#bear’s sonic journals: sing out!

[krispyweiss]

Album Review: Various Artists - Bear’s Sonic Journals: Sing Out!

When two-thirds of the Grateful Dead, Country Joe McDonald, Rosalee Sorrles and Kate Wolf got together to raise funds at the Seva Sing Out for Sight benefit at Berkeley Community Theater, organizer and emcee Wavy Gravy termed the April 25, 1981, benefit a “mini-Woodstock.”

And he reprised his famous stage announcement from 12 years earlier, declaring: “What we have in mind is a fine set of eyes for 300,000.”

In the interim, the musicians provided the audiences’ ears with fine sets of music as captured by Owsley “Bear” Stanley and just released as Bear’s Sonic Journals: Sing Out!, volume 10 of the ongoing series which seeks to find and preserve these reels and release what’s releasable. On that note, it should be mentioned Odetta also performed on this evening, but Stanley’s foundation was unable to secure permission to release her music.

As would be expected for a Bay Area gig in ’81, the Dead members closed the show, beginning with an surprise, 20-minute performance from the Rhythm Devils - aka Grateful drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart - who reprised their nightly drum duet on a scaled-down set of kits. Posterity is lucky to have it; however, drum showcases by definition have limited appeal.

The pair, joined by bassist John Kahn, stuck around to accompany Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir for their acoustic set, which mirrored Dead’s 1980 15th-anniversary celebration with unplugged songs like “Dark Hollow,” “Monkey and the Engineer,” “Oh, Babe it Ain’t No Lie,” “On the Road Again” and others.

“We started out kinda like this,” Weir says after the opening “Deep Elem Blues. “We wanted to be the Rocky and Bullwinkle of rock ‘n’ roll.”

The entire nine-song performance is splendid, and particularly interesting for the slow - but acoustic - rendering of “Friend of the Devil” and the evening-closing “Oh Boy!”

Preceding the Rhythm Devils, Wolf alludes to the occasion with stunning renditions of “20/20 Vision” and “Eyes of a Painter,” among other songs, during a six-song set that finds Gravy joining in for a wobbly rendition of the Youngblood’s “Get Together.” While the sound of this and every other performance is flawless, the producers left in a bit of tape degradation in the middle of Wolf’s set to sonically illustrate the importance of tracking down and restoring the Bear’s countless recordings.

With Mitch Greenhill providing a second guitar, Sorrels performs a lovely folk set during which she professes her love for San Francisco on the original “12 Adler Place” and nods to her genre’s roots on “If You Love Me” and “The Loving of the Game,” a number whose resonance remains so clear, David Bromberg and Michael Cleveland have each cut it in recent years.

Opening the evening, McDonald tied together the hopefulness of the Woodstock generation and the ominous dawn of the Reagan era by reprising “The Fuck Cheer,” retrofitting “Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” with references to Iran and Afghanistan, remembering his friend Joplin on “Janis” and looking toward a potentially dystopian future on “Picks & Lasers.” But perhaps more illuminating are “Slide Trombone Blues,” which McDonald plays on the titular instrument and his instrumental rendering of “Oh! Susanna” on acoustic guitar; for they show another side of the quirky folkie.

It’s no substitute for being there. But much like the Woodstock movie and albums, Sing Out! helps those who couldn’t be there get some idea how wonderful Wavy Gravy’s mini-Woodstock of ’81 must’ve been.

Grade card: Various Artists - Bear’s Sonic Journals: Sing Out! - A-

3/20/24

[garudabluffs]

Special show featuring members of the Grateful Dead unplugged!

Folk Music & Beyond 6/1/24 KALW radio

We’ll feature members of the Grateful Dead unplugged on “Folk Music & Beyond” TODAY at 2 pm! Jerry Garcia & Bob Weir performing an acoustic set from a 1981 concert recording in Berkeley, along with The Rhythm Devils (Mickey Hart & Billy Kreutzmann), Country Joe McDonald, Kate Wolf, and Rosalie Sorrels.

“Sing Out! Berkeley Community Theater, April 25, 1981” has just been released as a 3-CD set, part of Bear’s Sonic Journals. The 1981 concert marked that last time that Bear (Owsley Stanley) served as the sound engineer for members of the Grateful Dead.

