The Eagles, more than any actual country acts, are responsible for the current denatured state of “Country” music. “In the nineties,” says Considine, “a whole generation of Stetson-topped singers and pickers insisted that the Eagles were as much an inspiration as Hank Williams (if not more).” That jibes with my experience: It takes me ten minutes to figure out whether I’m listening to a country station or some reanimated corpse of KlassiK RocK.
Tim Cavanaugh, “Why Don’t You Come to Your Senses?”, Reason Hit and Run, 2005-03-30.
December 15, 2018
QotD: New Country music
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December 14, 2018
“Bohemian Rhapsody”
Colby Cosh on the media phenomenon of “Bohemian Rhapsody” … which, in his opinion, isn’t all that good as a song:
… Queen wasn’t really a four-piece; it was a pansexual mutant alien athlete-hero plus three ugly, highly talented Englishmen. And “Bohemian Rhapsody” almost isn’t a song so much as a captured moment. Considered as a song, there isn’t much to it except as a showcase for virtuosity: it’s not among Queen’s 20 best. And ordinary people can’t take a crack at “Bohemian Rhapsody” expecting to do it nicely and competently, in the way they might do “Blackbird” or “Wonderwall.” To be used for performance by the general public, “Bohemian Rhapsody” basically requires a roomful of drunks united in the ironic, non-judgmental spirit of karaoke.
Perhaps there is not much more to be said of “Bohemian Rhapsody” by way of explanation. Queen enjoyed trying on American hats from time to time (ah, if only Elvis had stayed around to receive the gift of “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”). But an American group could never have made anything that was weird in this particular way — wallowing in the pathos of a French gangster movie, then diving into a cryptic Dantean nightmare, piling up gestures and word-sounds into a unabashedly hokey panorama. There is no content at all to the thing, per se, except what the band members put into it as performers. In no way, I promise, will knowledge of Scaramouche’s place in the commedia dell’arte or the life of Galileo Galilei unlock some hidden layer of understanding.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” is an exquisitely made thing whose intricacy and beauty everybody can appreciate on more or less the same level. That is the special formula for mass popularity in all of the arts. They will tell you the Mona Lisa has a zillion layers of biographical or political meaning, but the painting really is what it is for everybody, and in roughly the same way. Every ordinary grownup can participate in the intimacy and the mystery of it, and it is not really a superior experience, as many great paintings might be, for somebody with a bundle of university degrees. As often happens I am reminded of Andy Warhol’s praise for Coca-Cola. “A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.”
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November 22, 2018
Shipping Up To Boston/Enter Sandman – Bagpipe Cover (Goddesses of Bagpipe x The Snake Charmer)
TheSnakeCharmer
Published on 16 Mar 2018Its St. Patrick’s day and i have something very special for you!! Bringing a mix of Irish tunes and metal for you on the Bagpipes with 3 Female Bagpipers all the way from US, Scotland and India. We love DropKick Murphys Shipping up to Boston and we’re also metal heads so we chose to mix both the awesome songs as a St. Patrick’s day song !!
