Everything is Music

It was another musical week. On Wednesday I accompanied my family to see one of their favorite bands, Enter the Haggis. You can read all about the show and see a video that my daughter shot here.

Thursday night was the spring concert of my daughter's 6th grade orchestra, and I have to say it was pretty good. The strings section has come a long way and sounded pretty together. The wind section sounded avant garde -- or was it that they all played at different speeds? Doesn't matter -- I'm a fan of people making their own music.

Last night, on a whim, we went to see the Asylum Street Spankers. Oh. my. You can go to their website to hear a selection of their music. Check them out. They had an impressive array of instruments, all acoustic, and a repertoire that ran the gamut from old blues numbers to biting political commentary (of the right sort.) A lot of it was pee-your-pants funny. And I can't say enough how much it did my heart good to hear them being outspoken: about 9/11, about the Bush Administration, about the travesty otherwise known as "the war on drugs."

Maybe you've seen this video. Somebody posted it a while ago, but I didn't realize it was the same band until right now. The show we saw wasn't quite as theatrical, and they have some new members, including Charlie King, who does harmonic overtone singing -- very cool.



They tour a lot, so if they come to your neck of the woods I highly recommend that you go.

Emma's Revolution

I had the pleasure of hearing one of my favorite musical acts, Emma's Revolution, at a house concert last night. In addition to being great songwriters and musicians, this duo -- Pat Humphries and Sandy O. -- are unflinching champions of peace and social justice. Plus, they are just genuinely nice people. (They won my heart forever when, the morning after I first saw them in concert we saw them shopping in our local food co-op, and they recognized my young daughter from the night before and made a point of coming over to say hi to her. That kind of caring makes a big impression on me.)

On what must be a grueling schedule, they criss-cross the country doing concerts coast to coast. They are at every big peace demonstration in D.C. as well as going to the School of the Americas demonstration each year. I highly recommend them if they come to a venue near you.

They have a new album called Roots, Rock and Revolution. I'm partial to one from a few years back called One x 1,000,000 = Change. Check them out here.