Greetings from the Winter Solstice (thankfully not in Moscow).

Greetings from the Winter Solstice (thankfully not in Moscow).

This is excellent modernized trad music! Sami Yoik, Eastern European gypsy jazz and prog rock, rolled into one!
https://play.google.com/music/m/Tjbyndqrwfewypn4v33cirjmx6m?t=D_s_iggun_Cuozzut_-_Mari_Boine

I maintain that Weird Al is the greatest living American songwriter and arranger.

I maintain that Weird Al is the greatest living American songwriter and arranger. Here is a retrospective of his work.

Originally shared by Allen Varney

"Squeeze Box, released a few weeks ago, is an exhausting, astonishing compilation of every one of Al's 14 studio albums, from his New Wave-meets-accordion mash-up 1983 self-titled debut on through his farewell to the full-length album format, 2014's Mandatory Fun, with another disc of 'medium rarities,' all of it slotted into a replica plastic accordion. It's a Complete World Book Encyclopedia set of Nerd Culture. It contains more studio albums than the Beatles ever recorded, documenting a man who has remained in the public eye for nearly twice as long as Elvis Presley.

"In terms of longevity, Al falls somewhere between The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live, though rather than an ever-cycling comedic ensemble, Al's just one bespectacled, poodle-haired accordionist with an adenoidal voice who's never done illegal drugs in his life and kept the same band and manager for the duration of his career. And rather than simply document his knack for turning the Knack and the Presidents of the United States into punch lines, Squeeze Box posits Al as a singular entity in pop culture [...] both the last of a specific type of musical comedian, and the dawn of a new era, where novelty albums and songs are relics and they instead move at the speed of novelty videos that proliferate on social media. As the hours of Squeeze Box roll on (and on and on), the corny jokes, dad-worthy puns, obscure pop-culture references, and musical in-jokes start to fall away, replaced instead with a staggering sense of accomplishment. Like a slice of bologna, Weird Al has had a remarkably long shelf life." (Vulture):

http://www.vulture.com/2017/12/the-unexpected-longevity-of-weird-al-yankovic.html

http://www.vulture.com/2017/12/the-unexpected-longevity-of-weird-al-yankovic.html?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s3&utm_campaign=sharebutton-b

Mari Boine is Samiland's Björk but much better.

Mari Boine is Samiland's Björk but much better.
https://play.google.com/music/m/Tmtawxbnou2okixcfemdettmgea?t=Vuoi_Vuoi_Me_-_Mari_Boine

A reminder of how much AC/DC rocked in their prime.

A reminder of how much AC/DC rocked in their prime.
https://youtu.be/2GiBVM7ICMs

MAGMA for Vikings. Genuinely good.

MAGMA for Vikings. Genuinely good.
https://play.google.com/music/m/Toxyunya4ypwhjodtf3ljvrtgc4?t=Runaljod_-_Wardruna

A look back at how Bob Dylan and other Western folk rockers influenced Japanese singer-songwriters.

A look back at how Bob Dylan and other Western folk rockers influenced Japanese singer-songwriters.

The Japanese language, Mr. Endo said, was essential to capture the details of domestic life — like the kotatsu, a small heated table and blanket where families or lovers huddle.

“There’s absolutely no kotatsu in Dylan’s songs,” he said. “A girl in a miniskirt is not putting her legs inside the kotatsu. And most importantly,” Mr. Endo added, growing agitated, “cats are not sleeping inside the kotatsu in Dylan songs.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/arts/music/japan-archival-series-folk-rock.html?mwrsm=GooglePlus

The Guardian discussing the lasting impact of Yacht Rock, the enigmatic but cloying soft rock genre that dominated...

The Guardian discussing the lasting impact of Yacht Rock, the enigmatic but cloying soft rock genre that dominated airwaves in the late 1970's and early 1980s in between Punk and New Wave.

