M.D. Spenser

New Cover Ready for SHIVERS Book 4!

2012-01-05T21:40:00.000-08:00

Exciting news! The cover for "The Animal Rebellion," book four in my SHIVERS series of scary chapter books for kids, has been completed.

I think it's fabulous!

Look for the book soon on amazon, Sony, Barnes & Noble and iBookstore!

Best wishes for a Happy New Year,

M.D.

'Ghost Writer' now available as e-book!

2011-10-23T04:34:00.000-07:00

To my fans,

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog.

Exciting news: "Ghost Writer," book 3 in my SHIVERS series is now available as an ebook at Amazon, Sony, iBookstore and Barnes & Noble!

US readers can buy it on Amazon at this link. UK readers can buy it here.

Happy (and scary) reading!

Your friend,

M.D. Spenser

SHIVERS book 3, 'Ghost Writer,' out soon!

2011-10-06T21:32:00.001-07:00

The cover for book 3 in the SHIVERS series is done and the book is at the e-publisher! The ebook will be available soon at amazon, Sony, Barnes & Noble and iBookstore.

Thanks to all my fans!

Your friend,

M.D.

SHIVERS Book 2, "A Ghastly Shade of Green," now out as ebook!

2011-08-28T23:32:00.000-07:00

A quick note to thank all those who have bought "The Enchanted Attic," book 1 in the SHIVERS series. Just to let you know that book 2, "A Ghastly Shade of Green," is now out as an ebook, as well.

Two down, 34 to go!

It's available at Amazon, iBookstore, Sony and Barnes & Noble.

Kindle customers in the U.S. can get it from Amazon here: http://amzn.com/B005HRYJLW

UK Kindle customers can buy it here: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/B005HRYJLW

Keep reading!

Your friend,

M.D.

SHIVERS REPUBLISHED!

2011-08-02T02:23:00.001-07:00

To my fans:

Big news: At long last, "The Enchanted Attic," book one in my Shivers series, was republished today as an e-book at Amazon's Kindle store. It will also be available soon at Sony, Barnes & Noble and iBookstore. Here's the Amazon link.

Coming soon: book two, "A Ghastly Shade of Green."

This effort is due largely to all those of you who have e-mailed me over the years to ask how to get copies of the books. Well, now you can. Check them out!

Your friend,

M.D. Spenser

ANNOUNCEMENT: SHIVERS LIVES!

2011-07-24T05:19:00.000-07:00

"The Enchanted Attic," book one in my Shivers series of scary novels for kids, should be available soon as an e-book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and for Sony Readers and iPads, as well.

If there's demand, the rest of the series will follow, in stages.

Also, audio books, read by me, are a possibility as well.

Shivers rises again?

2011-06-24T03:41:00.000-07:00

I'm considering putting out the Shivers series as e-books. What do you think? Will kids be interested?

Republish M.D. Spenser's Shivers Series!

2010-07-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

Republish M.D. Spenser's Shivers Series!

Bulletin: I'm Alive!

2010-06-30T01:08:00.000-07:00

I happened upon a link the other day that announced, alarmingly enough, "Writer M.D. Spenser Dies."

Well, this was news to me. I wondered perhaps if I was browsing the web from the far side. Maybe I had died without realizing it. Is this what death is like, I wondered?

So I clicked on the link and found this: "NOTE: M.D. Spenser has not yet died."

Whew! What a relief! Apparently it's a tribute page just waiting for me to kick the bucket.

Wait on, folks, wait on. M.D. Spenser has not yet died.

On-line petition asks that Shivers be republished!

2010-06-26T01:56:00.000-07:00

Hello, everyone! Important news: There is an on-line petition circulating that asks that my entire 36-book Shivers series be republished.

I get e-mails quite often from people asking me how they can buy copies. And I'm afraid I have to disappoint them and say that the books are not in stories anymore. But I know there is considerable demand for them and it would help if publishers had evidence that this was the case.

If they were published again, it would make Shivers available to a new generation of readers. I ask your help: Please sign the on-line petition and forward the link to all your friends. Here's the link: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/mdspenser_shivers/

Your friend,

M.D. Spenser

Americana - The Wonder Of It All

2010-01-02T04:22:00.000-08:00

By M.D. Spenser

When did Americana shrink so small?

How did a term that once described music that defied genre become itself so strict a genre? And to what benefit? Because in the process, something vital has been lost.

The term originally described artistry that drew on all the myriad strains of American music. Narrow-minded program directors, catering to incurious listeners, were rejecting country music with too much rock, and rock with any fiddles at all. Folk that was bluesy found no home. Pop flavoured with jazz was deemed too big a stretch for the masses. Blues with too much soul was somehow impure.

Then came a brave and determined group of artists who transcended genre. Their songs echo with blues, country, pop, folk. These writers draw on the full range of the American experience: rockabilly, Appalachian, bluegrass, Tex-Mex, Dixieland, and Zydeco, or Cajun music

This is music as big and expansive, as diverse and exciting, as the country itself.

In it you can hear the ebb and flow of migration, the creative force of culture meeting culture: The Cajuns draw musical traditions from their ancestral home in France, by way of eastern Canada (their name is derived from “Acadian”). Thence they were evicted in the 1700s by the British; many migrated to Louisiana, where they mingled and intermarried with Native Americans, Caribbean Islanders, Spaniards and other Europeans.

The Blues are born of the forced migration of Africans to North America, and the economic migration of rural American blacks to the cities of the north. It rings with spirit in the face of oppression.

In country music, and particularly bluegrass, you can see the dancing of the Irish and hear their joy: They carried this joy, along with their sorrow, to America when they fled poverty at home.

What makes American music so rich is not merely that each of these musical traditions found a home in America. It is the exuberant cross-pollenization of different traditions—of Acadians meeting Caribbean Islanders, of Africans meeting the Irish—that makes it so vital and alive.

Americana is as big as the country itself. And as rich, expansive, exciting and magical.

But that wealth and diversity is no longer embraced by all who produce programs of what they call Americana music.

Some reference sources describe the term “Americana” as interchangeable with“alt-country.”

In the UK, the AmericanaOK internet radio program brings little-known musicians to broader attention, and that’s good. But listen awhile and you’ll find one song pretty much like another: weatherworn country—more resonant emotionally than the gloss of radio country—but, it must be said, pretty dreary and downbeat. There’s no swing, no bop, no bounce, and not all that much hope. Missing is strut of Dixieland, the urgency of rock, the magic of Mariachi, the richness of the blues, and the shimmering beauty of American folk at its best.

I’ve even seen Americana defined as “a loose subset of American folk music.” What? You must be kidding. Folk is a subset of Americana, not the other way around. How could something once so inclusive become so exclusive? Why did something once so wide become so narrow?

Here’s to making the tent broad once more. This is music that stimulates and broadens. Without our knowing it, it awakens us. It excites us to embrace many cultures, to make them part of us.

Americana music, in its broadest sense, is great entertainment and wonderful fun. Accept no substitutes: Enjoy it, feel it, revel in it, make it your own—and support it wherever you find it.

CD Review - Tim Lothar & Peter Nande

2009-12-22T13:27:00.000-08:00

Two For The Road
Straight Shooter

By M.D. Spenser

From the first notes of this outstanding country Blues album you know it’s going to be fun.

The rollicking beat and wonderfully relaxed feel of it all might make you overlook just how fine the musicianship is. But don’t.

Tim Lothar, originally a drummer, plays a style that’s pure blues yet recognizably his own: He combines fingerpicking, slide, and a drummer’s intricate sense of rhythm.

Peter Nande’s harmonica ranges from dance-quick and happy to as lonesome as a midnight train.

Lothar and Nande have each been named Danish Blues Artist of the Year, but to say that is almost to undervalue them: Who cares that they’re Danish? They should win some W.C. Handy awards: This is the best acoustic Blues album you’ll buy this year.

It’s produced by long-time American Bluesman James Harman—who, one critic has written, “is incapable of making a bad album.” His production (and guest vocals) infuse the outing with authenticity and humour.

One highlight is a cover of the Lovin’ Sam Theard tune, ‘Can’t Get That Stuff No More’ (wrongly attributed here to Tampa Red)—you just have to sing along.

The nine originals are stellar, too, from ‘Slow Train’, a jaunty toe-tapper, to ‘Rough Ride’, which Lothar’s loping drums and staccato guitar give a propulsive feel.

This album proves that Blues don’t come from place of birth: These guys get it. Beginning to end, this album is a damn good time.

Here’s hoping Lonesome Tim and Big Boy Pete tour the UK—soon.

The Album That Almost Never Was: Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”

2009-06-20T04:01:00.000-07:00

By M.D. Spenser

One of the greatest soul albums of all time was almost never recorded.

Had Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” remained but a dream, Maria Muldaur’s latest album, “Yes, We Can”, would not exist. And music would have missed a cry from the heart that remains as moving today as it was nearly 40 yeas ago.

The problem was a dispute between Gaye, Motown’s biggest solo star, and Berry Gordy, the label’s founder.

During the 1960s, Motown racked up an extraordinary string of hits, crossing over to the white audience with Diana Ross & the Supremes, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, The Four Tops, the Temptations, and Gaye himself.

This was dance music; its crossover appeal was rooted not only in its rhythms but also in its avoidance of social comment. Gaye had huge hits in the ’60s, all personal, none political: songs like ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’, ‘Ain't That Peculiar’, and ‘How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)’.

But society was changing. As the ’60s wore on, blacks, often lacking student deferments, were sent in disproportionate numbers to fight and die in Vietnam.

In the summer of ’65, racial tension exploded into six days of riots in the Los Angeles area of Watts. When the smoke cleared, 34 people were dead, more than 1,000 were injured, and nearly 4,000 had been arrested.

And in 1968, the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. More riots followed, sometimes brutally repressed.

Motown’s hit-factory formula was becoming increasingly out of touch with the black experience.

Nor did Gaye fit the Motown mould. No pretty boy whose talents were limited to smiling, dancing and singing songs written by others, he was a complete musician, a successful drummer and hit songwriter before making it big as a singer—a complex, moody, thoughtful, talented man.

In 1970, he recorded a single: ‘What’s Going On’. It opened with the words: “Mother, mother/There’s too many of you crying/Brother, brother, brother/There’s far too many of you dying/You know we’ve got to find a way/To bring some lovin’ here today.”

The song addressed the war in Vietnam and police brutality. Gordy called it “the worst record I ever heard” and refused to release it.

But Gaye said he would record nothing else unless the song was released. In early 1971, Gordy relented.

The song topped the Billboard R&B chart for five weeks. After which Gordy asked whether Gaye could record a whole album of songs like that.

Two months later, in the grip of inspiration, Gaye recorded the album in 10 days. He wrote or co-wrote every track. He produced the album himself, spending as much time at the controls as behind the microphone.

The result was an enormous commercial and critical success.

‘“What's Going On” is not only Marvin Gaye's masterpiece, it’s the most important and passionate record to come out of soul music,” the critic John Bush has written on allmusic.com.

Even the cover heralded something different. Here was Gaye, suddenly bearded, no longer the manufactured star of TV dance programs, with the skinny tie and big grin. He’s walking in the rain, pensive, melancholy, hands in his pockets, drops of water flecking his hair and beading up on his raincoat.

And there’s the title: “What’s Going On.” No question mark: This is a statement. As the song says, ‘Come talk to me/So you can see/What’s going on.”

The music is gorgeous, from the haunting alto sax that opens the title track to the fading drumbeat that concludes ‘Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)’. (The two bonus tracks on the CD should not be there.) It’s a symphony, gracefully shaped, a suite of songs that sometimes run one into the next, distinct but of a piece. This is pop that is orchestral, but quietly so; it’s jazzy, relaxed, a sweeter shade of mournful.

Over it soars one of music’s most soulful voices: Rolling Stone magazine put Gaye sixth on its list of The Greatest Singers of All Time.

The album tackles all the issues Motown had avoided: war, brutality, addiction, pollution, the pouring of money into moon shots while inner cities decayed. There’s anger, yes: “Make me wanna holler/The way they do my life”, he sings. But there’s sadness and caring, too, and wistfulness.

The album included three huge hits: the title track, ‘Inner City Blues’ and ‘Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)’. It cleared the way for countless other soul artists to address these issues and to write and produce their own work.

The album still sounds utterly current; covers from it continue to be recorded.

When Muldaur, distraught at the state of the world in the 21st Century, thought of recording a social justice album, she thought first of the protest music of the 1960s folkies. But then she remembered that she didn’t really like it: it was marked by monotonous strumming; it had no groove. Then her thoughts turned to the black social consciousness music of the 1970s—started by Marvin Gaye with this album.

On “Yes, We Can,” Muldaur includes ‘Inner City Blues’ and others songs that followed from what Gaye had begun. This was the music she’d been looking for.

“It was like protest music you could dance to,” she said.