SHARE , COMMENT, LIKE – Tell us what you think 🙂PATREON – https://www.patreon.com/thesnakecharmer
Buy Now:
iTUNES – https://goo.gl/VD4RqZ
GOOGLE PLAY – https://goo.gl/kvbfs8
SPOTIFY – https://goo.gl/SqoSYPBagpipers :
Archy Jay – (The Snake Charmer)
Jane Espie (Phantom Piper) https://www.youtube.com/user/JaneEspie
Chelsea Joy – (Dame of Drones) https://goo.gl/PBr2aUVideo Credits :
Videographer 1 – Harald Weinkum
Videographer 2 – Neoric Productions
Editor – Karan KatiyarMusic :
Harald Weinkum: bass, guitars, keyboards
George Dum: drums
Mixed and mastered by George Dum at Liquidfish Studios,
Los AngelesFor bookings – archyj03@gmail.com
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November 20, 2018
Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald“
Mark Steyn devotes a column to the work of Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, particularly his very well-known ballad on the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior in 1975:
Edmund Fitzgerald, 1971
Detail of a photo from Wikimedia Commons
When it comes to trains and boats and planes, Gordon Lightfoot has hymned all three, but it’s the middle mode of transportation that produced the song he’s proudest of:
The ship was the pride Of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go
It was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned…In November 1975 Lightfoot chanced to be reading Newsweek‘s account of the sinking of a Great Lakes freighter in Canadian waters. He’s a slow and painstaking writer, which is one reason he’s given up songwriting – because it takes too much time away from his grandkids. But that day forty-three years ago the story literally struck a chord, and he found himself scribbling away, very quickly:
The legend lives on From the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said Never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy…“Gitche gumee” is Ojibwe for “great sea” – ie, Lake Superior – as you’ll know if you’ve read your Longfellow, which I’m not sure anyone does these days. Evidently Hiawatha was on the curriculum back east across Lake Huron in young Gordy’s Orillia schoolhouse. The Gitche Gumee reference may be why, when I first heard “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald“, I assumed its subject had sunk long before the song was written. In fact, it sank on November 10th 1975 – just a few days before Lightfoot wrote the number. When she’d launched in 1958, the Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest ship on the Great Lakes, and, when she passed through the Soo Locks between Lakes Superior and Huron, her size always drew a crowd and her captain was always happy to entertain them with a running commentary over the loudspeakers about her history and many voyages. For seventeen years she ferried taconite ore from Minnesota to the iron works of Detroit, Toledo and the other Great Lakes ports …until one November evening of severe winds and 35-feet waves:
The wind in the wires
Made a tattle-tale sound
And a wave broke over the railin’
And every man knew
As the captain did too
‘Twas the witch of November come stealin’…And about seventeen miles from Whitefish Bay the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, with the loss of all 29 lives. It remains the largest ship ever wrecked on the Great Lakes, launched in 1958 to take advantage of the new St Lawrence Seaway (to be opened by the Queen and President Eisenhower on an inaugural voyage by the Royal Yacht Britannia the following year) and specifically constructed to be only a foot less than the maximum length permitted. Edmund Fitzgerald was the then chairman of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance of Milwaukee, and, as far as I’m aware, the only insurance company executive to be immortalized in a song title. Fifteen thousand people showed up for the ship’s launch at River Rouge, Michigan. It took Mrs Fitzgerald three attempts to shatter the champers against the bow, and then there was a further half-hour’s delay as the shipyard workers tried to loosen the keel blocks. After which the ship flopped into the water, crashed against a pier, and sent up a huge wave to douse the crowd. One spectator promptly had a heart attack and died.
And then came seventeen happy years. Even in the twenty-first century, there is something especially awful and sobering about death at sea: it is in a certain sense a reminder of the fragility of security and modernity. Whenever I’m in, for example, St Pierre et Miquelon, the last remaining territory of French North America, I stop by the monument aux marins disparus, sculpted in 1964 and to which many names have been added in the years since – because a ship put out, and somewhere on the horizon the great primal forces rose up from the depths and snapped it in two like a matchstick.
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November 19, 2018
Corvus Corax featuring Arndis Halla: Hugin & Munin
Corvus Corax
Published on 25 May 2018The new album “SKÁL” – OUT NOW ► http://hyperurl.co/corvuscorax
With “the voice of the icelandic wind” Arndis Halla!
http://arndishalla.isMusic by Corvus Corax
Lyrics: traditionalVideo Credits:
Produced by Swieding Medien
Executive Producer: Corvus Corax & Doro Peters
Second Camera: Sarah Wieding, Serge Foly & Halldór Sveinsson
Color Correction: Sarah Wieding
Filmed, Edited & Directed by Ronald Matthes
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November 10, 2018
Remy: I Love L.A. (Parody)
ReasonTV
Published on 9 Nov 2018Remy updates the iconic Randy Newman anthem for 2018.