Still, something about the rebranding of the music that inspired it as yacht rock – an evocative name that posited the music as a soundtrack to a mythic life of sunkissed luxury – seemed to chime with people, bringing it to a new audience. “I think Yacht Rock [the web series] was the beginning of this whole Hall & Oates resurrection,” Oates later remarked. “They were the first ones to start to parody us, and put us out there again..

Inspiring DJs and collectors to dig in the crates is one thing, but exerting an influence on the sound of mainstream pop is another entirely. On the most prosaic level, soft rock appeals to latterday producers because it is, as Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter has said, “the pinnacle of audio fidelity”. There’s also a feeling that the sound acts as a kind of shorthand for musical sophistication: if you’re a former boyband member like One Direction’s Niall Horan, one way of signifying that you have grown is to break out the soft rock influences. As McDonald points out, Steely Dan set a new standard for music that could happily function as pop – they were “all over the radio for years” – without sacrificing its jazz-inspired complexity. “They cast a spell over American pop culture that’s very enigmatic to me, because the music is so sophisticated that I didn’t think it met the criteria of what people thought pop music should be.”

Kirby, meanwhile, has a theory that yacht rock was the sound of rock music entering its 30s. “What I found when researching the artists on Seafaring Strangers was that this was not their first foray into recorded music,” he says. “They had started out playing folk or studying jazz; they had been in R&B bands or soul groups. They forged their songs with a certain maturity, saying: I haven’t made it yet, and I’m still playing music and I’ve got a family and I’m a more mature, potentially complicated person. What music can I create that reflects where I am in my journey?”
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/oct/27/michael-mcdonald-doobie-brothers-hall-oates-toto-soft-rock-got-cool

This is the birth of rock 'n roll.

This is the birth of rock 'n roll.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHunRdJnrWs

Serin Fallu - Youssou Ndour

https://play.google.com/music/m/T74nwv4zvtkccn6c63oje6zzrda?t=Serin_Fallu_-_Youssou_Ndour

H/t Mari Christian​

H/t Mari Christian​

Originally shared by Ken Hannaford

What makes music 'new'? There is one aspect of Wyschnegradsky's work that lies outside the listening expectations of this time while everything else remains as a familiar landscape. Perhaps I should request a vote on those who consider this new and those who consider it different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9WPfkXQa_Y

Update: new version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sfi9gaFwM0

Update: new version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sfi9gaFwM0


This is sublime balladry, part of a series of place-specific performances by Tuvan folk artists collected by YouTube user cribnebulla2012 (a friend IRL).

Observation: the range and depth of the traditional Tuvan repertoire at least equals that of Irish folk music.
https://youtu.be/gK1aIt-ee2s

Larnie Fox​ creates strange little hand-cranked machines for making gamelon-like music. Here are a few in action.

Larnie Fox​ creates strange little hand-cranked machines for making gamelon-like music. Here are a few in action.

Originally shared by Larnie Fox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q76O7ATdo0U&feature=autoshare

Dot showed Krakow the sheet music that was used by the Shaggs when they were active.

Dot showed Krakow the sheet music that was used by the Shaggs when they were active. “They had charts for everything,” he told me, “which was a total mind-fuck.” The melodies had been written by Dot, and she and Betty sang and played them together on their guitars with the sort of intuitive, spooky closeness that is a hallmark of sibling acts like the Delmore Brothers and the Blue Sky Boys. Their sister Helen, meanwhile, was in her own world, playing “rudiments of beats that she remembered from drills during her drum lessons in school” that had little or no relationship to what her sisters were playing.

