Speaking of people discovered through my brother Steve he played me Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band and said check out her guitar player!
"He’s a Brit!” *
Lifelong fan right there . . . . .often overlooked but never quite equalled!
Saturday, August 02, 2025
Albert Lee - Just Because
Mississippi John Hurt | Don's Tunes
Now I may have mentioned that my dear brother Steve introduced me to a lot of music largely from America and Mississippi John was one of those ( blues men and country pickers too, Doc Watson this means you!) but John Hurt holds a special place in my heart as soon as I heard Lovin’ Spoonful, I’m Satisfied, Lay Me Down a Pallet on Your Floor and so on I was gone . . . loved that down home easy pickin' style
World-renowned master of the acoustic guitar John Hurt, an important figure in the 1960s folk blues revival, spent most of his life doing farm work around Avalon in Carroll County and performing for parties and local gatherings. Hurt (1893-1966) only began to earn a living from music after he left Mississippi in 1963 to play at folk festivals, colleges, and coffeehouses. His first recordings, 78 rpm discs released in 1928-29, are regarded as classics of the blues genre.
Mississippi John Hurt’s delicate vocals, inventive fingerpicking on guitar, and warm personality endeared him to generations of music fans. Much of Hurt’s material predated the blues, and his gentle style provided a stark contrast to the typically harsh approaches of Delta musicians such as Son House and Charley Patton. According to a family bible, Hurt was born on July 3, 1893, in Teoc, several miles southwest of here. Other sources, including his tombstone at the St. James Cemetery in Avalon, have suggested dates ranging from 1892 to 1900. He began playing guitar around age nine. By twenty Hurt was performing at parties and square dances, sometimes with local white fiddler Willie Narmour, who had a contract with OKeh Records. Narmour recommended Hurt to OKeh, and in 1928 Hurt traveled to Memphis and New York to record. His OKeh songs included the murder ballads “Frankie,” “Stack O’Lee,” and “Louis Collins;” “Spike Driver Blues” (Hurt’s take on the John Henry legend); “Nobody’s Dirty Business” (a tune with roots in 19th century minstrelsy); religious songs; and Hurt’s own “Candy Man Blues” and “Got the Blues Can’t Be Satisfied.”The recordings apparently had little effect on Hurt’s lifestyle, and he continued to play regularly for locals at house parties, picnics, night spots, work sheds, hunting lodges, and at the Valley Store at this site. His older brother Junious also sometimes played harmonica here. For most of his life Hurt worked as a farmer, but he also worked in a factory in Jackson and at a local gravel pit, and was employed as a laborer for Illinois Central Railroad and the Works Progress Administration. One of Hurt’s 1928 songs, “Avalon Blues,” later provided record collector Tom Hoskins with a clue to his whereabouts, and in 1963 Hoskins located Hurt in Avalon and arranged for him to move to Washington, D.C., where he cut several albums and recorded for the Library of Congress. Hurt subsequently became a popular and beloved performer on the folk music circuit. His many admirers included the folk-rock band the Lovin’ Spoonful, whose name was inspired by a line from Hurt’s “Coffee Blues.” In 1965 he moved to Grenada, Mississippi, where he died on November 2, 1966.
Photo: Daniel Kramer
content © Mississippi Blues Commission
Mississippi John Hurt, Philadelphia Folk Festival , 1965
Make Me A Pallet on Your Floor
Coffee Blues (that Lovin’ Spoonful)
I like to think introducing me to this song was my Steve’s way of educating me as to where the guys got their name from - I discovered the Lovin’ Spoonful 'for myself' and wanted something to call my own as he was busy playing Bob Dylan!
Picture of the Day
The Jelly Roll Morton Band
with Morton on the far left
Where it all began!
well for me . . . .
Andy Warhol’s Nico and The Velvet Underground posters for the Boston Tea Party
Anybody?
Friday, August 01, 2025
THE END OF THE F**KING WORLD TV soundtrack!
