Give the Drummer Some's
Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere
I did something the other day I virtually never do. I sold a record. And I didn't just sell a record, I parted with a treasured slab of vinyl for a fairly ungodly sum. Making the situation all the more head-scratching, I (1) never even put the album up for sale, and (2) gave away every track on the album over four years ago in a post right here at Beware of the Blog. (A music nut searching for the record stumbled on my post and made me an offer I couldn't refuse.)
Over a lifetime of hunting for music and enjoying it deliriously, the notion of letting go of any record has been anathema. I sold one particular disc at a college LP swap thirty years ago, and it still burns me to this day. But life in the digital age is apparently changing me. (Not to mention being unemployed in the digital age.) With good-quality MP3s and a fancy scan of the covers in hand, what really is the big deal about holding onto the real McCoy?
Larry Storch ~ Reads Philip Roth's Epstein
(Blog: I'm Learning to Share!)
Storched Earth
"In Larry Storch's enactment of Epstein, Philip Roth's prose is accurately animated. Professionally, Storch is a comedian—a limber, pungently accurate performer. He is a familiar at most of the country's major night clubs, and has created wide-ranging characterizations on television, and increasingly, in the movies. But Storch, like most original comedians, is not limited to surprising an audience into laughter. Through learning his craft, he has learned how thin and fragile the boundaries are between laughter and aggression, between laughter and insecurity. He is, in short, an actor, and in his reading of Epstein, he has done justice to the measure of Epstein the man as well as to the depth of the pit he has diligently if unwittingly dug for himself." (From the liner notes by Nat Hentoff)
Gisela May ~ Singt Tucholsky
(Blog: Zero G Sound)
Canary in a Gemeinschaft
"Gisela May studied at the drama school in Leipzig. She was employed for nine years at various theatres, including the State Theatre of Schwerin and the State Theatre in Halle. From 1951 she was engaged at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, Max Reinhardt's former workplace. She played a variety of roles from the classics to modern. In 1962 Gisela May moved to Bertolt Brecht's theatre group, the Berliner Ensemble, to which she belonged for 30 years. Here she played many roles including Madame Cabet in 'The Days of the Commune,' Mrs Peachum in 'The Threepenny Opera, and ' Mrs Kopecka in 'Schweik in the Second World War.' The theatrical highlight in Brecht's stage work was her personification of 'Mother Courage.'" (Translation of May's bio from her Website)
Fuxan Os Ventos ~ Sementeira
(Blog: The Red Hippie)
Galician Formula
"In 1972, some high-school students decided to form a Folk Band with the sole purpose of having the most of they could take out of it. When they won a popular contest with the Song 'Fuxan Os Ventos' they just decided to go along and use it as their name from then on. More contests were won and they started growing notoriety from both the Critics and the Public, however as the times went by they started getting more and more involved with Galician Folk Music and with the Political Ideas of the Left (Spain was undergoing a transition between Fascism and Democracy). They were deeply involved with the culture of their People (Spain was since the beginning a merge of very different States with very different cultures, and there is still a lot of friction between some of those States) and it was mainly about them that they Sang about, along with exaltations of the virtues of their people and the working class." (Description by The Red Hippie Teenager )
Vladimir Vysotsky ~ Songs for Movies
(Blog: Spookcityusa)
Vlad the Exhaler
"Admired by all circles of Soviet society, a voice of dissent, but not a dissident, accepted by the Soviet government as an actor, but never as a poet and singer, Vysotsky held no office, no titles. "He was simply a son of his country, he was very Russian. He did play a very political role, because in his songs he came out against evil force, against the ugly system under which he was born." (Description by Mikhail Chemiakin, at Vladimir Vysotsky the official site )
Jenks "Tex" Carman ~ Chippeha! The Essential Dixie Cowboy
(Blog: Just Malaise )
Yodel, eh, Who He?
"Jenks Carman is one of the most unusual artists. He was popular in California from the '40s up into the early '60s and performed on the Town Hall Party TV show with people like Joe Maphis. He played guitar in the old Hawaiian style, that is just a regular flat top type Martin in the laying down position, and was both adept at playing breaks, solos and backing up his singing. What makes his guitar style so unusual was that the staccato type style he played was popular in the teens up into the mid '20s. It was the style of the 'real' Hawaiians that migrated here from about the turn of the century till the mid '20s. His vocal stylings were something to behold too. He sang in a high, nasal toned voice. His singing matched his guitar stylings, staccato. I'll admit some people may not like his voice, I like to hear him myself. He was part Cherokee Indian and could speak the Cherokee language. On his song 'Hillbilly Hula,' the words just sound like gibberish but it is in the Cherokee language. Also, he uses a Cherokee word that sounds like chippeha that he says sometimes that he said the meaning of is like when we might say 'hee-haw' or 'whoopee' when we hear something we like." (Description from a post at Allen's Archive)
Listen to Meow Thai (mp3)
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