Melanie - Gather Me (1971 us, polished professional and joyous, 2016 remaster) Plain & Fancy (Rockasteria)

 

Melanie - Gather Me (1971 USA, 2016 remastered)

"Kinda got a feelin' we're not in Kansas no more, no more, no more, no more, Toto stop your barkin', 'cause we're not in Kansas no more" .... you just gotta love this short little throwaway 'wizard' of a song from the "Gather Me" album by Melanie Safka (photograph of 4 year old Melanie by Dagmar). 

After the release of The Good Book in early 1971, Melanie Safka and her producer (and then husband) Peter Schekeryk left Buddah Records to form their own label, Neighborhood Records, and the new freedom seemed to do her a world of good -- Gather Me, released later the same year, is one of her most accomplished and confident albums, a set that allowed Melanie the room to indulge her lyrical obsessions while Schekeryk created superb musical accompaniment from her simple but forceful melodies. The epochal "Ring the Living Bell" is a pocket suite that takes a skeletal lyrical conceit and gives it flight through sheer belief while Schekeryk's arrangement, reinforced with gospel style vocal backing, makes this accomplishment all the more impressive. 

"Railroad," "Little Bit of Me," and "Steppin'" display a lyrical maturity and subtle strength that marked a real step forward for Melanie as a songwriter, and "Some Say (I Got Devil)" is an emotionally devastating tale of a pregnant teenager who clearly has no idea what she should do. Melanie's habit of overplaying her hand as a vocalist is thankfully in retreat on Gather Me, which finds her in full control of her instrument and communicating a wide palette of emotions without becoming melodramatic. And if "Brand New Key" comes across like a silly novelty tune in this context, it's a playful and engaging one, and Melanie sounds like she's having fun putting Freudian symbolism within the grasp of AM radio. Gather Me may well be Melanie's finest album, capturing her at the height of her skills as a writer and singer, and it has stood the test of time better than the majority of her work. 

by Mark Deming

Tracks

1. Little Bit Of Me - 4:12

2. Some Day I'll Be A Farmer - 2:52

3. Steppin' - 3:28

4. Brand New Key - 2:27

5. Ring Around The Moon - 0:41

6. Ring The Living Bell / Shine The Living Light - 5:04

7. Railroad - 2:52

8. Kansas - 1:50

9. Some Say - I Got Devil - 3:09

10.Center Of The Circle - 4:42

11.What Wonderous Love - 3:55

12.Baby Day - 3:45

13.Tell Me Why (Michael Edwards, Mitchell Parish, Sigmund Spaeth) - 1:28

Words and Music by Melanie Safka except where stated

Personel

*Melanie - Guitar, Vocals

*Sal Ditroia - Acoustic, Electric Guitar

*Don Payne - Fender Electric Bass

*Roger Kellaway - Piano, Arrangements

*Buddy Saltzman - Drums

*Donald MacDonald - Drums

*Robert J. Gregg - Drums

*Johnny Pacheco - Congas

*Toots Thielemans - Harmonica 

*Gilbert Chimes - Harmonica 

*Michael Chimes - Harmonica

*George Marge - Woodwind

*Artie Kaplan - Contractor

Plain & Fancy

Birthdays, earworms and one hit wonders : Sixpence None The Richer - Kiss Me

Happy birthday to Leigh Nash, born in New Braunfels, Texas on this day in 1976. 

Kiss her beneath the milky twilight, lead her out on the moonlit floor, lift your open hand, strike up the band and make the fireflies dance. 

Sixpence None The Richer - Kiss Me

Route

J.J.Cale - Woke Up This Morning | jt1674

 Fortunately I did too!

https://www.tumblr.com/jt1674/787438878106796032/jj-cale-woke-up-this-morning

Dr John - My Children My Angels [Locked Down] | jt1674

 We all need a Doctor every now and then  . . . . . if you say the recent picture I shared of Mac with his girls you will understand this song . . . . his children, his angels . . . you know it

Mac and his angel children . . .

https://www.tumblr.com/jt1674/787334470432899072/dr-john-my-children-my-angels

My Album of the week . . . . . James McMurtry - The Black Dog & The Wandering Boy

three day turn around (with frequent mail updates) about delivery from Norman Records thanks to the Sealyman this is my newest Album purrchase - IT’S ACE!