One of the truly great joys is find to new musics (Emily Barker, Wilful Missing etc) via the television and you may have spotted that I have now subscribed to NetFlix and been catching up with loads of great films and series (the music selection from Ricky Gervais’ Afterlife is great BTW - didn’t make ME cry at all! OBVS!) but I have been intrigued by the series The End of The F**king World - a Brit TV series and just featuring a favourite in Tim Key but the soundtrack is extraordinary. Featuring an awful lot of Graham ‘Blur’ Coxon at his very best and yet also featuring a selection of early pop classics or forgotten tracks too (Billy Fury anyone?)
Truly fascinating and a masterpiece I suspect, darkly comic and ever so slightly frightening but the MUSIC?!
for example
Graham Coxon - Walking All Day (From 'The End of The F***ing World')
Billy Fury - Wondrous Place
Florist - Unholy Places
Graham Coxon - Mashed Potato (From 'The End of The F***ing World')
The End Of The F***ing World - Original Songs and Score by Graham Coxon out now! Spotify: http://bit.ly/teotfw-spotify iTunes: http://bit.ly/teotfw-itunes Digital download: http://bit.ly/teotfw-dl Pre-order on gatefold vinyl: http://bit.ly/teotfw-vinyl Taken from the original music for the Channel 4 / Netflix TV Series The End Of The F***ing World, produced by Clerkenwell Films and Dominic Buchanan Productions. Original Songs and Score by Graham Coxon. Follow Graham Coxon:/ grahamcoxon
/ grahamcoxonofficial http://grahamcoxon.co.uk http://shop.blur.co.uk/uk/graham-coxo...
Blooper Reel . . . . . .
David Byrne’s Newsletter August 1st 2025
|
|
So many songs tell us how to do a specific dance. So many! Instructions that make you move... It never gets tiring.
-David Byrne
Listen to this month's playlist on: Apple Music: Click Here Mixcloud (free streaming): Click Here |
|
Check out the inspo behind the writing and recording of “She Explains Things To Me,” the 2nd single from my forthcoming album ‘Who Is The Sky?’ out September 5th. |
|
|
Richard Thompson / Park West, Chicago, IL Oct. 17, 1986 WXRT-FM, Voodoo Wagon | a draftervoi find
Richard Thompson / Park West, Chicago, IL Oct. 17, 1986 WXRT-FM
Park West
Chicago, IL
October 17, 1986
WXRT-FM
01 Bill Cochran - WXRT-FM Intro02 Richard Thompson - Stage Intro03 Richard Thompson - Man In Need04 Richard Thompson - Valerie05 Richard Thompson - When The Spell Is Broken06 Richard Thompson - Jennie07 Richard Thompson - Dead Man's Handle08 Richard Thompson - Wall of Death09 Richard Thompson - The Calvary Cross10 Richard Thompson - Lover's Lane11 Richard Thompson - Nearly In Love12 Richard Thompson - Band Intros13 Richard Thompson - The Willow Tree, Bean Setting, Shooting14 Richard Thompson - Flying Saucer Rock and Roll15 Bill Cochran - WXRT-FM Outro16 Richard Thompson - Just The Motion (outtake)17 Richard Thompson - Borrowed Time (outtake)
draftervoi says:
"Another multi-generation WXRT-FM tape that I got in trade back in the 1980s.
Good show, from one of WXRT's Sunday night rebroadcasts.
Sometimes they edited the show down from a longer original show,
so there's a possibility that there's a longer version of this out there.
Back when we traded tapes through the mail, we would often end up with space
for a few extra songs. Most traders would add in a few tracks to fill up the
blank space. On this show, the trader added two outtakes of unknown date.
What with all the releases of bonus tracks over the years, these may
have been released by now.”
