Music
-
The Appalachians
I just finished watching The Appalachians on PBS. On the whole, it was good, but had a few glaring flaws namely:
- Why was it funded by the Department of Veteran’s Affairs and NASA?
- The failure to draw the conclusion that successful unionization was the cause of the increased wages for the coal miners, hence the increased mechanization (and safety) of the mines, and also the drop in the people needed to work the mines. The producers treated these as unrelated events.
- No music past the Carter Family, which is quite notable since there is much footage of Clarence Ashley and Doc Watson available.
- No mention of traits that carried over from Scotland and Ireland, namely a desire to be on the far edge of society (and I’m sure many others, such as whiskey making) Instead they concentrated just on the music as the only carryover. While important, it was hardly the whole thing.
- No mention of bluegrass music; they stop at string bands.
- They omit the details of the modification of the banjo over time. Originally it was a four sting instrument made from gourds. It evolved into a 5 string instrument made from cats, and now leather. They present it as coming into existence fully formed as a 5 stringed instrument. It’s an interesting progression and on that stuck out by it’s absense.
- And most importantly, they omit the importance of the cultural factors and the terrain in explaining the hardness of their lives. They wanted their independence at any cost, and living on land inhospitable to mankind was the price they paid.
-
Telluride
I have now been downloading the Telluride bluegrass festival (a legal download) for a day and a half now. It’s a legal download off of BluegrassBox.com. I’m surprised that someone offered it in it’s entirety this way.
-
An Evening at Blind Willie’s
Where surprisingly few photos turned out that well. Here is one.
-
The Boo Hoo Ramblers
I saw the Boo Hoo Ramblers at Blind Willies’ last night and they’re still my favorite new (to me) band. A very tight trio of guitar (periodically banjo) bass and fiddle the Boo Hoo boys perform a well stuctured and very long show. I highly recommend seeing them.
On a side note, the singer/guitarist is Clark Ashton, who also has Commuter Art Gallery, A.K.A. the house with all the large iron statues in the front yard on North Druid Hills road.
-
An interesting evening with PBS
I Tivo’d Speaking Freely on a whim and was amused to see that Charlie Daniels was the guest. I actually learned quite a bit.
- He’s a very good fingerpicker, I thought he only played fiddle
- He was on Nashville Skyline I thought that Norman Blake did all of the guitar work on that.
- He is a very articulate and charming guy, which is not the impression I had of him before. Although after 30 years as an entertainer I shouldn’t be surprised he knows how to work a room.
Then it was on to Unfiltered with Tucker Carlson, which is rapidly becoming my favorite of the talking head shows. At first I was surprised when by the quality, since Crossfire was terrible. It opens with a monologue, then on to 2 rounds of interviews with experts of some kind. The absense of politicians reciting canned responses is quite rereshing.
-
I’m blown away
I searched for Gillian Welch on Google, and discovered CMT bluegrass radio. CMT generally features the dregs of soccer mom country music and is generally best ignored. However, I now see they have a bluegrass station and I’m utterly blown away. It’s absolutely superb, both in audio quality and in selection.
-
Just got back from Blind Willies
Where I saw the lovely and talented combination of Bill Sheffield, Beth Casner, and Roger WhateverHisLastNameIs (featuring Ralph Lutrelle on Dobro) for a lovely evening of country blues. For some reason this cell photo turned out very grainy.
-
In place of a longer thought
Songs for John Doe was an anti-war record put out in the early 40’s by dutiful Soviet apparachiks the Almanac Singers (Pete Seeger, Woodie Guthrie and the rest). For a brief period Stalin and Hitler were allies (and invaded Poland together, a little known fact). This record was their take on the matter, taking the position that America should not go to war for US Steel and JP Morgan, which was of course the only possible reason it would. They changed their tune the moment Operation Barbarossa began.
I have quite a few thoughts about this topic, but in general it would seem that the human condition is indeed timeless. I’ve got a quite a few thoughts on the matter that I’ll get into words over the next week or so.
-
Dreamcatcher Guitar Workshop
The Lawrence Juber workshop at Dreamcatcher was interesting. There’s no denying that he’s an incredibly talented and innovative player, as well as a master of different tunings. He seemed to be playing a bit too much for the guitar nerd (which is his market) and it wound up being something of an acoustic Satriani, which is good, but not to my taste.