N.B. a signed copy no less!

and my newest favourite label!

Norman Records

Jeff Buckley - Gunshot Glitter (Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk) |jt1674

For Gary Lucas . . . .  

https://www.tumblr.com/jt1674/787429153305722880/jeff-buckley-gunshot-glitter

Appearances can be deceptive . . . . . when Nazi eyes are smiling! | Vintage Dancer.com

 Someone was asking in a thread what kind of people could work for ICE right now.

 

I think it's a good time to remember that the image above are the people who put children into gas chambers. 

When I was little, I asked what kind of person could work at a concentration camp. 

The answer to both questions I think is "normal people who have accepted the dehumanisation of another group of people."

There are approximately thirteen people in this photo. Three officers from the Wehrmacht, the German military of Nazi Germany. Ten women in uniform. Skirts to their knees, with matching blazers, stockings, and practical black shoes. Their hair is done in styles that were fashionable in the 1940s. 

Do you know how they did those hairstyles? They were actually fairly difficult. Most women got their hair done at a salon or by a woman in the neighborhood, or a sister, a friend. You had to set it to get that volume, to get those curls to stay in place while still staying smooth and neat. 

Addendum:

Someone added this

1940s Hairstyles- History of Women's Hairstyles

1940s hairstyles for women. Long hair, short hair, easy day and evening updos. Victory rolls to pompadours. Hair history, tips, tutorials,  

VINTAGEDANCER.COM 

"These women set their hair the night before this picture was taken. Maybe they went to a salon. Maybe they ran a little one out of their housing in Auschwitz. They took this picture, laughing. Please again notice there is a German soldier on the right, holding an accordion. Do you think he was any good? Remember, this was a time where you needed a record player [expensive] or a radio/wireless to hear recorded music. People liked having a musician play, even if they weren’t great. It was fun. 

They’re not monsters. There is nothing about any of these people that make them fundamentally different from you or me.  

The fate of child and youth prisoners was no different in principle from that of adults (with the exception of the children in the family camps). Just like adults, they suffered from hunger and cold, were used as laborers, and were punished, put to death, and used as subjects in criminal experiments by SS doctors.  

At the end of 1943, separate barracks were set up for children above the age of 2. These did not differ in any way from the barracks assigned to adults. The camp authorities did not even distribute milk or appropriate food rations for infants, thus sentencing them to starve to death. Only the children in the camp hospital were a little better off—the prisoner nursing and medical staffs tried to provide them with additional blankets, food, clothing, and medicine. 

The hardest thing was trying to help the Jewish children who were at risk of selection for the gas chambers. 

The extermination of children in Auschwitz and their transfer to other camps, especially in the final stages, ensured that few of them survived until liberation.

What I want people to realize is that the smiling women in this photo had their hair done that week. The laughing soldier holding the accordion probably played for them on the day this was taken. The women probably danced with one another, took turns with the available men. They probably sang while he tried to play a popular song. 

And while they were doing this, there were infants in the buildings, being held by their siblings, or strangers, children under the age of ten, all of them, starving to death, after the smiling people in this photo herded their mothers and grandmothers into gas chambers, after which their fathers and uncles and cousins had to pull the bodies out and remove the gold fillings from the mouths of the corpses.  

And at the end of 1944, when it was becoming a reality that the Allies were probably going to take back Poland, that Auschwitz would be found, the ten women in this photo were probably still working there. And they were making sure that the children who had somehow, against all odds, survived up to that point, were transferred to other camps to be murdered. Transfers, big or small, require paperwork. That these women typed up on typewriters."