Being from drafter and FM this is just fantastic quality and FLAC file too! If you’re a Richard Thompson fan you need this . . . . . another 80s selection and simply the band is on top form
Richard Thompson Band - ‘Valerie’ Recorded October 17 at Park West in Chicago,
Main Inspirer . . . . . DELMORE SCHWARTZ - LOU REED
Delmore Schwartz Uncredited and Undated Photograph
I
I think it is the year 1909. I feel as if I were in a motion picture theatre, the long arm of light crossing the darkness and spinning, my eyes fixed on the screen. This is a silent picture as if an old Biograph one, in which the actors are dressed in ridiculously old-fashioned clothes, and one flash succeeds another with sudden jumps. The actors too seem to jump about and walk too fast. The shots themselves are full of dots and rays, as if it were raining when the picture was photographed. The light is bad.
It is Sunday afternoon, June 12th, 1909, and my father is walking down the quiet streets of Brooklyn on his way to visit my mother. His clothes are newly pressed and his tie is too tight in his high collar. He jingles the coins in his pockets, thinking of the witty things he will say. I feel as if I had by now relaxed entirely in the soft darkness of the theatre; the organist peals out the obvious and approximate emotions on which the audience rocks unknowingly. I am anonymous, and I have forgotten myself. It is always so when one goes to the movies, it is, as they say, a drug.
My father walks from street to street of trees, lawns and houses, once in a while coming to an avenue on which a streetcar skates and gnaws, slowly progressing. The conductor, who has a handle-bar mustache helps a young lady wearing a hat like a bowl with feathers on to the car. She lifts her long skirts slightly as she mounts the steps. He leisurely makes change and rings his bell. It is obviously Sunday, for everyone is wearing Sunday clothes, and the street-car’s noises emphasize the quiet of the holiday. Is not Brooklyn the City of Churches? The shops are closed and their shades drawn, but for an occasional stationery store or drug-store with great green balls in the window.
My father has chosen to take this long walk because he likes to walk and think. He thinks about himself in the future and so arrives at the place he is to visit in a state of mild exaltation. He pays no attention to the houses he is passing, in which the Sunday dinner is being eaten, nor to the many trees which patrol each street, now coming to their full leafage and the time when they will room the whole street in cool shadow. An occasional carriage passes, the horse’s hooves falling like stones in the quiet afternoon, and once in a while an automobile, looking like an enormous upholstered sofa, puffs and passes.
My father thinks of my mother, of how nice it will be to introduce her to his family. But he is not yet sure that he wants to marry her, and once in a while he becomes panicky about the bond already established. He reassures himself by thinking of the big men he admires who are married: William Randolph Hearst, and William Howard Taft, who has just become President of the United States.
My father arrives at my mother’s house. He has come too early and so is suddenly embarrassed. My aunt, my mother’s sister, answers the loud bell with her napkin in her hand, for the family is still at dinner. As my father enters, my grandfather rises from the table and shakes hands with him. My mother has run upstairs to tidy herself. My grandmother asks my father if he has had dinner, and tells him that Rose will be downstairs soon. My grandfather opens the conversation by remarking on the mild June weather. My father sits uncomfortably near the table, holding his hat in his hand. My grandmother tells my aunt to take my father’s hat. My uncle, twelve years old, runs into the house, his hair tousled. He shouts a greeting to my father, who has often given him a nickel, and then runs upstairs. It is evident that the respect in which my father is held in this household is tempered by a good deal of mirth. He is impressive, yet he is very awkward.
II
Finally my mother comes downstairs, all dressed up, and my father being engaged in conversation with my grandfather becomes uneasy, not knowing whether to greet my mother or continue the conversation. He gets up from the chair clumsily and says “hello” gruffly. My grandfather watches, examining their congruence, such as it is, with a critical eye, and meanwhile rubbing his bearded cheek roughly, as he always does when he reflects. He is worried; he is afraid that my father will not make a good husband for his oldest daughter. At this point something happens to the film, just as my father is saying something funny to my mother; I am awakened to myself and my unhappiness just as my interest was rising. The audience begins to clap impatiently. Then the trouble is cared for but the film has been returned to a portion just shown, and once more I see my grandfather rubbing his bearded cheek and pondering my father’s character. It is difficult to get back into the picture once more and forget myself, but as my mother giggles at my father’s words, the darkness drowns me.
