Re: Bashful Brother Oswald Would Be Ashamed -- Scaramanga
| Posted by Benny Smith , Aug 10,2001,11:12 | MetroBlab |
With all of that in mind, all I have to say is toast one for the pride of Hancock County as today is the birthday of one of the greatest of all time...JIMMY MARTIN! "Pull my britchees to my knees, going up Criple Creek if I please!" All hail the King of Bluegrass!
Oh yeah, it's Osborne, not Osbourne. Sonny ain't no freakin' European...
Happy Birthday JIMMY MARTIN... King of Bluegrass!
Re: Happy Birthday JIMMY MARTIN... King of Bluegrass! -- Benny Smith
Sounds like reason enough to drink to me.
Bashful Brother Oswald Would Be Ashamed
Re: Bashful Brother Oswald Would Be Ashamed -- Scaramanga
| Posted by jessefox , Aug 10,2001,00:23 | MetroBlab |
I gots mixed feelings about it my own self. The music on the album (and in O Brother) really is pretty great. But it's also pretty slickly packaged. And much as I love Alison K. and Gillian W. and all the rest, it's hard to resist comparing the new recordings to the old ones, and the new ones always come up short. Why? Not because they're not "authentic," I don't think -- Alison's pretty authentic, and Gillian sure fakes it well. But because singing and playing styles have changed, courtesy of technology and assorted mass media influences and who knows what all. There's a freedom and also an unmasked desperation in those recordings from the '30s and '40s that people seem more reserved about expressing these days (in old-time music, at least -- you have to go to hip-hop and various forms of rock to find the same uninhibitedness now). It's telling that Ralph Stanley and the Peasall Sisters are the only ones to really cut loose on either of the albums -- he's too old to know any better, and they're too young. Anyway, I can sit around and make fun of all the yuppies listening to "Angel Band" in their SUVs, and I have. But hell, at least they're listening to "Angel Band"! And Ralph and Alison and Emmylou and all the rest of them are making some serious cash off the whole project. Good for them, I say. Maybe some of the people who discover the songs through these soundtracks will actually bother to go track them down elsewhere. Remember, the dang Kingston Trio inspired a whole generation to start digging up dusty folk records.
jfm
I Don't Give A Damn About A Greenback A Dollar
Re: Bashful Brother Oswald Would Be Ashamed -- jessefox
| Posted by Scaramanga ® , Aug 10,2001,07:23 | MetroBlab |
Fuck the Kingston Trio. They are nothing but three (well, four) assholes that robbed Pete Seeger! "Where did all the flowers go?" Well, I don't know Junior. I think I shoved them up your touchy-feely ass! So, where was I? Oh yes, New York City. New York City, the city by the bay. I think that the real reason most of those CDs were sold in New York City is because some wormy, grimy, slimy record cocksucker bought them all up. Hell yes! It's happened before! How the hell do you think that Paula Abdul happened? Yep! I would venture to guess that less than 10% of what we think is popular is. Most of it (that pesky 90% left over) is the product of some dick cheese record weasel making it look like it is. Hell, Harry Blackstone's office please! We have a master illusionist here! They go out and buy up their own product then the "trades" come on and start screaming "MY GOD MAN, IT'S A BONA FIDE HIT!" and then Rolling Stone puts the fetus on the cover and it's all over but the shouting. Guess what happens next! Well, since they've run up their margins they need to recoup that money. How do they do it? HA! They screw the artist(s) and then they screw us! Think of this. You're the "flavor of the moment" and they've bought all your product masking the fact that nobody else has so they CHARGE YOU for it.
I Don't Give A Damn About A Greenback A Dollar
Re: I Don't Give A Damn About A Greenback A Dollar -- Scaramanga
| Posted by belle ® , Aug 10,2001,14:45 | MetroBlab |
Youre smart with your brain.
Nitpicking
Re: I Don't Give A Damn About A Greenback A Dollar -- Scaramanga
the city by the bay
That'd be San Francisco, not New York.
