"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and other personal passions with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone. Never had ads, never will.
"The
effect is like a Woodstock snowfall with the defiance of 1970's Self
Portrait: another way of saying his roots are
everywhere."
Perhaps, but from where I'm sitting his visionary talent is nowhere in evidence.
The Chicago Tribune's music critic gives the old man a gentleman's C:
"I'm willing to cut him a break here. Besides, the CD actually isn't
that bad, and in some cases ("Here Comes Santa Claus" for example) is
actually pretty damn hilarious."
Yes, comedy. And everyone keeps saying that Dylan plays it straight, so the joke must be on those of us not hip enough to get it.
"It’s a double shot of straight sentimental corn syrup, and it’s the closest Dylan has come to crooning since Nashville Skyline,
his lovely 1969 country ode to domesticity. The years and cigarettes
have had their way with the man’s larynx, and he can’t match the warm
honeycomb baritone that surprised and confused his fans three decades
ago—frankly, he often comes off as a lunatic warbling carols with
almost terrifying conviction—but nevertheless, his damaged voice is
full of warmth and sweetness. “Although it’s been said many times, many
ways… Merry Christmas to you,” he sings, and he sounds like he means it
more than Mel Torme ever did. For all the world, the record doesn’t
feel like a charity album or a goofball lark or an odd experiment—it
just sounds like the work of a dude who really, really loves Christmas."
Crap. Now I'm the Grinch 'cause I say it's not just the weather outside that's frightful. And I tend to go for screwball novelty recordings, as a rule.
It's not hard to presuppose that Dylan-- who has an entire
encyclopedia, dozens of nonfiction treatises, and at least a handful of
college courses dedicated to parsing his lyrics and intent-- is either
deeply irritated or deeply bemused by his anointment, and is responding
to over-the-top canonization by doing deliberately oddball stuff (see
also: leering at underwear models in a Victoria's Secret commercial).
Even the title-- eerily reminiscent of Kenny Rogers' 1998 turd, Christmas From the Heart--
feels tongue-in-cheek. But maybe that's a trap, too-- maybe, like
zillions of red-blooded, religiously ambiguous American dudes, Bob
Dylan just likes Christmastime and Adriana Lima. And we're stupid for
presuming anything more.
Again with "We are not worthy?" This is embarrassing. Jolly Old St. Bob left his sooty footprints all over the carpet and the critics are in denial.
Why not call it like it is; the man is getting more attention for this "charity offering" than any of his largely irrelevant recordings of the past decade. And I'm not buying it.
I took in back-to-back shows this weekend by Loudon Wainright III and Richard Thompson, who are touring North America together this Fall as "Loud and Rich." This is the first time since my Deadhead days I have followed musicians from one gig to the next, and it afforded me the chance to see how this combo was shaping up and especially to spoil myself by listening to Richard Thompson two nights in a row. I swear, I could happily do that for a week of Sundays, even if he stuck to the same set list. The things he can do with a guitar never fail to astonish.
These two old friends are an intriguing pairing. They both share a
merciless wit, with clear affection for novelty songs and dark humor.
Thompson produced a couple of Wainwright's albums and Loudon has covered some of Thompson's songs. They both have folk roots and they both have maintained a loyal fan base for about 40 years. They clearly get along, and that was particularly evident in some of the songs they did together. Otherwise, they are very different musicians. Wainwright is a
shoot-from-the-hip kind of performer, whereas Thompson has a smoother
delivery, spot on timing and far superior technique. They may have had equal billing, but any other performer with Loudon's skills would have merely been the opening act.
Loud and Rich played the Flynn Theater in Burlington Vermont on October
3rd, and Harvard's Sanders Theater in Cambridge, MA on the 4th. The format of the
tour has Loudon playing for about an hour, to be joined by Thompson for a pair of
songs and then wrapping up with one more on his own. After intermission, Thompson takes the stage for an hour, with Loudon coming back for two encores together (the first Thompson's choice, the second one Loudon's). With the exception of "Down Where the Drunkards Roll" - done as a duet as the first encore on both nights - the other songs they performed together were different each time. The best was a raucous rendition in Cambridge of the R&B classic "Smokey Joe's Cafe", which suited their styles really well, and featured Thompson's over the top delivery of Smokey Joe's warning - in a Scottish brogue, no less - "You better eat up all your beans, boy and clear right on out."