My father and mother depart from the house, my father shaking hands with my mother once more, out of some unknown uneasiness. I stir uneasily also, slouched in the hard chair of the theatre. Where is the older uncle, my mother’s older brother? He is studying in his bedroom upstairs, studying for his final examination at the College of the City of New York, having been dead of rapid pneumonia for the last twenty-one years. My mother and father walk down the same quiet streets once more. My mother is holding my father’s arm and telling him of the novel which she has been reading; and my father utters judgments of the characters as the plot is made clear to him. This is a habit which he very much enjoys, for he feels the utmost superiority and confidence when he approves and condemns the behavior of other people. At times he feels moved to utter a brief “Ugh “—whenever the story becomes what he would call sugary. This tribute is paid to his manliness. My mother feels satisfied by the interest which she has awakened; she is showing my father how intelligent she is, and how interesting.
They reach the avenue, and the street-car leisurely arrives. They are going to Coney Island this afternoon, although my mother considers that such pleasures are inferior. She has made up her mind to indulge only in a walk on the boardwalk and a pleasant dinner, avoiding the riotous amusements as being beneath the dignity of so dignified a couple.
My father tells my mother how much money he has made in the past week, exaggerating an amount which need not have been exaggerated. But my father has always felt that actualities somehow fall short. Suddenly I begin to weep. The determined old lady who sits next to me in the theatre is annoyed and looks at me with an angry face, and being intimidated, I stop. I drag out my handkerchief and dry my face, licking the drop which has fallen near my lips. Meanwhile I have missed something, for here are my mother and father alighting at the last stop, Coney Island.
III
They walk toward the boardwalk, and my father commands my mother to inhale the pungent air from the sea. They both breathe in deeply, both of them laughing as they do so. They have in common a great interest in health, although my father is strong and husky, my mother frail. Their minds are full of theories of what is good to eat and not good to eat, and sometimes they engage in heated discussions of the subject, the whole matter ending in my father’s announcement, made with a scornful bluster, that you have to die sooner or later anyway. On the boardwalk’s flagpole, the American flag is pulsing in an intermittent wind from the sea.
My father and mother go to the rail of the boardwalk and look down on the beach where a good many bathers are casually walking about. A few are in the surf. A peanut whistle pierces the air with its pleasant and active whine, and my father goes to buy peanuts. My mother remains at the rail and stares at the ocean. The ocean seems merry to her; it pointedly sparkles and again and again the pony waves are released. She notices the children digging in the wet sand, and the bathing costumes of the girls who are her own age. My father returns with the peanuts. Overhead the sun’s lightning strikes and strikes, but neither of them are at all aware of it. The boardwalk is full of people dressed in their Sunday clothes and idly strolling. The tide does not reach as far as the boardwalk, and the strollers would feel no danger if it did. My mother and father lean on the rail of the boardwalk and absently stare at the ocean. The ocean is becoming rough; the waves come in slowly, tugging strength from far back. The moment before they somersault, the moment when they arch their backs so beautifully, showing green and white veins amid the black, that moment is intolerable. They finally crack, dashing fiercely upon the sand, actually driving, full force downward, against the sand, bouncing upward and forward, and at last petering out into a small stream which races up the beach and then is recalled. My parents gaze absentmindedly at the ocean, scarcely interested in its harshness. The sun overhead does not disturb them. But I stare at the terrible sun which breaks up sight, and the fatal, merciless, passionate ocean, I forget my parents. I stare fascinated and finally, shocked by the indifference of my father and mother, I burst out weeping once more. The old lady next to me pats me on the shoulder and says “There, there, all of this is only a movie, young man, only a movie,” but I look up once more at the terrifying sun and the terrifying ocean, and being unable to control my tears, I get up and go to the men’s room, stumbling over the feet of the other people seated in my row.
IV
When I return, feeling as if I had awakened in the morning sick for lack of sleep, several hours have apparently passed and my parents are riding on the merry-go-round. My father is on a black horse, my mother on a white one, and they seem to be making an eternal circuit for the single purpose of snatching the nickel rings which are attached to the arm of one of the posts. A hand-organ is playing; it is one with the ceaseless circling of the merry-go-round.
