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| 25 new of 154 responses total. |
krj
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response 37 of 154:
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Apr 25 21:06 UTC 2002 |
Making notes for Mickey and myself:
Two interesting tracks from Monday's "Late Junction" can now be
identified, now that the tardy playlists are up.
James Yorkston and the Athletes play "The Lang Toun," a quite long,
guitar-heavy kinda folk rock thing sorta kinda. Unfortunately
this song only seems to exist as a 10" vinyl single, and the
amazon.co.uk blurb on Yorkston's coming album expresses disappointment
that the song is not part of the album. On the label Domino Records.
There was also a bagpipe/african percussion thing from Jimi McRae,
alias Jimi the Piper, whose album is available from MusicScotland.com.
-----
Today's "Travelling Folk" show (host Archie Fisher) was from the
Shetland Folk Festival and contained a bounty of yummy stuff.
Mickey tells me I missed some nice stuff by Karine Polwart before
I could tune in. I heard yet another track I liked by Mary Gauthier;
her promo stuff has really put me off, but I have now really liked
two songs of hers which I have heard on the BBC.
Dan Crary and Beppe Gambetta are doing some flatpicking wizardry;
alas, I am not sure that the song I liked the best, "Nashville Blues,"
has been recorded by them. It's originally by the Delmore Brothers.
There was a nice version of "The Silkie" by a new band, Fine Friday,
whose album "Gone Dancin'" is due out imminently, and I heard yet
another tasty track by Nancy Kerr & James Fagen, and I am just
gonna run out and get that one. Tonight.
Radio Scotland still hadn't fixed the channel balance problem,
daggone it. Left channel was very weak on both of the shows
we listened to this week. We sent them e-mail today.
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micklpkl
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response 38 of 154:
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Apr 28 18:05 UTC 2002 |
I listened to TRAVELLING FOLK again, twice --- once on the Saturday
rebroadcast (still balance issues) and once as I was editing the
recording I'd made. It was a super show, I thought.
One thing Ken might not have heard was an a capella number by Bill
Jones, and an instrumental guitar piece by Tony McManus --- both on the
schedule for the Orkney Folk Festival, which Archie was flogging since
he's also performing. :) 23-26 May 2002
The Karine Polwart song was with Malinky, but was a song of her own
composition, "The Dreadful End of Marianna for Sorcery" ... rather
beautiful, in that haunting Scottish way. I think I need to hear more
from Malinky.
The Dan Crary / Gambetta number that I liked best was the second song
played in the first hour, "Thunderation." ... also "Mozart in Hell" was
a crackin little number (as they say ... lol). Who were the Delmore
Bros.? Crary & Gambetta had a really funny conversation with Archie
Fisher, in the second hour, that had me crackin up when I listened on
headphones and could pay attention to the accents.
The live guests in the first hour were the new Shetland trio Milladen.
They played a couple of good sets of tunes. The guitarist (name
escaping me) is evidently an auld acquaintance of Archie's, having
played with the group Hom Bru for some 25 years.
I didn't get pulled in much by Mary Gauthier, I guess. However, the
artist in the line-up right after her was *amazing* ... Tony Reidy, a
poet from County Mayo, recently turned songwriter, sang an original
song called "Draiodoir Dubh" --- this was simple, but with a lot of
depth. The refrain, "I was a boy, but I was growing / Lost the magic in
the knowing..." still echoes in my mind. It's growing on me, and I'm
gonna have to find his self-produced album, THE COLDEST DAY IN WINTER.
So what are your impressions of the Nancy Kerr & James Fagan CD, Ken? I
really loved that version of "Dance To Your Daddy" mixed with something
called "The Flaming Drones" ... I would enjoy hearing your impressions
of the rest of the disc, whenever you get around to it. :)
I will be ordering the Fine Friday disc, myself. That version of "The
Selkie" was wonderful, and seeing as I'm becoming a collector of that
song, I must own it. The first verse is sung unlike any other recorded
version I've heard. I do think it's one of the alternate versions
written in the _Children of the Sea_ book, though. So ... the guy in
Fine Friday is Chris Drever, who is Ivan Drever's (of Wolfstone) son, I
guess? A solo track by Ivan Drever preceded "The Selkie," one off his
THE ORKNEY YEARS CD.
