OK. so it’s been a while, but you look good. How was your christmas and everything? We’ve been er, busy. It’s a long story, we’d been drinking, you know? We’ll tell you all about it later, is the bar open? Anyways, I can’t say ’bout normal but some kind of service is about to resume here. We’re back baby!
Well then, only took ’bout a month. That’s pretty good going in our world. New mix for you people! It was put forward, I think, by some folks hankerin’ on a new mix from us that we do something like the set from Glastonbury(ish) and that’s sorta what you have here. It was easy enough to start with until it became clear the set had been packed with a good number of Randy & Earl favourites that pop up on the other mixes already, so I guess that kinda gives it the title. That and the fine Hank Thompson tune of that name in the middle there someplace. New old records I guess you’d say, if you wanted to be damn annoying about it. So, we had to do some listenin’ and we had to go off camping elsewhere and whatever, we’ve been engaged in an unofficial competition to see who can attend the poshest festival, I think Randy won but all results aren’t in yet. Still he’ll be doing it all for you at Endorse It! any day now and that ain’t posh or fancy, not in anybodies world, thank God. So, like I was saying, here’s the new mix, click the pic to get it, it comes in a lovely zip-up bag with the sleeve and tracklist for you to print out and cherish too if that takes yer fancy. The tracklist is also on the Mixes page if you wanna read it first – some famous names and some less so – all great stuff, have a good August friends.
OK, so, Glastonbury didn’t turn out to be quite the glorious return it might have been for the Old Record Club. Randy got sent back to jail, sorry, hospital and things got under way in less than ideal circumstances – We turned up 10 mins after they closed the gates and I was forced to kinda block the traffic and ‘forcefully make my case’ to even get us on site, then in a spookily accurate recreation of our worst fears it rained like the end of the world all night thursday making the site a bit of a mudfest by friday morning. Bah! nothing to trouble a veteran, undeterred Earl took to the decks and rocked the house (with a little assistance from Earl Jr. see below) even though they didn’t want to be rocked, just dry, at that point. Fortunately for all of us the rain kept away for the rest of the weekend and a fine time was had all round. Young Earl Jr. had a ball, we had to tear him away from the Arcadia stage after midnight “…but I haven’t finished dancing yet!” and so here’s a few of his pictures if you ever wondered what it looked like for the little guys….
No doubt you’ve read your fill about the festival in a more timely fashion than here, but it was suggested that we put up a mix based on the set from Glastonbury and that’ll be along shortly friends………….
I first heard of Elizabeth Cotten back in the early ’90s via the firehose* song In Memory Of Elizabeth Cotton (sic), which they’d released when Cotten died back in 1987. I had no idea who Cotten was, but it was a beautiful, beautiful song.
Since I’ve been dipping my toe in country blues lately, Cotten’s name came up and I remembered the firehose song and checked her out. I wish I’d done it way back when I first heard the song, because then this extraordinary musician’s music could have been with me for that much longer.
Cotten is of that generation of folk and blues artists who dabbled in music before family, work and church took over and then got (re-)discovered in the US folk boom of the 50s and 60s (in Cotten’s case, by being housekeeper to the Seeger family). Her unique playing style (born partly out of playing a right handed guitar left handed and upside down, and through having no knowledge of standard tunings when she learned) is just gorgeous – a really fluid, rolling sound (inevitably labelled Cotten Picking). And her voice, which could range from gruff but warm to just sweet as honey, is one of the best of its kind.
She recorded a handful of albums between her 50s ‘discovery’ and her death (at 92) in 1987. Written when she was a child but not recorded till half a century later, Freight Train is probably her most famous tune (and the most direct influence on the firehose song), while Shake Sugaree, recorded in the late 60s, is the track that really made me sit up and listen.
Looking for artists in a similar gentle, rolling vein I finally got round to Mississippi John Hurt, who I think has a lot in common with Cotten, so as a bonus I’ve included one of his innumerable gems here.
