The Blogger Album Project

DCup is a clearinghouse for all the good memes. I happily jumped onboard this one. And then I didn't post it. And then Quaker Dave did it too. So I was re-inspired.

THE RULES:

1. Post your list of the seven best albums, the seven bloggers you will tag, a copy of these rules ...
2. Each person tagged will put a URL to their Blogger Album Project post along with a list of the seven best albums in the comment section HERE.
3. Feel free to post the “I Contributed to the Blogger Album Project” Award Graphic on your sidebar, along with a link back to this page.
4. Post a link back to the blogger who tagged you.

Seven albums? It's really hard to think of just seven, and then an album that was incredibly important at one time in my life suddenly seems embarrassingly ditzy from where I stand now. (Like the Bobby Sherman album I bought in 6th grade and listened to over and over and over and ...) I think what I am going to do is work backwards chronologically until I've got seven, and hopefully I won't get to anything truly mortifying.

Eliza Gilkyson; Paradise Hotel
The Pretenders; Isle of View
Kirsty MacColl; Kite
Johnny Clegg & Savuka; Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World
Johnny Clegg & Savuka; Shadow Man
Peter Gabriel; So
John Prine; Bruised Orange

Of course there were others, albums and songs. I love the Beatles, but I could never just choose one Beatles album. When Mr. Ether and I were first going out I listened to Roxy Music's Avalon a lot. I went through a Ladies of the Canyon phase, a Jethro Tull Songs from the Wood phase, a Neil Young Comes A Time phase and a Bruce Springsteen The River phase. For a brief period I lost my heart to Lloyd Cole and the Commotions and Lena Lovitch. In later years I was pretty into Tom Waits' Raindogs and John Prine's Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings. Recently I've been excited by John Gorka and Steve Earle. Townes Van Zandt is a perennial favorite. The Bonzo Dog Band ... and ... and ... (now I'm hyperventilating. I think I'll stop.)

I don't like tagging, so do it if you feel moved to do so.

In Memorium -- Better Late Than Never

Kids don't have a little brother working in the coal mine. They don't have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that. That’s why I sing these songs. That’s why I tell these stories, dammit. No root, no fruit!”

I don't pretend to be up on all the news about everything, but the fact that the May 23 death of Utah Phillips did not cross my radar screen until today is unusual indeed. I hope that it doesn't mean that his death went mostly unnoticed in the progressive news world. It shouldn't have. Phillips was a true dyed-in-the-wool liberal, the old-style kind, who believed in populist movements, workers' rights, and the power of song to bring about social change. Amy Goodman wrote a lovely tribute to the man. Read it here. Read his obituary here.

Anyway, another of the good ones is gone. I was going to wish him R.I.P., but something tells me that he wouldn't want that. So I'll just say that I'll miss you, Utah, and I'll do my best to keep carrying the banner. We need your message now, more than ever.

Happy Solstice ...

... from a bunch of little kids (a.k.a. Fairport Convention, circa 1970. Don't you just want to pinch their youthful cheeks?)

"Now Be Thankful"

True Confessions of an Anglophile

I just finished reading Colin Irwin's In Search of Albion -- From Cornwall to Cumbria: A Ride Through England's Hidden Soul. I saw this book reviewed last year in Sing Out! magazine and had to have it, but it took me a while to track down a copy.

Although I don't fly the Union Jack or give a rat's bum for Queen Liz and her ilk, I have long nurtured a love for many things British. It was in high school that I discovered the music of Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Pentangle, and more. At the same time a friend introduced me to the English mummers' tradition (which clearly spawned the unbridled looniness of the Bonzo Dog Band, Monty Python's Flying Circus, and, I daresay, the goofy antics of the young Beatles.) I played briefly -- and badly -- for a Morris dance team, where the main goal of some of the dancers seemed to be to make me laugh. (Ever try to play a wind instrument when you're laughing? Impossible!) I danced English country dances. I even did the illustrations for a small book called Festivals of the English May, which I believe is cataloged in the Library of Congress, well la-dee-da. After a bad break-up with a fiddling folk musicologist, I swore off folk music, purged my lp collection of any folk music, and fell in love with a bass player in a punk rock band. That should have been the end of it, but the thing is, he loved Steeleye Span, et al -- it is one of the things that cemented our friendship in the first place -- so there you have it. Back to being an Anglophile.

In In Search Of Albion, Colin Irwin, a former writer for the now-defunct magazine Melody Maker, drives around England for a year, seeking out pockets of living traditions that define English culture and defy the media images of the "new England." From start to finish, In Search Of Albion was a delight for me. People who are into English folk traditions are probably a somewhat obscure subset of the general population; you don't run into them everyday. Reading it, I felt like I'd met an old friend.

Irwin begins his adventure in Padstow, Cornwall on May Day. (My introduction to English folk traditions was the Padstow May Day celebration, seen through the lens of George Pickow, documentary filmmaker and husband to folk music legend Jean Ritchie. I saw the movie years ago, and was entranced.) From there, he more or less circumnavigates the island, skirts Hadrian's Wall, dwells for a while in the North Country, crosses the Yorkshire Dales without ever once mentioning James Herriot, makes a detour across to the quasi-independent Isle of Man, travels through the Fens, and ultimately back to Cornwall.

Along the way, we get a kind of people's history of England, along with juicy tidbits about some well known folk musicians. For example, the great Scottish balladeer and songwriter Ewan MacColl was actually born Jimmy Miller in Manchester, England. (If I can digress for a few sentences, I just want to say that I lost a lot of respect for MacColl a few years ago when I found out that he carried on a love affair with Peggy Seeger while still married to his wife Jean, and fathered a child with each woman, both born in 1956. Kind of sleazy. One of those children was the incomparable late Kirsty MacColl, who famously said to Billy Bragg, "I hate fucking folk music." I think I understand why.)

Speaking of Kirsty MacColl, Irwin clearly has a soft spot in his heart for her, which further endeared me to his book. He reveres Ashley "Tiger" Hutchings and knows the album Morris On (one of my favorites in 1976.) He is underwhelmed by Nick Drake (me too.) Beyond simply wallowing in the familiar -- like a Kitty Kelly tell-all for the British folk revival -- Irwin does a good job of linking folk music and traditions with populist movements that are still ongoing, from labor struggles to current protests against the war on Iraq. The book introduced me to some musicians with whom I was not familiar, so today I'll be heading to a locally owned, independent cd store to order Nic Jones' Penguin Eggs. And Colin Irwin writes in a very funny and self-deprecating style.

If by this point in my review, your eyes are glazed over or you're snoring, this probably is not a book you'll be scouring the Internets to find. But if any of this made you prick up your ears, you might enjoy it. I found my copy used at Powells.

(Cross-posted at the Spring Reading Challenge.)