Great show, indeed.
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dbratman
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response 39 of 154:
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Apr 29 18:13 UTC 2002 |
Unfortunately when I think of the Orkneys and music, what pops up in my
mind is Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.
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micklpkl
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response 40 of 154:
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Apr 29 18:49 UTC 2002 |
I'll have to look that up, since I have no idea who you're talking about. :)
One thing that kept me wondering, when listening to Archie Fisher talking
about musicians from Orkney, was the word "Orkadian." To my ears, this sounded
like "Arcadian" and it took me several listens to figure out what was meant
by this word. :-)
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dbratman
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response 41 of 154:
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May 2 00:07 UTC 2002 |
Sir Max, as he's known for short, is perhaps the leading living British
composer of what we may, for lack of a better term, call classical
music. I attended the US premiere of his Eighth Symphony a couple
months ago. He's lived in the Orkneys for many years, and incorporates
Orkneyan and Scottish references into his music: one of his best-known
works is "An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise", with a solo part for
highland bagpipe.
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krj
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response 42 of 154:
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May 2 21:58 UTC 2002 |
I blew off the "Travelling Folk" show on Radio Scotland today
in favor of a leisurely lunch with Steve Andre at a new Thai
restaurant. I'm feeling overwhelmed with music right now anyway,
and Radio Scotland still hasn't fixed the channel balance problem.
I did listen in to the last 45 minutes, where they previewed and
mostly panned the upcoming Blue Murder album. Poo, I liked all
the tracks they played from it. (The first Travelling Folk show
of the month is the Album Review show.)
Blue Murder has been an occasional British folk project for years,
but no albums have ever been released until now.
It's a folk acapella supergroup: originally it was
The Watersons + Swan Arcade, but mortality and retirements
have changed it somewhat so it is now most of the Watersons
family -- Martin Carthy, Norma Waterson, Eliza Carthy, and
Norma's brother Mike Waterson -- plus Coope Boyes & Simpson
(Jim Boyes was in Swan Arcade).
Radio 3's "Late Junction" show was delayed almost an hour tonight
by a feature documentary, so I went cruising around and found
the legendary John Peel show on Radio 1. Actually had some rock
music I found interesting; one band was Samurai Seven, and another,
all instrumental, was Difficult Proof of UFOs (I think).
Peel's show conflicts pretty directly with Late Junction --
Peel is on Radio 1 Tues-Wed-Thurs 2200-0000 UK time.
Argh.
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krj
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response 43 of 154:
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May 4 05:31 UTC 2002 |
Andy Kershaw's Friday show contained a couple of delights, two of
which are sending me rushing an order out to Amazon if I can't
find the CDs downtown this weekend.
The show opened with a pounding track from Rachid Taha's recent
live album. I've heard a bit of Algerian Rai before and liked it,
but I hadn't heard much recently, except for some Khaled on another
BBC show which piqued my interest. This track was great; chanting
call and response, thundering drumming, an electric guitar, and it all
goes on for about ten minutes. I've played my recording of this about
nine times in the last seven hours. Wow.
Second wonderful track was by Cornershop, a very 70's-rock sounding
track called "Lessons Learned From Rocky I to Rocky III."
Cornershop has been a problem band for me; I loved the single
"Brimful of Asha" but didn't like anything else I heard from that
previous album. (Cornershop are scheduled to be live-in-studio
on Kershaw's show next week, 5:15 Eastern time on
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3 )
And there was yet another track from Mary Gauthier's album, New Orleans
folkie who, from her press material, I had expected to intensely dislike.
This is the third time I've liked a Gauthier track on a BBC show.
Filling out the rest of the show: a couple of blues songs; an Irish
accordion instrumental from Sharon Shannon; a Joni Mitchell song from
The Band's "The Last Waltz"; 10,000 Maniacs. The touted centerpiece
of the show, a 30 minute set recorded in concert by Oliver Mtuzudki,
left me cold, possibly because of the sub-par recording quality.
I vaguely remember liking Mtuzudki's previous CD.
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mcnally
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response 44 of 154:
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May 5 02:20 UTC 2002 |
Speaking of "The Last Waltz" -- I'm guessing that there's some sort
of anniversary re-release thing going on, as a theater in Seattle's
U District was showing it last week and it looked like probably a
new print. Definitely worth catching.