Elizabeth Cotten – Freight Train
Elizabeth Cotten – Shake Sugaree
Firehose – In Memory of Elizabeth Cotton
Mississippi John Hurt – Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor
(* you can add the fact that I MUCH prefer firehose to Minutemen to my ever-growing list of heresies if you want, but for all their genuinely radical approach and purity of intent, Minutemen were just a bit annoying to listen to.)
Well now, this post is a lil’ late but we had good intentions and all so just hush up and say thank you like yer mama said you should. Most of y’all will already know The Handsome Family and how very wonderful they are. Making music rooted in american tradition but all their own, strange story songs filled with animals, the supernatural, drink, love, god, murder – all the good stuff. Much loved here at the Old Record Club, (can it really be just a year since we were watching them with awe at Glastonbury?- more about that soon) they’ve put out a run of , dammit, near flawless albums that’s pretty much unparalleled and unprecedented among their peers, yes sir! If you’re new to them just start somewhere in the middle and work both ways – seriously now, you can’t go wrong. They just put out their eighth album, a collection of love songs in celebration of Brett and Rennie’s 20 year marriage and unique amongst their records for not featuring a single death. we’d like to congratulate the happy couple and celebrate a little here and make up for that low body count with three (yes three you lucky people) old-timey murder ballads Handsome style. Barbara Allen is from the Tiny hands EP and the live tunes are from different dates in Holland some time – all of it’s great but if you’re just gonna try one make it I Hear A Sweet Voice Calling, and if you cain’t get with that then you just don’t have no soul.
The Handsome Family – Barbara Allen
The Handsome Family – Banks Of The Ohio (live)
The Handsome Family – I Hear A Sweet Voice Calling (live)
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Howdy folks, how y’all been keepin’? Some of y’all might bes aware of how brother Randy fell off the roof of the trailer try’na hook up some free satellite TV type deal for us and now he’s got enough metal in his leg that we just set him out on the porch sofa, hook his leg up to the TV and we get us a real sharp picture, oh yes, oh my. Every cloud brethren, every cloud. Meantime, this has kinda complicated certain matters for the old record club. Couple weeks back Earl ventured out alone to What’s Cookin’ where he shamefully kicked another DJ off the wonderful music machine in a vain attempt to hog the limelight for hisself. We’d like to apologise to Mr Slick Rick for the indignity and offer our thanks as ever to the wonderful Ramblin’ Steve for putting us on. Among the featured performers that evening were the wonderful Henry Brothers singing old timey songs of death and murder, with a smile. Here’s a clip of them doing just that about how ‘Death Is Only A Dream’ that we picked up off the satellite via Randy’s poor knee…
You can also listen to them at their myspace page on the information superhighway there.
Now. Being a determined kinda feller our Randy is hoping to be back behind the wheels of steel this coming holiday monday (April 13th) down at Brixton’s Windmill Bar & Lounge, where those self same Henry Brothers will feature on a packed bill of goodness topped by a Mr William Elliot Whitmore. It may be early days to promise we’ll definitely be there, but frankly we’re the least of the attractions so you should get down there anyways and, you know, Randy has kinda bent his mind towards it
Where Y’at? check this out friends.
It ain’t Mardi Gras – these guys parade Super bowl Sunday – but it’s the spirit of the thing y’know? Under Claiborne bridge with the Rebirth Brass Band and a long way from the floats on Canal St and the fools on Bourbon.
Anyway, there was gonna be another gumbo type mix for Mardi Gras but that just plain never got done, maybe next year. Meanwhile over at Home Of The Groove (where you could argue it’s Mardi Gras all the time) there’s all kinds of good stuff for you to check out including a nice bit of writin’ about that same Dr John album and his version of Iko Iko. Not to mention The Wild Magnolias too………see y’all around.