I understand now why restaurant critics make two visits before submitting their reviews, because the Flynn show had some unfortunate "presentation issues", particularly in Loudon's uneven opening set, that were fortunately nowhere in evidence the next night. Anyone, particularly a guitarist who plays his ax as savagely as Wainwright, can break a guitar string. Loudon broke two, without a technician to swap out instruments, and forgot the words to some of his new songs on more than one occasion. Even RT was not immune to whatever bad karma was in the air, as he unintentionally disconnected in the closing bars of 52 Vincent Black Lightning (the horror!). To his credit, Wainwright had his game fully on at the Cambridge show. The first nights of this kind of tour are essentially the shakedown cruise, anyway.
Wainwright had a piano on stage in Burlington and pulled out "Red Guitar" and "Another Song in C", which managed to pull the heartstrings at one moment and dip into self-referential mockery the next. He didn't bring his banjo, alas. He featured a number of songs from his last two albums and some that haven't even made it to disc yet. I admit that since one of these - Recovery - consists of revisiting songs from his back catalog, I was hoping for a few more old chestnuts. "Dead Skunk"? "Swimming Song"? "Clockwork Chartreuse"? No matter. Always alert to topics and trends ripe for exploitation in song, Wainwright has several "for the New Depression", including "Cash For Clunkers", a crowd favorite that Loudon wisely decided to lead off with the second night. Wainwright was game to shuffle his set list from night to night, which bodes well for the tour as he adapts to crowd response.
Thompson gave strong performances on both nights. I was blessed with very close seats in both theaters. The guitarists in the audience - including my wife for the Burlington show - were universally gobsmacked by his picking and fretwork. I've seen him perform live often enough in the last few years to start to notice how even songs that seem to be in regular rotation evolve as he plays, and especially the way he sings them. He positively growls the line "to ride" in 52 Vincent Black Lightning like the pipes of James Adie's motorbike, and the way he ratchets up the vocal crescendos of Crawl Back (Under My Stone) - the closing song of the second set on both nights - left me and everyone else in the hall as delirious as the roiling chords that wail in waves from that guitar like it were a fully loaded Strat instead of acoustic.
Thompson's set during the Flynn Show stuck to a list that included a haunting rendition of "Persuasion" and a foray into the acoustic material from the mid 90's album You? Me? Us?, from which he selected both "Cold Kisses" and (surprisingly) "Woods of Darney". Richard has a new lament in his repertoire to go with three recent losses - with the chorus "A Brother Slips Away" - that I hope makes it into his next album. He did great renditions of "I Wanna See the Bright Lights Tonight" each show, dropping an hilarious aside during the second performance that the original LP featured the misprinted lyric "a couple of drunken knights rolling around on the floor" that would have made ol' Sigmund proud.
RT seems to favor some of his more recent work more than others in performance. He knows that "52 Vincent Black Lightning" is the one song we all must have and very kindly obliges us every time. He featured three songs from "Sweet Warrior" in Burlington that I heard him do last year in Great Barrington: "Johnny's Far Away", "Dad's Gonna Kill Me" and "Sunset Song", which last has the potential to be another audience favorite in the same vein as "Beeswing". However, the songs from his 2005 "all acoustic" Front Parlor Ballads appear destined for obscurity and rarely get an airing.
The second set in Cambridge followed the same list as the night before until the audience started calling out requests. So near the end, with Thompson declaring he was "putty in our hands", he obliged by playing "Bathsheba Smiles", "Beeswing" and "From Galway to Graceland". On this night with things breaking their way and all that good energy in the hall, I would have loved to have heard another song or two with Loud and Rich together. God knows what they would have decided to play next. Maybe something by Plastic Bertrand. Thompson has that covered.
