Salford is to Manchester pretty much what Leith is to Edinburgh - the scummy port town which is close enough to be pretty much part of the city, but still maintains a separate identity. And indeed Salford may be a good way behind Leith in this aspect, but it too seems to be slowly becoming nicer and nicer, and shrugging off some of its rough image. Salford has a very long way to go I suppose, but there does seem to be a fair bit of decent arty stuff happening down there at the moment, which tends to be how [...]
Salford is to Manchester pretty much what Leith is to Edinburgh - the scummy port town which is close enough to be pretty much part of the city, but still maintains a separate identity. And indeed Salford may be a good way behind Leith in this aspect, but it too seems to be slowly becoming nicer and nicer, and shrugging off some of its rough image. Salford has a very long way to go I suppose, but there does seem to be a fair bit of decent arty stuff happening down there at the moment, which tends to be how [...]
Seeing as we are in Canada for the weekend (dear thieves, the house is not unoccupied, and the lad staying there is a fighty little fucker), I figured some Canadian songs might be in order. I am actually half-Canadian, which is a bit odd, because I've never actually lived there. So it's always weird coming here, to a country I'm technically from, but which I really don't know at all. Given we played Born Gold, Odonis Odonis, Slow Down Molasses and Hot Panda on last week's show , however, I figured that was probably enough new Canadian [...]
I want to thank Fred for the suggestions for today's music. Today is Kate and Bill's birthday. Kate would have turned 66. It's hard to believe it has been two years since her passing.
I absolutely love demos. You should know this by now of course, not least because I have spent the last year endlessly rattling on about music, even if it wasn't a demo in the first place, has been brutally re-engineered to make damn sure it sounds like one. These demos, on the other hand, are just fucking beautiful and need no polish to improve them. Tell My Sister is actually a three CD box set, containing two re-releases and a collection of demos. The re-releases are the McGarrigle's first two albums - lovely in themselves, but not really [...]
This podcast was recorded - not a word of a lie - on a deserted mountaintop in Corsica in the shadow of a ruined castle. Not an especially enormous ruined castle, I'll grant you, but the shadow of a ruined castle nevertheless. I will try and show you this as clearly as possible when I choose the picture for the mp3 tag and all that stuff, but I honestly doubt it will be all that easy. Vast panoramas of rocky mountains don't really come across all that well in photos, particularly when the only device you have with [...]
Kate & Anna McGarrigle From Folk & Blues: An Encyclopedia, St. Martin's Press , 2001 KATE AND ANNA McGARRIGLE Vocal duo, songwriters, guitarists, pianists, accordionists, banjoists. Anna, born Montreal, Quebec, Canada, December 4, 1944. Kate, born Montreal, Quebec, Canada, February 6, 1946. Kate and Anna McGarrigle have not achieved the level of popularity and record sales of contemporary performers such as Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, the Roches, Leonard Cohen, or Maria Muldaur, but they comprise one of the most musically and lyrically gifted sister folk duos originating [...]
Tribute to Kate McGarrigle with Emmylou Harris and Kate's family (Richard Termine) And now for something completely different. My I-P junkie friends ( I say that lovingly!) will hopefully bear with me as I delve into one of my passions, one which has been stilled over the past few years by all the murder and mayhem in the Middle East. I know friends and enemies sometimes remark on my intemperateness in the comment threads here. So I thought it might be the right time to divert from the usual political fare and delve [...]
This is Kate & Anna McGarrigle performing live with a sizable studio audience in Cologne, Germany for WDR (TV) in Studio 'L' back on the 3rd February 1977. As was so often the case when the McGarrigle sisters performed the atmosphere was informal and homely, the singing and musicianship counted for everything as is demonstrated in this recording where the monitors were failing and the band rightly demanded better. That said with difficulty hearing themselves in the mix the actual performance was both stunning and moving. In 1975 the sisters [...]
Alice Blue is a light blue-gray or steel blue color that was favored by Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt and sparked a fashion sensation in the U. S.. The hit song "Alice Blue Gown", inspired by Longworth's signature gown, premiered in the 1919 Broadway musical Irene. The musical was made into a movie in 1940 starring Anna Neagle and Ray Milland.
I've been itching to do this podcast for a while, but only now got my arse in gear to do it: record a podcast straight from vinyl. It's a bit of a nuisance, because I have to switch back and forth from the mic, for the chatty bits, to the USB input for the records... oh never mind, you don't care about my logistical hassles do you. The nice thing about vinyl is that the playlist is not simply going to be an inbox dump of whatever new indie has arrived this week, simply because I don't have [...]
Kate and Anna McGarrigle : Tell My Sister [ purchase ] Happy new year to all of our readers. Before we leave 2010 behind completely, let me say that this week of tributes would not be complete for me without Kate McGarrigle. After the beauty of her music, Kate McGarrigle makes me think of family. That may seem odd, given the fact that her marriage to Loudon Wainwright III famously ended badly. But McGarrigle was at the center of a series of annual Christmas concerts which included her children, Martha and [...]
Black Mesa State Park , OK, 1975 MP3: Kate and Anna McGarrigle: My Town
Tomorr... yesterday I flew out to Paris to see Mrs. Toad, who has been stuck in God Bless America for the last two weeks because of Iceland's seismic indiscipline. We are going to have dinner and walk together and hold hands and generally act like a couple of idiots. More or less like we always do. For a couple of curmudgeonly old fuckers who spend their entire lives swearing at one another, we are a pretty sentimental pair, really. This podcast is mostly based around my Dad and his music. For my early years I was well into [...]
Tomorrow is International Women's Day 2010. It is, according to the event's website , "a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future". The day has been celebrated for over a hundred years and is actually a public holiday in many countries, including China, Russia, Bulgaria and Vietnam. It's not a holiday in Ireland but there are a lot of events taking place to celebrate the day, which you can read about here . The University of Limerick is hosting an International Women's Day Conference entitled "Women & Recession: [...]
Over the last thirty or so years, Burt Britton has worked at The Village Vanguard, The Strand, and The Sheridan Square Book Store. He was then a co-owner of the Upper East Side's Books and Company, which closed in the early 90s. While he worked, he would ask people to draw self-portraits , including Miles Davis, a teenage Kareem Abdul Jabar, Tennesse Williams, and of course, Edward Abbey, whose self-portrait is above. Over 200 were selected for auction this past September, and Abbey's, in the company of people like Normal Mailer, Frank Gherry and Saul [...]
In most corners of the world this weekend, certain sections of the economy are going to receive a welcome boost. In particular, restaurants, florists, confectioners and greeting card companies should see a significant swell in their coffers as a result of all the goodwill generated by Valentine's Day. February 14 has been known as St Valentine's Day since the end of the fifth century and was called after a number of Christian martyrs who were all named Valentine. According to this site , around a billion Valentine's cards are sent around the world every year, with men spending twice [...]
Having rounded up most of the deaths of musicians in 2009, I’ll start to do so monthly as of now. I won’t include everybody who has died. So jazz drummer Ed Thigpen, who died on 13 January at 79, doesn’t feature because I have no music by him. Others won’t feature because their genre is meaningless to me (death metal, for ironic example). And a few will surely slip under my radar, though probably fewer than the numbers ignored by the Grammys. I will include only musicians; songwriters, producers, managers, label bosses and so on are excluded unless they also [...]
Song, by Toad
Keep the Coffee Coming
Tikun Olam: World Music
Beehive Candy
Star Maker Machine
Cold Splinters
A Town Full of Losers
Any Major Dude With Half A Heart
Weekly Mix Vol. I
Duquette Johnston Offers Up Cherry Blossom
Life Is Precious Survival Kit