For a moment it seems that they will never get off the merry- go-round because it will never stop. I feel like one who looks down on the avenue from the 50th story of a building. But at length they do get off; even the music of the hand-organ has ceased for a moment. My father has acquired ten rings, my mother only two, although it was my mother who really wanted them.
They walk n along the boardwalk as the afternoon descends by imperceptible degrees into the incredible violet of dusk. Everything fades into a relaxed glow, even the ceaseless murmuring from the beach, and the revolutions of the merry-go- round. They look for a place to have dinner. My father suggests the best one on the boardwalk and my mother demurs, in accordance with her principles.
However they do go to the best place, asking. for a table near the window, so that they can look out on the boardwalk and the mobile ocean. My father feels omnipotent as he places a quarter in the waiter’s hand as he asks for a table. The place is crowded and here too there is music, this time from a kind of string trio. My father orders dinner with a fine confidence.
As the dinner is eaten, my father tells of his plans for the future, and my mother shows with expressive face how interested she is, and how impressed. My father becomes exultant. He is lifted up by the waltz that is being played, and his own future begins to intoxicate him. My father tells my mother that he is going to expand his business, for there is a great deal of money to be made. He wants to settle down. After all, he is twenty-nine, he has lived by himself since he was thirteen, he is making more and more money, and he is envious of his married friends when he visits them in the cozy security of their homes, surrounded, it seems, by the calm domestic pleasures, and by delightful children, and then, as the waltz reaches the moment when all the dancers swing madly, then, then with awful daring, then he asks my mother to marry him, although awkwardly enough and puzzled, even in his excitement, at how he had arrived at the proposal, and she, to make the whole business worse, begins to cry, and my father looks nervously about, not knowing at all what to do now, and my mother says: “It’s all I’ve wanted from the moment I saw you,” sobbing, and he finds all of this very difficult, scarcely to his taste, scarcely as he had thought it would be, on his long walks over Brooklyn Bridge in the revery of a fine cigar, and it was then that I stood up in the theatre and shouted: “Don’t do it. It’s not too late to change your minds, both of you. Nothing good will come of it, only remorse, hatred, scandal, and two children whose characters are monstrous.” The whole audience turned to look at me, annoyed, the usher came hurrying down the aisle flashing his searchlight, and the old lady next to me tugged me down into my seat, saying: “Be quiet. You’ll be put out, and you paid thirty-five cents to come in.” And so I shut my eyes because I could not bear to see what was happening. I sat there quietly.
V
But after awhile I begin to take brief glimpses, and at length I watch again with thirsty interest, like a child who wants to maintain his sulk although offered, the bribe of candy. My parents are now having their picture taken in a photographer’s booth along the boardwalk. The place is shadowed in the mauve light which is apparently necessary. The camera is set to the side on its tripod and looks like a Martian man. The photographer is instructing my parents in how to pose. My father has his arm over my mother’s shoulder, and both of them smile emphatically. The photographer brings my mother a bouquet of flowers to hold in her hand but she holds it at the wrong angle. Then the photographer covers himself with the black cloth which drapes the camera and all that one sees of him is one protruding arm and his hand which clutches the rubber ball which he will squeeze when the picture is finally taken. But he is not satisfied with their appearance. He feels with certainty that somehow there is something wrong in their pose. Again and again he issues from his hidden place with new directions. Each suggestion merely makes matters worse. My father is becoming impatient. They try a seated pose. The photographer explains that he has pride, he is not interested’ in all of this for the money, he wants to make beautiful pictures. My father says: “Hurry up, will you? We haven’t got all night.” But the photographer only scurries about apologetically, and issues new directions. The photographer charms me. I approve of him with all my heart, for I know just how he feels, and as he criticizes each revised pose according to some unknown idea of rightness, I become quite hopeful. But then my father says angrily: “Come on, you’ve had enough time, we’re not going to wait any longer.” And the photographer, sighing unhappily, goes back under his black covering, holds out his hand, says: “One, two, three, Now!”, and the picture is taken, with my father’s smile turned to a grimace and my mother’s bright and false. It takes a few minutes for the picture to be developed and as my parents sit in the curious light they become quite depressed.