Soul To Soul – A Concert For The Ages

2009-05-26T01:35:00.000-07:00

By M.D. Spenser

One of the most exciting R&B concerts ever staged took place not in America but in Africa. And it was originally the brainchild of a former prostitute.

The show, put on in Accra, the sprawling capital of Ghana, began March 6, 1971. More than 200,000 people packed what was then called Black Star Square, on the Gulf of Guinea, and went wild to some of the most supercharged soul you could ever want to hear. Featured were huge American stars like Wilson Pickett, Ike & Tina Turner, the Staples Singers, Carlos Santana and Roberta Flack, along with a variety of top African artists.

The show lasted 14 hours, until 6:45 the next morning. To watch videos of Tina Turner from that night is to see her in the peak of her fiery form, a dozen years younger than the woman who sang ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’. Her feet are a blur as she shimmies across the stage, shaking a tailfeather in the best tradition of the era, and her vocals a scream of passion from deep within.

Not only did the show electrify those present. In time, it also showed the connections music can form—between African song and American, between white and black, and between past and future.

And it began with an idea from Maya Angelou, the celebrated American writer—and former prostitute.

“Music was my refuge,” Angelou wrote once. “I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”

Another of her refuges was Africa. She lived in Ghana for a time in the 1960s. And it was she who suggested to the government of Kwame Nkrumah that black American artists be brought in to celebrate Ghana’s independence.

Nkrumah, a Marxist, was overthrown in a military coup—some say it was backed by the CIA—before the concert could take place. But the idea didn’t die.

In the end, the Soul to Soul concert was held in 1971, on the 14th anniversary of Ghana’s independence from Britain. It was a concert for the ages. A documentary about it was released later that year; the film was released again on DVD in 2004, along with a CD soundtrack.

The connections between Africa and America showed in the way the music from both continents fit side by side, each building on the excitement of the other. The way music bridges the races was evident, too: Many people remarked that the performer with the most African sound that night was not Wilson Pickett, for example, or Roberta Flack, but Carlos Santana, a white man born in Mexico.

The connections between past and future have become apparent over time. Just recently, when the jazz and Blues artist Lizz Wright was making “The Orchard,” her newest album, her producer showed her the film of Soul to Soul. Wright was mesmerized by Tina Turner; she heard in Turner’s voice something of her own experience, a feeling she wanted to capture on the new album.

In the end, she included ‘I Idolize You,’ a song sung by Tina but written by Ike Turner, then her husband. Ike had started playing in the ’40s. In the ’50s he backed people like Elmore James and Otis Rush. You can hear him playing piano on early Howlin’ Wolf recordings.

And now, because of that concert in 1971, a song written by man who backed Howlin’ Wolf is the highlight of one of the finest, most progressive Blues albums of the 21st Century.

CD Review - The History Of Rhythm & Blues 1925-1942

2009-05-03T00:42:00.000-07:00

Various Artists
Rhythm and Blues Records

By M.D. Spenser

This exhilarating compilation covers the period almost from when the Blues were first recorded until Billboard magazine inaugurated its first sales chart for black music, the Harlem Hit Parade.

It runs from a rough and rhythmic field holler to the smooth tones of Lionel Hampton’s vibraphone, and encompasses along the way developments central to modern music: the introduction of slide guitar, the invention of the walking bass, the development of boogie woogie piano, the advent of swing.

This album is a distillation of a four-CD set; as such, it’s an exceptionally strong collection, each of the 25 tracks a discovery, a joy. The liner notes are worth the price in themselves: Well-written and entertaining, they detail not only the history of each artist, but the context of each song.

We hear John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson pioneer the single-note lead on harmonica, Tampa Red introduce the guitar-piano Blues combo, Jimmie Rodgers mix Blues and country in a way later taken up by Ray Charles and others.

Great names appear: Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway, Count Basie. A number of these songs remain famous, too: 1929’s ‘Roll And Tumble Blues’ has been recorded most recently by Seasick Steve; 1940’s ‘Don’t You Lie To Me’ was covered by the Stones.

But some of the best stuff is more obscure: Arthur “Big Boy” Cruddup’s ‘Mean Ol’ Frisco’ is a treat, as is ‘I’d Rather Drink Muddy Water’ from The Cats and the Fiddle.

The most recent song on the album was recorded more than 65 years ago, but this is no dusty exercise in musicology. This is creative, vibrant music. Even today, it quickens the pulse.

Music Interview - Maria Muldaur

2009-04-10T01:13:00.000-07:00

Maria Muldaur More Sultry Than Ever: I Finally Got the Voice I'd Always Wanted

By M.D. Spenser

Few singers have built such a varied career as Maria Muldaur.

She was part of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early ’60s, and later sang and played fiddle in jug bands. In the early ’70s, she was half of an eclectic duo with her then-husband, Geoff Muldaur. Then, divorced and solo, she scored a massive pop hit in 1973 with ‘Midnight At The Oasis’.

More recently, her voice has become much richer and over the last several years she’s done the deepest Blues of her carer.

Her latest album, “Yes, We Can” explores the black social consciousness music of the early ’70s. She’s backed by a group she calls “The Women’s Voices For Peace Choir”, which includes Joan Baez, Bonnie Raitt, Phoebe Snow and, of all people, the actress Jane Fonda.

In a recent interview, sounding enthusiastic and girlish at 66, Muldaur seemed to talk with no full stops, one thought running into the next. Some excerpts from that conversation:

MD: Before we get to the new album, I want to ask in general about your recent work. It seems that you’re singing now better than ever. How would you say your singing has evolved over the years?

Maria: From when I was a teenager, I’ve always really loved the Blues, and rhythm and blues. And when I was 17, I discovered and fell in love with Bessie Smith. And a little bit after that I fell in love with Memphis Minnie and a lot of these early Blues women, and have always loved Mavis Staples and all of the black gospel singers.

So, even though I was given a very nice little light lilting soprano voice, in my soul of souls I’ve always wanted to be a Blues and gospel singer. And just as the years make everything on a person go south, so to speak, the good part of it was that it also made my voice go south. If you hear what I’m doing now and then you put on ‘Midnight At The Oasis’, you wouldn’t even think it’s the same person.

I find it a very gratifying and nice little unexpected gift, having matured over the years, that I finally got the voice I’d always wanted to have.

Your albums over the last decade have been quite distinct from each other. There’s the Blues-rock of “Southland Of The Heart”, piano Blues in “Meet Me Where They Play The Blues”, vintage Blues in “Richland Woman Blues”, pop in “Heart Of Mine: Love Songs of Bob Dylan”, and now a social justice album. Did there come a point when you felt released from the constraints of Top 40 and free to take on whatever projects you wanted?

I was never in the constraints of Top 40.

I grew up in Greenwich Village, which is where what I always laughingly call the folk scare of the early ’60s started. I got exposed to Appalachian mountain music, Delta Blues. They were rediscovering and bringing up north people like Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, and black gospel music and bluegrass.

I was in a band with—you know who (bluegrass artist) David Grisman is? We were in a band together in 1962 called Maria And The Washington Square Ramblers. It was a bluegrass band and I was the lead singer.

And then, of course, for many years I was in a jug band, first the Even Dozen, which I was in with David Grisman and John Sebastian (later of The Lovin’ Spoonful), and with the Kweskin Jug Band for about eight or nine years. And then I did two albums with Geoff Muldaur as a duo, and those were pretty eclectic.

So when we broke up, both musically and personally, I got the unexpected opportunity to go out to California and do my own solo album. I made what really, if you look back at it, was a very eclectic album. The first song is a Jimmie Rogers song. I did ‘Don’t You Feel My Leg,’ which was an old New Orleans Blues. I did ‘Walkin’ One And Only’, which was a Dan Hicks song, which is a very hip, kind of early swing kind of thing.

So really, the fact that there was this song that I did as a favour to my young guitar player, ‘Midnight At The Oasis’, just was another gift from above that everybody just fell in love with that song. And it was on the charts for almost a year, it was nominated for a Grammy in several categories, it went gold and eventually platinum, etc. And that was when I became known to a larger audience maybe as a pop artist.

But really, if you go and look at my next album, it starts with a Skip James song, and has some swing tunes on it that I did with (saxophonist/trumpet player/clarinetist) Benny Carter and a big band.

So what I’m saying is I’ve always been about exploring different kinds of American roots music. And that little foray into the Top 10 was a happy accident that I’m very grateful for, but that’s never been what I was about.

How was it making “Sisters & Brothers” with Eric Bibb and Rory Block?

It was like falling off a log. We did it in a town called Unity, New Hampshire. Rory Block’s been my soul sister for years, and we both absolutely drink out of the same musical fountains of the early Delta Blues and so forth. And Eric Bibb was a much more recent discovery of mine, and I love his voice and his whole kind of very soulful, preacher-like way of writing songs and singing and playing the guitar—I just adore him.

We got up there and sat around in the living room of this little bed & breakfast for a couple of days and thought of different songs, and ended up cutting the whole album in a couple of days. It was just a wonderful experience.

You mentioned Bessie Smith—I can’t imagine anyone else doing such a wonderful job of singing ‘Bessie’s Advice’. How did you happen to record that?

I’m glad you asked this, because this is just indicative of what a serendipitous little meeting of the minds and hearts and souls we had up there in Unity, New Hampshire.

Eric, almost as an afterthought, said, “Maria, you know, when I heard I was going to work with you, I wrote this song. It’s called ‘Bessie’s Advice’.” And he played it for us in the living room.

And I said, “I really like the song, I love what it has to say, but it needs a bridge, and it also needs to have—you know, because the whole song’s about if your man does this or that or yells at you or punches you—it’s all negative”. I said, “You have to have the other side where it talks about what if he’s just what you want, you tell him ‘Come on in’”.

And I sat down at the piano with (keyboardist) Chris (Burns) and—this is almost like a scene out of one of those Tin Pan Alley movies—you know, I’m trying to sing it to him, and he’s going, “This chord?” And I’m going, ‘No, no, no, more minor’.

I’m sitting at a stool at the edge of this grand piano, and Eric Bibb has a pencil and a piece of paper, and we get to the bridge, and he’s scribbled out the bridge and put it in front of me. And then as we were sort of shaping the music of the song, he was finishing the last two verses. I was throwing in my two cents with, “No, no, no, it should say something more like this”.

And it just kind of flowed from his pen onto the paper. And what you hear on the record, we recorded it about five minutes after that happened.

It’s wonderfully atmospheric.

I mean, talk about hot off the press or fresh out of the oven. The song was finished and the producer said, “Now, go in the sound booth”, and I thought he was getting sound. I, of course, wanted to rehearse it and rehearse it. And he said, “No, no, just do it. It sounds great.” Ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing.

The new album, “Yes, We Can,” is a departure, isn’t it? Were you worried that a protest album would come off as preachy?

I don’t give a damn. I mean, A), I don’t worry about anything. B), I mean in terms of what I’m presenting to the world, I pray about it.

I don’t write, so I have to reach deep inside and figure out what’s resonating with me at any particular time. And what was on my heart and mind was the very dismaying and deplorable condition of the world right now.

So I said, Oh, I’ll make a protest album. But then I quickly decided, no, I don’t want to look back with derision. I want to look forward with vision and present a positive outlook, something to give people hope.

Back in ’60s, when I was living in the village as part of the whole folk scene, there was one faction of people that were trying to discover authentic American roots music of various sorts. And then another faction of the folk scene was people who were into protest songs. And even though I totally espoused the causes they were singing about, the words were humourless and kind of jingoistic, and the music was a little too simplistic. It just didn’t captivate my ear.

So the whole notion was—aww, but wait a minute, I don’t like protest music.

But then I suddenly thought of all the wonderful songs of social relevance that a lot of the black soul artists in the late ’60s, early ’70s were singing. They were certainly very aware of all the social ills that needed to be addressed. And they wrote and recorded wonderful songs that addressed those issues very eloquently but yet with a total groove. It was like protest music you could dance to.

So that’s when I thought of Marvin Gaye, and I did ‘Inner City Blues’, and I thought of ‘War (What Is It Good For)’, and ‘Why Can’t We Live Together’.

One of the secrets seems to be in having the music funky enough that it doesn’t seem in any way preachy.

Because that early stuff, they were just sort of strumming relentlessly on acoustic guitars. To me, it has to be artful. The first, quotes, protest music I ever liked was Bob Dylan, because he raised the bar a thousandfold. ‘Masters Of War’ and ‘John Brown,’ both of which are on this album, he wrote when he was 21. Can you imagine that? I mean, it’s just amazing.

One of the most moving songs on the album is ‘John Brown’—a mother sends her son off to war hoping for glory and he comes back maimed.

He wrote it probably because he was facing being drafted himself. I knew him way back in those days. And that was the Vietnam era. But how much more poignant the song is now, because back in those days, if someone was wounded badly enough, mercifully they usually died.

Now, they can bionically sew them back up, patch them up, you know, give them bionic limbs, and then in some cases they’re even sending them back off to battle. And yet there’s a lot of people in this country that think that’s heroic.