All in all I was pleased to have attended both concerts. A bit of a novelty act, something of an experiment, it was great fun to watch and hear. My cousins in Charlottesville should make every effort to catch Loud and Rich when they roll into town, and RT has a solo gig coming up in Princeton, too, so my kin in Jersey have an appointment to keep.
There are times late at night, especially when the first bottle of red has joined the other dead soldiers in the recycle bin, when I have no end of fun shuffling through the music videos on YouTube. Being something of an aficionado of cover songs, I am easily delighted to find rap on accordion, or brilliant acoustic versions of hard rock classics.
Take, for example, Nirvana's grunge anthem "Smells Like Teen Spirit". For me, it is hard to choose among the Tori Amos, Patti Smith, and Weird Al Yankovich versions (though Weird Al gets major props for his parody of the original video).
So for my enjoyment, if not necessarily for yours, may I suggest the following examples - some good, some..other than that...of covers found on You Tube for Led Zeppelin's: Your Time is Gonna Come:
Acoustic, standard tuning, no lyrics, with (black) dog barking in the background.
By Dredd Zeppelin, 'cause I took my boss's sister to hear them play at the Livingroom in Providence back in 1990 and have never fully recovered.
And then, apropos of nothing: a Japanese ska version of the funk standard "Pass the Peas (like-a we use-to-a say).
Brings back the good old days when I was fronting for the Hiram L. Weinstein All-Star Memorial Funk Project. Before YouTube - good God! - when I got soul (and I'm super Bad).
In a fit of focused cleaning - the sort that fails to declutter the house but puts one portion of it in perfect order - I came upon a cassette I had made for Emily before she was born. The date is March 15, 2000, and if I felt brave or hopeful enough at that stage in Viv's pregnancy, having lost our first child in stillbirth the year before, it must have been around the time of the level 2 ultrasound that showed nothing amiss this time around.
This was in the pre-download, late analog era when people still made tapes of their favorite music to share with their friends. I was a decade out of college (4 years since graduate school), and much of the new music I was exposed to at this time came from tapes sent to me while we were in Africa. I still had my vinyl out, and piles of hissing cassettes, and it was here that I went to make a tape for my baby, anticipating sharing a life of song and music from the first day onward. Both Emily and Elias love music and are growing up in a family that sings.
So what did I put on this tape for my unborn daughter? The title is also the name of an improvised composition by my old friends Theo and Charlie, part of a jam session from our boarding school days when Charlie had an in room suspension for some last minute holiday schnapps consumption on the way back to school (as did I, but that is not part of this story). Some of the music might be construed as lullabies, but certainly not all for there is also Morphine's "You Look Like Rain" and Hendrix doing "The Wind Cried Mary".
Loudon Wainwright III opened the 1st set with "Swimming Song" , with "B-Side" on the other side, naturally. Bob Dylan played "Froggie Went a Courting" and Dianne Ferris covered a soulful "Blackbird ." Nancy Griffith's version of "Boots of Spanish Leather" and the Indigo Girls "Watershed" are the sort of songs I might have sung at bedtime; when Emily was two, she knew all the words to "Rocky Raccoon" thanks to her Daddy's nightly crooning. I slipped in the Cowboy Junkies doing "I'm so Lonesome I Could Cry", and Laura Love doing a raunchy "Clap Hand", but it turns out that Lyle Lovett's "If I had a Boat" has the controversial lyrics that have prompted recent family discussions of what can be sung in place of the delightful line "Kiss my a** I've bought a boat I'm going out to sea." Well, in France they serve their children wine with dinner. I expose mine to Richard Thompson and murder ballads.