VI
They have passed a fortune-teller’s booth, and my mother wishes to go in, but my father does not. They begin to argue about it. My mother becomes stubborn, my father once more impatient, and then they begin to quarrel, and what my father would like to do is walk off and leave my mother there, but he knows that that would never do. My mother refuses to budge. She is near to tears, but she feels an uncontrollable desire to hear what the palm-reader will say. My father consents angrily, and they both go into a booth which is in a way like the photographer’s, since it is draped in black cloth and its light is shadowed. The place is too warm, and my father keeps saying this is all nonsense, pointing to the crystal ball on the table. The fortuneteller, a fat, short woman, garbed in what is supposed to be Oriental robes, comes into the room from the back and greets them, speaking with an accent. But suddenly my father feels that the whole thing is intolerable; he tugs at my mother’s arm, but my mother refuses to budge. And then, in terrible anger, my father lets go of my mother’s arm and strides out, leaving my mother stunned. She moves to go after my father, but the fortune-teller holds her arm tightly and begs her not to do so, and I in my seat am shocked more than can ever be said, for I feel as if I were walking a tight-rope a hundred feet over a circus- audience and suddenly the rope is showing signs of breaking, and I get up from my seat and begin to shout once more the first words I can think of to communicate my terrible fear and once more the usher comes hurrying down the aisle flashing his searchlight, and the old lady pleads with me, and the shocked audience has turned to stare at me, and I keep shouting: “What are they doing? Don’t they know what they are doing? Why doesn’t my mother go after my father? If she does not do that, what will she do? Doesn’t my father know what he is doing?” —But the usher has seized my arm and is dragging me away, and as he does so, he says: “What are you doing? Don’t you know that you can’t do whatever you want to do? Why should a young man like you, with your whole life before you, get hysterical like this? Why don’t you think of what you’re doing? You can’t act like this even if other people aren’t around! You will be sorry if you do not do what you should do, you can’t carry on like this, it is not right, you will find that out Soon enough, everything you do matters too much,” and he said that dragging me through the lobby of the theatre into the cold light, and I woke up into the bleak winter morning of my 21st birthday, the windowsill shining with its lip of snow, and the morning already begun.–
Delmore Schwartz, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” 1935
This story was written by Delmore Schwartz, novelist, short story writer and poet, when he was 21 years old. Lou Reed, who studied writing at Syracuse with Schwartz, was something of a protégé, as was, at a much earlier date, Saul Bellow.
Not sure whether we posted this before nor where I got it! but it is worth a read . . . . .
Wilco - Headliners, Madison, WI October 28, 1999 | Floppy Boot Stomp
Wilco - Headliners Madison WI
October 28 1999
Wilco
October 28, 1999
Headliners,
Madison, WI
01 [crowd - tuning]
02 California Stars
03 I'm Always In Love
04 I Must Be High
05 Summer Teeth
06 How to Fight Loneliness
07 Hotel Arizona
08 Nothing'sever gonna stan din my way(again)
09 Red-Eyed and Blue
10 I Got You (At the End of the Century)
11 She's a Jar
12 A Shot in the Arm
13 Misunderstood
14 Hesitating Beauty
15 Christ for President
16 Passenger Side
17 My Darling
18 Can't Stand It
19 Monday
20 [encore break]
21 Forget the Flowers ->
22 New Madrid -> (Uncle Tupelo)
23 The New World (John Doe, Exene Cervenka)
24 Casino Queen
25 [encore break]
26 Kingpin ->
27 Outtasite (Outta Mind)
John Stirratt; bass guitar, backing vocals
Jeff Tweedy; lead vocals, rhythm, acoustic and lead guitars, harmonica
Ken Coomer; drums, percussion
Jay Bennett; rhythm and lead guitars, keyboards, backing vocals
Leroy Bach; rhythm guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)