell.
posted by puny human
on Oct 8, 2010 -
12 comments
She's been called "the greatest posthumous success story in music history." But when she died of melanoma at age 33, few people outside of the Washington DC-area had heard of
Eva Marie Cassidy.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jun 17, 2010 -
62 comments
Aman
da Walther and Shei
la Carabine became friends in Canadian high school band. They now make up
Dala, an accoustic folk pop duo who sing songs like the cutesy pop song
Levi Blues,
Alive about a hellish New Years Eve in an old cabin,
Marilyn Monroe about coming of age, and the more serious
Horses, a song dedicated to a paraplegic teenager. They have opened for Neko Case, Tom Cochrane, and Matthew Good and covered
Neil Young.
posted by mccarty.tim
on May 19, 2010 -
9 comments
Born in Big Sandy, Texas in 1874,
Henry Thomas was one of the oldest black musician who ever recorded for the phonograph companies of the 1920′s and his music represents a rare opportunity to hear what American black folk music must have sounded like in the last decade of the 19th century.
[more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on May 11, 2010 -
21 comments
Showing Off is a series of videos, audio clips and articles in which noted music journalist and Frankie Goes to Hollywood mastermind Paul Morley explores various facets of music. Each month has a theme,
[warning: most links have autoplaying video] Michael Jackson,
Kraftwerk,
classical music,
disco,
The Beatles,
folk music,
The X Factor,
the Noughties,
the next big thing,
UK hip hop,
jazz, and
dance. Here is some of what's on offer:
MeFi faves Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip on hip hop,
These New Puritans' Jack Barnett, Johnny Marr on folk (parts
1,
2), but isn't all just interviews, there are also a lot of performances, e.g.
Michael Nyman and David McAlmont,
Badly Drawn Boy,
Susanna Wallumrød covers Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak, and
Cornershop cover Norwegian Wood.
posted by Kattullus
on Apr 26, 2010 -
8 comments
Music! - A 1968 documentary by the National Music Council of Great Britain, featuring folk singing, The Beatles, and even early electronic music produced by tape splicing.
Part 1,
part 2,
part 3,
part 4,
part 5.
posted by Artw
on Mar 7, 2010 -
8 comments
