
Another Wild Weekend has started on the good foot, as I just bought me a ticket to see Patti Smith play an acoustic gig in an Amsterdam church in June. I'm cool, so on to the music posthaste. Edition #56 brings you brand new sounds by the Futurebirds and Yuck, and oldies to treasure courtesy of Son House and Vera Hall. Have a wild one. Let's warm up with a track from one of the finest roots reggae albums known to man: In The Light ('77) by Horace [...]

Here are two very different songs for you. The first is a pretty recent rap song that got some heavy rotation over the summer. When I read that NaS and Damien Marley had put together an album I was tripping. NaS is one of the best East Coast rappers out there, and the fact that he was married to Kelis for two years (one of my favourite R&B/pop singers) only makes him that much cooler. The fact that the guy who wrote Illmatic and the most talented son of Bob Marley were releasing a record together was (literally) music to [...]

Creo que fue un pintor surrealista de principios del siglo pasado el que dijo "El hombre no inventa nada, está todo ahí". Qué sería del arte -en cualquiera de sus expresiones- si no fuera por el trabajo que le ha antecedido. Por eso, en este tercer Jueves de Safari, vamos a explorar el mundo del sampleo, esas bases musicales que uno oye cantar hoy, con la extraña sensación de haber escuchado esa melodía en otra parte, en otro tiempo. Una selección de notables samples, que incluso han llegado [...]

Vera Hall - Trouble So Hard (1959) I've always wondered what would all these musicians from 50 years ago or more have thought if they'd knew that their recordings would still be heard in the 21st century, studied by scholars in universities in the whole world. So imagine Vera Hall (see picture below), wife of a coal miner from Livingston, Alabama, recorded by Lomax fifty years ago, learning she sung on an international smash hit in 1999... So here we go gain [...]

Vera Hall is sampled here in Santic's version of Troubled so Hard . I think this is another example of the influence of gospel blues music on other forms of music. Many who are not familiar with the orgins of modern forms of music do not understand the debt that is owed to those who came before. As an example of this, you can find many covers of Troubled so Hard on YouTube, but almost none of them mention MS. Hall or her contribution. I also wrote a post about Moby's sample [...]

Natural blues - Moby According to Wikipedia "Natural Blues" is a 2000 single by the musician Moby. It was originally released in 1999 in his album Play. It is essentially a retitled remix of the originally a cappella song "Trouble So Hard" by American folk singer Vera Hall and her cousin Dock Reed. "Trouble So Hard" can be found on Alan Lomax's "Sounds of the South: A Musical Journey From the Georgia Sea Islands to the Mississippi Delta" disc 1, track 8. It was first released in the UK, where it peaked at number [...]

I guess all of us have been thinking about hard times lately. It's unavoidable when every headline and every bulletin keeps reminding us of our collective predicament. Still, despite this, I find a certain solace in looking back over history to times of great upheaval. It helps me to put things into perspective. And in doing so, it's interesting to see how people have dealt with hardships and adversity through music. I am, of course, leaving out some obvious choices, but hear are a few tunes that resonated with me. Marvin Gaye [...]

mp3: Bill Landford & The Landfordaires - Run On For A Long Time mp3: Vera Hall - Trouble So Hard mp3: Bessie Jones - Sometimes mp3: Boy Blue & Willie Jones with Joe Lee - Joe Lee's Rock mp3: Willie Hutch - Hospital Prelude of Love Theme mp3: Spoonie Gee - Love Rap mp3: Incredible Bongo Band - Apache Today, for your downloading pleasure, some of the songs Moby sampled to make his multi-million selling [...]
Who stole the booty indeed! A cracking bluesy tune, from the album 'Drew Missisippi'. Brought to you by the great Boo Boo Davis on the Black & Tan label from the Netherlands. The blues with a big beat that will have your head bopping like you were hip-hopping away. Nice one sir-a great testament to your musical tastes and talents. Artist: Boo Boo Davis Tune: Who Stole The Booty? Album: Drew Missisippi Download 03_who_stole_the_booty.mp3 Buy tune here Buy albums here [...]
This month is just flying by, isn't it? It seems like just yesterday that I had all my money in my bank account and my sanity intact. The holiday season seems to deplete those resources faster than my 6 year old nephew changes hobbies (making gift buying that much more of a nightmare. . . "Do you still like superheroes? Dinosaurs? Baseball?"). There's no question that Christmas is my favorite holiday, but there are still so many things that bother me. I'm not going to go into them here, because when it comes to [...]