Music

  • Top 40 Over 40.1: She walked in through the out door

    Emmylou Harris : Coat Of Many Colours (1977) I’ve just finished listening to Wrecking Ball by Emmylou Harris. It’s a phenomenal record. Why have I never heard anyone talk about it? Below the above picture you’ll find a link to an early clip of her covering another underrated songwriter, Dolly Parton. Could it be that…

  • Jumping to Conclusions

    I’ve been listening to some records by Kurt Vile this week.  (Smoke Ring For My Halo, Childish Prodigy, Constant Hitmaker, God Is Saying This to You…)  I first heard his name from an ad on NPR music.  I assumed at the time that it was a play on words referring to the composer Kurt Weil. …

  • Halftime

    Madonna is scheduled to perform shortly after the conclusion of the second quarter of today’s Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants.  I saw Truth or Dare when I was in 8th grade and remember all the controversy surrounding her persona when she first came out, most of which had…

  • Stuck Inside Samsara With the Karmic Blues Again

    I’ve managed to fulfill one of my new year’s resolutions – to start this blog and website.  But I don’t put a lot of stock in the whole new year’s ritual.  If I did, I might be posting “Getting Better” by the Beatles or “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” by Fleetwood Mac, instead of the…

  • Subliminal Messages

    Every once in a while I try and find something weird having to do with my past on the internet as a lark. This is a YouTube video some young women in Prague made of a shopping trip to Ikea, using Free to Go by the Folk Implosion as a soundtrack.  Their conclusion at the…

  • Pick a Bela Bartok

    This week I am listening to a few records by Béla Bartók, (1881-1945,) a composer from Hungary I got interested in after hearing that he influenced my two favorite musicians, Ornette Coleman and John Fahey.  (Check out Ornette’s violin playing on the Town Hall Concert, for example.)  I don’t usually listen to much classical music,…

  • It’s Only Right and Natural

    Following up on the last post about Han Bennik and Peter Brötzmann:  I mentioned that most animal sounds that appear on records are samples.  We used multiple tracks from this disk on the Folk Implosion song Serge – they all have different characteristics.  Both the tracks, and the frogs, I mean.  They remind me of…

  • A Real Misty Mountain Hop

    I’ve been listening to this sehr schöen album called “Schwarzwaldfahrt” repeatedly this week.  It was recorded by two improvisational musicians, Han Bennik (from the Netherlands) and Peter Brötzmann, (from Germany,) in 1977 (I think.)  They loaded up a car full of instruments and recording gear and traveled to record in the middle of the black…

  • Discography

    I found this discography on the web after googling my first tape Stars and Songs.  Why was I looking up my first tape, you might ask?  Because I don’t have a copy of it myself and I was trying to remember all the songs that were on it for a project I’m working on called…