Let Us Now Praise ... Gillian Welch!

I was late to discover Gillian Welch, maybe because she always looked like someone in those old Dust Bowl photos. very severe. One day I was driving around and heard part of an NPR broadcast with two people singing such close harmonies, I thought "Damn if the Judds haven't gone No Depression/Americana on us -- good for them!" Well of course it wasn't the Judds but Gillian Welch and David Rawlings performing songs from their album "Time (The Revelator)", and I was totally captivated.

There are certain albums I put on when I'm in a special mood, but there's only a handful that I can listen to in whatever mood I'm in and it'll take me to the emotional place the album occupies. "Kind of Blue" is one, Robert Wyatt's "Rock Bottom" another -- albums that exist out of normal time and space for me, and allow me to enter a separate world. "Time (The Revelator)" is one; spare, simple, ancient and modern at the same time, acoustic and hypnotic. The songs are almost always s-l-o-w but never boring. The last track "I Dream A Highway" is almost 15 minutes long, and it truly casts a spell. I was talking to someone 20 years younger a while back, and when I mentioned Gillian Welch, she said "Oh, I heard that at a party once -- that's got that great long long song, right?"

The DVD was from their Revelator tour, and it too is powerfully hypnotic, plus you get the bonus of songs not on the CD, and their great stage presence -- and surprise, Gillian has a great laugh, Dust Bowl regardless!

Blaxploitation!

What a great CD series! These are British imports, so sometimes their perspective on what exactly constitutes "blaxploitation" differs from ours, but put any of these on and suddenly you're cruising the mean streets in your low rider (or so I imagine, says the pink guy.) "Volume 3: The Payback" features Curtis Mayfield ("Move On Up"), William DeVaughn ("Be Thankful for What You Got"), War ("The World is a Ghetto") --- and these are the full-length album versions, not the single edits. Volume 1 has more of what you'd expect ("Pusherman", "Superfly", "Theme from Shaft") but in both volumes, there are other, more surprising choices ("Also Sprach Zarathustra"? "Summer in the City" -- by Quincy Jones ??) Still, it all hangs together very well.
"Blue Funk" isn't part of the Blaxploitation series, but's it is very similar, raiding the Blue Note vaults to feature Grant Green, Jack McDuff, Lou Donaldson and Bobby Hutcherson -- fine, fine stuff indeed.

John Renbuorn

Like Bert Jansch (from an earlier post), John Renbourn was part of the British folk-baroque revival, and of course, John and Bert played in Pentangle. John's solo work featured 'early music' transcribed for guitar, and later albums explored American acoustic blues and Celtic music. While Bert Jansch and Davy Graham were probably more influential due to their eclectic styles, John Renbourn was more of an accomplished traditionalist than groudbreaking artiste. That being said, the album "The Lady and the Unicorn" was one of the first popular guitar albums to feature music of Dowland, Gervaise and Bach in guitar transcriptions. "Sir John Alot of Merrie Englades Musyk Thyng & Ye Grene Knyghte" included jazzier pieces along with trad folk, and "The Nine Maidens" was a collection of 'original' pieces (mostly further arrangements of olde tunes ala "Lady & the Unicorn"). Of the 3, "Sir John Alot" is my favorite; the flute playing is a nice touch, though I could use a little less bongo/hand-drum.