Paul Horn: Real Good, For Free

I'm still going through my CDs, ramping up the culling process. Why?

The CD above ("Paul Horn in India and Kashmir") is one reason. I recently wrote of flautist Paul Horn's passing -- and completely forgot that I owned this CD!

 The 2 LP reissue that I once owned  (and the subsequent CD reissue) isn't recorded to pop standards; sounds like a field recording in mono and black & white. But every summer I pull it out because it sounds languid yet focused, a recording of a real-time event in a summery haze, even though it's a Canadian musician performing with Indian musicians. This is NOT some New Age pan-cultural World Music hybrid, but authentic Indian music arranged in part by Ravi Shankar. It sounds, to my ignorant western ears, well, honest.

Paul Horn played on the Joni Mitchell track "For Free", Joni musing about her career as a very well paid performing artist and the street-corner musician she heard who "played real good for free".  On the "India" CD, we have Paul Horn, a prominent (and well paid) studio jazz musician exploring authentic non-commercial music. Commerce versus heart -- and I have so many CDs that I freakin' forget I own a particular favorite! Irony much?

My name is David, and I have a problem. (I know, I know, point taken, but that's another discussion for another time...) I'm working on it, weeding my collection down to a manageable size.  In my defense, I worked in music retail, so I was exposed to way more music than ever before, I was getting lots of music for free, and the stuff I bought I got at cost. It's just taken me a long time to understand the difference between "cost" and "value". And this understanding has been hastened by the fact that CDs are now practically worthless in the market. (It's not like I have the option of trading them in.)  Some would argue that music, hell, ART is considered worthless by most people. So if nobody's buying, what do you do -- add more layers to the landfill?

Anyway, I'm whittling down the collection. I only have so many years of listening ahead of me, might as well focus on the great stuff rather than the okay stuff. It's funny to me how the classics rise to the surface somehow -- as much as I love the Sex Pistols, I'm listening to lots more Duke Ellington and Uncle Dave Macon these days. As the Holy Modal Rounders album said, good taste is timeless. (Mind you, this was the album that featured the song "Boobs A Lot", so...)

Emmylou Harris and Linda Thompson

Yes, there is a connection between the poster woman for New Country and British folk-rock's Ice Queen. I'm sure you know it, but I'll get to that later.

I just wanted to give a shout-out to Emmylou Harris, the woman who more than anyone introduced me to REAL country music. Hell, I even bought a "Best of George Jones and Tammy Wynette" LP because of her! "Elite Hotel" was the first Emmylou album I heard back in the late '70s when I worked at Everybody's Records in Bellevue, due to an enthusiast on staff who played the Flying Burrito Brothers and Emmylou despite a staff hopped up on the Sex Pistols and the Ramones. Emmylou gave wider exposure to singer-songwriters Gram Parsons, Rodney Crowell, Townes Van Zandt, Jesse Winchester, Guy Clark and Delbert McClinton -- and introduced greenhorns like me to Dolly Parton and the Louvin Brothers.

Later I went back and picked up "Pieces of the Sky" and "Luxury Liner", and my favorite, "Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town". I taped my 'Best of Emmylou Harris" (totally different from the 'official' best-of, typical!) and drove around quite happily singing along. And then...I met Emmylou Harris (well, her guitar, anyway.)

There was a time when between real jobs, I worked as a baggage handler on a commuter airline that flew out of Sea-Tac. (I still swoon at the scent of airline diesel.) One day, Emmylou took our little puddle-jumper to Orcas Island -- and I got to load her guitar! I was busy with other bags so I never actually saw her walk out of the boarding gate, but my fellow staffers (aware of my mini-crush on the Beautiful Emmylou) teased me and said right out of the gate she spit on the tarmac.

Later my future wife and I headed to Orcas because word was Emmylou was performing a free concert at the Grange. Short version: massive downpour, doors open late, everybody on the island is there so the place is fire-code-violatingly jam-packed, we sadly peel out of the parking lot because the last ferry is about to depart. A sad instance of Concertus Interruptus.

