Just a note that one of the things that has kept me on Facebook is playing Scrabble however I am not down to two people who will still play me. I know life gets in the way but feel that one day it may not be a reason to come onto Facebook. It's implied that people play lots of other games and I should challenge them but I gave up on Words With Friends when the number of pop ups before playing each game made it impossible (in my opinion for me) to play.
Today I am still not feeling 100% but I have listened to a whole lot of vinyl this morning including the whole of "Go" by Yamash'ta / Winwood / Shrieve a stunning album veering from pure songs to spaced out sounds and I'm not sure who is responsible for what but an amazing journey . That was followed by sides for Lou Reizner's "Tommy" , Joy Division and a few reggae singles. Listening to something you can't program or skip actually becomes more relaxing and satisfying, because you are not thinking of cutting something out or wondering what's next.
#Oktoberfest is continued with another implied drink (wine) in the Long Tall Glasses. This is one of my favourite Leo Sayer songs and much prefer his earlier stuff almost reminding me of something in the style of almost Woody Guthrie. I found a live take in Sydney and I have a feeling this is not how you would expect to see Leo Sayer live, it is rather good.
Well think I will go and rest a little more on this rainy Sunday.
I've just watched the BBC documentary Woody Guthrie: Three Chords and The Truth and it reminded me of a few things and showed me a lot i didn't know about them man. I didn't that Guthrie and his father were racist and his father was involved in or facilitated lynchings. A lot of Guthrie's early writing was awash with racist wording and illustrations until ...
.. on his radio show he played a piece called "Run Nigger Run" , and he used THAT word in the worst ways you could, but then he got a letter from a Negro listenten, an educated guy who said up to the that point the show had been excellent, but by playing that and using THAT word he was showing disrespect and race hate towards African Americans. Guthrie took this on board and vowed never to use THAT word again, he apologised on air and in a letter and became very active in pushing race equality. The problem is race inequality is still with use but Woody showed that people can change when educated by events.
This then brought me on to the fact that though he was struck down by the horrifying Huntingdon's Chorea which destroys the nervous system and therefor you lose control of everything, he had been a prolific writer being inspired by everything. After his death there were over three thousand sets of lyrics to unrecorded songs.
A lot of these are now being picked up by artists examples of which are seen in Billy Bragg and Wilco's "Mermaid Avenue Sessions" and the wonderful take on "Old Man Trump" by Ryan Harvey (with Anne Di Franco and Tom Morello) and he remarked bout the number of songs that Woody had written.
Another remarkable one is "Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" , my favourite take on this is by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez (see here), but this illustrates the absolute disdain the for immigrant workers not even acknowledging them as human and the same is happening today with Trump's Wall and Brexit in the UK.
The documentary is excellent watch it , listen to Woody's songs and if you need to change yourself for the better , do it.
It's the last day of may and the last blog post I did was the 888th on this this blog , I don't know if that's significant but there's probably someone who knows and old saying that means something but it was a precursor to a pretty amazing week for me personally, and that week it still continuing to throw up thing that are good , make to think , and make you enjoy life.
A friend had mentioned to me about a project to record some unrecorded Bob Dylan lyrics from 1967 around the time of the original Basement Tapes when Dylan and the Band were jamming in a basement and the tapes were bootlegged and eventually released. I read a blog review and that inspired me to get the album and to write this post.The copy from Amazon says all about it:
"Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes is a music event 47 years in the making. It's an historic album project from five of music's finest artists -- Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops), Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes), Jim James (My Morning Jacket) and Marcus Mumford (Mumford & Sons) -- in unique collaboration with a 26-year-old Bob Dylan. Produced by project creator T Bone Burnett, the album was recorded in March, 2014 at Capitol Studios in Hollywood, where the artists and Burnett convened for two weeks to write and create music for a treasure trove of long-lost lyrics handwritten by Bob Dylan in 1967 during the period that generated the recording of the legendary Basement Tapes.
The collective completed and recorded dozens of songs, 20 of which appear on this deluxe edition."
T-Bone Burnett has lots of experience delving into the history of Americana , and his work on the soundtrack of the Coen Brothers' "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" (Itself based on Homer's Odyssey) , is testament to that.
It got me thinking of other times people had effectively scramble under artists' beds to dig out and create a contemporary vision of their music . When Jimi Hendrix died , unfinished tapes were taken to produce the albums Crash Landing and Midnight Lightning with varying amounts of success. You couldnt help wondering what would have really happened had Jimi lived.
Country Joe McDonald set the poems of Robert Service to music for his "War War War" album which is similar to what Burnett and Costello have done with Dylan's lyrics. I first heard "The Twins" in the seventies and it's still with me today as we see governments send men to war and abandon them when they return.
Again this is a great example of a contemporary artist, taking worthy material from the past and spreading the word to a brand new audience.
Billy Bragg and Wilco completed recordings of Woody Guthrie's unrecorded lyrics on their Mermaid Avenue triumvirate of albums. Again there is an excellent synopsis this time from the BBC that tells you all about the history of this:
"Thirty years after his death, Woody Guthrie was a distant memory when Mermaid Avenue came out in 1998. But he’s never been far away. You can hear the original Depression troubadour in the dustbowl romanticism and blue-collar unrest of every alt-country band that’s picked up a guitar – and the recession of a new century seems a good time to be remembering that.
Bob Dylan has come almost full-circle, back to the folk and blues with which he first channelled Guthrie as a teenager, and Springsteen has turned out This Land is Your Land at SXSW. But nobody has picked up on Woody as effectively – or unexpectedly – as this transatlantic get-together.