“They knew exactly what they were doing,” Krakow said, though the changing and often odd-meter time signatures heard on “Philosophy” were mistakes. “Some of the songs sound like they’re in 1/1, with every beat feeling like a punch in the stomach.” The guitars were not in alternative tunings—they were simply out of tune. Though repeated listenings of Shaggs songs can reveal an order within the chaos, and the music’s unadorned authenticity builds into some sort of visceral, gutty celebration of total weirdness that some call genius, it’s probably more accurate to call the album accidental art. The Wiggins were not, as some would have it, “on to something.” They were embarrassed when they heard the results of the recording, and, as time passed, the ever-expanding numbers of devotees they inspired left them nonplussed. They did not feel related to outsider music at all, and wondered whether they were being made fun of.


https://plus.google.com/+KeeHinckley/posts/jDAsoUtNheo

Forgot to post this on my birthday.

Forgot to post this on my birthday.


https://play.google.com/music/m/Tmqho7ling7mcw7x4vr265a64xq

I love “Promised Land” because it’s not just about one Johnny B.

I love “Promised Land” because it’s not just about one Johnny B. Goode, but all of them, Americans everywhere on a shared spiritual journey, hitting the road when they’re feeling stuck, experiencing all the cathartic guitar solos, trying to outrace their inevitable second thoughts.

“If you wanted to paint a picture of that era,” Mr. Ely observed, “you wouldn’t even have to lift a brush, you could just pick up a guitar and play that song.” In just two minutes and 23 seconds, Mr. Berry establishes a whooshing vision of the American dream, as the poor boy leaves his home in Norfolk, Va., and takes buses, trains and jets to Los Angeles to make it in (presumably) the music business, briefly taking note of the civil rights unrest of the time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/travel/chuck-berry-road-trip.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

This is not too far from the original.

This is not too far from the original.
https://youtu.be/jfLzD73AnuU

Another example of how Richard Thompson can make any material sound good.

Another example of how Richard Thompson can make any material sound good.
https://play.google.com/music/m/Th2yq66l5i5uniz25mfa5waioxy?t=Oops_I_Did_it_Again_-_Thompson_Richard

Google Play served up this gem --- an acoustic Richard Thompson album I hadn't heard.

Google Play served up this gem --- an acoustic Richard Thompson album I hadn't heard. This track is a standout example of his mastery of the traditional British folk idiom.
https://play.google.com/music/m/Txp76d2msyhm2ug6ydvrt34vkkq?t=Banish_Misfortune_-_Richard_Thompson

Early music scholar and performer John Butt (I remember him as Kapelmeister at Cal) on how the Reformation changed...

Early music scholar and performer John Butt (I remember him as Kapelmeister at Cal) on how the Reformation changed Western music:

Why are we celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in music? Why does it have any enduring significance for the culture of western music?

For a start, the Protestant imperative to attend more to text in general and scripture in particular, led to the Catholic church’s own Reformation, the Counter Reformation, in the mid-16th century. It was in this environment that Palestrina became the mythologised father of a new Catholic musical tradition that, like those of the Protestants, purported to present the text more clearly by avoiding the excesses of polyphonic elaboration.

The Catholic church’s increased interest in music as the medium for text also drew it closer to humanist concerns for expression and effect – something that lay behind the development of madrigalian and operatic styles. And the interest in expression and emotional content also directly paralleled the new sense of intimate spirituality that characterised both the Catholic and Protestant reformations.

The art of music, which used to be the analogue of the proportions of heaven and the harmony of the entire cosmos, was increasingly brought down to earth, with the focus more on the human spirit and body. It would be simplistic to claim that all this was caused by the Reformation, but it is unlikely to have happened without the debates about faith, devotional practice and personal responsibility that the Reformation inaugurated.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/18/the-reformation-classical-musics-punk-moment

This pseudo-quantitative heat map analysis of YouTube music popularity by US county proves only one thing: my...