The way I do it, I took that version—which is, I think, really funky—from a version that the Staples Singers did. And Bonnie Raitt says that’s her favorite, too.

Was making the record fun?

Oh, my god, it was the most overwhelming project I’ve ever—because just to ask all these women of great stature, and who were heroes of mine, I had to screw up all my courage to call up and ask all these people, including Jane Fonda. But not a person said no.

And then they just so naturally took to the music. I mean, the version of “Masters Of War” I sing gives me chills. I said, “How are we going to do this?” because Dylan’s way just drones on and on, only a couple of chords.

And the drummer just started playing these ominous, war-like sounding, thunderous rolls on the drums, and then the keyboard player and the guitar player, they just came in with these really dark, moody, ominous chords. It wasn’t like it was all written down and we had a big grand plan. It just organically emerged out of the players because we were all of one heart, mind and spirit on this project.

I have to ask—can Jane Fonda sing?

I’m here to tell you she can sing. What gave me the idea was that I had done a benefit with her the year before for a wonderful film called “Sir, No Sir” (a documentary about soldiers opposing the Vietnam War).

So they had a big benefit to raise money to distribute it. At the end, Holly Near and Jane Fonda did ‘Down By The Riverside’, which has kind of been the anthem for peace-seekers over the years, an old black gospel song. And I’m standing right next to Jane, and I noticed how clearly she sang.

So as I’m sort of trying to plan this whole thing, she came into my mind.

First she was a little intimidated because Joan Baez was there. And she’s like, “Oh, God, what am I doing here? I’m not a real singer.”

And I said, “Now, Jane, just sing it like we were singing it at that benefit”. And she went out there, put on her little headphones and sang her heart out.

It’s really funny. When she starts singing—the lead part was already on, so—(sings) “I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield”—and we hear “ba bum ba bum”—“Down by the riverside”—“ba bum ba bum”.

And she’s doing the “ba bum ba bums,” and my main engineer turned around and said, “Well, do you want her to do that? Should I stop the take?” I said, “Are you kidding?”

She just reminded me of a girl in the eleventh grade choral group, just singing her little heart out.

Where did you get the idea to slow the song ‘War’ down, take out Edwin Starr’s grunts, and give it such a delicate, mournful reading?

Mournful—that’s it. I have to say credit goes to Joan Osborne and her band. I had never heard Edwin Starr’s version. But I had heard her version, and I kind of thought that’s how the song went.

And actually it’s funny, because the people at the record company didn’t like my version of ‘War’. And even my guitar player said, “Well, I miss that whole angry thing.”

I said, “But this isn’t about that”. I said, “These are women mourning. Their husbands, lovers and children are being killed for no good reason. The is the feminine take, the people who bring life into the world and nurture and nourish it for eighteen years till your child is grown. And then your child is snatched up and sent off for no good reason to be killed and maimed.”

And that’s my take on the song, and I had to fight to keep it on the album.

Overall, how would you like people to respond to hearing the album?

Well, my music has been the soundtrack—I mean, I could really write a little book, which would have to be X-rated, if I had written down all the little stories that people have told me.

People come up to me and tell me these stories about what they were doing or what they were inspired to do when they heard various songs of mine. So it’s clear to me that my songs have been the soundtrack to various love and lust affairs. People come show me photos of children they conceived to ‘Don’t You Feel My Leg’ or one song or another.

And the thought occurred to me that, if things continue as they are, pretty soon there won’t be any people to make love and make romance and babies, and no place to do so, either, and so it’s our hope that these songs will just give people the idea that instead of feeling utterly hopeless about what’s going on in this world, that they say, yes we can change things.

It’s just like, you know when you have to clean the whole house and you put on some really bumpin’ music to kind of motivate you? Well, I want this music to motivate people to do whatever they can on a local level to effect a change in this world.

Do you know what is next for you?

I would like to make a jug band album and an Appalachian old-timey album. And then I will feel like I will have gone completely full circle. I just follow my heart, and so far in all these years I’ve not run out of things to do or to sing about.

CD Review - Tom Doughty

2009-03-06T13:57:00.000-08:00

Have A Taste Of This

By M.D. Spenser

This album of lyrical lap slide guitar is worth your attention.

Tom Doughty, a Cheshire native, mixes originals with covers from an impressive array of sources, including Randy Newman, Bob Dylan and Blind Willie McTell (‘Delia’, which Doughty incorrectly attributes to Rev. Gary Davis).

Doughty’s playing is deft, rhythmic and melodic. He fingerpicks while playing slide and the sound is as smooth and Bluesy as you’re likely to hear anywhere.

His singing is expressive, too—owing more, perhaps, to folk than to Blues.

Did I mention that a motorcycle accident in 1974 left Doughty paralyzed from the chest down, impairing movement in both hands? It’s not really relevant: You don’t hear it in his music.

He can’t move the fingers of his left hand; hence the slide, the open tunings, and the guitar in the lap. He says the strength of his right hand is diminished, too, but you sure can’t hear it in his picking.

Apparently, his guitars hung on his wall looking at him for 10 years until he finally decided he’d find a way play again, even with his diminished movement.

Now, he’s invited to lead workshops on technique. Far better to take Doughty’s music on his own terms, never mind the paralysis.

‘Zimbabwe’, an original, is a bit obvious and ham-handedly political: “Mugabe/Killing machine”, he sings.

But ‘Jitterbug Swing’ is lively and jaunty. And Doughty plays a moving and mournful version of ‘Nobody’s Fault’ (“It ain’t nobody’s fault but mine”).

Just a very, very nice CD.

CD Reviews - Three CDs From Blue Skunk Music

2009-02-25T01:21:00.000-08:00

DOUG ADAMZ AND DAN HAYES
Blues Duo

STEVE ROWE
Five

BILL ABEL
One-Man Band

Blue Skunk Music

By M.D. Spenser

With these three enjoyable CDs, Blue Skunk demonstrates again the value of small, independent labels: This is good music we might otherwise never hear.

Judging from its Web site, Blue Skunk has only a half dozen or so artists, but they’re skilled and Bluesy.

Doug Adamz and Dan Hayes, both fine guitarists, offer a stripped-down acoustic set: On some songs the spaces speak as loudly as the notes.

Their guitars blend so seamlessly it’s sometimes hard to tell whether two guitars are playing or just one. Their playing is easy, relaxed and rolling, sometimes augmented by harmonica—pure blues from two guys who are in it for life even if the money’s no good. “When you pawn your guitar it just breaks your heart,” they sing.

Steve Rowe, by contrast, is an electric guitarist, and he’s excellent. On “Five” he offers driving Blues-rock, heavy on the drums, with propulsive base lines.

Rowe really cuts loose on the guitar, but always to augment the song rather than to call attention to himself. Unpretentiously, he lays down some stonking blues. He rocks but remembers the roll.

The feeling ranges from swampy to Bluesy to funky. One song has echoes of Carlos Santana, another sounds like Gary Moore.

Bill Abel is an altogether different kettle of fish: On “One-Man Band” he provides the kind of raw and primal Blues the Fat Possum label brought to prominence.

The album was recorded live, no overdubs; Abel produces an unbelievably full sound for a one-man band.

He plays hi-hat and snare with one foot, bass drum with the other, and both rhythm and lead on guitars—some of which he made from cigar boxes.

His voice is a howl that seems to fit his bear-like appearance—at once a wail of desperation and an affirmation of life.

The songs are filled with noise, clatter and emotion. This music is very much in the style of Seasick Steve, but without Seasick’s pop veneer, if you can imagine that.

Good as they are, these albums could have been better. Abel’s CD is 16 tracks. Rowe’s is 15 tracks, most of them long. Paring down the number of tracks, painful as it might have been, would have resulted in tighter, more compelling albums.

Still, it’s a pleasure to listen to all three of these CDs. We can only hope Blue Skunk continues to bring such worthy artists to a wider audience.

CD Review - The Mountain Firework Company

2009-01-26T15:30:00.000-08:00

Samurai
Self-produced

By M.D. Spenser

One of the great joys of being a music lover is stumbling across something as beautiful as this lyrical album of alt-folk. Unheralded, self-produced right down to the photos, this one’s a keeper.

The Mountain Firework Company is a six-piece band of Brits working primarily in an American vein. The sound is full: Guitar, banjo and mandolin are all fingerpicked at once, augmented by a fiddle and anchored by a double bass and tasteful drumming.

The opening cut, ‘Rolling River’ has the feel of John Hartford’s ‘Gentle On My Mind’ or even Harry Nilsson’s version of ‘Everybody’s Talkin’.

But on a deeper level, MFC’s music harks back to the folk that preceded the Blues—it’s not that this has a hint of Blues in it, it’s that the Blues has in it some of this.

The music’s gorgeous, the lyrics poetic. “Those stolen kisses in the moonlight/Were never yours to keep’, Gareth McGahan sings in ‘Love Is A Rose’, a song about love’s mortality.

McGahan wrote all 12 tracks; he’s a superb songwriter. His vocals contain echoes of the great American folk singer Pete Seeger, and the songs feature close harmonies reminiscent of Crosby, Stills and Nash.

But this music is fresh, something all its own. Atmospheric songs in minor keys deal with dark subjects without feeling gloomy. On the title cut the violin adds a Celtic feel. The chord changes are wonderful, the musicianship stellar.

Seemingly out of nowhere has come this gem of an album. Very nice indeed.

Music Interview - Lizz Wright

2009-01-05T22:45:00.000-08:00

Singer knows: Home Is Where the Heart Is

By M.D. Spenser

For Lizz Wright, the truest things begin and end at home.

Before she thought of any songs for her most recent album, “The Orchard,” she held in her mind an image—a picture of home. The first work on the album involved no microphones or backup singers, only a camera crew.

She took the crew to Hahira, Georgia, where the earth is fertile and the history rich. Wright didn’t grow up in Hahira, but she was born there, her grandmother lived there, and Wright went there often.

“I always felt that grandma’s house and her land were home,” she says. “She was a very, very tangible maternal figure for me. Grandma was everybody’s mom.”

With 1,800 residents, Hahira (pronounced Hay-HIGH-rah), is just what you’d expect of a southern American town. People still harvest cotton and tobacco. The rusted hulks of old cars lie about, their wheels removed. There’s a swamp, of course; the dirt is moist and pungent.

It’s a sleepy town, Wright says. When you arrive, nothing pops out at you: You have to quiet yourself to feel Hahira’s warmth and richness. There are orchards everywhere, filled with ancient trees bearing peaches or pecans. Sometimes after church, Wright’s family would pile in the car and drive to an orchard to pick peaches together.

One orchard in particular sticks in Wright’s mind—a pecan orchard beside her grandmother’s house. It belonged to the neighbours and, as a child, Wright didn’t dare go into the orchard; that was someone else’s land.

But she used to peek through the fence. The old pecan trees were bigger than any she’d ever seen; they stood arrayed in perfect rows just as they had been planted all those years ago, and the rows went on forever.

Even today, she says, orchards make her think of her family, her people.

It was to the edge of that orchard (but not inside) that she took the camera crew as she thought about her new album.

“I’m grown now, and I still don’t dare go there,” she says. “But I did use pictures of that orchard to go to Verve and say, ‘I have no words but I have a picture, and this is what I want’.”

She wanted, she says, to capture some of the feeling of home. As an interpreter, she felt she could do anything, as long as she held onto her roots, her story.

Wright, who turns 28 in this month, sang her first solo when she was 6 years old, in church. She grew up on Robins Air Force Base, two hours up Interstate-75 from Hahira: Her father was a minister on the base. Wright knew she would always sing—that singing would be her offering, as she puts it, her way of serving.

But she never expected to sing professionally. The Wright family ran the church the way a farming family handles the land, and she expected to follow her father’s path.

She went to Georgia State University in Atlanta, where she studied voice. As she matured, she felt compelled to explore music other than gospel. She wanted to see if music could be a way of sharing, a means of healing, and whether she could create a concert experience in which there was a bond between audience and performer. She asked people around her for advice.

“Don’t you ever say that kind of stuff again,” one person snapped. “Nobody wants to hear that. That doesn’t make any sense. You keep that kind of stuff to yourself.”

That hurt, but Wright ventured into other kinds of music anyway—primarily jazz but also Blues. She kept her day job, though, until music just wouldn’t allow it anymore. She got involved in a Billie Holiday tribute, had to miss a day at the cafe in New Jersey where she worked, and was fired.

“So I was like, OK, you know what? I’ll try this music thing for a while, because it’s getting in the way of all this other stuff anyway,” she recalls.

She signed a recording deal with Verve in 2002. The following year, her debut, “Salt,” was released. It included a number of jazz standards; Wright’s singing, subtle, textured and true, heralded the arrival of a significant new talent.

In 2005, she released “Dreaming Wide Awake”, a rich and quiet album on which Wright showed herself to be an interpreter of the highest order: She breathed freshness into The Youngbloods’ ‘Get together’ and Neil Young’s ‘Old Man’—making them original and exciting in the way a wonderful new book excites an avid reader.

