Cheers, Ian! I'm on my way to get a copy! I read the Blind Willie McTell one a few years ago too. Great read. I've got a load of biographies of bands and musicians - some good and some rubbish
I finished the book on Sunday as I could not out it down. It is fascinating to think that the environment in which these musicians lived was little over a hundred years ago. The McTell book was exceptional and I think the best book about any musician that I have read. It smashes the misconceptions of the archetypal blues musician. This book goes in the opposite direction and portrays a very different kind of lifestyle. There are some decent photographs and copies of census records so that the whole exercise allows you to picture the environment in which he grew up in. Seeing that he was about 27 when he died, it is incredible to see how quickly he grew up and how young he much have been when these events happened to him. It was the kind of lifestyle that is hard for us to relate to and I was staggered by the levels of abject poverty which Johnson tried to escape. The family trees are really complicated too. I felt that the man really emerged from the myths but that the authors were not totally dismissive of these tales insofar that they explain the contexts in which the myths would have taken hold. It is weird too to think that Johnson's sometimes travelling buddy, Johnny Shines, never made it to the studio. The repertoire is also nicely explained and I am now doing to have to hunt down my copy of the CD I have of his music. I'd always assumed that there were "stock" melodies which the blues musician's used which explains the fact that the same songs appear so often with different titles amongst different musicians but the book goes through each tune to explain why they were recorded as well as explaining the lyrics and how they have been misunderstood for over eighty years. If you like blues, it is an essential read and it made me see Johnson as more contemporary - very much the 1930's equivalent of a Rap artist.
Love this! Love my theremin but can only get a motorbike driving past type of sound or a nasty farting noise https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08nnj31
I have never quite understood how the theremin worked. About 10 years ago I went to the Anvil in Basingstoke to hear a performance of Oliver Messiaen's "Turangulila symphony" which was written in about 1948 and incorporated another early electronic instrument called an Ondes Martenot which is similar but also uses a keyboard. I believe he had also used the instrument in a pre-war composition too. (The instrument was developed in the 1920s.) The instrument was mesmerizing to watch although I think the whole composition remains my favourite piece of classical music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondes_Martenot Messiaen was a fascinating composer. He quickly moved against the Serialist school of composers when he started to establish his own voice. I have a CD of an early composition and it is clear that we was originally influenced by his teacher, Paul Dukas (The sorcerer's apprentice) to begin with. Eventually, his music started to make use of exotic, far-Eastern scales and birdsong. Messiaen was a massive influence on many jazz arrangers emerging in the 1960s onward yet he famously hated jazz.
Some new music from two of my all time heroes commenting on today's troubled times... Just listening the the whole album and Chrissie is back on top form it could've been named Pretenders III.
I love discovering songs I never knew existed on youtube and here are a couple from The Shins' James Mercer and Danger Mouse, Brian Burton's side project, Broken Bells...
Broken Bells are fantastic and surprisingly under the radar given who they are. Their debut album was one of my favourites of 2010. Highly recommend "The High Road" as a single.
Not sure if people are familiar with All We Are. They have a new album out which is quietly funky and worth a listen... However, here is a series of three videos from their 2017 album which I think people might enjoy. They tell a story across the three so worth watching in order. Edit: NSFW: Language
Back to frenchsaint76's more Scandinavian flavour, this is well worth a listen to.....as is most of the music created by Aurora.