This pseudo-quantitative heat map analysis of YouTube music popularity by US county proves only one thing: my musical tastes are several sigmas outside the mean. Aside from oldie metal act Metallica, I couldn't hum a tune by any of these popular artists. 
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/upshot/music-fandom-maps.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0#future

RIP the artist formerly known as Gurrumul

RIP the artist formerly known as Gurrumul

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/world/australia/yunupingu-singer-aborigine.html

His debut album is incredible.
https://play.google.com/music/m/Bfovmlgfwmq4av7xycov3b3bhwy?t=Gurrumul_-_Gurrumul

Opinion | Richard Twice: A Musical Life Interrupted

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/opinion/richard-twice-music.html

A forgotten proto-prog masterpiece. Heavy organ!

A forgotten proto-prog masterpiece. Heavy organ!
https://play.google.com/music/m/Bievdpv6lehmbbqo6ddeumq72ae?t=Space_Shanty_-_Khan

An excellent Steeleye Span / Fairport Convention tribute band.

An excellent Steeleye Span / Fairport Convention tribute band.
https://play.google.com/music/m/Ajjsu5ijznlwo6vwjbbdamcl5za?t=Offa_Rex

LSTM trained on Bach and Mozart MIDIs spits out endless wonky pseudo-baroque toccatas, passing briefly through a...

LSTM trained on Bach and Mozart MIDIs spits out endless wonky pseudo-baroque toccatas, passing briefly through a drunken mashup of Paul Hindemith and Scott Joplin on a broken player piano. We are nowhere close to the glory of CPU Bach.
https://youtu.be/SacogDL_4JU

WSJ reports that hip-hop worship of Mammon has gone global

WSJ reports that hip-hop worship of Mammon has gone global

Even a decade ago, rappers nodded only a handful of times to any currency other than the dollar. In 2007, the euro appeared in just one rap song in the database of Rap Genius, a crowdsourced website that annotates rap lyrics. The Japanese yen appeared twice, and the peso a half-dozen times.

But as hip-hop music has become more global, rappers are internationalizing their lyrics, too, and references to foreign currencies are multiplying.

Peso appeared in 40 rap songs last year, Rap Genius said, while yen was mentioned in 10 and euro in seven. The Indian rupee, Russian ruble and British pound are also popping up in hip-hop lyrics with increasing frequency._
__
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-low-has-the-dollar-sunk-even-some-rappers-prefer-euros-1496935600

Bob Dylan's Nobel lecture seems as incoherent and ambiguous as ever:

Bob Dylan's Nobel lecture seems as incoherent and ambiguous as ever:

“Moby-Dick,” as he describes it, gave Mr. Dylan the tool of intertwining character voices and the theme of rebirth through a narrator. “Ahab gets tangled up in the harpoon lines and is thrown out of his boat into a watery grave,” he writes. But Ishmael survives the shipwreck, “in the sea floating on a coffin.” The theme “works its way into more than a few of my songs,” he wrote, but gave no examples. (That sound you hear is a dozen dissertations being started.)

“All Quiet on the Western Front” — which is also admired by President Trump — portrays the hell of war, and the role of an artist to document it and give the world a reason to survive. Finally, Mr. Dylan turns to “The Odyssey,” with its themes of wandering, adventure and danger, and of returning home to a changed place.

What does it all mean? Mr. Dylan dodges answering directly. But he argues that songs both are and are not literature, the work of novels and plays and epic poems. “Songs are unlike literature,” he wrote. “They’re meant to be sung, not read.” And he asks people to encounter his lyrics the way they were intended to be heard, “in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days.”

But, he added, the granddaddy of Western literature was a singer and a lyric writer, too. “I return once again to Homer,” he wrote, “who says, ‘Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story.’”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/05/arts/music/bob-dylan-nobel-prize-lecture-literature.html?module=WatchingPortal®ion=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=15&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/05/arts/music/bob-dylan-nobel-prize-lecture-literature.html&eventName=Watching-article-click&_r=0

This delightful performance turns Beethoven's heroic funeral march into a happy funeral rumba.

This delightful performance turns Beethoven's heroic funeral march into a happy funeral rumba.

Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger

And now something just for fun: The second movement of Beethoven's Symphony no. 7, transformed into a Rumba.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZRb0FyAa9s

The Wall Street Journal picks up on Hevisaurus, theFinnish dinosaur-costumed kids' metal band:

The Wall Street Journal picks up on Hevisaurus, theFinnish dinosaur-costumed kids' metal band:

For parents, the band helps solve a practical problem: how to get their small ones rocking so hard they agree to take a bath, without picking up salty language along the way.

“We started listening to Gwar,” says Mr. Hamlin, who has a 3-year-old and a 10-month-old. “We can’t really listen to Gwar anymore, because if he said some of the words that Gwar would say I’d probably have a phone call from his nursery.” The American metal band plays in grotesque monster costumes—the adults-only equivalent of Hevisaurus—and has hits including “Slaughterama” and “Lust In Space.”

Mr. Hamlin now relies on Iron Maiden for bath time instead.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-combines-iron-maiden-dinosaurs-and-play-dates-hevisaurus-the-heavy-metal-sensation-for-children-1488214557

A fine skiffle maqam by Davy Graham.

A fine skiffle maqam by Davy Graham.
https://play.google.com/music/m/Tcnyegsoabqzfmhwxagsukbohqm?t=Rif_Mountain_-_Davy_Graham

Deep cuts here, reminiscent of Fela Kuti with a heavy dose of Lee Scratch Perry

Deep cuts here, reminiscent of Fela Kuti with a heavy dose of Lee Scratch Perry
https://play.google.com/music/m/Bvtjbm2fkjuoxjfvskei3vbbi5i?t=World_Psychedelic_Classics_5_Who_Is_William_Onyeabor_-_William_Onyeabor

Scarfolk Council​​ unearths a forgotten Prog Rock masterpiece by Scarfolk town native Beige, inexplicably...

Scarfolk Council​​ unearths a forgotten Prog Rock masterpiece by Scarfolk town native Beige, inexplicably unavailable on streaming music services:


Here's the story of 'Space Minstrel' from the LP's inner sleeve notes:

"The earth has been completely smashed up by a disappointing nuclear war. The only survivor, a minstrel, clings to a big lump of rock that was once part of the Queen's garden. As the minstrel hurtles through the spacious universe, he sings show tunes and music hall favourites to the planets as he passes them. But without a real audience he's soon depressed and considers flinging himself off his rock into a nearby black hole... 

...However, his love of song is too strong. He endures and his voice echoes through the heavens, bouncing off stars, nebulas and other cosmic rubble. 400 billion years and 3 days later, his vocal vibrations are picked up by an alien race called The Capri-Cortina. They discover a bit of thumb in the minstrel's white glove, rebuild him, and create millions of copies. The minstrels are given their own planet called Zipadeedoodah31-TX where they happily sing for what is left of eternity..."

'_Space Minstrel' was, perhaps not surprisingly, Beige's first and only album. They disbanded in 1979 and Geoff Djeff formed a short-lived minstrel punk band called 'The Dainty Boys._'

'Space Minstrel' (Scarfolk Records & Tapes. 1977)

Tracklist:
1. The Apocalypso of Creation's Demise
i. Earth Dearth 
ii. Part I
iii. Celestial Dixie Suicide (in Top Hat & Tails) 

2. The Majestic Cosmos of the Infinity-sized Steamboat Vortex
i. Mammy with the Four Green Arms in 4/4
ii. [Instrumental: Mellotron & banjo duet]
iii. New Horizons of the Intergalactic Space Minstrels in Space
https://scarfolk.blogspot.com/2013/03/space-minstrel-by-beige-prog-rock-1978.html?m=1

Lovely, pleasant dities in the olden style.

Lovely, pleasant dities in the olden style... but a bit conventional, overshadowed by more adventurous contemparies such as Gryphon and Stackridge.
https://play.google.com/music/m/Tkh7r4ccfabbac6kh3jg7fnbz4q?t=Spring_Air_Live_-_The_Amazing_Blondel