Nitpicking
Re: Nitpicking -- Ian
| Posted by Scaramanga ® , Aug 11,2001,11:32 | MetroBlab |
It was a pun you juggling monkey freeeeak!
Nitpicking
Re: Nitpicking -- Scaramanga
| Posted by ilyich , Aug 11,2001,23:24 | MetroBlab |
pun - the humorous use of a word, or of words which are formed or sounded alike but have diferent meanings, in such a way as to play on two or more of the possible applications; a play on words.
yer pal,
Ilyich
Authenticity
Re: I Don't Give A Damn About A Greenback A Dollar -- Scaramanga
| Posted by Baron Samedi , Aug 10,2001,11:19 | MetroBlab |
I personally don't think the problem is a lack of authenticity, whatever that may be (everybody, at one time or another, learns and borrows from somebody else). I think what we're experiencing is a kind of collision with a strange shock wave of information, started by Thomas Edison, fixed by the rise of digital storage, and accelerated by the Internet. It used to be that information would come and then go. You'd use it or enjoy it, then you'd move on to the next thing. Now, however, everything is available to us all at once, all the time, and it never really goes away. So instead of us getting all excited about this new group called "The Beatles" with their fab new sound, all we hear is how derivative they really are, because we've listed to the CDs and downloaded the MP3s of all the people these upstart Beatles borrowed from. Anybody with an active interest in music, in particular, no longer has to rely on some dusty old record store to find lost gems on 78s or 45 b-sides. They're all rapidly being transferred and uploaded for anyone to easily find. So the result is an odd sort of time compression. Practically the entire musical history of western civilization is available all at the same time. It all becomes blurred and starts sounding the same. Folk music - including the blues - is particularly vulnerable to this blurring, since it relies so heavily on the same basic chord progressions and cultural templates. If you take more than just a superficial interest in the music, it's nearly impossible not to see where this contemporary artist borrowed heavily from that old artist. So what do you do as a fan or record buyer? Well, if you're like most people, you end up buying and listening to a lot of old stuff you're familiar with. You end up like the John Cusak character in "High Fidelity," and sorting music according to your personal connection with it, rather than by genre. Because music is more than just sound sequences strung out through time. They're a component in the fabric of your life. A song means little or nothing without you, as an individual, having heard it and incorporating it into your memory. The song they played over and over on the amusement park ride. The song you heard that summer at the beach. The song that really cute girl liked that you pretended to alo like so that she would like you. The funny thing is, this kind of thing still goes on; you're just not privy to everyone else's life experience. There are young people right now building the current Top 40 into their memories. Twenty years from now, a 35 year old woman will buy or download an N*Sync Greatest Hits package. She won't care that they've never been anything but a really bad Commodores imitation. She'll think of it as that winter when she went on her first real date, or something like that.
So the problem is not the record companies or the radio stations or the record buying public. It's this compression of time created by easy digital recording, and the fact that we're getting OLD. We've been around long enough so that everything is starting to feel recycled. And it's just going to get worse, not better. As we continue to age, everything will sound like everything else. Only rarely will we find a sparkling gem of originality, and then it will fade. Eventually, we'll even tire of living in our own past, and we'll tire of the world as it will hold nothing new for us, and we'll happily die.
Authenticity
Re: Authenticity -- Baron Samedi
| Posted by jessefox , Aug 10,2001,11:45 | MetroBlab |
Yeah, good observations. I was thinking about that sometime recently when I had the radio on and some new song came on with a completely recycled riff and I thought, "Man, don't people know where that came from?" But then I thought about some 40-year-old guy telling me in 1983 that R.E.M. was just a rehash of the Byrds, and even though I still think that's way too simplistic, I'm probably being too simplistic too in just writing off anything that sounds overly familiar. On the other hand, I can still get into new stuff with a lot of familiar elements if they're recombined in some passionate, believable way. But I don't know if I'm ever going to lose an interest in finding stuff that sounds genuinely NEW somehow. I see a lot of my friends already settling in with their little CD collections of stuff they know and love that they're going to listen to for the rest of their lives, and that's fine, that's all they want from music, but I still want it to feel like it did when I was 17 or even 7. And maybe it never will again, quite, but I still get plenty of shocks-of-the-new, enough to keep me looking and listening.