The most pleasent rediscovery on this compilation is Elvis Costello's "Clown Strike " from the 1994 album Brutal Youth. The lyrics are marvelously inventive:
And it's pandemonium For the humble and the mighty You don't have to tumble for me Even a clown knows when to strike
Tell me what you want of me Or are you terrified of failure? You put on a superstitious face Behind all this paraphernalia We're not living in a masquerade Where you only have three wishes It isn't easy to see In a lifetime of mistaken kisses
But there's one thing that I had to keep inside Because I was shaking Why don't you get some pride There was a clown strike And the clowns threw down their tools But you don't have to play so hard And I'm nobody's fool You don't have to go so far 'Cause I love you as you are
Going back to the vaults, 9 years and a few months more, I remember the man I was then and the father I hoped to be. Pandemonium for the humble and the mighty, but sweet as summer wine.
This is, hands down, the concert tour you do not want to miss this year.
"Richard Thompson and Loudon Wainwright III, long time friends and collaborators commence their first ever North American tour together for the 2009 / 2010 season. While they have performed and recorded together intermittently over the years, this will be their first full scale North American tour together. Be prepared for a once in a lifetime concert event when they join forces on the same bill."
2 October Lebanon, NH - Opera House 3 October Burlington, VT - Flynn Center 4 October Cambridge, MA - Sanders Theatre 8 October Tarrytown, NY - Tarrytown Music Hall 9 October Red Bank, NJ - Count Basie Theatre 10 October Westhampton Beach, NY - Westhampton Beach PAC 12 October Wilmington, DE - Grand Opera House 13 October Towson, MD - Kraushaar Auditorium...
I hope to be in at the Flynn and am conspiring to fit Cambridge in as well.
I has music in mind when I wrote this week's Nature Notes article for the Lakeville Journal, readable here with free registration.
"... What grace notes are lost if they leave us? Do our woodlands remember the chestnut snows of summer that crowned their canopies with creamy white flowers? Is the drumming ground of the extinct heath hen, or the river without Atlantic salmon, diminished by their absence? Or is this symphony played on a scale far beyond our span of years? With no one left to hear the sound, to whom will it matter when a tree falls in some future forest?"
The unseasonably warm weather we have experienced here in the Litchfield Hills over the last few days has really given a kick start to Spring. Many of the bulbs, ephemeral wildflowers and trees are leafing out and bursting into bloom at least 10 days ahead of where they were last year at this time. Temperatures are now more in line, with chilly nights and days in the low 60s, but already one's thoughts turn to spaded earth and seedlings in soil thta may yet experience a hard frost before it is safe for summer garden glories like tomatoes and basil that I await with great pleasure.
I can smell the smoke of someone burning brush through my open office window. These early Spring days are precisely the wrong time to spark up a burn pile, with tinder dry lands and strong winds ready to carry embers and fan the flames. It is a good time, however to burn invasive barberry, which has just expended its energy reserves in a first flush of green and will have a hard time bouncing back from a good scorching.
Tomorrow is Mayday and this weekend is therefore the one time of the year when the women of Bryn Mawr College revel in white. I have fond memories of maypoles on the green, strawberries and cream for breakfast and frolics on the grass from my years at Haverford and as a "Bryn Man".
"Pray dainty nymphs, and spake / Shall we play barley break? fa la la la la..."
Who wouldn't trade their work-a-day attire for straw hats and morris bells at such a time? It's good to be the goat-footed balloon man...
I'm not altogether sure I want to know what it says about me that on a gorgeous day without a cloud in the sky, I have murder ballads running through my head. Yesterday's electric folk post may have gotten me started, and the truth is that some very fine music has been made that is steeped in lyric gore. This is especially true of those traditional songs that come from northern Europe, and those bluidy Scots and Scandis whose folk songs often tell of vengeful revenants and cruel mothers. Cleaned up and taken out in polite company, such stuff went gold for the Kingston Trio and lauched the modern folk movement.
There are many songs, not strictly in folk ballad form, which could rightly fall in the genre. Some of them are elevated to exquisite heights by one particular performance. Others are simply classic no matter who does them.