Even so, Wright’s 2008 album, “The Orchard”—the one that began with photographs of Hahira—was a revelation. “Dreaming Wide Awake” was some collectors’ favourite album of the year, but “The Orchard” is one for the decades.

Wright had become pigeonholed as a jazz artist. The new album would include rip-roaring R&B, shimmering folk and full-throated Blues. She knew going into the project that she would disappoint many people who would think she was leaving her true self behind.

“There’s a certain kind of dignified and poised persona that began to develop very quickly around me,” she says. “And I knew I was, in essence, puttin’ on a pair of boots—which is, ironically, more of going home to me than anything. But it didn’t matter to people; the first thing they saw was what they chose to love.”

In a coffeehouse confession, she told her producer, Craig Street, what she wanted to do next. She was so fearful that, when she recounts the conversation, she mimics herself talking in a crying voice:

“Man, I really want to do this,” she told Street, her voice quavering. “I like jazz, I love it, but …”

… But she wanted to go home.

Many labels balk when their artists want to change a successful formula. But Wright had begun her association with Verve with an ultimatum to the president.

“I walked into Ron Goldstein’s office when I first got signed, and I said, ‘Listen, man, I don’t know what I’m doing. And I don’t want this business to change me. I don’t have to have this. If this freaks me out, I’m not going to do it’,” she recalls.

So there was no question of trying to tell her what to do.

The album that resulted transcends genre. It has elements of Blues, gospel, R&B, jazz and folk; and it’s grounded in an honesty both gentle and brave.

The first words the listener hears are these: “Coming home to your shelter/Coming home where I stay…”

More than ever, Wright’s voice has become a deep and vibrant instrument, richly expressive. But what makes this an album for all time are the songs—originals, collaborations and covers—and Wright’s interpretation of them.

The emotional peaks are ‘I Idolize You’, a scorching Ike Turner Blues about infatuation, and ‘Leave Me Standing Alone’, a sizzling, gospel-inflected original in which the lover is sent packing.

From those two opposite poles of love, as if from the towers of a bridge, the other songs are suspended in graceful arcs, beautifully detailing the nuances of love.

We meet the girl who loses the battle to protect her heart, and is “quite well pleased.” We see love’s risk: “And what if the water's cold when I fall?” Wright asks, as she feels herself falling in love.

We watch her heal the pain of lost love in the waves of the ocean. We understand when the lover leaves but the love remains.

“Love and nature are never all of one thing,” Wright says. “And what I enjoy is the challenge of allowing the nuances around those subtle things to speak at once, the way they do in life.”

There’s little nuance, though, in ‘I Idolize You’, a powerful Blues infused with lust: “If you want some loving, Baby/That I’ll give to you/If you want some hugging, Baby/Oh, I can hug some, too.”

It seems a departure from the delicate textures of Wright’s previous work. But she views it as a return.

Her decision to include the song began with watching “Soul To Soul”, a documentary about a 1971 concert in Ghana by American soul artists. Wilson Pickett performed, as did The Staples Singers, Roberta Flack, and Ike and Tina Turner.

“It was wild,” she says. “It was also very sacred to me.”

Two or three weeks later, Street played her the original Ike and Tina version of ‘Idolize’.

“My first impression was, I’ve heard this voice before,” Wright recalls. “This is what the women sing like in the small churches where I’m from—that fight for freedom and that fight for a place and that fight for acceptance and that fight to take care of the family. And I totally heard that in her voice. So it was because that voice was familiar, I was like—well, there’s a piece of home.”

The album’s musicianship is superb, the production flawless, the song selection sterling, the singing in a class by itself. But something else—something intangible—also contributes to the album’s power. It results from Street’s decision to have Wright and her friend and collaborator, Toshi Reagon, first play the songs live in several sets at a small club in New York.

There is in the best of times a transaction that takes place between audience and performer, one revealed not in applause alone but also in rapt attention, the expression on a face, the energy in the air.

“The audiences really let me know a lot,” Wright says. “For me to start performing them right away made the songs more real for me. It wasn’t about making a record, it was about me and these songs. You know, can I go inside of them or am I letting them inside of me? I always think songs really evolve in a performance experience. Sometimes I love what happens to a song after I’ve been playing it in concert for a while, because I always think that the audience creates the experience along with me.”

Wright enjoys the studio: She speaks with joy of the experience of recording “The Orchard”. There were no hired session players, no drummers you’d never met before. All the players were friends. It was a gathering of her favourite people on an estate in the Catskill Mountains, in upstate New York, looking out the windows at a reservoir, and working together. The creative conversation, Wright says, was amazing.

But if she had to choose between recording and performing, Wright would choose the latter, the effort to create the bond that someone years ago had told her made no sense: the magical exchange between audience and performer where each gives the other something deep and true.

To do that, Wright gets very quiet before each performance.

“I gather myself so actually I have something to release,” she says. “I sit down and think about the stories that I’m inside of at the time. I think about the roads that are crossing in my life. I borrow information from my life or from my imagination. And I get really still and just try to put all that stuff in a big bowl before I come out.

“I ask the band to do the same thing. I don’t like people checking e-mails. I don’t like guests backstage. I like it quiet. If the green room’s dirty, I bring my own cloths and candles and incense. I will go get flowers or send someone to get them. It’s really important, this gathering.”

At a performance last year in London, Wright walked on stage slowly, regally, eyes downcast, hugging herself. Then, from deep within, she sang with eyes closed, caressing herself, sometimes wrapping herself inside a shawl.

Some might wish for a more extroverted performance. But looking inside herself is the essence of Wright’s art. Not a word falls from her lips without having been first filtered through her soul. Those in the audience understood full well that participating in that most private of journeys was a privilege: They returned the favour in ways unspoken.

For her next project, Wright has only a notion in her mind, maybe a picture, a photograph, or a destination deep within.

“I have some feelings, but not towards an exact idea,” she says. “In a way, I’m thinking more about how to move my career experience closer to my heart.”

Because she doesn’t need fame or fortune, or even the music business at all. She says she could walk away, any time, find something else and be fine. What she needs is to keep in touch with Hahira and the pecan orchard and who she really is.

“I haven’t changed a lot,” she says. “I know I could lose this and find a simpler way. I know what I’ve got to do to feel alive and to wake up in the morning and feel good. I know what I’ve got to do, and I can handle that.”

CD Review - Mike Markey & Nick Jones

2008-11-26T15:27:00.000-08:00

Heads of the Valleys

By M.D. Spenser

One hates to be too negative about this album, because both of these Welch sidemen are highly competent players. But competent can be a damning word in music.

The best bluesmen – all of them – have brought something original to the table. Not so here.

Mike Markey & Nick Jones have backed the likes of Water Trout and Zoot Money. Out on their own on this album, they offer typical prewar two-man Blues: One guy on acoustic guitar and slide, the other on harmonica and vocals.

Jones’ imitations of the guitar styles of Robert Johnson and other old-time greats are skilful. Markey’s harp playing is equally so, although his singing sounds deeply rooted in the white experience.

There are fast songs, slow songs, humorous songs and songs where they perform the old trick of having the slide and vocals track exactly. But nothing makes you sit up and take notice.

They do a cover of ‘Fishin’ Blues’, but if you think this matches Taj Mahal’s version – talk about original personalities – you’re mistaken. Not even close.

The music here, while well-played, is indistinguishable from any number of artists on any number of albums. Something’s missing, and it’s this: Markey and Jones have completely neglected to include anywhere in their music something of themselves.

CD Review - JZ James

2008-11-22T01:10:00.000-08:00

The West Memphis Turnaround
Moon Sound

By M.D. Spenser

Listeners who value tasteful musicianship and quiet originality will find much to enjoy on this CD by the German Bluesman JZ James. With his mix of acoustic and electric guitars and his jazzy take on the Blues, James creates mood poems that go down sweet as honey.

The album’s dedicated to the pianoman Eddie Boyd, who fled America and settled in Europe, helping plant the Blues over here. James counts himself among Boyd’s children – metaphorically, we assume. These 11 originals are marked by great chord changes and intricate rhythms that make even slower numbers toe-tappers.

The opening track sets the tone: a gently rolling mix of acoustic and electric guitars topped by mournful harmonica. “I would go home now baby/But I’m a stranger there,” James sings.

There’s a wonderful jazz-Blues tribute to Nina Simone: “But lady why complain/I believe that the songs you sung were not in vain,” he croons. OK, he says “not in wain,” but Bluesmen have always been allowed their idiosyncrasies.

“Ballad of Sallie Mae” tells of the murder of Robert Johnson over up-tempo fingerpicking on one acoustic guitar and percussive strumming on another.

Most songs feature acoustic rhythm, electric lead, tasteful drumming and upright bass, sometimes in a minor key. But the mood varies, as does the tempo; James always keeps our interest. One love song even has an exuberant bluegrass feel.

If you play this when friends are over, sooner or later they’ll prick up their ears and ask, “Who’s that?” Then spread the word.

Gozo: Mythical Island Of Odysseys Offers Timeless Feel

2008-11-16T00:41:00.000-08:00

By M.D. Spenser

SAN LAWRENZ, Gozo, Malta – From the mouth of Calypso’s cave can be seen the spot where the Greek warrior Odysseus washed ashore, in Homer’s telling, 1,000 years or so before the birth of Christ.

Calypso held the warrior captive for seven years, promising him eternal youth if he would stay. Odysseus, who desired the nymph by night but wept for his family by day, declined the offer. At length he was set free on the order of the gods.

The island was called Ogygia then; today it is called Gozo and is part of the Mediterranean nation of Malta. Judging by the age of many of its 30,000 residents, no one since Odysseus has been granted eternal youth, either. Still, Gozo’s quiet blend of eras and cultures – from Phoenician to modern, from Arab to Sicilian – can rejuvenate the weary soul.

The island is small, just nine miles long and four miles wide, and obscure. It offers uncrowded beaches, cliff-top trails and meandering alleyways. The pace is slow. The views are pastoral. Cacti dot the terraced hills; in spots cathedrals rise impressively above it all.

Gozo lies in a strategic narrowing of the Mediterranean Sea, 60 miles from Sicily and 180 from North Africa. It has been ruled over the millennia by many people, Semitic and European; its language, Maltese, is a mixture of Arabic and Italian.

Gozo seems a place that is neither here nor there, neither now nor then. The capital city was renamed Victoria in 1897 in honor of England’s queen (and Gozo’s), but residents still use its former name, Rabat.

The island is reached by flying into Malta International Airport on the country’s main island (also called Malta). From there, Gozo is a 15-minute helicopter ride away.

Or, for a fraction of the price, the visitor can take a taxi to the other end of the island of Malta and hop a 30-minute ferry. The dark blue of the sea highlights the light gray of the volcanic cliffs that jut vertically from its waves.

On Gozo, one finds more history than just the volcanic crevice billed as Calypso’s cave. Visitors also clamber through the ruins of the Ggantija Temples. Built about 5,600 years ago, the two temples predate Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Egypt by hundreds of years.

They are impressive more for their antiquity than their current appearance. They are today little more than roofless rooms defined by walls of huge volcanic stones, bleached by the sun, eroded by time and as full of holes as Swiss cheese.

Nearby, a vendor relaxes on a folding chair, his wares displayed atop an old stone wall. Among other potions, he sells homemade carob syrup – “good for cold sore throat and asthma,” announces his hand-written sign.

Atop Victoria – or Rabat, if you will – sits the old walled city: a citadel, actually. It is worth a visit, even if getting there does involve a steep hike. One can tour the old jail, with its horrifyingly small cells with tiny windows through which captives must have been tormented by the twittering of free-flying birds.

Along the old city’s narrow, curving alleyways lie a number of museums devoted to folklore, natural science, archaeology and other themes.

The old city (current population: fewer than 10) is dominated by the Gozo Cathedral. Its ornate interior features huge crystal chandeliers, massive candle holders, and graphic statues of Christ stumbling under the weight of the cross and then nailed to it. The walls and ceilings of this echoing vastness are painted, carved and gilt; the floors are of marble.

Facing outward on the cathedral steps stand statues of two popes – Pius IX and John Paul II – alongside two cannons. The Maltese have always protected themselves with both faith and guns.

The island, like any self-respecting tourist destination, offers water sports such as parasailing, snorkelling and diving. There are first-class resorts, too: During my visit, I stayed at the Kempinski Hotel San Lawrenz, which features various pools, restaurants and waving palms, but there are others.

But the essence of Gozo’s considerable charm lies not in the water sports or the resorts, nor in the Roman ruins, the Ggantija Temples, or even Calpyso’s cave. It lies more in the walking trails and in the narrow, Italian-influenced alleyways of Victoria.

Here, the visitor wanders among 100-year-old houses of chipped masonry or stone. Religious icons are affixed to the doors. Geraniums protrude in unruly fashion from second-floor balconies.