Back in 98, the idea was simple: winnow out the best of the thousands of lyrics Guthrie had written without music, and turn them into songs.
The first album’s success spurred Mermaid Avenue Vol. II in 2000. And this package adds in the unreleased, more-ragged final 17 tracks from the sessions (including some non-Guthrie folk standards), without dimming the charm of the original.
Wilco’s languid, dogged strumming and Jeff Tweedy’s now yearning, now rabble-rousing vocal perfectly capture the Guthrie that has seeped into every crack and crevice of Americana.
But it is Billy Bragg – the one who is an anachronism, really, a banner-waving socialist in a 21st century world of indie brats and pop divas – who guards the soul of this resurrection. The Englishman can spit the word “fascists” with rare contempt, even if few listeners will feel the political charge the word once carried.
But he brings a British folk lyricism, too, that deepens and sweetens the brew.
The words show Woody’s range, from inspired poetry to rhyme-free rambling. But like a time-machine Basement Tapes, the free-flowing musical clamjamfry buoys up the folk icon in a way that makes a virtue out of inconsistency. There are memorable contributions from Natalie Merchant, Eliza Carthy and Corey Harris. And at root, really, it isn’t about musical taste any more than it’s about politics. Bawdy, smart, big-hearted and mischievous, Mermaid Avenue is simply all about a personality that is rich with life.
--Ninian Dunnett "
The Costello / Burnett project is unusual because Dylan is still with us , but it's great that Dylan can hear the results of this. There are many more examples of this sort of thing , but it's good to get your hands on something of this quality. Enjoy your Sunday
..and I've woken up , or rather been woken by an annoying tickly , chesty cough, In an Alan Bennett-esque piece of situationanist observation I'm sure I made myself a LemSip , well Boots own brand equivalent last night , but can't finsd any trace of it, and I'm still wondering whether I imagined it!!
Anyway it's one of those times where it's too early to get up and too late to go back to sleep. There's a thick carpet of snow outside and though it started to melt , it's now freezing , so not driving weather and the roads are very, very quite.
Was listening to an album of protest songs last nightfron the 40's and 50's from the likes of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and many others about the oppression of the average man by a combination of banking and government. It's funny how banks and governments should be there to serve us , but in fact just exploit us. I'm one of the lucky ones in that I am keeping head above water , but lots of people arent so lucky, with fuel and food prices rocketing and wages either staying static or jobs just going and then people expected to take minimum wage jobs.
In yesterdays paper there wasreported a push by the Tory right to curb union power by not allowing strike action unless 50% of the members turn out. Be interesting to apply similar criteria to bills but through Parliament . Nothing gets passed unless 50% of MPs turned up. Can you imagine a company functioning with it's members have such a blatant disregard for their work and responsibilities?
Also yesterday the UK's triple AAA credit rating was downgraded to AA by the banks , who , don't forget put the whole world in this mess AND were bailed out by the governments of the world. George Osborne said that was justification for continuing austerity measures (ie tagetting people on benefits and the pensions of those on minimum wage). Yesterday the Inland Revenue was trumpetting the success of it's anti tax avoidance measures , apparently a Liverpool hairdresser and a Northumbrian Pipe Fitter were the top ones recovering about £20K. Letters of congratulation were probably sent to Amazon , Starbucks and Google. I am not getting at those companies for legally avoiding tax , I'm accusing our governments (and this goes back a long way) for facilitating this: Check this article on tax avoidance (which remember is legal and encouraged and facilitated by goverments all over the world) and here are some telling figures:
1% - Income tax rate reportedly available to members of the legal K2 tax scheme used by Jimmy Carr. Source: The Independent
98 – Number of FTSE 100 companies operating out of tax havens. Source: ActionAid
£25bn
– Estimated annual cost of tax avoidance, according to 2008 research.
£13billion of this is lost to individuals and £12billion to the 700
largest corporations. Source: Tax Research UK and the TUC
10% - Average rate of tax paid by top earners, according to a confidential HMRC study seen by George Osborne. Source: The Telegraph
In 2005, the 54 billionaires in Britain paide less that £15 million in income tax between them. £9 million of that was paid by James Dyson. To put it in perspective it's like me and you paying less than 10p a month on our earnings.
In 2011 only 9 of the 62 owners of apartments in One Hyde Park, London (the world's most expensive block of flats) paid any council tax.
Over 600,000 companies are registered in the British Virgin Islands (populaton < 29K)
In 2009 Exxon posted $19 billion profits and received a $156 million federal tax rebate from the US Government
So you can see goverments and big business are still in cahoots , taking profits for themselves and leaving us to pick up the tab. Anyway it's time to go back to bed now...
Just listening to Ken Bruce on Radio 2 , and a record came on that I knew , and thought a friend of mine Carol would love. I'd heard the record before and the lyrics had a stylish familiarity. The song was London from the album "Don't Stop Singing" by Thea Gilmore . The album is a project in which Thea has taken unused Sandy Denny lyrics and set them to music creating a very beautiful album . Sandy was a wonderful singer and writer and it is amazing that her words can still captivate and amaze , brought to life by the wonderful Thea Gilmore.
On a similar note Woody Guthrie's niece or daughter (sorry about this) found a huge box of her father's / uncle's lyrics and gave them to Billy Bragg and Wilco who recorded the songs , now available in The Complete Mermaid Sessions , breathing life into writings that may otherwise have been lost to us. Both these albums should be in everyone's collections , two absolute gems which I have just ordered,
You can probably even get them on iTunes , Amazon have the hard copy and download options!!