Listen 2 hrs. http://www.kalwfolk.org/Playlists/240601.php

[americanahighways]

REVIEW: Bear’s Sonic Journals – Sing Out! – Berkeley Community Theater Live – 3 CDs

REVIEW: Bear’s Sonic Journals – Sing Out! – Berkeley Community Theater Live – 3 CDs #johnapice @americanahighways #americanamusic #gratefuldead #bobbyweir @owsleystanleyfoundation #1981

Bear’s Sonic Journals – Sing Out! – Berkeley Community Theater Live – 3 CDs (April 25, 1981) Without sounding too tie-dyed nostalgic this set is a hippie gift with the hipster dialogue & musical showcase. Recorded in 1981, it’s loaded with a voice from the Haight-Ashbury 60s about as intact as possible. It could’ve been performed next to the Further bus parked across the street from City…

[thesinglesjukebox]

SAM HUNT - DRINKIN' TOO MUCH [5.33] What've we got here? Why, it's a CONTROVERSYBOMB!

Ramzi Awn: A bold experiment with a few good ideas, "Drinkin' Too Much" employs dark moments of candor to highlight a muddled mix. [5]

Olivia Rafferty: The heart and soul of country music is storytelling, which is why this track works so well. "Drinkin' Too Much" shifts the typical country subject of alcohol abuse to the context of sad man R&B, aka Drake's genre. The spoken verses contain a rawness that could only be conveyed with that style of delivery, and the lyrics themselves are so vivid. Lay this over a subtle blend of 808s and slide guitars, and you have a solid attempt to influence the direction of country music. Let the genre-mashing begin. [8]

Anthony Easton: John Prine, in a recent Rolling Stone cover story, spoke about how Dylan's Nashville Skyline broke apart country music for him (he was a folkie at the time): "Man, there's something there where their two paths crossed. My stuff belongs right in the middle." This is also in the middle: between soul and hip-hop, between the drinking and heartbreak of Nashville and the fame-wasted ennui of Kanye and Drake. But it's also at the bottom: the bottomed-out production, how Hunt trips over details, how he extends stories, how he never quite brags about his money, how his self-loathing bubbles up like swamp gas. It's the opposite of all those party songs, the opposite of Moore and Eldredge and Gilbert. It has a singular voice -- a songwriting voice, but also how he sings, a gravelly push that reinforces his production choices. It is the smartest thing he has done, and maybe the most heartfelt. [10]

Alfred Soto: I'm no country corn pone. I like electronic whooshes and the kind of manipulation of space more common on Drake or "Climax"-era Usher, but Sam Hunt can't even talk-sing without his sockless boat shoes tripping on his ill-lettered cadences. He comes off like a lunkier Chainsmoker, in the market for any hook that'll get him on the radio and laid -- two of his more admirable virtues. Find better songs, dude, and don't try so damn hard. [4]

Thomas Inskeep: This non-single posted on SoundCloud is the audio equivalent of a viral video, and like many viral videos, it's also essentially a journal entry set to music. Frankly, it's not up to snuff: this is him doing his rhyming couplets (he loves rhyming couplets) with a woozy rhythm track from Pro Tools or whatever. It also sounds a lot like a demo for Justin Bieber. Most of all, this is slightly creepy oversharing; I want a Silkwood shower after listening to it. [0]

Elisabeth Sanders: Everything about this is deeply embarrassing, and that's why I love it. While I can't pretend I like this as much as anything off Montevallo, it makes up for it with "I wish you'd let me pay your student loans," and I'd like to submit this as a great entry into a music category I'd like to call "voice-memo pathetic-wave." (The other artist in this genre is Mike Posner with his great, deeply pathetic album At Night, Alone.) The song approximates, sonically and with almost nauseating accuracy, the feeling of being just too drunk enough that the room is spinning a little, being very sad about something that might be your fault in a crowded place at 2 in the morning. BEEN THERE, SAM. [7]

Jonathan Bradley: In which Sam Hunt pens a letter to Montevallo's Courtney From Hooters On Peachtree and proves himself to not be country music's Drake, but rather its Mike Skinner. The hook is the weakest part; it doesn't resolve Hunt's thoughts but elides them. (The austere "8pm" take works better and is worth a point or two more.) There is frisson in a lyric that pushes too far past the fourth wall, threatening to combust as it reaches the event horizon -- for the non-country, non-rap examples to which "Drinkin' Too Much" draws nearest, look to emo acts like Cursive's The Ugly Organ or Say Anything's "Every Man Has a Molly." "Hope you know I'm still in love," Hunt closes, except it's a correspondence that is only intimate the way a performance is, and so his words are combustible as well as heartfelt. The sour sense that this song bears too much truth is its most compelling point but also its most repellent; Hunt is too casual in his exhibitionism. [5]

Will Adams: It feels right; we've reached the level of bleakness in our pop music that songs can now just be actual shitposts with first draft choruses tucked in. [3]