I liked many later Emmylou Harris albums well enough ("Blue Kentucky Girl", "Roses in the Snow", "The Ballad of Sally Rose", "Wrecking Ball"), but there was a period when her warble got more warbly and the vibrato got uncomfortably unlistenable, but she righted that ship and continues to amaze to this day.

So...Linda Thompson releases her first solo album following the wrenching breakup tour/divorce from folk-rock's Johnny Appleseed (what??) Richard Thompson. Fans who want The Dirt pore over the lyrics,  and Linda doesn't disappoint. I always liked the lyrics of the title track: "More an instant with the angels than a lifetime with a saint,  All I need is one clear moment, one clear moment's all it takes".  But then you get "Only A Boy"'s "long may you rot in hell". And "Talking Like A Man" is the coldest moving-on song ever: "if you get lonely, don't head back this way"..

And there's "Telling Me Lies": "I cover my ears, I close my eyes, still hear your voice and it's telling me lies" -- and that's the song that Trio (Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton) covered and earned a Grammy nomination.

Even the liner notes of the CD reissue complain about the dated late '80s production, but if I was hearing it with virgin ears today, I think the songwriting would still impress (and even over-produced as they are, there are some very good tracks.) Linda and Richard somehow eventually reached some sort of detente, and Richard appears on later Linda albums (with various spawn included.) Maybe blood is thicker than water (or vinyl) after all. 

Later, I'll talk about "Dreams Fly Away: A History of Linda Thompson", Linda's 'best-of' from 1996. Stellar.

End-of-Summer Dub Suggestions

Yes, I know that we've still got 3 more weeks of summer, but psychologically I think most of us think of Labor Day as summer's last gasp. Which brings me to the end of another few months of a reggae-rich musical diet.

Sometimes it's worth it to listen to the experts, or in this case, enthusiasts that became experts. Blood and Fire is a reggae reissue label based in England, and their reissues are lovingly chosen and presented. I heard a track from Keith Hudson's "Pick a Dub" on one of B&F's sampler CDs, and gladly bought a copy. On the B&F website, there's a section for recommended releases, and their #1 choice was "Morwell Unlimited Meet King Tubby's Dub Me". Like the Keith Hudson release, it's early dub (1974 & 1975), and pretty basic -- no ringing telephones, doorbells, toilets flushing like I mentioned way back on the "African Dub" series. Both CD's are excellent and the perfect soundtrack to the end of summer.

You young people and your "attention deficit syndrome"!

Hah! Tonight, I'm reading the liner notes to Lee Perry's dub classic "Super Ape" while half-watching Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes from a Marriage". I haven't seen "Scenes" for years, and I'm certainly not watching it again -- I still remember scenes of gut-wrenching emotional torment as Ingmar shows a young marriage torn apart by a husband's affair -- the scene where he leaves the house while Liv Ullman tries to hold onto him screaming is just too much to revisit. I watched a bit at the end, and had forgotten how much of an self-satisfied idiot the husband is, but I did remember accurately how beautiful and radiant Liv Ulllman was (oh, and the part where she says her love life has perked up considerably since he left is priceless!)

Okay, so not much of an entry this time, but I'm working on the next one: some of my classical favorites, including Mahler, Rameau and Sibelius.  I was trying to come up with the list of my Top Five Classical Composers (shades of "High Fidelity"!), and for today, at least, I'd say: Debussy, Ravel, Mahler, Handel and Stravinsky -- but truth be told, I'm not really a list-maker anyway; just trying to amuse myself on the way to work.

I'll most likely write my draft tomorrow night -- my wife's 3/4 of the way through a bad Elizabeth Taylor bio, and on her insistence, I checked out a DVD copy of "Cleopatra". Yeah, I'm not going anywhere near THAT turkey....

Jesse Winchester RIP

This is a late post about the late Jesse Winchester, who passed away in April. Why in God's name is Elvis Costello's ugly mug adorning this post? You'll see.