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krj
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response 45 of 154:
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May 5 03:47 UTC 2002 |
Yup, rerelease of the film; the soundtrack album recompiled into a
4-CD set adding 24 songs from the original 3-LP release;
and I think the DVD comes out this week, or thereabouts.
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krj
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response 46 of 154:
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May 8 19:48 UTC 2002 |
Right now, Mike Harding (BBC Radio 2 folk show) is hosting a guest
appearance by Tim Eriksen, of the American band Cordelia's Dad.
("There aren't many people who have worked with Kurt Cobain and Doc
Watson," said Harding, though I think he has Cobain confused with
Steve Albini, who produced the most recent Cordelia's Dad album.)
Tim says there will be a rock Cordelia's Dad album out in the spring;
guess I need to go look at the website. I've written at length
about Cordelia's Dad before; they have veered wildly between
punk-influenced rock and militantly trad folk over the last 15 years.
And with the "O Brother" mini-craze in American roots music,
Cordelia's Dad picks *now* to come out with a rock album.
Timing, guys, timing... :/
Yesterday's Celtic Connections show was pretty good, though Radio
Scotland has *still* not fixed the channel balance problem, grrrr.
The live session was by the Finlay MacDonald Band; MacDonald is a
bagpiper who plays with a guitarist and a drummer; some of the
tracks were very rock-sounding while others stuck more closely to
the Scottish military pipe band tradition.
Mary Ann Kennedy, the host, also played a track from the new
Baka Beyond CD; the song is sung in Gaelic and Mary Ann had an
entertaining rant about how bad the Gaelic pronounciation was.
(She did say you should get the CD anyway if you aren't a native
speaker.) Also played was a new track from the flute-based band
Flook.
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krj
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response 47 of 154:
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May 9 20:13 UTC 2002 |
And Flook is getting the BBC hype treatment, because they were
on today's "Travelling Folk" show with a concert set, maybe
five-six songs? Next week's show promises a concert set by
The Poozies, which is tremendously exciting for me: this is the
first sighting of the Poozies since band member Patsy Seddon's
husband died last year (Davy Steele, of a brain tumor), and
the first chance I've had to hear the band since Elidh Shaw replaced
Kate Rusby.
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micklpkl
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response 48 of 154:
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May 10 01:21 UTC 2002 |
Cool news about The Poozies! I wish I could've caught the show today with
Flook, too. (I heard three songs by them on the Live Sessions page of the
Celtic Roots section of the BBC Scotland website and really enjoyed all of
it)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/musicscotland/celticroots/
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krj
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response 49 of 154:
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May 10 20:22 UTC 2002 |
The BBC reported to me that they found a busted sound card in the
PC which encodes the Radio Scotland feed for Real Audio.
They replaced it, and the channel balance problem is now fixed.
Yay!
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scott
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response 50 of 154:
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May 10 23:10 UTC 2002 |
(for a moment, before I read the entire paragraph, I thought BBC had found
a defective sound card in Ken's PC!)
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krj
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response 51 of 154:
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May 14 03:46 UTC 2002 |
"Late Junction" is featuring the music of Chris Wood this week.
Wood is a fiddler who played in the earlier, folkier incarnations
of the Oyster Band, and who these days plays mostly with
Andy Cutting (Cutting of the bands 1651 and Fernhill).
Tonight's best track was from a collaboration album with Martin
Carthy, which was quite nice. I wonder how much of that album
is instrumental?
Also tonight was a great track from Shine, the new band from Scotland
with Gaelic singer Alyth McCormack, harp player Mary MacMaster from the
Poozies, and another harpist who I don't know. McCormack is everywhere,
it seems, with two bands and solo work. Looks like the cd is
actually out now.
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dbratman
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response 52 of 154:
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May 14 16:49 UTC 2002 |
I vaguely remember Chris Wood from the very short period in which I was
paying attention to the Oyster Band.
When you say "earlier, folkier incarnations," what periods are you
distinguishing here? I ask because of the extremely confusing
discussion of Clannad some time back, in which my general references
to "early Clannad" were taken by others to mean later periods, because
they were apparently completely unaware of the existence of the period
I was referring to.