Katherine St Asaph: Did we need another country "Marvin's Room"? In every country review I keep harping on artists telling the same generic story addressed to the same imaginary sorority girl, but here's a lyric and addressee that are certainly not generic or imaginary, and I'm not sure what to think. If Sam Hunt's byline didn't scare off the traditionalists, the first vocoded note is almost deliberately scheduled to shoo away the rest (none of the subsequent vocal is so blatant), leaving a smaller audience of fans and an explicit audience of one specific, named girl. There's something inescapably creepy -- voyeuristically creepy for the listener, manipulatively creepy for the artist -- about this, this couple chords and a tirade. Most of his target demographic will hear this as romantic, but for those unfortunate enough to have been stalked, the details are so familiar as to be textbook: presenting her with his un-rebuttable imagination of her life, in which she stages the Everytime video every time she wants to cry, in which there's nowhere else in Georgia she can buy peaches, in which everything reminds her of him, or at least does now; reminding her of her debt while holding Montevallo money over her head; apologizing for boosting her profile while writing her name into a huge triumphant chorus; pondering "whether it's OK to lie" while careful to mention none of the indiscretions that got him there -- merely their consequences, which now seem unreasonable. Better to address this as fiction, then -- like most "autobiographical" songs by celebrities, somewhere between songwriting exercise and publicity stunt, because you don't cross over into pop and stay without some dating drama. What's left is slapdash: accurate-sounding candor spewed over a couple identikit country choruses, each piece well-crafted but only assemblable by a real-life happy ending. Which is the point, and the problem. [5]

Megan Harrington: Too much of my instant dislike of "Drinkin' Too Much" hinged on the preposterous way Sam Hunt apologized for (more or less) doxing his then ex-girlfriend, now fiancé Hannah Lee Fowler on his debut album Montevallo, only to turn around and close the song by singing her name. In case there were any straggler fans out there who hadn't quite put her identity together, I guess. It was incongruous in a way that grated on me until I realized that it was the perfect synecdoche for the song, one that indulges overwrought production as 40 as it was country and several different singing styles, including plain old talking. It's right there in the way he names her his first fan and then cheats on her, the way he dismisses her sisters as "matchmakers" but hopes her dad still prays for him. Real life is messy and filled with leaps forward followed by half-steps back, relationships are chaotic and confusing, and Hunt captures all of it, ending hopefully with a (sort of, he hopes) romantic pledge to win her back. And it (sort of, I think) worked? [7]

Crystal Leww: The first time I heard "Drinkin' Too Much," I did not like it. I did not like the 40-esque production, the sad sap lyrics, the way that Hunt called out his ex-girlfriend. Then I listened to the 8pm version, stripped of the production flourishes, and figured that it was just the production that was bugging me. The lyrics were sad, but they were so specific: peaches in Pelham, a hotel room in Arizona, and that devastating, heartbreaking "hope your dad still prays for me," a reminder that breakups are the deaths of families, too. I've never liked the comparisons to Drake -- Drake is someone who has clearly never been in an adult relationship with a real woman rather than a built-up image of a woman, but Montevallo and "Drinkin' Too Much" feel like they're about real adults who have genuinely loved each other and created lives together. I still like the 8pm version more, but I've come around on the full version. It's dramatic, but I appreciate the attempt to appeal to a broader audience, and it highlights that Hunt's lyricism shines through anything, even snaps and strings. [7]

Josh Langhoff: A prof used to tell us, "People who are sorry weep bitter tears." I don't buy Sam Hunt's sorrow. Nor do I buy that this song has a melody or a beat, that it has any connection to country or R&B, that this is the same Sam Hunt who did "House Party," or that picking peaches is anything but the pits. More schnapps! [3]

Katie Gill: Look, I'm sorry, I can't hate this. With the exception of that "I hope your dad still prays for me" bit, the verses are awful, not singing but the Sam Hunt Spoken Word Poetry Hour. They swing between endearingly hokey and the awful Nice Guy sort of patronizing that was the entirety of "Take Your Time." But the chorus is AMAZING. It's so silky and smooth, perfectly mixed, and Hunt shows that he has a halfway decent R&B(ish) voice. But the two never really meet. The transition between verse and chorus is awkward every time, as the buttery-smooth chorus butts up against the not very smooth speaking voice of Sam Hunt. [6]