Parody written and performed by Remy
Camera and editing by Austin Bragg
Music tracks, background vocals, and mastering by Ben KarlstromReason is the planet’s leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won’t get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines.
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LYRICSNice fall day
In L.A. County
Sitting watching all the leaves change
Temperature dipping into the low 70’s
I dress accordinglyRoll down the window
Put down the top
You know what
Maybe roll it up on second thought
That guy was higher
Than the pension of a state employeeCan’t use straws here
No fois gras here
You can’t park here
Lots of laws hereEvery toilet
Barely flushing
But the sun is shining all the time
Looks like another bill to payI love L.A.
We Love it“Definitely recommend this crystal here.
Oh and this one is our number one seller.”
“What’s that for? Anxiety?”
“No. Typhus.”
“Ah”Public school graduates
Can barely read
And when they try to park
Well this is what they seeSweet regulations
Ain’t nothing like em nowhereBeachside
We love itMountainside
We love itRiverside
We…eh….Fixed streets
We love em
We love L.A.“Unfortunately I’ll have to fail your restaurant.
I found a rat in the kitchen.”
“That wasn’t a rat that was my, uh,
emotional support rodent.”
“Well why didn’t you say so!”“And this right here is a great hemorrhoidal crystal.
Uranus is in retrograde.”I love L.A.
We love it
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October 18, 2018
The Chieftains – O’Sullivan’s March
Beatriz
Published on 9 May 2015The Chieftains – O’Sullivan’s March
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October 16, 2018
Julie d’Aubigny – Duelist, Singer, Radical – Extra History
Extra Credits
Published on 13 Oct 2018Julie d’Aubigny lived during an unusual time in 17th-century France when political and cultural norms were shifting. She was allowed to exist openly as a bisexual woman pursuing her swordsmanship and singing talents in the court of King Louis XIV.
Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
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September 18, 2018
The Sidh – Iridium
TheSidhVEVO
Published on 9 Jul 2015The Sidh – Iridium (Official Video)
Pubblicato il 10 lug 2015 ©&(P) Artis Records.
“Si ringrazia l’Amministrazione Comunale di ZOVENCEDO per aver messo a disposizione il Museo della Pietra nella Priara de Cice”
Google Translate renders the quoted sentence as “We thank the Municipal Administration of ZOVENCEDO for making available the Stone Museum in the Priara de Cice”
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September 8, 2018
“Over the Hills and Far Away” – Patty Gurdy (Gary Moore / Nightwish Hurdy Gurdy Cover)
Patty Gurdy
Published on 4 Mar 2018This instrument is called “hurdy gurdy” and has its roots in the medieval times. It works like a mechanical violin with a wheel bow, that can play bass, melody and rhythm all at once.
If you want to support me, give me a thumbs up and share this video on any social media platform you like! Thank you 🙂
Produced by/Drums played by: Olaf Abor
Cello played by: Sandra Schmitt
Filming by: Pushingpixels (Markus Felix) and Andreas Heller
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August 1, 2018
Farewell to Canada’s best trio … and this time, they mean it
Colby Cosh, clearly a fellow long-time Rush fan, heaves a sigh and writes the musical epitaph:
Rush in concert, Milan 2004.
Photo by Enrico Frangi, via Wikimedia Commons
All of this — even Neil Peart’s remorseless flintiness — reflects the distinctive, endearing characteristics of Rush: the band has now ceased to exist for some of the same reasons it attracted adoring generations of listeners. As a commercial proposition, Rush remains a potential superpower. Other groups of similar magnitude have always been able to find ways to push on when important members, or even every member that anyone might recognize, came to the end of the road. (In a rock group there is usually at least one person who could really use the cash from a tour.)