NEW SINGLE- Kathryn Williams ‘Personal Paradise (from her new Album MYSTERY PARK)

 Kathryn Williams - Personal Paradise

Kathryn Williams has announced her 15th studio album, ‘Mystery Park’, due September 26th via One Little Independent Records. To mark the announcement, Williams has shar…

See more

Speaking of The Clash . . . . [B.A.D.] Mick Jones’ birthday today too

 BAD - E=MC2

Mick Jones birthday

Big Audio Dynamite - E=MC2, Night Network TV 1986.

thanks to Route for the heads up

Route

Remembering Big Bill Broonzy (June 26, 1893 or 1903 – August 14, 1958) | Don’s Tunes

Big Bill Broonzy is synonymous with pre-war Chicago blues. One of the first artists to make his way to the Windy City, he became one of the most influential artists in blues history.

Broonzy reinvented himself many times. He made his own cigar box fiddle at the age of 10, and with help from his uncle, learned to play.

After he moved to Chicago in the 1920s, he switched from fiddle to guitar, learning from Papa Charlie Jackson. Broonzy worked as a Pullman porter, cook, and foundry worker until he mastered it.

Broonzy was also one of the first bluesmen in Chicago to play electric guitar, beginning in 1942, though his audiences preferred the acoustic sounds of the South.

When a younger generation of electric blues artists began ruling the Chicago scene, Broonzy found a new audience in the white, folk music lovers of both the United States and Europe.

Being a versatile artist with an instinct for professional survival, Broonzy first went to Europe in 1951. He was greeted by enthusiastic fans, and critical acclaim. Subsequent European tours found him influencing young British artists including John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Ray Davies, and Rory Gallagher. Broonzy felt most at home in the Netherlands, where there were no Jim Crow laws nor racism. He fell in love with a Dutch girl by the name of Pim van Isveldt, and fathered a son, Michael, who still lives in Amsterdam.

During his travels on the folk circuit, Broonzy became friends and performed with artists that included Pete Seeger, and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. His song, “Black, Brown and White Blues,” became a protest anthem against racism. In spite of the song’s critique of discrimination, some fans in the black community did not approve of his shift from blues to folk music. Regardless, upon returning from his last tour of France in 1956, he became a founding faculty member of the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago

Source: JD Nash - American Blues Scene 

(photo © Robert Doisneau)

Master French photographer

I’m With Her - cover A Hundred Miles (with Gillian Welch & David Rawlings) Night Grass

“Hundred Miles” with Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings at NightGrass

"A huge life moment and enormous honor. The only cover we’ve recorded for either of our albums with the person who wrote it over 20 years ago. Thank you Gill and Dave and to Telluride Bluegrass - where we first played together 11 years ago” say ‘I’m With Her'

I really don’t get these ’shorts’ and so here’s the full song . . . 

A Hundred Miles - I'm With Her - 10/10/2015

I'm With Her (Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O'Donovan) and The Jeremy Kittel Trio perform Gillian Welch's "A Hundred Miles" during our October 10, 2015 show

Websites:

http://www.sarawatkins.com/ http://www.sarahjarosz.com/ http://www.aoifeodonovan.com/ http://imwithherband.com/ http://jeremykittel.com/ http://prairiehome.org/shows/october-...

Gillian Welch - 100 Miles (the original)

‘got a short little span of attention' so fly by TicToc and Instagram, Flickkenabok’s ‘story’ and reels

listen to the WHOLE thing = back to Valve amps I say!

so I will sign off for the day with these covers of the wonderful Welch song

BLUR Live in AMSTERDAM 1999 | Floppy Boot Stomp (A Silent Way Special)

Blur - Amstel, Amsterdam, NL. 1999

Blur Live - VPRO Studio
Amstel, Amsterdam, Netherlands
1999-02-25
VPRO-FM Source @flac 
 

Silent Way says: A secret show for Dutch radio station VPRO

 (broadcast on March 11), showcasing almost all of 13 before it 

would be officially released.

