Now I like a lot of Christmas Songs, but they get so overplayed, so i thought I'd share a couple of Christmas Songs that I feel should be played more often on the radio.
Every so often I do a search on Ronnie Lane to see if anything new has shown up. I was pleasantly surprised to see that someone posted a video I hadn't seen before, a full concert from 1980. Originally recorded for German music TV show Rockpalast.
Here's a link to the Rockpalast Archive that gives the set list and musicians. Rockpalast Archive
1980 was towards the end of Ronnie's performing career,( before MS stopped him from performing) but he seems in fine form, playing his songs, Faces songs, and old standards.It doesn't hurt that he has some great musicians backing him up including Ian Stewart (Rolling Stones), Henry McCullough (Wings, Grease Band), Bruce Rowland (Fairport Convention, Grease Band), and Charlie Hart and Chrissie Stewart who had played with Ronnie in Slim Chance. (Okay so did Bruce but...) Not to mention the Sax players, George and Raymond Carless.
I enjoyed watching this concert, any footage of Ronnie is good to see. I was a little disappointed that he was playing a Strat and Ovation instead of his Zemaitis, but like I said, any footage of Ronnie is good.
My favorites were a slightly revamped How Come, Debris, Kuschty Rye (with Henry McCullough playing Mandolin), and One for the Road. Also, as strange as it seems, I also like it when musicians mess up on stage, and Ronnie forgets the words in You Never Can Tell - priceless.
Enjoy!
Okay, you've probably figured out that I'm not really a fan of Pop Music... well, no ... let me rephrase that... I'm not a fan of a lot of current pop. There is some pop from the 1960s, through the 1980s that I like, but most of the new stuff just doesn't appeal to me. However, you can't really get away from it when people around you listen to it, so I hear it, and occasionally there's something I hear that I ...kinda like.
Anyway, a while back,I was reading through Talkbass.com and there was this one post that a bass player in a cover band wrote about "Ever hate a song so much you'd risk being fired?" And I was thinking of all of the times I had to play Margaritaville, which I never liked, and wondered what song someone could hate so much, that the'd risk getting fired over. Well, the song was Call me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen. I hadn't heard it, so of course looked it up.
Well, it's catchy, and the videos kinda funny, and I didn't see why a cover band would not play it. I mean that's what cover bands do...cover popular songs. Well, after that I started to hear it more, and it kinda grew on me, but then I saw this video, and well, that did it.
Maybe it's because I grew up around Philly, and The Roots are a Philly band, or maybe it's because of the instrumentation. I mean melodica, bongos, ukulele, kazoos, toy xylophone, and Questlove playing guiro with a comb...or maybe it's just the overall goofyness of this video, but I have to admit, I like this song, but I love this version! So there you have it, a guilty pleasure.
I didn't mention who opened up for David Bromberg when I saw him on 11/10/12. I wasn't aware of the opening act and was pleasantly surprised when out walked Michael Daves. I first heard of Michael when the album he did with Chris Thile, "Sleep With One Eye Open" came out in 2011. Now I like bluegrass, but I don't like it when it gets too slick. I like bluegrass when it has a rawness to it, and Michael definitely plays it raw. He played a half hour or so of bluegrass standards on a low budget funky guitar, and his vocals sound like he came straight out of the hills. After his set, I went out to buy his cd, and Michael was standing there selling them. I was able to talk to him for a couple of minutes, and he was a really nice guy. I asked about his guitar, thinking it was an old 1950s Stella of Harmony. He said it was a plywood Truetone guitar that was distributed bt Montgomery Ward. He also had a Martin on stage, but only played the Truetone. I said that I thought that the sound of the plywood guitar really fit the sound of the music that he plays.
Check him out for yourself
I saw David Bromberg for the fourth or was it the fifth time recently. (11/10/12) I've seen him solo, with a quartet (consisting of him, Jay Ungar, Molly Mason, and his longtime bass player Butch Amiot), and with the Angel Band. But this most recent time was the first time with a full band. I can't say which version was better. They were all good, although different, but I have to say that I really enjoyed the full band setting. Maybe it has to do with the horns. I've said before how much I like it when bands use a mix of strings and horns, or electric and acoustic instruments. Bromberg did just that. He had a 7 piece band consisting of; him on acoustic or electric guitar, (mandolin on one song) Butch Amiot on bass, Mark Cosgrove on second guitar(acoustic and electric and mandolin on some songs), Nate Grower on fiddle, Josh Kanusky on drums, John Firmin on sax, and Peter Ecklund on trumpet. Later he had two female backup singers (Nancy Josephson and Kathleen Weber) on some songs. With that many instruments to choose from, he was able to do everything from fiddle tunes to soul style rave-ups. Not only was he able to, he did. The show started off with the classic, Get Up and Go, which ends with a medly of fiddle tunes. Here's a great version from 1986.
Later in the set he started talking about the recent election, and played a song about the development in Colorado and Washington - If You'se a Viper. I can't find a video by Bromberg, but there are a number of versions out there - check out Stuff Smith, Fats Waller and Martin, Bogan & Armstrong.
I'm kicking myself that I didn't have a camera, because I can't find videos of some of the songs he played that were just killer. A great version of Blind Willie Johnson's Nobody's Fault but Mine, and a killer version of Testify.
One of the things I love about Bromberg is how much fun he has on stage. Not only when he's playing, but when the other guys take a solo, he has this huge grin on his face. When they play a good solo, he yells, "Play it again!" or "Another!" He seems to get as much enjoyment out of the music as the people in the audience. So here's some David Bromberg to enjoy.
Sloppy Drunk from 2009
Summer Wages from 1991-ish ( He did a great version of this at the show)
Every so often, you hear a song done differently from the way you normally hear the song and it makes you look at it in a new light. Recently I was listening to a bootleg that was given to me - David Lindley at the Freebird Cafe, Jacksonville Beach Fla. from 11/4/03. In this performance David plays Warren Zevon's 'Indifference of Heaven." Now I'm familiar with this song from Warren's "Learnig to Flinch" album, but I was ... well... indifferent to it. The guitar sound on that album doesn't really appeal to me. It's strummy 12 string with piezo pickup, which just sounds... in my opinion...bad. So I think that influenced my thoughs on the song which I wouldn't consider one of my favorite WZ songs..
When I heard Lindley play it, I said "Wow, that's a really good song." It really put the song up a notch. Maybe not in my top 10 Zevon songs, but possibly in the top 20. (If I kept such a list) So here it is, first Warren's version, and then David's version. Which do you prefer?
Warren Zevon
David Lindley
and for something different, here's David playing it on Weissenborn.
Well I'm a day late for Halloween. I was going to post Sandy Denny's "After Halloween", but couldn't find a video for it, so I'll post Fairport Convention's version of "Tam Lin" which occurs around Halloween.