Here are my picks for the top Ten Murder Ballads, based on one or the other of these criteria. No doubt you could add a few of your own, as indeed I struggled mightily over which would make the cut (and cleverly stretched to fit in an eleventh, as you shall see).
"Down By The River" Neil Young This one often gets drawn out into an extended jam in live performance.
Be on my side I'll be on your side There is no reason for you to hide It's so hard staying here all alone You could be taking me for a ride She could drag me over the rainbow Send me away...
"Hey Joe" The Jimmi Hendrix Experience made it a classic.
I'm goin' way down south, way down south Way down to Mexico way, yeah I'm goin' way down south, way down south, baby Way down where I can be free
Ain't no one gonna mess with me there, baby Ain't no hang-man gonna He ain't gonna put a rope, a rope around me, yeah
"Crazy Man Michael" Dave Swarbrick/Richard Thompson. Richard wrote the lyrics for a traditional tune that was later replaced by a new one of Dave's composing.
O where is the raven that I struck down dead And here did lie on the ground o I see that my true love with a wound so red Where her lover’s heart it did pound o
"Matty Groves", traditional, arranged by Fairport Convention: A lady seduces her servant, and taunts her husband who slays them both:
"A grave, a grave!'' Lord Darnell cried, "to put these lovers in. But bury my lady at the top for she was of noble kin."
"Pretty Polly" various. Joan Baez did a classic rendition, and another by Hilary Burhan was used in the closing credits of an episode of HBO's "Deadwood". It is related to many older ballads, including Childe #90, and the best melange of these is another arrangement by Broadside Electric entitled Jellon Grame:
"Lie you there, oh father dear My mother's curse to rue The place that she lies buried in Is far too good for you."
"Stagger Lee" various. Take your pick: Ma Rainey, Mississippi John Hurt, Duke Ellington, Taj Mahal, the Grateful Dead...
"Tom Dooley " The Kingston Trio. The one that got the ball rolling in the late 1950s. My aunt learned this song while in college around this time and it is a standard at family sing alongs.
"Bruton Town" various artists. I am partial to the 1972 Sandy Denny version, as wel as that by Broadside Electric on their album "With Teeth":
"Now welcome home, my dear young brothers, Our serving man, is he behind?" "We've left him where we've been a-hunting, "We've left him where no man can find."
"Childe Owlet": Childe #291 performed by Steeleye Span. This one breaks all the rules. A man is condemned by false witness to be torn apart by horses because he spurns the advances of his kinsman's wife, who gets away with it.
Lady Erskine sits intae her bower A-sowing a silken seam A bonny shirt for Child Owlet As he goes out and in His face was fair, long was his hair She's called him to come near “Oh, you must cuckold Lord Ronald For all his lands and gear.”
"Where the Wild Roses Grow" Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, from an album of nothing but Murder Ballads:
On the third day he took me to the river He showed me the roses and we kissed And the last thing I heard was a muttered word As he stood smiling above me with a rock in his fist
Electric folk is one of those musical genres that either rocks your boat or leaves you cold. Neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring, it does not conform to any neat musical category - which, of course, is part of its appeal. Ever since Bob Dylan pulled out the stops and went electric at Newport in '65, old standards have been getting fresh airings with sometimes revolutionary effects.
Consider that paragon of heavy metal bands, the incomparable Led Zepellin, which is often credited for the lengths it has taken blues standards. It should also be acknowledged among the innovators of electric folk. Zepellin III includes the song Gallow's Pole, which they may have discovered as a Leadbelly recording but which is has deep traditional roots.
It is the fourth album, however, that cements the link between Zep and Britain's electric folk pioneers. The Battle of Evermore, in which Jimmy Page picks up an unfamiliar mandolin and frenetically noodles his way into a howling ballad, also features the vocals of Sandy Denny: the only woman to ever get a singing credit on a Led Zepellin album (she got her own symbol on the album sleeve, which from the Zep was quite a hat tip). Robert Plant has a longstanding interest in electric folk, and not just in the Anglo tradition, for he is a staunch supporter of the electric Tuareg band Tinariwen that rocks out in the Mali sands. He also clearly has a sense of humor, being a fan of the marvelously offbeat Dread Zepellin, but I digress.
