Modern Kicks

hard times, come again no more

Billy Bragg singing "Hard Times of Old England" with the Imagined Village.

It's growing on me.  When I first listened last night, I found it a bit too slow, but it doesn't feel so much that way now.  The intriguing ensemble  includes, along with Bragg and other notables, folk icon Martin Carthy and his daughter, fiddler Eliza Carthy, not to mention Paul Weller.  The idea of approaching traditional music from a contemporary blend of styles and instruments drawn from the musics of modern Britain's many cultural groups certainly delivers a rich, if sometimes sonorous, sound.  One request: if Bragg isn't going to play, at least let him hold a guitar--he has no idea what to with his hands.

The Imagined Village project certainly blends well with Bragg's current interest in what constitutes an English identity today, a topic about which he's written and even devoted most of an album.  I didn't find that record very successful as music, unfortunately, though I look forward to reading the book.  I do wonder what Bragg and Weller say to one another these days.  Obviously it's been a long time, and no doubt they've had plenty of opportunities in the relatively small world of British pop to meet and talk, but I recall from Bragg's official biography a movement on his part from admiration for Weller to a certain amount of disappointment and disillusionment in the aftermath of the Red Wedge effort.  Whether that was deserved, or Bragg was simply misguided, or if I'm even remembering correctly may all be doubted, but it interests me nonethless.  Anyway, a clip from old times to end this post.

my thoughts exactly

Busy and blocked.  But not displeased at the arrival of spring or without hope that my opportunities to post will improve.

Blue, Red and Grey - The Who

a conceit comprehensible to fewer each year

Lines & Circularities

on hearing Casals’ recording of Bach’s Sixth Suite

Deep in a time that cannot come again
Bach thought it through, this lonely and immense
Reflexion wherein our sorrows learn to dance.
And deep in a time that cannot come again
Casals recorded it. Playing it back,
And bending now over the instrument,
I watch the circling stillness of the disc,
The tracking inward of the tonearm, enact
A mystery wherein the music shares:
How time, that comes and goes and vanishes,
Never to come again, can come again.

How many silly miracles there are
That will not save us, neither will they save
The world, and yet they are miraculous:
The tonearm following the spiral path
While moving inward on a shallow arc,
Making the music that companions it
Through winding ways to silence at the close;
The delicate needle that navigates these canyons
By contact with the edges, not the floor;
Black plastic that has memorized and kept
In its small striations whatever it was told
By the master’s mind and hand and bow and box,
Making such definite shudderings in the air
That Bach’s intent rises from the tomb . . .
The Earth, that spins around upon herself
In the simple composition of Light and Dark,
And varying her distance on the Sun
Makes up the Seasons and the Years, and Time
Itself, whereof the angels make record;
The Sun, swinging his several satellites
Around himself and slowly round the vast
Galactic rim and out to the unknown
Past Vega at the apex of his path;
And all this in the inward of the mind,
Where the great cantor sings his songs to God . . .

The music dances to its inner edge
And stops. The tonearm lifts and cocks its head
An instant, as if listening for something
That is no longer there but might be; then
Returns to rest, as with a definite click
The whole strange business turns itself off.

--Howard Nemerov

midwinter report

A bit melodramatic, like a lot of his stuff, but it still strikes a chord, especially at the end of one in a series of long days.  Not that my life is anywhere near this, but isn't that part of the point?  A little wallowing has such a cathartic effect.  And the piano part is lovely.

These Days (I Barely Get By) - George Jones

woke up this morning with the hot water

Crisis averted, how about a little fun?  Not only in keeping with recent events, it can double as a personal, belated "best of 2007" post.  Not that I've heard the whole record, but the song is great.  I remember the SO coming in once when I was listening to it; she asked, "When was this recorded?"  "Um, this year, I think," was my reply.  "Sounds like it was 50 years ago," she replied.  That's part of the fun of it.  Also it reminds one how much fun Tom Waits can still be as a songwriter now and again.

Cold Water - John Hammond

it's not even worth talking about those people down there

James Panero flags an essay in the Atlantic complaining about the role and status of "quirkiness" in today's culture.  Like James, I can't help but cheer at any rhetorical bricks thrown at the insufferable Ira Glass, and to a certain extent agree that the author's later backtracking to only being against "bad quirk" is something of a copout.  Still, if one called Jonathan Richman a leading example of quirkiness in pop culture (and the case surely can be made regarding the composer of "I'm a Little Dinosaur") and found that a bad thing, well, so much the worse for the indictment of quirkiness.  Jonathan Richman rocks, and that's pretty much all there is to it (perhaps an exception can be made for quirky rock music that always has a strong backbeat.)

I was also quite alarmed when I read James' post and saw the claim that the "inert cuteness of "quirk culture" can be traced back to the Talking Heads and indie rock."  While I don't know exactly how James feels, reading the Atlantic article revealed the reassuring news that the author of it regarding the Talking Heads' culpibility for quirkiness to have begun with "Stay Up Late," from the Little Creatures record--you know, the one that when released caused all Talking Heads fans to wonder "What the hell has happened to this band?"  When David Byrne sang "Goo goo, ga ga ga, goo goo, ga ga ga" a few years before, it wasn't quirkiness, after all; it was an expression of contempt for the way the rest of his fellow citizens lived tout court.  Which may have, you know, its own problems, but Ira Glass it ain't.

Talking Heads -  The Big Country

ain't it the truth?

I got nothing, but this came to mind during my evening reading:

Liz Phair - Shitloads of Money

noted

- A. O. Scott writes that the new biography of Kingsley Amis offers "tasteful catnip for high-minded voyeurs."

- Porter Wagoner is back, baby.

- Because I didn't link to it the other day, part 4 of Christoph Büchel's statement to the Globe.

- Ken Johnson on what the soaring art market means for public collections.

- Louise Bourgeois interviewed in the LA Times.

Given that Dolly's career had moved on to a very different place by the time I was listening to music (i.e., halfway toward being a joke), I never realized how much Emmylou Harris sounded like the young Parton.

it's a gray, gray morning

The rain it do fall.

Painted Ladies - Richard Thompson

remember the sun and how it used to shine in dark corners of your mind

Still working (or, not having time to work ) on the Hodgkin post.  Let me distract you with some music (although I cannot compete with this, except to say: Nilsson?  Ha-ha.)  I wrote about this song by the Ginn Sisters once before, but wasn't in a position to share it.  It's no longer on their MySpace page, but you can hear it below.  And while I'd mitigate some of what I said about it being like contemporary country (in some ways it is, but it's a lot more basic and honest), I stand by the idea the idea that they sing the hell out of this song.

The Ginn Sisters - Broken Spirit