All of which is far afield from the question of Down From the Mountain. The fact is, Alison Krauss, for example, is a wonderful singer, one of my favorites, but she is inescapably "modern" and of her time, which is one of the things I love about her. So when she sings "I'll Fly Away," it sounds lovely and lyrical and tasteful and all the other things that she is, but it doesn't sound ragged and desperate and passionate the way the various old recordings I've heard of it do. Because things sounded different then. Not more "authentic" or even better, but of their place and time. Just like someone singing one of Alison's songs 50 years from now won't capture it the way she has.
Anyway, that's a lot of rambling. Music. I love it.
jfm
settling
Re: Authenticity -- jessefox
| Posted by SnM , Aug 10,2001,13:19 | MetroBlab |
"I see a lot of my friends already settling in with their little CD collections of stuff they know and love that they're going to listen to for the rest of their lives, and that's fine..."
I don't know. If it's fine, how come it doesn't come across that way when you write it? Especially that little dig about "little"...
I think you are belittling me, Mayshark. I think you are looking down at me. I think you are contemptuous of me. You're dissing me, Mayshark. And it hurts. It really hurts.
And after I gave you that inspiration from JJJ for your song. I am betrayed!
Touchy-touchy-touchy-feelings.
Authenticity
Re: Authenticity -- jessefox
| Posted by Sarah Pirkle , Aug 10,2001,12:41 | MetroBlab |
I'll have to agree that it grates my nerves to hear bluegrass/oldtime/etc. sung with the wrong sort of accent,even worse is a put on accent, but you don't necessarily have to be from the south to be authentic. Allison Krauss (from Champagne, IL) and Dan Tyminski (from Vermont) sound damn fine to me. You can't even tell unless they speak. Even Del McCoury is from Pennsylvania.
One of the best things about bluegrass/oldtime is that a large number of the fans can actually pick up an instrument and demonstrate their favorite tunes. It is encouraged. It started on front porches and parlors as a past time and form of expression for working people, and it is still that. Now I have 10 year old violin students who in addition to listening to N sync or whatever, are listening to the soundtrack of this movie. The difference is the kid can reproduce the O Brother soundtrack with her own two hands and voice. Music doesn't just exist on tv, on cd, it belongs to her too.
So that brings me to my next point, yes, the old recordings of this stuff may sound more believable, but you can't go see the Carter family any more. I'm glad you can hear this music live somewhere, that is the best way to experience it.
My only problem with it is I went to see Down from Mtn at Downtown West, but the sound sucked. I had to ask the manager to turn it up twice,(I think that irked him) and it was not in surround sound. We were getting mono from the speakers at the front of the room only. Surely they did not go to the trouble to make this documentary and not attempt to capture the sound any better than that!
I Don't Give A Damn About A Greenback A Dollar
Re: I Don't Give A Damn About A Greenback A Dollar -- Scaramanga
| Posted by Gene Harrogate ® , Aug 10,2001,10:19 | MetroBlab |
dick cheese record weasel
Welcome to the light. Breathe deeply now. You're going to be okay.
What happened? Check bounce?
How long have I been telling you that the record industry is responsible for famine, global warming, and tooth decay?
~Gene Harrogate
I Don't Give A Damn About A Greenback A Dollar
Re: I Don't Give A Damn About A Greenback A Dollar -- Gene Harrogate
| Posted by Scaramanga ® , Aug 11,2001,23:13 | MetroBlab |
"What happened? Check bounce?" HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! That is the single funniest thing I've heard in fucking years! Who the fuck uses checks anymore? Credit cards either! CASH, Junior. That's the way we do it down here. All them fellers you see hoppin around with their flashy watches and cheesy Japanese cars are gettin that with plastic or a promise, both of which you can take years to pay back. Cash, on the other hand is immediate.
