mmmusics-blog

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Blue Crystal Fire - Robbie Basho

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Fire by the River - Harumi

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Wooden Shjips - Shrinking Moon for You

been listening to Shjips again recently 

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Forest - Gypsy Girl & Rambleaway

I love this but it is pretty godawful, really. But really good. 

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The Balfa Brothers - La Danse de Mardi Gras

I can't pretend that I know anything about Cajun music because I don't, at all. 

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Bob Marley - Selassie is the Chapel

we're showing the Bob Marley documentary where I work. This song's in it and I'd never heard it before.

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And of course, it would be churlish not to include something by Bert Jansch, who very sadly passed away yesterday at the age of 67. Surely one of, if not the single best British guitarist, acoustic or otherwise. 

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Oh - and on the subject of Thee Midniters and their version of Land of 1000 Dances - I've recently been reading a rather nice book called Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers : Overlooked Innovators and Eccentric Visionaries of '60s Rock. There's a fairly exhaustive chapter about Thee Midniters in which it details how they got their name - it was apparently a homage to Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, and tells of how their version of Land of 1000 Dances (I'm sick of typing that already!) came to be. For the second half of the gig they were backing up Cannibal and the Headhunters who couldn't make the gig, due to being stuck in Fresno fog or something like that, and so Thee Midniters decided to play Land of 1000 Dances without them. Apparently it went down a storm live, and as a single did quite well locally (Land of 1000 Dances had originally never been a hit, but had caught on with heaps of Mexican-American bands in the mid 60's) and they managed to get to 67 in the charts. But then Cannibal and the Headhunters released their rival version not long after, which charted at number 30, and then Wilson Pickett came along and blew them both out of the water. 

Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers is a pretty engrossing read and it features a diverse enough bunch of bands and artists that there'll probably be something for everybody with even a passing interest in 1960s rock, folk, soul and psych. Worth a gander.

http://www.richieunterberger.com/urbhome.html

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Today I have been wasting my day off work by trying to decide which of several versions of Land of 1000 Dances is superior. After several ponderous hours (well, minutes really), I have decided:

A) much as I like Wilson Pickett, his version's not all it's cracked up to be.

B) I have always loved Cannibal and the Headhunters so I guess theirs is, for me, the definitive version.

C) Also worthy of note is Thee Midniters version (more on them presently) and the Fats Domino version, which I hadn't actually heard before today. Not being particularly fond of Fats Domino it came as quite a pleasant suprise. I'm not sure whether he wrote it originally or whether someone else did (whose name escapes me).

What an astonishingly fun afternoon I've been having. 

Anyway, after all that I was trying to think of more songs that have been covered multiple times - which is not at all difficult, but the one that first came to mind was Kisses Sweeter than Wine. Now, there's a few versions that I don't feel are really worth bothering with (The Marlene Dietrich one, I'm afraid, doesn't do it for me. Same goes for Waylon Jennings). The Weavers original (well, not exactly original but I'll get to that in a minute) is lovely, full of those good old Weavers harmonies. The 1957 Jimmie Rodgers version is also pretty good, nice how he moved it into a minor key. The Frankie Vaughn one, which I think was released in the following year is not hugely different from the Jimmie Rodgers' one, albeit with the addition of some nice sweepy, syrupy strings.

BUT. The Weavers' version wasn't really an original composition - it was in fact an appropriation of If It Wasn't For Dicky by Leadbelly, which was in itself an appropriation of an traditional Irish song. And if the Leadbelly song qualifies as another version then it's by far and away the best. It's possibly my all-time favourite Leadbelly song, and seeing as he was a man with such a prolific musical output, that's saying quite a lot.

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Good Morning! How Are You? Shut Up! - Ivor Cutler

Ivor Cutler was a truly wonderful Scottish singer songwriter / artist / poet / humourist. 

More info here : http://www.benbecula.com/archive/ivor_cutler.shtml

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Mud Cup Monocle - Caroliner Rainbow Hernia Queen

Amazing / horrible bluegrass / noise. Brilliant!

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Angels and Demons at Play - Sun Ra

Sun Ra, born Herman P. Blount, was a poineering self-taught jazz bandleader, who believed that he was from Saturn but had been sent to Earth to bring harmony and peace to humankind. He was a genuine original and quite, quite amazing. 

Pretty extensive article about him here:

http://missioncreep.com/mw/sunra.html

Also the Sun Ra wikipedia page is fairly detailed too, the section on philosophy is particularly interesting: 

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

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Scream - Ralph Nielsen and the Chancellors

Two tracks with crazy screaming in. This is one of my all-time favourites!

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Switchblade - Ron Thompson

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Wouldn't Mind Dying - Blind Mamie Forehand

1927. 

At the moment all I feel like listening to is blues and gospel.

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Verbal Expressions of TV - Johnny Thunder.

Johnny Thunder, not Johnny Thunders. Although you'd have to be pretty stupid to mistake this for Johnny Thunders.

Johnny Thunder was in the Drifters for a while. He had a pretty big hit with Loop de Loop in 1963. This song is the b-side to his cover of I'm Alive by Tommy James and the Shondells.

On the subject of I'm Alive, I have never been able to decide which version- out of those by the Shondells, Johnny Thunder and Don Fardon - is the best. It's a conundrum. Possibly, with it's much rawer sound, this version. But I'm not sure.