Cats curl in sun-splashed doorways; nearby, women make lace, their nimble fingers enlacing 28 or more strands of thread into a coherent pattern.

Over the course of history, Gozo has been ruled by the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the French under Napoleon Bonaparte, the British and, since 1964, the Maltese.

But time has woven these strands together gently and seamlessly: the 5,600-year-old temples, the 3,000-year-old citadel and the century-old houses seem all of a piece.

And the charm lies, too, in the island’s serenity. When Europeans want a quiet vacation, they go to Malta. When the Maltese want a quiet vacation, they go to Gozo.

CD Review - Seasick Steve

2008-10-30T01:30:00.001-07:00

I Started Out With Nothing And I Still Got Most Of It Left
Warner Brothers

By M.D. Spenser

What a wonderful album.

Seasick Steve, the former hobo with the gray beard and soup-strainer moustache, burst into national consciousness with his ebullient 2006 appearance on Jools Holland’s Annual Hootenanny. His first solo album, “Dog House Music,” was good. This one’s better.

It’s laced with Steve’s addictive, syncopated Blues playing – single notes serving simultaneously as rhythm guitar and lead. The slide rocks, the hobo references ring true: “I can’t lose what I never had/And you can’t take what I ain’t got,” he sings on the title track.

But the delight is the love songs. Steve seems all rough edges and overalls, yet inside lives a gentle poet and musician.

The single ‘Walking Man’ is acoustic guitar and affecting vocals: ‘If you want me to stay I’ll stash my sleeping roll under your bed/That says more than anything in my life I ever said,” he sings.

‘Happy Man’ starts with acoustic Blues guitar. ‘Oh this life has knocked me down to my knees/And I think it’s time I get a little bit of that promised land,’ Steve croons above a quiet churchy chorus. Then Ruby Turner suggests he put his arms around her – and the song turns into stonkin’ gospel-soul, the backing vocals raucous and joyful. Happy man, indeed.

The transfer to a major label has done no harm. There are drums, backing vocals and guests – Turner, Nick Cave, KT Tunstall. But Steve retains the fierce originality that’s at the core of all good Blues.

And damn fine Blues this is.

A Hungarian rhapsody in steamy-hot spa waters

2008-10-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

By M.D Spenser

BUDAPEST, Hungary — A hint of snow chilled the air as half a dozen men clustered around a chessboard, frowning, wearing nothing but swimsuits.

Two of them were playing. The rest were watching. And all were up to their necks in the mineral-filled hot water that bubbles up from 4,000 feet below the city of Budapest.

The water, thought to cure arthritis and known to cause relaxation, is a source of pride to Hungarians.

"It is our treasure," Eszter Szaniszlo, a guide at the Szechenyi spa, told me. "We don't have sea. We don't have mountains. We have thermal water."

The Szechenyi spa, on the Pest side of the city — the east side of the Danube — is one of the largest bath complexes in Europe. Around one of the many spots where the water emerges from the depths, the Hungarians early in the 20th century constructed a huge, ornate yellow building in the neo-baroque style — all balconies, balustrades, cupolas and statues.

The building — an oval surrounding the main outdoor baths — houses many amenities. You can rent a locker and a swimsuit, lift weights, do aerobics, enjoy a mud pack, take a sauna or get a bite to eat.

The center of the complex is open. It is here that you can bathe your aches away as snowflakes settle in your hair. Much of the clientele is local. The place is famous for chess players, who unfurl plastic chessboards and concentrate their minds while their bodies relax.

The waters are laden with sodium, calcium, magnesium and other minerals. Hungarians place such stock in the healing properties of the water that, if your doctor writes a prescription — so many soaks for this many minutes at such-and-such a temperature and mineral concentration — the government (which owns the Szechenyi spa) will pick up the tab.

But plenty of tourists come as well, just for a good hot soak. Amid the mist that rises where hot water meets cold air, you'll hear many languages — Italian, French, German, Spanish and a smattering of English.

Not being one to neglect firsthand research, I rented a suit and strode, cold and goose pimply, out of the building and toward the pool, where the chess players were immersed in concentration.

There are three outdoor pools. At one end of the complex, a pool with an array of jets provides a more exciting experience. In the middle is a lap pool — the coolest of the three. Preferring to start right in on the stress relief, I headed to the third, the warmest, where the water is a comfortable 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

I waded in and let out an involuntary moan. The water was deeply relaxing. So was the rather cinematic experience of gazing up through the mist at the building's flourishes and scrollwork.

After a time, I waded to the foot of a nude Venus. From the base of the statue, jets of hot water arced through the air, pummeling my back and kneading my muscles.

It was daytime, midweek. Besides tourists, local retirees were in evidence. Around me paddled elderly Venuses — clad, thankfully — with figures more robust than the statue's. Beside them stood stoic men with bodies like Humpty Dumpty and faces like Leonid Brezhnev's.

Fully relaxed, I decided to go for a little excitement. In the pool at the other end of the complex, a series of jets swept swimmers around in a circle. This was moderately entertaining, but not greatly so.

In another spot, jets shot up straight from the bottom of the pool. They were so powerful that you could actually bend your knees and sit on them. Around me, six or eight other people were doing the same thing, and virtually every one wore a foolish grin.

Indoors are the many therapeutic pools. Unlike the outdoor pools, which are constantly filtered and look quite clear, the indoor pools are filtered less often so the minerals can build up to the concentrations doctors prescribe.

Put another way, they're green.

I tried one nevertheless. I soaked for a bit, but my health, which was fine to start with, did not seem to improve, and I headed out for the more satisfying experience of bathing outdoors in the winter.

When it was time to go, my limbs were like spaghetti. I felt my skin aglow.

I was thirsty, though, and went to buy a drink before leaving. Szaniszlo, the guide, had told me about the spa's wonderful thermal water.

"It's good for the joints, for the bones, and you can drink it as well," she'd said.

And just think — only 23 forints, 13 cents, for half a liter.

I settled for a Diet Coke.

CD Review - James Booker

2008-10-19T23:59:00.000-07:00

The Lost Paramount Tapes
DJM

By M.D. Spenser

These tapes may have been lost but thank God they were found. This is as entertaining a collection of New Orleans style Blues piano as you’ll ever hear.

James Booker was ebullient, drug-addicted, erratic and alcoholic. But he was in peak form when this 1973 set was recorded.

He’s supported by an all-star New Orleans band, some of whom backed Dr John, so you know there’s some funky stuff comin’ down. But Booker is the reason for these recordings.

At the forefront is his astonishing boogie-woogie keyboard – rhythmic, syncopated and danceable. His soulful singing is icing on the cake.

Here’s betting you’ve never heard ‘Goodnight Irene’ played like this, run through Booker’s funkified filter, with impassioned singing over a rolling piano. He plays ‘Feel So Bad’, made famous by Little Milton, with the treble notes tripping over each other in a waterfall of funkiness. In ‘Junco Partner’, Booker is every bit the equal of Dr. John on both vocals and piano.

Sometimes Booker lets his piano do the talking. His laid-back playing on the original instrumental, ‘Lah Tee Tah’, is so beautiful that, even at 5:43, you’re disappointed when it ends. Don’t put ‘African Gumbo’ on your iPod on public transport because you’ll make a spectacle of yourself. And Booker’s moody piano on Brownie McGhee’s ‘Hole in the Wall’ will bring joy to your heart.

Booker died of liver failure in 1983 at age 43. Nine years later, these tapes, missing almost 20 years, were found.

Hallelujah. This is genius.

CD Review - Pete Gavin

2008-10-15T17:40:00.001-07:00

Blues Respect
Alias

By M.D. Spenser

Don’t be put off by the ridiculous orange mohawk Pete Gavin wears in the album photos. This is a fine album featuring mostly Blues with a bit of country thrown in, all propelled by Gavin’s excellent electric slide and harmonica.

But first things first: This Pete Gavin should not be confused with the drummer of the same name. This one is a former physicist who cut his teeth as a musician on the streets of London and is now based in Germany.

There’s some classic Blues on this album, with Gavin’s slide moaning over a bass and drums.

The promotional CD includes no credits, so it’s impossible to tell how many songs are originals. But there’s a mournful and effective reworking of Little Feat’s ‘Willin’’, the truck-driving song.

And Gavin’s version of Leadbelly’s ‘Midnight Special’ is acoustic, but rolling, driven and rhythmic.

Not everything works. The title cut, which opens the CD, is heavy, lugubrious, almost ominous bass-heavy rock – not an auspicious start.

And Gavin shows a few signs of too much club work and not enough time in the studio. Jokey novelty songs – the originals? – can slay a live audience but fail to fully come across on disc. And a fake American southern accent in a spoken bit can convulse a club of beer drinkers but not bear up on repeated listenings.

But that’s a minor cavil. Gavin’s version of ‘It’s My Life’, is all Blues, with hard-ass electric slide, and it alone is worth the price of admission.

CD Review - Ai! Si! Si! Mambo And Latin Flavoured Rhythm & Blues

2008-10-12T10:08:00.001-07:00

VARIOUS ARTISTS
El Toro

By M.D. Spenser

Don’t be misled by the title: This CD has little to do with rhythm and blues.

In the mid-’50s, Americans went nuts over the mambo. All across the country, people were gyrating wildly to the strains of Cuban music that presaged today’s salsa. Most songs had the word “mambo” in the title: ‘Mambo Boogie’, ‘Niki Niki Mambo’, ‘Mambo Baby Tonight’ and even ‘Mambo Santa Mambo’.

All the songs collected here were recorded between 1954 and 1957; this CD documents a craze. And as with any craze, it attracted a lot of artists looking to capitalize by superimposing a bit of mambo over their true styles.

Many had not a drop of Cuban blood in them. A number of these songs are doo-wop covered with the thinnest of Latin veneers.

There is some stuff here of interest to Blues fans: Ivory Joe Hunter does a nice job with ‘I Got To Learn To Do The Mambo.’ The Street Singers offer ‘Caldonia’s Mambo’, giving a Cuban flavour to one of B.B. King’s signature tunes.

The great Ruth Brown weighs in with ‘Mambo Baby’, though it’s not her finest moment. The Platters and The Drifters make welcome appearances, too.

A lot of these songs are fun; you can see how the craze developed. But a lot of these songs are similar, too; you can see why the craze petered out.

And the CD is long: At 28 tracks, thatsa lotta mambo.

Chris Smither -- The Luminaire, London, 6/10/08

2008-10-09T14:30:00.000-07:00

By M.D. Spenser

The guitar looks small in his hands and he plays it with the casual ease of a Vegas card dealer doing complex shuffles while chatting with a friend.

Chris Smither is one of the most delightful fingerpickers ever to pick up an acoustic guitar; his folk-Blues stylings are at the same time as intricate and as laid back as any you will hear. That in itself would be reason enough to see him but, as he showed at the Luminaire in October, it’s only the beginning of what he has to offer.

His immense catalogue of songs, written and polished over the course of his 40 years on the road, are jewels, all – each adorned with little pearls of weathered wisdom.

Take for example ‘Father’s Day’, a song he wrote recently for his own father. The concluding lines – these from a man in his 60s – are heartbreaking in their insight and their kindness: “Ain’t I done good? I needed that from you/And all I’ve got to say is, by the way, you done good too”.

And then there’s his voice, smoky and atmospheric. He seems to sing to each member of the audience in turn; you understand the songs – their pathos and their wisdom – in more richness that can be communicated by CD alone.

He’s contemplative, but he can rock, too: He did a rollicking version of his most commercially successful song, ‘Love You Like A Man’, covered as ‘Love Me Like A Man’ by 15 singers from Bonnie Raitt to Diana Krall.

He finished with ‘Leave The Light On’, about how at 64 he still has more to do. He was just one man with an acoustic guitar but when the last chord died the audience rose of one accord and roared.

For an encore, Smither ended where he began, with his laid-back picking to the fore. He did Blind Willie McTell’s ‘Statesboro Blues’, played as a guitar piece of dazzling complexity that seemed as easy for him as humming a tune down by the riverside on a lazy summer day.

Magic.

CD Review - Taj Mahal

2008-10-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

Maestro
Heads up

By M.D. Spenser

The incomparable Taj Mahal, who celebrated his 40th anniversary in the business last year, remains as inventive and lovable as ever, as this highly enjoyable album shows.

It opens with ‘Scratch My Back’, the 1966 Slim Harpo hit – upbeat Blues, rowdy and bawdy, with a great beat, killer horns and salacious lyrics. When his baby hits the right spot, Taj squeals with delight, “Oh, you gonna get you a new car! Ooh, you ’bout to get you a new house!”

Then his restless intelligence ranges over a magnificent array of styles – West African, reggae, Blues, New Orleans – never losing his raucous sense of fun.

Guests include Ben Harper, Ziggy Marley and Angelique Kidjo. The backing bands are superb: his own Phantom Blues Band, Ziggy Marley’s Band, Los Lobos and the New Orleans Social Club.