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krj
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response 53 of 154:
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May 14 17:07 UTC 2002 |
I'm sure that Chris Wood was a member of the Oyster Band for
the album LIE BACK AND THINK OF ENGLAND (3rd album, 1983) and he
was gone by LIBERTY HALL (5th album, 1985). If I wasn't so lazy I'd
go punch up Jim Love's discography of the band to find out when he
joined and when he left, but...
Today's Celtic Connections set includes a concert set & chat with
Karen Matheson, of Capercaille, who is now flogging a new solo album.
The tracks the BBC has played from this new album have been among the
most boring things I've heard on a BBC folk show. Bleah. At least
the stream will be in properly balanced stereo today, so I can be bored
in correct symmetry.
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krj
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response 54 of 154:
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May 14 19:31 UTC 2002 |
((... and the first hour of Celtic Connections was outstanding --
and Karen Matheson's set, in the second hour, is less boring than
I was expecting, though I still wouldn't spend money on her stuff
again.))
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krj
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response 55 of 154:
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May 16 19:32 UTC 2002 |
Well rats and damnation. One of the most important BBC shows for me
was going to be the Poozies concert broadcast on Travelling Folk.
But the source took some sort of hard failure in the middle of the
session; attempts to restart Real Audio got a "URL not found" at
the Radio Scotland address for about five minutes. Argh argh argh.
The other listener in our #bbcradio channel had the same failure.
They do repeat the show on Saturday night, but I don't have good
bandwidth at home.
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krj
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response 56 of 154:
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May 16 21:03 UTC 2002 |
I should mention two more BBC Radio Scotland programs. Iain Anderson's
new show comes on at 4 pm Eastern M-F (I think) and focuses on
singer-songwriters. And, on Friday, there's a show called
"Brand New Opry" with some fun country music.
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mcnally
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response 57 of 154:
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May 19 16:45 UTC 2002 |
I was going to ask whether this was the same Chris Wood who played
in Traffic but then I realized that he's been dead since the early
80s..
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micklpkl
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response 58 of 154:
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May 19 20:09 UTC 2002 |
Ken, in resp:37 we were gushing about the Dan Crary & Beppe Gambetta
collaboration --- did you ever find the name of their album? Just curious.
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krj
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response 59 of 154:
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May 20 02:59 UTC 2002 |
The one album they've done so far is "Synergia!", which seems to be a
repackaging of an album previously called "Live On Tour 2000".
It includes most or all of the pieces they played in the Travelling Folk
Shetland Festival session, including "Nashville Blues" and "Mozart
In Hell." The concert banter goes on a bit too long, and it really
grates on me when Crary calls Gambetta "Spaghetti Man," which he does
at least twice.
Gambetta has a show at the Ark in early June; dunno if I'll get to go,
because the date will be in the crazed few days before we shove Leslie
out the door for her summer music program.
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micklpkl
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response 60 of 154:
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May 20 16:54 UTC 2002 |
Well, I missed the rebroadcast of Travelling Folk on Saturday --- I'm
just no good at remembering the BBC on the weekends, I guess.
Just thought I'd say a few words about Andy Kershaw's programme on 17
May, since I just finished playing the recording I made. This was the
show featuring the session with Rachid Taha, and although I enjoyed
that stuff, it really didn't strike me as essential.
OTOH ... the second song was by another Algerian, and it's completely
wonderful --- the playlist calls her Souad Massi, and her CD is on
Island, called RAOUI... I gotta remember to look for this one, as it
hits a sweet spot for me. When I heard her sing the first line, I was
hooked.
Another fun song was an old one by Henry "Ragtime" Thomas
called "railroad song" which was nothing but the railroad timetable
from Fort Worth, Texas to Chicago, Illinois ... all the stops in
between were sung, with guitar and homemade pan pipe accompaniment. :)
The last surprise I got was hearing Brian Eno's song "By This River"
which I've loved since first hearing it, back in the '80's. Evidently,
it appears on the soundtrack to *Y Tu Mama, Tambien*
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krj
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response 61 of 154:
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May 20 17:47 UTC 2002 |
Souad Massi has been getting a lot of press in Folk Roots magazine,
though I don't think I've heard her yet. As I mentioned, I ended
up skipping out on the Kershaw show Friday due to a date with my
wife -- first Kershaw show I've missed in two months.
Thanks for the report on what I missed!
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