Sandy Dennis had a seminal influence on the electric folk genre, bringing a repertoire of traditional British and celtic music to her work with the groundbreaking Fairport Convention. Fairport alum Richard Thompson is one of the hardest rocking folkies in the business (if indeed any such label can apply to his fretwork and compositions). Fairport's Cropredy Convention is one of those grand, three day festivals which should be on my list of pilgimages to make, perhaps on the way to Canterbury, before we finally meet on the ledge. Then there is the lesser known but greatly accomplished Broadside Electric, the Philadelphia based elctric folk band which features my college friend Tom Rhoads on guitar and vocals.
One of the things that appeals to me about this music is that it frequently makes use of the Childe Ballads and can therefore be counted on for a good dose of revenge and bad ends. Notable examples can be found in Fairport's Sir Patrick Spens and Matty Groves. Broadside Electric credits Childe Ballads for making their album More Bad News their "second most gory." Who says folk music is all about where all the flowers have gone? Let's have some Daisy Mayhem!
Some folk instruments become completely different beasts when electrified. The fiddle is perhaps formost of these, wailing like a banshee or leaping like St. Elmo's Fire. Folk also allows for unusual time signatures that get an extra lurch when amplified. This was also one of Led Zepellin's fortes, though I'm pretty sure Black Dog, whether or not there is a call and response going on, owes little else to any traditional folk music. One of my favorite Broadside Electric songs - The Gardener - has a nice broken time signature at the climax (and is also a Childe Ballad).
So were the Vandals given the keys to the city? Or would the "folk", ever resourceful and not given to standing on ceremony, have plugged in if they were able? I'm with Duke Ellington, here: "If it sounds good, it IS good!"
One of the central truths of advertising is that sex sells. Another is that words and phrases with perfectly innocent definitions can sound downright pornographic when taken out of context. Just try saying "kumquat" without blushing. The fruit itself is actually extremely sour, not at all what the name would suggest. Accident? I think not.
Or go to a diner and tell the waitress you take it black, like it over easy, and prefer fresh squeezed. There is something very earthy about breakfast at a greasy spoon, and when Flo told Mel on Alice to "kiss my grits" we all knew she wasn't talking about hominy. We can thank the US navy for taking things further downhill with "shit on a shingle" (creamed chipped beef on toast), though the limeys have their own version "on a raft" made with kidneys. And anyone who made it through Ulysses and all that organ meat that Molly Bloom craves without catching the overt sexual references wasn't paying attention.
Any grease monkey knows how to do a lube job, twist a lug nut and what is going on between the master and the slave cylinders. As for pistons and crankshafts, it takes a lot of thrust to get the engine going. I am convinced that the absolutely filthiest song ever to slip past the censors is the Beach Boy's "Little Deuce Coupe", as a sample of the lyrics makes patently obvious:
Just a little deuce coupe with a flat head mill But she'll walk a thunderbird like (she's) its standin still Shes ported and relieved and she's stroked and bored. She'll do a hundred and forty with the top end floored
She's got a competition clutch with the four on the floor And she purrs like a kitten till the lake pipes roar And if that ain't enough to make you flip your lid There's one more thing, I got the pink slip daddy
And comin off the line when the light turns green Well she blows em outta the water like you never seen I get pushed out of shape and its hard to steer When I get rubber in all four gears
Much more clever than The Lemon Song, which has all the subtlety of a ball peen hammer.
Sports metaphors are a slippery slope, especially when inserted in the workplace. That CEO missed an opportunity by neglecting to include ice hockey terms in his inappropriate address. Pressure in the crease, anyone?
Old School Ads, however, are the cream of the crop. As one memorable British 60s advert put it: "Unzip a banana"
My, oh my. What ever happened to Carmen Miranda? I think I'll go have a Snickers. I hear tell it satisfies.
