A few weeks ago over at collaborative music blog Star Maker Machine I had the opportunity to share Bob Marley's Stir It Up -- a song which I maintain is one of the great summersongs of all time, in spite of its subversive political undertones. In my accompanying post, I noted that: Bob Marley's greatest hits release Legend may have been just a posthumous compilation, but it was a perfect, complete set; it caught fire upon its release, bringing the sound of reggae full-bore into [...]
I grew up in the suburbs, where wildlife was scarce, though we had our share of squirrels and birds, and the occasional rabbit sighting in the backyard. When we wanted to see larger animals, we generally headed out to Drumlin Farm , a working farm run by the Audubon Society, where caged birds of prey lined the path to the chick hatchery, the pigs and sheep gave birth every spring, and you could always spot the queen in the glass-lined, thin-sliced beehive, if you looked long enough. There was a pond, too, for crawdad spotting. [...]
Naturalismo , which I discovered when researching last week's post on Freak Folk , seems to be one of very few music bloggers to note the passing of Alton Kelley -- the sixties poster artist whose most popular work was probably the above skeleton-with-rose-garland poster, originally created for a 1966 Grateful Dead show at the Avalon Ballroom. You may not have seen the poster before, but you've seen the graphic it inspired on a hundred Volkswagen bumpers; the image, which Kelley and his long-time partner Stanley Mouse adapted from a nineteenth century illustration for The Rubaiyat [...]
Rock Hard Times - Eels This Little Light of Mine - Elizabeth Mitchell Going Home - Josh Garrels St. Peter - David Ford San Andreas Fault - Natalie Merchant I've Got a Thing About Seeing My Grandson Grow Old - Cat Stevens In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel One Headlight - The Wallflowers
North Carolina is rich in history and broad in geography, stretching from warm beachfront majesty to the base of Appalachia. That it holds a dominant place in the history of folk music is due in part to its cultural diversity, and in part to its situation midway up the coast, along the route that folk strands might have once traveled from North to South and back again. This combination of factors has made it an influential locus and crossroads for several southern folk movements of the last century, including branches of the blues, appalachian music, and strains [...]
This is from a Smithsonian Folkways album called You Are a Little Bird released in 2006. This album, like those of her earlier releases, is for children. Her choices for kids' music, though, aren't your usual. Besides this Gillian Welch/David Rawlings, you'll find Velvet Underground's "What Goes On" and Neil Young's "Little Wing." MP3 File
Tomorrow is the first day of Spring, and someone forgot to tell the sky. In the morning, says the weatherman, the world will turn to slush. And if we are truly blessed, all our sins will be washed away. Outside the snow sulks in great mounds where the plows have pushed it aside. Hard ice falls on three-inch shoots and tufts of new grass. We stay up late, and sit by the window together, and wait for the rains that do not come. [...]
I have a love/hate relationship with Neil Young . While I've always loved his early work, both solo and with CSNY, as my ears and his voice age, I find it harder to listen to that infamous whine for more than a few minutes at a time. But ever since I wore a used copy of his incredible, confessional album Harvest down to the groove one mopey adolescent summer, I have had nothing but admiration for Neil Young's ability to pen poetic yet straightforward songs which give voice to the plight of the [...]
No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. It saddens me how much Dr. King's I Have A Dream speech continues to resonate today. Sad, too, that so much of the rising generation thinks of today as just another day off. May these few still, small, unsatisfied voices in the wilderness remind us of how far we have come -- and how far we have yet [...]
Hope no one minds an early "Sunday" post this week; my brother and his wife are on their way in from Brooklyn for the long weekend, and I don't get to see them as often as I'd like. I'll have a short post up for Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, if I can; in the meantime, enjoy today's feature on "American Primitive" folkartist Gillian Welch and her partner David Rawlings, the tenth post in our popular Covered in Folk series, where we pay tribute to the songwriting talents of a single artist. [...]
Raising Jewnitarian children means working hard to balance the outer culture's overabundance of Christmas music with alternative seasonal sounds. This is sometimes harder than it sounds, especially when it comes to covers. Though there have been a few originals over the years that would fit the category, most notably a recent spate of Hannukah music from the fringes of the indierock world, it's harder for these songs to enter the canon, driven as it is by the tick and tinsel of gift-giving and public holiday display in a predominantly Christian culture. In some ways, [...]
A my, Hailey, and I went up to Ravinia this weekend to catch a rare Chicago performance from our favorite children's artist Elizabeth Mitchell . She performed songs from all three of her albums including many from her latest, You Are My Little Bird . For those that don't know, she (along with her husband Dan) are both members of the superb indie-pop band Ida when they aren't being parents and singing kids songs. Elizabeth performed a few songs with a full band, but was mainly accompanied on stage by Dan and their daughter [...]
1. Illinois - Alone Again - This shifty little number is right at home with a lot of the best indie rock of recent memory. Catchy, hooky, punchy, bumpbumpbumpy. [from What the Hell Do I Know? | buy ] 2. Ghoststories - Secret Life of the Union, Pt 1 - I like how this one builds from whispery spidery webs to a nice little snare-driven crescendo. It reminds me of the new Cloud Cult record, but slightly less weird. Cool album art, too. [from Quixoticism | [...]
Elizabeth Mitchell - "Three Little Birds" This is a song for kids. As I don't know any kids or understand what they like, I have no way of evaluating how successful it is at achieving its intended purpose. For this adult, the cutesiness of the kid's voice is a little grating at first, but then takes on a very different dimension halfway through the song. At 1:05, when the Hammond organ reggae opens up into a strummed family folk, the parents and the kid start into a call and response. Only at this point does one begin to hear how [...]
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