Never one to limit himself, Taj plays guitar, harmonica, ukulele and banjo, all well. ‘Slow Drag’ is an original Blues with Taj playing the melodic lead on banjo – very pleasing.

‘I Can Make You Happy’, another original, is lascivious hard-ass Blues. It doesn’t get any greasier than this: ‘I’m coming over Saturday night, baby/Now you know just what your daddy wanna do’

The Fats Domino song, ‘Hello Josephine’, and the album’s closer, ‘Diddy Wah Diddy’, by Bo Diddly, are joyous stomps.

No one’s done more than Taj over the last half-century to keep the Blues alive. Yet he’s never been bound by genre. If you think that’s a paradox, you just don’t get it.

Maestro indeed.

CD Review - Jeremy Spencer

2008-09-30T00:36:00.000-07:00

In Session
Secret

By M.D. Spenser

Some fine acoustic resonator slide graces this album, but there are clunkers among the high notes.

Jeremy Spencer is best known as the guitarist who deserted Fleetwood Mac in the middle of a tour in favour of a cult. His musical obsessions – now, as then – are rockabilly and Elmore James.

Four of the album’s 14 tracks are by James, the great Bluesman, and they are by far the best. ‘Red Hot Mama’ features Spencer and his relaxed, easy slide, backed only by a fine Blues rhythm guitar. Great stuff. At 60, Spencer remains in good voice.

Then there are some 50’s numbers – ‘Sea Of Love’, for example, or Carl Perkins’ ‘Pointed Toe Shoes’ – sung rockabilly fashion, with “huh-uh-huh-huh!” inserted in the middle of words.

The album’s worst numbers are the originals, which are preachy. ‘Bitter Lemon’ is about taking misfortune and making – you guessed it – lemonade. Then there’s the overly defensive song, ‘You Don’t Have To Be Black To Be Blue’. If you want to sing the Blues, just throw back your head and sing ’em – don’t explain why. Let your Blues explain themselves.

Still, the slide is nice, the musicianship good.

Two words of warning. First, six of these 14 songs also appeared on Spencer’s last album, the 2006 Blind Pig release, “Precious Little”. Apparently, Spencer didn’t feel that album sold enough and thought he’d give it another try.

Second, those who care where their money goes should google Spencer. The music’s good but what you’ll find is disturbing.

CD Review - Walter Jr.

2008-09-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

The River Club
Gatortone

M.D. Spenser

What begins as an album of minimalist swampy funk has some entertaining tracks – and some you’d want to permanently program your CD player to skip.

Louisiana guitarist Walter Jr. opens this album of 11 originals with the Bluesy, funky title track about a guy who sees a woman “dressed in red oozin’ high-heeled sin” and knows she’s ready for love by how she dances. It features bass, drums and two sparse guitars that concentrate on the staccato more than the sustained. Mix in tasty guitar solos, and it’s a track that augurs well.

But Walter starts to stumble on track four, ‘Never Make It Up’, about how you can’t make up for infidelity. It’s an absolutely gorgeous slow Blues and I would die to hear Etta James sing it. But Walter, whose growl is effective when he bites the words and spits them out, just doesn’t have the voice to carry the song’s sustained, mournful phrases.

The album returns then to enjoyable swamp rock.

But it closes with two egregious religious tracks, just awful. “Jesus Say” begins with a portentous spoken intro, then veers into charitable Christian lyrics like “Jesus say, blessed are the meek/For they shall inherit the earth/Everybody else can just go to hell”. The closing track expounds on how “He holds the lightning in his hand” for six minutes and 20 long seconds.

Bottom line: this CD has eight pretty good songs, one great song poorly sung, and two absolutely horrible ones. Program your CD players accordingly.

CD Review - Irma Thomas

2008-09-26T15:48:00.000-07:00

Simply Grand
Rounder

M.D. Spenser

New Orleans soul singer Irma Thomas was renown in the ’60s for her infectious good humour, not to mention as the woman from whom the Rolling Stones swiped ‘Time Is On My Side’. Now 67, she offers this sweet and mellow album tinged lightly with the regret age brings.

The concept: pair Thomas with some of the best piano players around, including Henry Butler, Norah Jones and Randy Newman.

Her voice sounds wonderful – deep and rich – and she sings within herself: She never did cut loose like Aretha anyway.

The songs range from a new John Fogerty tune all the way back to ‘If I Had Any Sense I’d Go Back Home’, from the Louis Jordan catalogue. Dr. John’s piano on that number is among the CD’s highlights.

The album is graced by hard-earned wisdom lightly worn. ‘Too Much Thinking On My Mind’ is a catchy soul-flavoured number about having too much on her mind to worry about the little things – like bills and the rent.

‘Same Old Blues,” with Marcia Ball, is the Blusiest piece – slow, melancholy, nicely done. A few jazz numbers leaven the mix.

Despite the different players, the album is all of a piece: Thomas’ voice is well to the fore, backed by fine piano sometimes punctuated by upright base and tasteful drumming. On occasion, a fine backing chorus fills out the sound.

These songs don’t grab you by the lapels, but they sure grow on you. This album is subtle, stately, poised – and quite lovely.

Little Toby Walker -- The Anvil, Basingstoke, 14/09/08

2008-09-24T15:16:00.000-07:00

By M.D. Spenser

The fine American Blues guitarist Little Toby Walker brought his entire band to the show in Basingstoke and, as musicians do, he introduced the members to the audience.

There was his thumb, the bass player; his middle two fingers, the rhythm section; and his index finger on lead guitar. And an excellent band it was – one of the best one-hand bands you’ll ever see. Walker’s picking is quick, rhythmic, Bluesy and most of all great fun.

He is more than anything a highly skilled entertainer. He leavens his show with hilarious anecdotes and knows how to involve an audience: a crowd that started out quiet and wary soon found itself singing lustily. “Oh, I just turned you into Blues singers!” Walker exclaimed.

And his repertoire, a mix of classics and sparkling originals, is heavy on amusing sexual innuendo. ‘Big Meat Shakin’ On The Bone’ celebrates the joys of larger women. And ‘Your Buggy Don’t Ride Like Mine’, a traditional number, doesn’t have much to do with going down the road: “Don’t get mad/Your buggy don’t ride like mine/I got an easy ridin’ buggy/It makes me go baby all the time”. Suffice it to say that the singer rides his buggy at every opportunity.

His instrumentals are every bit as entertaining: Walker mixes a walking bass, sassy fingerpicking and a delightful slide to great effect.

He covers artists from Fats Waller to Hank Williams, from Muddy Waters to Rev. Gary Davis, but makes each song his own.

At times, Walker’s voice can seem a bit one-dimensional, though his singing is always exuberant. But his finale, a highly personalised version of Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’, was movingly sung – bone-chilling in its acceptance of life’s choices and their consequences.

Walker is a master showman; by the end of the night, the audience was not just watching the show but had become part of it. And that suited Walker just fine.

“Music”, he explained, “is far too important to be left in the hands of professionals”. An evening with him shows you just how right he is.

CD Review - Missippi Marvel

2008-09-07T07:10:00.000-07:00

The World Must Never Know
Broke & Hungry

By M.D. Spenser

This is a half-decent CD buried under the weight of an insulting publicity campaign.

The album features an elderly Bluesman singing in the Delta style, accompanied mainly by just his electric guitar in the manner of Lightnin’ Hopkins. Some tracks include drums; on the best, the Marvel is accompanied also by a second guitar and harmonica.

Besides traditional tunes, the Marvel covers a song by Muddy Waters, after whom he patterns himself vocally; one by Little Walter, a Muddy sideman; and one by Hopkins himself.

The Marvel’s vocals are powerful if a tad grandfatherly. His playing is pleasingly rhythmic, although he hits, as the producer happily observes in the liner notes, “the occasional bum note.”

One can debate what constitutes raw versus polished, but it’s condescending to Blues performers to say that authentic equals bum notes. As John Hammond Jr. told Guitar World when Muddy Waters died: “Muddy was a master of just the right notes."

Speaking of condescending, the publicity campaign claims the Marvel is a 78-year-old who’s never reconciled his Blues with his religion. Fearing rejection by his church friends, he agreed to record this debut only if his identity was never revealed. The label has arranged at least one live performance in which the Marvel played concealed by a makeshift tent.

Sure, I believe that. And Paul is dead.

If you’re hankering for authentic – and skilful – Delta Blues, better to fill your shelves with Hooker, Hopkins and Muddy. The bottom line is that this CD is so-so.

CD Review - Ruthie Foster

2008-08-30T02:52:00.000-07:00

The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster
Blue Corn Music

By M.D. Spenser

Well, finally. Ruthie Foster has at last made a full-throated R&B record worthy of her prodigious talent.

Mining a mostly acoustic folk and country Blues vein, the Texas singer and guitarist had recorded worthy albums, notably 2002’s “Runaway Soul.”

But for years people have compared her to Aretha, so it shouldn’t have taken a genius to figure out she ought to be singing more soul, with maybe some gospel thrown in. But it did—producer Malcolm “Papa Mali” Welbourne, who told Foster he heard more in her than was coming across.

This is in some ways a break-up record: Foster recently ended a 10-year relationship. But it is an affirmation, too—of faith, the ability to feel, the solace of friendship and the miracle of being a woman.

The songs range from the wistful ‘Cuz I’m Here’ (“and you’re there/all alone”) to the high-octane soul of ‘Heal Yourself,’ one of five originals. Along the way, she covers Son House, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Lucinda Williams and Eric Bibb.

The songs grow on you, burrowing inside, refusing to be dislodged.

‘Phenomenal Woman’, with words by the author and poet Maya Angelou, is as lush an ode to the richness of womanhood as can be found. “Pretty women wonder/Where my secret lies”, the song asks, then answers: “It's in the reach of my arms/The span of my hips/The stride to my steps/The curl of my lips.”

It may have taken Foster a while to find her true voice. But thank goodness it’s happened.

OPINION: Never Buy From BestChoiceFurniture

2008-08-22T08:39:00.000-07:00

By M.D. Spenser

The benefits of internet shopping are obvious. No need to drive from store to store searching for what you want. With a click, you can buy from a reputable company like Amazon, and within a day or two your stuff arrives at the door.

But there are risks.

What if the company boasts a professional website offering a range of goods at what seem to be reasonable prices – but won’t stand behind what it sells?

What if the company is, for example, BestChoiceFurniture.co.uk? And let’s say the product turns out to be defective. You’re likely to be SOL – stone outta luck.

Had you bought from a store with a physical location and regular opening hours, you could go there, demand to see the manager, and probably reach some accommodation. Your merchandise would be replaced or your money refunded.

Take my experience as a cautionary tale. I ordered a bunk bed from BestChoiceFurniture for about £100. The bed arrived in short order. Good news. Unfortunately, when my wife and I assembled it, we found that one part – necessary for stability – was defective.

I called BestChoiceFurniture. When I finally got through, I was told no problem. I could choose between having an entirely new bed delivered or just having the defective part replaced. The bed was 99 percent assembled, so I opted for just the part.

Over the next couple of months, I kept a log of the scores of calls I made to the BestChoice, and the false things BestChoiceFurniture told me in reply. I will spare you the details because that would run to thousands of words. A small sample will do.

I dealt with an ineffectual person named Lisa. The manager refused over the course of several weeks to get on the phone with me – and in the end never spoke to me at all. But Lisa, on behalf of the company, gave me certain delivery dates: I would receive the replacement part next Tuesday. Didn’t arrive? Oh sorry, it will come next week, either Wednesday or Thursday. Not yet? Good News. The part was put in the post today.

All false.

When I became more annoyed, Lisa told me it wasn’t BestChoice’s problem, but one for “the supplier” to fix. I pointed out that I had no deal with “the supplier”. I gave my £100 to BestChoiceFurniture. My arrangement was with them. They took my money; it was their responsibility to provide me with what I paid for – a product I could use.

To no avail. The problem was the supplier’s – and, what’s more, Lisa informed me she did not feel able to “harass” the supplier.

In the end, despite scores of phone calls, I was SOL. BestChoiceFurniture took my money and simply did not care.

None of which means, of course, that you should never by anything from the Web. But it does mean you might want to check out the companies you do business with, searching the Web for testimonials or complaints. And – just my opinion – never do business with BestChoiceFurniture.co.uk

CD Review - JT Ross

2008-07-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

Loaded
South Side Records

By M.D. Spenser

If you’re looking for an album of hard-driving guitar-and-harmonica Chicago Blues, this is not a bad one to pick up.

JT Ross was born in Chicago; his father, Michael Trossman, painted portraits of Blues and rock stars, including for Rolling Stone magazine. JT claims to have got his first harmonica as a baby, to have met Howlin’ Wolf and Hound Dog Taylor as a kid, and to have learned the harpist’s art from such luminaries as James Cotton and Junior Wells.