Could Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson find some young drummer with healthy wrists and ankles, take “Rush” to the casino circuit, and sell mountains of $75 tickets? They probably could, and they would probably put on a wonderful show. But it is unthinkable (he wrote, knocking on the wood of his desk) for them to do such a thing under the Rush name.
They could probably even devise a low-stress acoustic-heavy setlist, with slowed-down versions of the hits, that they could take to small venues with Peart in tow. Tempting as such schemes must be — Lee was publicly in denial about Peart’s second retirement for ages, and Lifeson says he would go on if it were entirely up to him — they do not suit the nature of Rush.
The group is a three-piece in which every piece counts more or less equally. And part of what their fans pay to see is physical effort of the highest intricacy. I hope it will not offend my fellow Rush fans if I compare it to juggling or acrobatics, or at least suggest that it has such an aspect. Rush songs are full of unpredictable, shifting time signatures and difficult cues. The band’s numerical paucity leaves nowhere to hide dropped chords or melodic clangers. Unlike most three- and four-piece groups, Rush has almost always refused to ever bring a hired sideman onto the live stage, even though this requires Lee to operate sequencers with foot pedals while playing what are often ludicrously difficult bass lines — AND singing like, well, like Geddy Lee.
This, I say as someone who loves Geddy like a family member, is truculence bordering on absurdity. If Rush could approach fans individually and talk it out with them, they could probably persuade them that it made sense to bring a keyboardist, or even a rhythm guitarist, along on the road. (Some groups even sneak in a second percussionist!) It may even be a bit sad that we were denied a more collegial Rush, one that participated in the life of its musical generation, strayed occasionally from its triune purity, and did fun crossovers with other groups (such as 1980’s “Battle Scar”, recorded with fellow Torontonians Max Webster for the Universal Juveniles LP).
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July 22, 2018
“Now We Are Free” – Bagpipe cover (Gladiator theme) | The Snake Charmer
TheSnakeCharmer
Published on 20 Nov 2016My take on this beautiful Gladiator theme song “Now we are free” with Bagpipes!
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Please support me on Patreon to help me make more videos like this and for me to be able to continue doing music/videos on youtube. It would mean so much. Please visit the page to see how. https://www.patreon.com/thesnakecharmer
From the comments: “Vignesh babu – Play at 0.75x and enjoy it and thank me later”.
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July 21, 2018
John Coltrane: My Favourite Things – Sachal Jazz and Wynton Marsalis
Hassan Khan
Published on Apr 30, 2015The original was regarded to have transcended from the West to the East and this tribute absolutely manages to do so! What a tribute and proof that when the East and West compliment rather than compete, there is no limit to what we can achieve! #Makejazznotwar! Sachal Includes Baqir Abbas (flute, bansuri), Nijat Ali (conductor), Ustad Ballu Khan (tabla), Nafees Ahmed (sitar), Asad Ali (guitar), Najaf Ali (dholak), Rafiq Ahmed (dholak)
H/T to Open Culture for the link.
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July 14, 2018
Wicked Game (Cover) – Hannah Boulton, Rabea Massaad, Dave Hollingworth & Ben Minal
Rabea Massaad
Published on 10 May 2017Wicked Game (Cover) – Hannah Boulton, Rabea Massaad, Dave Hollingworth & Ben Minal
As requested here is just the track from my Universal Audio Apollo 8P vs Neve 1073 shootout.
The question here is, which do you think you are hearing?
H/T to ESR, who said “Rare case of a cover that is way better than the original.
Who knew you could improve Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game by re-imagining it as a blues shuffle? Boulton’s vocals and Massaad’s guitar just nail that timeless feeling.”
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July 11, 2018
Men of Harlech
Mark Mains
Published on 16 Apr 2011This stirring music first appeared as “March of the Men of Harlech” in Musical and Poetical Relics of the Welsh Bards (Edward Jones, London 1784). The song was also used in the movie Zulu (1964). To learn more visit: http://www.rorkesdriftvc.com/myths/my… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_of_H…
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