Short bit of history: Jesse, born and bred in the US South, comes up for the Vietnam War draft, decides instead to de-camp to Canada, where he remains for many years, writing wistful songs about the land he left behind. Sweet, unsentimental yet heartbreaking songs. I tuck some in the back of my brain, but at first recall, all I can come up with is "Rhumba Man". Oh wait, there's "The Brand New Tennessee Waltz", and that great song that Emmylou Harris covered, "Defying Gravity", and that fine version of "Biloxi" that Ian Matthews did....well, the list goes on.

Fast forward to 2014. My dear wife and I learn of Jesse's passing, and vaguely remember his appearance on Elvis Costello's show "Spectacle", hence the gap-toothed image below.

It's a "guitar pull" (?) episode, and onstage we have EC, Jesse, Sheryl Crow and Neko Case. Heck, I barely knew about Neko when we first viewed the episode, and now we also have on the disc an earlier episode which features...the since-late Levon Helm (my wife's latest fave -- LOVES "Electric Dirt").

On the Jesse show, he performs "Sham-a-Ling-Dong-Ding", a sweet, sweet song about young love in the late '50s, the songs that expressed love in nonsense lyrics, and how the 'old folks' said they were crazy, foolish youngsters. My favorite line: "the way we danced was not a dance, but more a long embrace".  Ah, but Jesse suggests that those same old folks sang the same silly songs ("silly love songs", eh Paulie?) But here's the catch: Jesse's isn't on stage with some rookies, but his songs are so dear that the camera catches a tear rolling down Neko's cheek -- priceless. I checked other reviews on-line, and Neko's tear was a common element. Even Elvis himself says something along the lines of "You finished me off; it happened in rehearsal and it happened now".

Sweet dreams, Jesse.

Juana Molina, and no, I'd never heard of her either

 

 

Working in bookstores, I've had access to what are called "Advanced Reader's Copies" or "ARCs". These are 'raw' versions of upcoming books, usually bare bones editions without accurate page counts, lacking illustrations and author notes. The idea is that bookstore staff will read it, write a short review that might end up as an advertising blurb when the book is officially released. One such ARC that I have is "1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die" by Tom Moon, and one of the recordings he mentions is the subject of this blog entry, "Segundo" by Juana Molina. His review was interesting enough that I went to Allmusic.com to preview some tracks, and I am so glad I did.

 

I've referred to the album as 'Bjork Lite', and it's full of electronic squiggles and programmed percussion, but there's more of an acoustic feel, and Juana's vocals are breathy Brazilian whisper rather than Bjorkian belting. Lyrically, I'm totally in the dark, because Juana is Argentinian, and the lyrics are all sung in Spanish (?) But there's a sweetness to her delivery, and a few songs features electronically derived animal noises in the background, birdcalls, metallic purring and yapping that enhance the mood in delightful ways. I'll check into more Juana Molina, but my sense is that this is one perfect little gem of an album, and that may be enough for me. More later!

Hariprasad Chaurasia, Indian Classical Flute, and yes... from Value Village!

In preparing for this post (yes, I do), I was going to say Hariprasad Chaurasia is my favorite North Indian flute player -- but after rifling through my CDs, I guess it's more accurate to say he's just about my ONLY North Indian flute player (sorry, G. S. Sachdev, almost forgot you.) I've got some of Hari's releases on the Nimbus label (they are the pinnacle, and they take advantage of the 70+ minutes available), and his classics "Call of the Valley" and "The Valley Recalls".

But I enjoy this little jewel ("Flying Beyond") from Value Village because it stays in "the zone" for the entire album. The Indian albums that record whole ragas follow the classical pattern -- a slow introduction, a lengthy development, then things kick in rhythmically and the pace picks up until the blistering finale. What's nice about the "Flying Beyond" album (and it is an album as it was back in the day, 2 sides at 20 minutes per side) is that it resides in the slow intro for the entire CD. Perfect if that's your mood, and many summer nights as we wait for the house to cool down, it's just the thing.