the Charts

Incredibly Cool Record Players

There was a time you would see these things
absolutely everywhere... especially in the
boudoirs of young men and women still
living at home.

These days, that space is most likely occupied
by a computer, or a TV, or maybe both. It says
something, i think, about the role that music
played in lives back when, and the role it plays
... or doesn't play in those demographics today.

Is it easier to feel nostalgic about these
colourful musical sculptures than it will
be about iPhones in a decade or two?


Maybe there won't even be a need
for nostalgia then...

Maybe there won't be anything 
to be nostalgic about.

*

Who's Roscoe Holcomb?

who's Roscoe Holcomb?


let's start with this...
have you ever heard the phrase
"high, lonesome sound"?

Roscoe is the man that was first described
as having it, by John Cohen

Why was it you stopped playing music for a while?


     They (Baptists) seemed to think it was wrong.  I used
to think it was too.  I get disgusted with it yet, cause I try
and try and it don’t seem I’m doing good at it, and get
disgusted and think sometimes I’ll quit anyway.  I like it
and I don’t like it;  I love to hear it and I love to play sometimes, but after so long a time I get burned out
with it. 
Long as I’m able to work and do, it ain’t so bad – been
used to it all my life.  When I can’t do nothing it worries
me and you don’t feel like playing anymore.

read the rest of this interview
with Mr. Holcomb here:

http://oldtimecrossroads.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/roscoe-holcomb-banjo-guitar-vocals-april-1964-interview-part-one/



learn why John Cohen, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton
(and i) think he's amazing here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_Holcomb

- 30 -

.

Bob Dylan says music "ain't worth nothing anyway'."

Acoustics, they are a-changin',
complains unhappy Dylan

Legend derides 20 years
of 'atrocious' recordings
- including his own

Oliver Burkeman in New York
Thursday August 24, 2006
The Guardian







Forty years ago, at a Manchester concert,
an outraged folk music purist yelled "Judas!"
at Bob Dylan when he put down his acoustic
guitar and plugged in an electric one.

Now, though, it is Dylan's turn to berate
modern music technology: in an interview published this week,
the 65-year-old songwriter dubs modern recordings "atrocious"
and claims no one in the past 20 years has released a record that
has sounded any good.





"You do the best you can, you fight technology
in all kinds of ways, but I don't know anybody
who's made a record that sounds decent in the
past 20 years, really," Dylan tells the novelist
Jonathan Lethem for Rolling Stone magazine.

Responding to claims by record companies and some artists
that illegal downloading starves them of income, he says:
"It was like, 'everybody's gettin' music for free'.

I was like, 'well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway'."







His main criticism of contemporary CDs
is the lack of sound clarity arising when
producers try to make each strand of a
recording as uniformly loud as possible.

"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious,
they have sound all over them. There's no definition of
nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just, like ... static."



the rest of this article,
as well as many other interesting
articles and reviews by some excellent
writers can be found 24/7 at one of
my favourite web stops:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music

-30-

.

Phil Ochs reviewing Bob Dylan

 

an interesting blast from the past...


because of who is writing about who, certainly 

but also because of the issues and language 

raised in what was at the time 

a journal of record for musicians 

and listeners...

The Art of Bob Dylan's 

``Hattie Carroll''

by Phil Ochs

From Broadside 48 July 20 1964; page 2 

 

`After Judy Collins' N.Y. Town Hall concert in which she
performed Bob Dylan's ``Hattie Carroll'' (BROADSIDE #43),
I overheard a well-known commercial folk singer criticizing
it as ``another one of those black and white songs.'' Another
act I know said the song was no good because it was too preachy.

It's a sad comment on the folk community when normally
intelligent people can totally misunderstand such an
important work. I believe this song could add a new
dimension to topical songs that has been missing too often
in the past. I'd like to use the song as an example to some
of the writers who contribute to BROADSIDE.

There are many pitfalls that Dylan might have fallen into
while treating such a delicate and difficult subject. It would
have been easy to describe the event and ask, ``Wasn't that
a terrible shame, don't let her die in vain'', and put the usual
sarcastic ``land of the free'' line at the end. I think this all
too simple artless approach is what the LITTLE SANDY
REVIEW critics are rightfully opposed to.

In line after poetic line Dylan brings out all the pathos
and irony of a tragic crime. He never gets trapped trying
to fit a thought into a prescribed rhyme form. What more
effective beginning could he have chosen than to use the
sound of the name William Zantzinger and the description
of the weapon, ``with a cane that he twirled round his
diamond ring finger,'' to carry over to the man?

He gives the setting in the first verse and asks that those who
would shed a tear over the murder to wait and listen to more.
In the second verse he describes Zantzinger's connections
with ``high office relations in the politics of Maryland who
reacted to his deed with a shrug of the shoulder.'' Once again
he deftly understates the evil, never making the mistake
of calling him a brute or coward and ruining the narration.
 

Dylan describes Hattie Carroll as a ``maid of the kitchen'',
not a downtrodden maid or a poor Negro woman. He brings out the pathos or her life perfectly with ``she never sat once at the head of the table.'' 

The description of the murder has to be one or the classics
of American folk music: ``the cane sailed through the air
and came down through the room, doomed and determined
to destroy all the gentle, and she never did nothing to
William Zantzinger.'' I listened to Bob's third record with
him before it was released, and the song that moved him
most was Hattie Carroll. 

read the rest of the review here 

ps - the original review came with this PS..

Note: Bob Dylan is to be at Newport Folk Festival
workshop on topical songs Fri. afternoon, July 24, along
with Phil Ochs, Malvina Reynolds, Johnny Cash, Jimmy
Driftwood, Frank Proffitt, The Chad Mitchell Trio, and
others. Pete Seeger will host this workshop which will
deal with Broadsides old and new.'  

learn more about
Phil Ochs fast here

-30-

Big Stars going thru Big Changes

Big music stars are just like the rest of us-
as they grow and mature into Major Artists,
they go thru changes walking down the road of life.

As their careers span the decades, it's possible
to look back and see more clearly the phases
of their artistic evolution...

David Lee Roth
the "It's My Band, Man" years

Jeff Beck

the "Available for Weddings
& Corporate Functions" years

the Allman Brothers

the "Be My Beatles" years

George Harrison
the "Scary Old Guy in the Park" years

Mel Tillis
the "Clint/Caan" years

Mick Ronson
the "Gay Caballero" years

Rod Stewart

the "Love Me in Latex" years

Ted Nugent
the "Gaylord" years

Ted Nugent

the "Manscaping Pioneer" years

Eddie Rabbit
the "Che" years

Ronnie Milsap
the "Stevie Ray Wonder" years

Ronnie Milsap
the "Trans" years

Bob Dylan
the "I serve Lord Satan" years






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