Track listing:

    [radio intro]
    Song 2
    [another intro?]
    Tender
    Bugman
    Coffee & TV
    Swamp Song
    [intermission]
    1992
    B.L.U.R.E.M.I.
    Battle
    [intermission]
    Mellow Song
    Trailerpark
    Trimm Trabb
    No Distance Left to Run [incomplete]
    [outro]
    [Tender, from 1999-02-19]

Robert Plant & Allison Krauss - Glastonbury 2022 | so many roads

Robert Plant & Allison Krauss - 2022-06-24 - Glastonbury, Pilton, UK (FM)  

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

2022-06-24

Glastonbury Festival

Pilton, UK

BBC-FM Broadcast

01. Rich Woman 

02. Quattro (World Drifts In) 

03. Fortune Teller 

04. The Price Of Love

05. Rock And Roll 

06. Please Read The Letter 

07. Trouble With My Lover

08. High And Lonesome 

09. It Don’t Bother Me 

10. Gone Gone Gone 

11. The Battle Of Evermore

12. When The Levee Breaks

Alison Krauss & Robert Plant Perform "Gone Gone Gone" | CMT Crossroads

Speedy says : When they first got together in 2008, it seemed to be an unlikely partenership to say the least.  Robert Plant was the howling voice of Led Zeppelin, the masters of hard rock. Alison Krauss was a bluegrass icon, know for her angelic, hypnotic vocals.  Yet, when they came together in the studio in late 2007, with legendary producer T Bone Burnett, the result was magic.  Their album, Raising Sand, went to #2 on the Billboard charts, and won the Grammy for Album of the Year, along with 4 others. The critics also loved the disc, with the Village Voice, for example, writing that it was "powerfully evocative" and "utterly foreign, oddly familiar, and deeply gratifying".  The duo toured in 2008, then went their separate ways until 2022, when they again hit the road together.  This FM broadcast captures Plant and Krauss at Glastonbury on June 23, 2022, 3 years ago today!

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - When The Levee Breaks (Glastonbury 2022)

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Rock ’n’ Roll  (Glastonbury 2022)

Paul Simonon finds these buskers irresistible!

 There are moments in the darkness mind . . . . . this from our own dear Soho

Paul Simonon, co-founder of British punk pioneers The Clash, surprised young musicians 'The Whops' as they covered “Guns of Brixton” and “Death or Glory” on a London street corner. 

In this once-in-a-lifetime encounter, Simonon sings along with the boys as they play two of the most recognisable tracks on The Clash's seminal 1979 album “London Calling.”

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

https://paulsimonon.com

John Hiatt- Take It Down (Crossing Muddy Waters) | jt1674

 

https://www.tumblr.com/jt1674/787261302950215680/john-hiatt-take-it-down

For Mick Ralphs . . . . .

https://www.tumblr.com/jt1674/787244637754638336/mott-the-hoople-thunderbuck-ram

News from across the pond . . . . .

World View of America POTUS HOKUS! This one from Australians!

The Aussies are laughing at you now Lil Donnie Drumpf!?

OMG! Australian TV MOCK TIRED Trump for horrible PUBLIC APPEARANCE

Merkins he is making you all a Laughing Stock!

ALL THE NEW THAT’S FIT TO PRINT!

and some that isn’t!

(mostly for Brother Jobe!)

Heart Shaped Box- Marcin

This extraordinary young man appeared on my favourite Sunday morning viewing “Sunday Brunch” and came over as modest gracious polite and remarkably self effacing for one so gifted. . . . .  

"Heart-Shaped Box" on One Guitar - Marcin (Official Video)

Flagging Down The Double E Newsletter | RAY PADGETT | Alphonso Johnson sit-in on bass!

 Santana Bassist Alphonso Johnson Recalls Bob Dylan Sit-In Drama

1984-06-24, Stadion San Siro, Milan, Italy

RAY PADGETT JUN 24

Photo via @guidoharari

When Bob Dylan embarked on his 1984 stadium tour with Santana, jazz bassist Alphonso Johnson had just joined that group (he’d remain through 1989). In addition to playing with Santana every night, one night he sat in with Bob for quite a few songs, alongside his boss Carlos Santana.

Turns out there’s a specific reason Johnson sat in for so many songs—and a specific reason he never sat in again. Below, in a brief conversation, Johnson tells me the story of his one-night-only performance with Dylan, 41 years ago today.

‘Real Live’ vinyl sleeve. Johnson in lower left.

 

read on here . . . . .