He blows a distorted, hands-cupped-around-the-mike style of harmonica, like Little Walter – with a bit of jazzy California flavour added, a la Rod Piazza or William Clarke.

No credits on the promo-tional CD, but it appears to be a mix of covers and originals. It’s an ordinary batch of songs, with pedestrian lyrics: “What is going on/In the world today?/Kids are shooting each other/People murdered day by day.” They’re generic 12-bar fare – the kind where someone could just shout, “Key of E!” and everyone would join right in.

Ross is an ordinary singer, too – certainly not the first Bluesman to play well but fall short of Caruso in the vocal department.

But none of that matters much, because he is a good harpist, and this is a good band. The lead guitarist is excellent, and some tracks are augmented by fine boogie-woogie piano. When they’re all wailing at full blast, makes you want to turn it up.

There’s not much original in this album. But it cooks.

CD Review - Tim Lothar

2008-07-14T16:56:00.000-07:00

In It For The Ride
http://www.timlothar.com/

By M.D. Spenser

This engaging set of Delta stylings just might be the best acoustic Blues album you’ll buy this year.

Deftly mixing fingerpicking with slide, Lothar creates that rarest of gems: a Blues album that’s deeply traditional yet utterly fresh.

It’s done with such seeming ease that you wonder about the secrets of its charms, yet hesitate to deconstruct something so graceful. But start with this: Lothar is a former drummer, and his guitar playing exhibits a sense of the intricacies, allure and endless possibilities of rhythm.

His singing, mellow and evocative, is never over the top, always in service of the song.

Though he’s Danish, Lothar has deep knowledge of the Blues: He unearths old Delta gems and brightens them with his infectious tempos. But his cover of Robert Johnson’s ‘Stones In My Passway’ is slow and haunting, carried by understated guitar and affecting vocals – an achievement.

And Lothar’s own songwriting is so good you have to read the credits to discover whether a song’s an original or yet another from Sleepy John Estes or Charley Patton.

The best lyrics, Lothar knows, hint rather than bludgeon. “A traveller I am by heart/The wind will lead my way,” he writes. “Please don’t ask me when/But I’ll be home again.”

Another original, ‘Da Boogie’, is a jaunty instrumental ornamented with hammer-ons and trills.

Nothing on the album seems forced, contrived or imitative. Lothar really is in it for the ride. And we’re lucky to be able to come along.

CD Review - Reverend Gary Davis

2008-07-09T01:58:00.000-07:00

Manchester Free Trade Hall 1964
Document

By M.D. Spenser

Reverend Gary Davis was pushing 70, a good 35 years past his heyday, when this live set was recorded in the UK. But his voice was still powerful, capable of roaring with religious fervour.

And his skills on “Miss Gibson”, his jumbo acoustic guitar, remained impressive – making for a show that delighted the audience then and holds pleasures for listeners today.

Davis, born in 1896, pursued music, one of few careers available to blind American blacks. He worked often on the streets, not recording until he was 58, and was one of the best ragtime guitarists of the early 1900s. His performance here of Scott Joplin’s ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ attests to that ability.

He was ordained in 1937, after which he often refused to play the Blues – though religion didn’t separate him from the bottle. This set is primarily gospel, performed with feeling, shouts and whoops. Davis had been rediscovered by the folk revival; the audience in Manchester was in heaven.

Joined onstage by blind harmonica player Sonny Terry, Davis relented and played some Blues, cry-singing ‘Oh Sally, Please Come Back to me (Worried Blues)’.

His guitar dexterity inspired many followers. He alternates rapid riffs with chords; he talks with the guitar; he plays with syncopation and humour on ‘Cincinnati Flow Rag’.

But on ‘Children of Zion’ the guitar is nearly overwhelmed by hiss. Even on better numbers, the recording can sound shrill instead of heartfelt. Still, this CD is one of the better places to hear Davis’ moving music.

CD Review - Magda Piskorczyk

2008-06-29T14:38:00.000-07:00

Blues Travelling
MTJ

Magda Live
Artgraff

By M.D. Spenser

Nouveau Blueswoman Magda Piskorczyk is on the right track, as these two innovative CDs illustrate.

She chooses from a wonderfully eclectic array of sources – from Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Jacques Brel – and has the courage to use new instrumentation.

The better of the two CDs is “Blues Travelling,” the studio set. It’s a spare affair. Some songs have only two musicians: Piskorczyk on acoustic guitar, often playing more single notes than chords, with either an electric fiddle or sax noodling over the top. Sometimes, light percussion is added.

On Sonny Boy Williamson’s ‘Help Me’, Piskorczyk opens with a standard blues progression, single notes on the bass string. The fiddle joins in, at first pizzicato – plucked rather than bowed – before soaring over the bass like a bird over a valley. It’s new yet deeply traditional.

‘Darkness On The Delta’, is sparse, old-timey acoustic blues, relaxed and melodic. During a break, whistling over the thump of the double bass creates a delightful mix of textures.

“Magda Live”, though, is weighed down by audience participation and Magda’s screams. It’s more fully instrumented – two guitars, sax, drums and double bass.

There are successes: a fine cover of Tracy Chapman’s ‘Crossroads’, punctuated by unusual and intricate rhythms; and Brel’s ‘Hearts’, a smoky lament, jazzily arranged.

But there are a few duds, as well. ‘Fever’ is inexplicably stripped of its bass line, one of the best in pop music, the spine of the song.

And Piskorczyk, a Pole, doesn’t always emphasise the right word in English phrases. Also, both albums, with songs counts in the upper teens, smack a bit of self-indulgence.

Despite these failings, Piskorczyk has guts, taste, an adventuresome spirit and a deep sense of the Blues. One gets the feeling of the feeling of a significant talent waiting to fully refine itself.

CD Review - Brad Wilson

2008-06-15T07:07:00.001-07:00

Blues Alive
Cali Bee

By M.D. Spenser

This album of live electric Blues would be great fun to blast into your backyard while you’re having a party, but if you haven’t heard these songs before, you haven’t been listening to the Blues.

Brad Wilson is a California act; he pretty much confines his touring to that state. He’s a good guitar player, in the show-off, amps-up style where you grimace constantly as you play. And he’s a competent singer, too – just not blessed with much imagination.

Let’s see – ‘Born Under A Bad Sign’ has already been on more than 175 different albums. ‘Sweet Home Chicago’, about 220. ‘Mojo Workin’’? About 300.

And that’s to say nothing of ‘Stormy Monday’, which has already appeared on more than 500 recordings. Obviously, Wilson is reluctant to play a live audience songs people haven’t heard before.

That said, this is not a bad album. All the players are decent. There’s some nice organ here, some fine horn work there.

There’s not much variation in pace: Almost all these songs barnburners, though ‘Last Call’, one of the album’s highlights, does slow things down a bit to good effect.

Wilson, like any number of technically good players whose egos sometimes overcome their musicianship, is subject to sudden spasms where he plays way too fast just to show he can.

Still, it’s good, rollicking stuff, proficient players wailing on all instruments, quite tight. But people considering adding it to their collection should realize that it’s meant mostly as a concert souvenir.

Eric Bibb -- Birmingham Town Hall, 31/5/08

2008-06-08T23:34:00.000-07:00

By M.D. Spenser

There is something about Eric Bibb that cannot be captured on record, as he proved again with this extraordinary concert at Birmingham Town Hall.

Yes, his albums are good. But he’s one of the greatest live musicians in any genre.

And as for genres, Bibb is a master of many.

He began with a spine-tingling rendition of ‘Goin’ Down Slow’, the old Blues about a man anticipating death. Standing alone, the band not yet on stage, Bibb exhibited his extraordinary skills as a guitarist and singer.

From there, he moved to a cover of ‘The Cape’, by the great folk writer, Guy Clark.

Then he toured his own stellar catalogue, which is replete with Blues – he’s a Bluesman at heart – folk, and house-rockin’ gospel.

“Let’s raise the roof,” he exhorted as he sang the spiritual ‘Needed Time’. And the audience eagerly complied.

His show is perfectly paced, with just the right ebb and flow, a kaleidoscope of tone and texture.

He whoops and hollers, and through his special kinship with listeners inspires them to do the same, particularly on the gospel numbers. Then he drops down to beautiful, shimmering folk.

His singing is so wonderful, his songwriting so accomplished, that his guitar gets short shrift. But he’s a masterful acoustic player, making the difficult seem easy and graceful.

He sang a few duets with his daughter, Yana Bibb, a fine singer as well. There wasn’t a duff number in the set.

At one point, Bibb sang the spiritual he called ‘Hold On’, which is known by most people as ‘Eyes On The Prize’. He heard it done by The Weavers long ago. When a Blues musician does a jazzy take on a spiritual he learned from a folk group – well, you start to understand Bibb’s genius in melding many styles into one.

At the end of the show, he left ’em yelling for more. He’s a former busker who built his career one listener at a time. Go to one of his shows – don’t miss it, whatever you do – and give him a chance to work his magic on you.

CD Review - Congregation

2008-06-03T01:56:00.000-07:00

Congregation
Bronzerat

By M.D. Spenser

This alternative, post-punk album is a very dark affair but a musically inventive and exciting one, too.

Congregation is two Brits – Benjamin Prosser and Victoria Yeulet – collaborating on an album that is based largely on 12-bar Blues yet is quite experimental.

Prosser plays slide guitar and bass drum. Yeulet sings and, oh, yes, that’s her on the leg bells.

The sound is very spare – just Prosser’s guitar, sometimes augmented by a thump of the drum hammering on the beat and only on the beat. Above it soars Yeulet’s voice, which owes something to Peggy Lee and something to Neko Case, all bright red lipstick, brassiness and beckoning finger – except that Yeulet is usually sending her lover away and preparing to wallow in despair.

“Too bad your loving was like a dose of hell,” she sings on the opening cut. “I ain’t never seen someone so awful,” she continues in another song, ‘Never Forgive.’

Let’s say it straight out: There’s a passing, if remote, association with mental illness here.

Prosser began his artistic career after a bout of severe depression. Yeulet came to attention in The Television Personalities, a group whose primary member, songwriter Dan Treacy, struggled with addiction and illness.

There is something honest and unprotected about such darkness, something that allows us to see into corners of ourselves we normally keep covered.

The music is inventive, ranging from the slow and mournful to up-tempo Blues and even what sounds like an updated version of ’60s rock. Original, and beautifully done.

CD Review - Temple of Soul

2008-05-30T00:43:00.000-07:00

Brothers In Arms
Hypertension

By M.D. Spenser

This debut by a supposed supergroup begins well, but the synthesizers and drum programming wear thin well before the album ends.

The best-known member of Temple Of Soul is Clarence Clemons, sax player in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. Like Clemons, the other members have stellar contributing credits but no solo albums: Narada Michael Walden on drums, T.M. Stevens on bass and Vernon “Ice” Black on guitar.

The album’s opener, ‘Anna’, in which the singer overcomes his sexual inhibitions in a car, is tight soul-disco. You can almost see the disco ball throwing shards of light around the dance floor.

From there, we get a retro tour through various styles of black American music: the funk of Sly And The Family Stone, bits of hip hop, and ‘Shaft’-era Isaac Hayes.

The listener is treated to not one but two Barry White impersonations, which feature syrupy spoken-word intros pompously delivered in a deep voice: “You get sad, but know that I love you/The universe loves you/Be happy”.

The only cover is Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’.

Mostly this is fine stuff by technically superb musicians. But halfway through the album, the throbbing synthesizer, echo-chamber vocals, and programmed drums start to become too much – especially for Blues loves, who tend to search for real emotion.

By the time the final track, the 13-minute ‘Jazzy Outtake’, arrives, the discipline with which the album began has given way to self-indulgence. And an album that began with such promise leaves in the end a disappointing taste.

Lizz Wright -- Soho Revue Bar, London, 21/4/08

2008-05-10T01:05:00.000-07:00

By M.D. Spenser

Lizz Wright walked on stage slowly, regally, eyes downcast, hugging herself, almost oblivious to the audience. Then, from deep within herself, she thrilled the Soho Revue Bar with some of the finest singing to be heard anywhere today.

Her voice is a rich and vibrant instrument, capable of rattling the rafters one minute and conveying great subtlety the next.

Wright was pegged early as a jazz singer, but her repertoire encompasses Blues, folk, gospel and more. It’s a strength for which she needlessly apologized: “If you wonder why my music is all over the place,” she said, “it’s just too much fun to keep to the rules and stay locked into one concept.”

She ranged from the soft beauty of ‘Stop’, which deviated jazzily from the recorded version, to the slow-burning soul of ‘Hit The Ground’, sung to make the listener believe every word: “You’re gonna make it somehow.”

The band – keyboard, guitar, bass, drums – was atmospheric, supporting Wright’s voice, never competing with it.

On “My Heart,” the bassist rendered perfectly a heartbeat. On ‘Song For Mia’, about losing one’s sadness in the eternity of the sea, the keyboards were wonderful and ocean-like.