So, the record companies. Well, they've paid me for years. Always knew the score. Always was bothered by it. It's the consumers I'm pissed with. Yep. Now, should the new toy be another Daytona or Offshore? Just bought a Norton Commando Fastback. Wanna ride?
I Don't Give A Damn About A Greenback A Dollar
Re: I Don't Give A Damn About A Greenback A Dollar -- Scaramanga
| Posted by Hank IV , Aug 10,2001,07:57 | MetroBlab |
i have to agree on most of your points.However,"Down fron the Mountain" doesn't have a big ass movie and it's budget to help pull it along.Give it time,we'll see where it goes.You MTVGeneration types are too impatient.I really agree that we are losing our heritage,but when was the last time you went out and "dug 'sang"? That's digging ginseng. or picked blackberries,kilt a hog or made soap.You know that Heartland Series may be just for you.
Born on Clinch Mountain (well o.k. the next ridge over)-Hank IV
John Rice Is No Patriot But He Shoots A Fine Anvil
Re: I Don't Give A Damn About A Greenback A Dollar -- Hank IV
| Posted by Scaramanga ® , Aug 11,2001,11:44 | MetroBlab |
Mtv Generation? Heartland Series? Fucking hell! I'm from Norris! I know what it's like to dry them beans for leather-britches. I know the greasy feeling you get when you swaller that squirrel meat! The point I was making about that damn CD (which is blasting at this moment through Scary Manor) is that it ain't selling here where they are targeting it. The reason for that is a lack of true heritage. Shit, it reminds me of some of that shit people play in a barn near a creek full of fish up there in Wisconsin. Now, before you jump all the hell over that one I can say that relatives of mine and very good friends of mine do that all Summer long. Them people is from these parts and are spending their Summer showing those damn yankees how it's done. Not since the great war of Northern aggression have he had such fine people doing so much for so little. What thanks will they get? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. SO, we branch out and take this conversation in a whole new direction. Steve Earle, who once tried to make love to old Townes said it best (although he was really fucked up on horse at the time,)"we can't feel what we felt then." I don't know what he was talking about for sure but I can tell you it wasn't about that.
Bashful Brother Oswald Would Be Ashamed
Re: Bashful Brother Oswald Would Be Ashamed -- Scaramanga
| Posted by jessefox , Aug 10,2001,00:05 | MetroBlab |
I gots mixed feelings about it my own self. The music on the album (and in O Brother) really is pretty great. But it's also pretty slickly packaged. And much as I love Alison K. and Gillian W. and all the rest, it's hard to resist comparing the new recordings to the old ones, and the new ones always come up short. Why? Not because they're not "authentic," I don't think -- Alison's pretty authentic, and Gillian sure fakes it well. But because singing and playing styles have changed, courtesy of technology and assorted mass media influences and who knows what all. There's a freedom and also an unmasked desperation in those recordings from the '30s and '40s that people seem more reserved about expressing these days (in old-time music, at least -- you have to go to hip-hop and various forms of rock to find the same uninhibitedness now). It's telling that Ralph Stanley and the Peasall Sisters are the only ones to really cut loose on either of the albums -- he's too old to know any better, and they're too young. Anyway, I can sit around and make fun of all the yuppies listening to "Angel Band" in their SUVs, and I have. But hell, at least they're listening to "Angel Band"! And Ralph and Alison and Emmylou and all the rest of them are making some serious cash off the whole project. Good for them, I say. Maybe some of the people who discover the songs through these soundtracks will actually bother to go track them down elsewhere. Remember, the dang Kingston Trio inspired a whole generation to start digging up dusty folk records.
jfm