So it looks like Lux finally got that date with Elvis after all. Honestly friends, after mentioning them in passing in the post about Wanda Jackson a little while back I had been considering writing about The Cramps on here – they’ve found their way back into pretty heavy rotation in my listening habits since late last year, a great, great band. I was thinking back a year or three there to a time when a rumour about Lux’s death would do the rounds bi-annually or so. Some even thought he used to start it, although apparently it used to creep him out a bit. I considered startin’ it up again just as a way of writing a bit about them. So when I heard the news of his death, from Randy as it happens, I just thought that old rumour was back again. Friends, I don’t need to tell you how sorry I am to hear that it’s true, or how glad I am I didn’t get around to that post. When The Cramps first popped into my view I saw them as just one of many and it was a while before I realised how unique, and how special they were. Looking back it seems absurd that I could have thought such a thing they were so alien and at odds with the time. I made the mistake of confusing their humour, their sense that rock ‘n’ roll should be fun with a lack of seriousness or belief in what they were doing. Underground and independent music in the 80’s (not yet cursed with the slur ‘alternative’ or the idea that ‘indie’ was a genre not an ethic) often took itself too seriously. People certainly didn’t make live albums in strip clubs. They didn’t tend to call what they were doing rock ‘n’ roll much either. The Cramps were the point where the two youth subcultures of Goth and Psychobilly met and got along for a spell but they were better than both. Blamed for psychobilly in general Lux snarled “They don’t seem very psycho to me” and despite the theatricality there was nothing fake about The Cramps, it was real. For onstage abandon and commitment there’s really only Iggy that you can compare with Lux, “What hath God wrought” indeed. The more interesting bands in those days tended to see punk as a cultural year zero and had set about building a new future but Lux just saw it as the latest manifestation of the primal rock ‘n’ roll he loved and he opened the door to a whole world of almost lost music for a lot of people. So in celebration of his life and music here’s a mix I banged together of a lot of that stuff, bookended by The Cramps themselves, enjoy it. A tracklist’ll be up on the mixes page pretty soon
You have no idea how much I hope the rumours about the death of Lux Interior aren’t true. We’ve lost a lot of legends lately – people I had huge respect for. But Lux, he’s been part of my life for 25 years or more. And I hope to fuck he’s not dead
CW Stoneking is one of those musicians who make you want to play that dumb game where you get someone to listen to a song and then say, “OK – guess what they look like and when it was recorded”, which is a dumb game mostly because the fact you’re asking makes it clear that their immediate impression will be wrong and they’ll cleverly revise it and probably guess right.
But anyhoo – born of American parents but raised in an Aboriginal community, CW Stoneking is an unexpected and unlikely gem. I finally got to see him this week at the slightly contrived, mostly enjoyable and allegedly Seasick Steve curated* Folk America show at the Barbican and he was a definite highlight.
His earlier stuff (such as Goin’ The Country, below) was wonderful early blues offered in a style you’d call authentic if its creator wasn’t a a young Aussie Orson Welles lookalike with tribal tattoos on his arms. But after a couple of albums, his music has developed into the sort of (painfully brief ) set he played tonight – much jazzier, a real New Orleans feel to the brass section and just generally bigger sounding. His new album Jungle Blues documents his days in New Orleans working in a “hoodoo shop” and then his eventual shipwreck en route from Trinidad to West Africa. If you choose to believe him, anyway. A brief chat after the show revealed he did travel 11,ooo miles to do 4 songs at this show then fly home (but, as he reasoned, he was going to be on the BBC).
Anyway, he’s ace and while I’ve heard it argued that he’s veering close to pastiche with his faux-authenticity, I don’t buy it: authenticity in music is a largely bullshit notion anyway, and Stoneking’s deep love for and understanding of the music he plays counts for a lot more.
So, buy his stuff – he deserves your money and he’s great. In fact, buy it direct from the man himself.
CW Stoneking – Goin’ The Country
CW Stoneking – The Love Me Or Die
CW Stoneking performs Dodo Blues – Live At The Barbican
* Seasick Steve had clearly never heard of most of the acts on the bill and seemed quite happy to just sit back in his rocking chair and get paid to introduce acts off cue cards, and who can blame him.