Joshua Copperman: I keep singing this title to the tune of Twenty One Pilots' "Ride", attempting to remember what little melody this song has ("I've been drinking too much, help me..."). Until the bridge -- which would make a better chorus -- nothing is worth remembering: not the strings, not the drum machine, and especially not the single strum of guitar to signify that it's still country. What made "Marvin's Room" work was the honesty and subtextual self-loathing that Drake would spend the rest of his career distilling. This seems less stream-of-consciousness and more trying to write stream-of-consciousness, which rarely works as well and results in lines like "I wish you'd let me pay off your student loans." The dramatic piano ending makes clear Sam Hunt's lack of shame in copying Aubrey, but that just makes him sound even less authentic, even though the backstory contains more than enough drama for something genuine. [3]

Edward Okulicz: The first time I misheard the line as as "I'm sorry for making the album Montevallo," but this sketch wouldn't be a repudiation even if he were sorry for that. And it's really not that much more than a series of lyrical fragments and a chorus, but I find myself nodding along at some parts, and being frustrated at the lack of detail in others, and going to the "Personal life" details of his Wikipedia article to see the resolution. So that means it's fairly compelling for its limitations. [7]

[Read and comment on The Singles Jukebox ]

[wrightworthmakesmylifeworthwhile]

Gray @somewhat-human-mostly-bitter tagged me in this and I finally got around to it

Name: emily

Nickname: I mean like none really but my first letter of my first name and my middle name make “eclare” so there’s that

Height: 5′5

Hogwarts House: Gryffindor

Go-to SSBB character: prolly sonic

Fictional character I’d date: phoenix wright and I are both big soft dorks but he belongs with edgeworth so. Conflicted. I’ll go with trucy wright instead then

Favorite band or artist: not to be That Kid but I mostly listen to musicals but I do like P!atd and FOB (which probably makes me sound like even more of an emo fuck)

When did I make this blog: November 2016 dam it’s only been like half a year

How many blogs do I follow: 114 hahaha which is kinda really low but it’s not because I’m pretentious I promise I just don’t know what I’m doing

Do I get asks on a regular basis: not really on a regular basis but if I ask for asks I can consistently count on a response

Aesthetic: uh I like purple galaxy and magic shit also I love old timey journals and quills and stuff

Favorite greeting: hey is such a good greeting I love it so casual and yet not too casual it’s the perfect amount of applicable I love hey

Pets: lab/retriever mix chester a orange tabby named pumpkin and two baby kittens maya a huge ass black cat and milo a smol gray cat

Last song I listened to: when I got tagged it was unfortunately…. the bear in the big blue house theme song but now it’s ambient music of a medieval city if that counts if not I’ll say live out loud from a little princess

Favorite TV show: steven universe

First fandom: uh well the first thing I got into passionately was harry potter but the first thing where I ever really got involved in fandom online with would be like doctor who or some shit

Hobbies: acting, singing, writing fanfiction, playing flute/piccolo, this blog…

Books I am currently reading: the things they carried bc of my English class

Worst thing to have graced my taste buds: ok no offense buddy ol pal but,,,,,,,,,,, that fucking goat cheese pastry I thought it was gonna be good but it tasted like I was eating my own warm throw up and to make matters worse it had sun dried tomatoes in it like. Gag. Tomatoes are ok but not like that it’s not god’s way

Favorite place: I don’t wanna be lame and say my room but…. Also the campus of the college I’m gonna go to is super pretty I love going there and my pal gray’s house is lit v nice I like the creek outside it’s idyllic

Tagged @jropo-38 @magrydyne @i-love-shoes-too @2nd-yatagarasu @maximilian-alexander @sexycowboy123 @chocolatemintdreams @zyxyz-xyzzy

do it or not whichever and do it even if you weren’t tagged

[krispyweiss]

“Mini-Woodstock” Set for Release

- Bear’s Sonic Journals: Sing Out!, featuring Grateful Dead members, Country Joe McDonald and others, due Feb. 23

Owsley “Bear” Stanley’s final known recording of Grateful Dead members will be released Feb. 23 as Bear’s Sonic Journals: Sing Out!

“It started out as a small, acoustical concert and turned into a mini-Woodstock,” Wavy Gravy said of the April 25, 1981, gig the Berkeley Community Theater.

The three-disc, 36-song collection features sets by two-thirds of the Grateful Dead, the Rhythm Devils, Country Joe McDonald, Kate Wolf and Rosalie Sorrels. It was announced with a 90-second recording of Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, the Devils (aka the Dead’s Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart) and Jerry Garcia Band bassist John Kahn playing the slow arrangement of “Friend of the Devil” on acoustic instruments.

The release represents the 10th edition of Bear’s Sonic Journals and includes a 50-page booklet with previously unpublished photos from the concerts alongside essays and other artwork.

Hear the “Friend of the Devil” teaser here.

1/22/24