The entire performance was augmented by the fantastic backup singing of Gina Breedlove, an artist in her own right.

Two of the show’s highlights: the Ike Turner song, ‘I Idolize You’, as sexy a blues as you could ever want, and a scorching rendition of the self-penned hit-the-road song, ‘Leave Me Standing Alone’.

Through it all, Wright sang with eyes closed, caressing herself, sometimes wrapping herself inside a shawl. This is both her strength and her weakness as a live performer.

On the one hand, as she matures she will learn to reach out to an audience and draw them in – even, now and then, to make eye contact. But on the other hand, looking inside herself is what her art is all about. Not a word falls from her lips without having first been filtered through her soul.

To be allowed to participate in that most private of journeys is a privilege and a joy.

Mavis Staples -- The Barbican, London, 15/4/08

2008-04-26T01:19:00.000-07:00

By M.D. Spenser

Ill with a throat infection, Mavis Staples, a consummate entertainer, pranced across The Barbican stage, lifted people up, inspired them and left them yelling until their own throats were sore.

Staples found her greatest fame as lead singer of the Staples Singers in the ’60s and ’70s. But, even as she approaches her 69th birthday, she’s no oldies act.

The bulk of her set was from her 2007 release, “We’ll Never Turn Back”, an album of funked-up civil rights songs produced by Ry Cooder. And great stuff it is – heavy on the bass, heavy on the beat, topped by Staples’ superlative R&B phrasing, which is guaranteed to get you out of your seat.

Still, the announcement that she was sick caused concern. But no need.

“They tried to make me stay in the hotel,” Staples hollered. “I said, ‘No! I want to see my people!’”

She had a mission: “We want to bring you some joy tonight, inspire you if you’re feeling down, give you a reason to get up in the morning.” And that’s just what she did.

Her material doesn’t plumb the loneliness of the inner self; it’s about facing life with faith and happiness.

“Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me round,” she sang as the bass pounded and the three backup singers made a joyful noise.

Staples looks wonderful – handsome face, immaculate hair, broad smile, great moves.

At first, her voice was barely audible. But as the evening progressed, she drew strength from her audience; her voice, far from fading, grew into its normal self. My goodness, she gives the impression she’s having a good time.

She did a couple of old Staples Singers numbers – ‘Respect Yourself’ and ‘I’ll Take You There’ – and there’s something moving about hearing Mavis herself perform them in person.

But she’s immersed in the present and looking toward the future. “We’ve been taking you there for 58 years,” she shouted. “Five-eight! And we ain’t tired yet!” Then she kicked off her high heels, danced up a storm, sang her heart out, and proved it.

Bettye LaVette -- Jazz Café, London, 13/04/08

2008-04-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

By M.D. Spenser

No one can put over a song like Bettye LaVette, the greatest unheralded soul singer in the world. And the incomparable Ms LaVette proved that again at the Jazz Café.

Slinky in black silk pantsuit, she strutted and danced, her songs a defiant assertion of who she is. “So proud I was built this way,” she sang in ‘The Battle Of Bettye LaVette’, a song about how, uncompromising as she was, she sang 40 years “before the money started rolling in.”

She sang of triumph and tragedy, but with not an ounce of self-pity. In ‘Choices’, she took the blame for all that’s gone wrong: “I’m living and dying by the choices I’ve made.”

The song had this reviewer near tears _ and apparently LaVette, as well.

She feels a song totally, emphasizing each word, her soulful voice cracking with emotion.

But this is soul, performed with a hard-driving band, and lots of dancing by LaVette. Man, can she get an audience worked up.

She makes eye contact with a listener, gestures, pleads, then writhes away across the stage. She is one of the few 62-year-olds who can get away with pelvic thrusts.

And her voice is one of the most expressive instruments in soul, conveying victory, despair and love. On “You’ll Never Change”, another defiant expression of self, she dropped the microphone and filled the room with her voice.

She makes no attempt to hide her age. Noting that she was finally nominated for a Grammy this year, she joked that she was older than the award itself.

She first recorded in 1962, at 16, scoring the hit ‘My Man’. But major success eluded her until the 2005 album, “I’ve Got My Own Hell To Raise”.

To say LaVette has lost nothing over the years would not be right. On the contrary, she has gained.

Her records, fabulous as they are, cannot convey the emotion she does in person. All her life experience is poured into each word. She can put over a song down to her silver-painted toenails.

Everyone should see a Bettye LaVette show at least once.

The Fried Okra Band – From Denmark To Mississippi And Back

2008-04-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

By M.D. Spenser

It’s a mighty long way from Denmark to the Mississippi hill country. But if you think that’s far, consider the distance between Whitney Houston and Robert Belfour.

But Morten Lunn, the lead singer of The Fried Okra Band, has covered both.

A native Dane, like the other three members of the band, he came of age listening to what everybody else was listening to: Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Dire Straits, a bit of heavy metal, a lot of Bruce Springsteen.

Now he and his band mates play music that is so far out of the mainstream as to be unheard of by most of his countrymen. Not to mention most Americans, as well.

Fried Okra plays primarily Mississippi hill country Blues. On its most recent release, “This Is Your Chance France Baby!”, the band covers unvarnished, gritty hill country artists like Robert Belfour, R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, as well as people like Corey Harris, Tom Waits and Robert Johnson.

An acquired taste

Hill country Blues is an acquired taste. Either you get it or you don’t. The melody is almost irrelevant. Don’t wait for the killer chord changes, because they won’t come. Many of these are one-chord songs. What’s important is the beat, the drone, the trance, the hypnosis.

This music is as rough as an old board that’s fallen off a weather-beaten shack with the nails sticking out.

For some people, it’s monotonous – literally, monotone. But for others, the lack of polish lays bare the raw emotions of the heart. And, even in Denmark, this music is finding an audience.

“I think the fact that the hill country style is different attracts some Blues lovers to it,” Lunn said, “because, in my view, it might help cut away the clichés that some people among the rock and mainstream audience associate with the Blues.”

Different backgrounds

The members of the band are Lunn on vocals and guitar, Thomas Foldberg on guitar and harp, Kare Joensen on bass, and Thomas Crawfurd on drums. They came to this music through different routes.

Lunn started out in a children’s band, playing rock ’n’ roll, Beatles and even 'Hoochie Coochie Man', though Lunn didn’t have the vaguest idea at the time who Muddy Waters was. Later, after his Whitney Houston period, he got into The Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry; an interest in Bluesmen naturally followed.

Foldberg is the band’s co-leader, second to Lunn. (The bass player, Joensen, calls him the vice sheriff.) He grew up on British invasion music: The Animals, The Stones, The Beatles, and so on, along with a bit of Jimi Hendrix.

But the Blues?

“My first encounter with the Blues was Elvis Presley’s ‘Blue Christmas,” Foldberg said. “Not exactly a Blues song, but almost. I was blown away and thought the piano work and the groove was amazing.”

But it’s still a long way from Presley to Kimbrough. For both Lunn and Foldberg, the journey had a couple of significant turning points.

Trip to U.S.

Most important, perhaps, was a trip they and two other friends made to the United States in 2000. They visited New Orleans, Memphis and Clarksville, Mississippi. Clarksville bills itself as “Birthplace and World Capital of the Blues” – not to mention the location of the Crossroads of Highway 61 and 49 where Robert Johnson is said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for musical genius.

In New Orleans, Lunn went to hear R.L. Burnside live.

Talk about raw. Burnside farmed most of his life, had slept-in hair, a hung-over look, and titled one of his albums “A Ass Pocket Of Whiskey” – likely in honour of what he carried around in his own ass pocket.

Burnside claimed to have been convicted of murder once and sentenced to six months in prison. His boss, it is said, used connections to keep the sentence short because he needed Burnside to drive a tractor.

“I didn’t mean to kill nobody,” Burnside said later. “I just meant to shoot the sonofabitch in the head. Him dying was between him and the Lord.”

After a heart attack, Burnside’s doctor told him to him to stop drinking. Burnside complied but said the change left him unable to play. He died in 2005.

In Memphis, on the same trip, Lunn met a guy who showed him the remains of Junior Kimbrough’s famed juke joint, which had burned to the ground earlier in 2000. And the guy drove him around the North Mississippi hill country, where this hypnotic, one-chord trance Blues originated.

A star does hill country

That trip piqued the interest of Lunn and Foldberg in hill country Blues. But, just as it took Elvis to open the ears of many listeners to black music in general, it took a relatively famous artist to bring prominence to the obscure hill country style.

That artist was Buddy Guy. In 2001, the year after Lunn and Foldberg’s trip to the United States, Guy released “Sweet Tea,” his hill country album, on which he covered two of Kimbrough’s songs.

And Lunn and Foldberg’s interest grew more intense.

“I think it took some time before the music really got to me because it in some respects differs from other Blues styles”, Lunn recalled. “I have always liked the first recordings Burnside made in 1968. Listening to the live CD, ‘Burnside On Burnside’ (also released in 2001), made me think that it was the sound I wanted.”

He hauled out a Junior Kimbrough album he had bought on the trip, listened some more, and was hooked.

Foldberg, too, acquired the taste slowly rather than overnight.

“Morten started to talk about these guys,” Foldberg said. “I didn’t really understand the stuff at the time. But a few years later, I couldn’t avoid these great artists. And suddenly it seemed so obvious to me. Hearing those guys gave me the same feeling as hearing Muddy for the first time.”

Lunn and Foldberg formed The Fried Okra Band around 2004. The other two band members had backgrounds in different styles. The bassist, Kare Joensen, had played with a variety of Danish rock bands. The drummer, Thomas Crawfurd, has experience in Balkan, Gypsy, jazz and ethno pop.

Unique covers

Fried Okra does not attempt to replicate the hill country originals exactly as performed by the original artists. So the diverse backgrounds of the band members – including those with no background in hill country Blues – adds to the flavour of Fried Okra’s covers.

Finding their own version of the song usually starts with just a riff or a beat. Then the band jams, each member adding something, until the final version emerges.

“It sometimes takes a while,” Lunn said.

“Regarding this band, I see the hill country style as a starting point and a base,” Foldberg said. “Me and Morten had this idea of how we wanted the band to sound, but the influences from Crawfurd and Kare have obviously made it different. I mean the hill country style is still there, but mixed with other sounds and influences.

“And important to note is that, since we’re not from Mississippi, we’re not playing the hill country style right as it should be”, he said. “It’s our interpretation, and we don’t have the roots to do it like Mississippians, no matter how hard we try. I try to see this band as a band rooted deep in the Blues, but it should develop its own sound.”

Most recent album

The opening of the album “This Is Your Chance France Baby!” sounds like something wild coming at you from inside a cave. There’s a throbbing drum, a feral guitar, then an explosion of hill country Blues.

Through the individual contributions and the jamming, the band has come up with a sound that is noisier and more electric than on the hill country originals. But the slide stings, the drums clatter, Lunn’s vocals are gruff – and the gritty feeling is exactly the same.

The tracks were recorded live, but have some overdubs. The result is the best of both worlds – the immediacy of live performance combined with the discipline of the studio. It’s a fine album – and about as far from Whitney Houston as one can imagine.

“I really like music raw,” Foldberg said. “I think that too clean and flawless music is uninteresting. For me, Burnside plays flawlessly. It goes straight to the heart. I get so mad when people think Steve Vai is god – and he is very skilful – and a guy like John Lee Hooker can’t play. I know it’s a cliché, but for me the Blues is about a lot more than only technique.”

Interest growing

Gradually, the audience is catching on. But music like this not the route to stardom, in Denmark or anywhere else.

“The audience for hill country Blues is not very big and it is not like we sell a lot of records,” Lunn said. “No Blues albums do in Denmark. But still, in Mojo Blues Bar in the centre of Copenhagen there is a crowd all week listening to the Blues.”

“They’re getting used to us slowly,” Foldberg said. “But for a lot of Blues puritans, I guess were just four people making noise.”

The band plans to release a new album next year – recorded, band members hope, in the United States. They’ve already begun talking to different producers. And the new album, in contrast to the last, will include a lot of originals and perhaps only one or two covers.

In the meantime, the band plays gigs in Denmark. On good nights, people in the audience listen in silent concentration, showing that they’re into the music. Sometimes, even better, they dance and yell.

“To quote Mr Burnside,” Foldberg said, “Blues ain’t nothing but dance music.”

And little by little, the word is spreading. People are starting to understand.

“The ones we talk to, most are also Blues fans, so they know about the music,” Lunn said. “But I don’t think the audience in general, on any given Saturday night, is familiar with Kimbrough or Belfour. But that doesn’t matter if the music makes them feel good.”

And with that good feeling comes an appreciation of this obscure but hypnotic musical style.

“Even though it gets zero attention from the mass media,” Foldberg said, “I guess a lot of youngsters have discovered that it’s so much more than guys with pony tails, beer bellies and 30-minute-long guitar solos.”

CD Review - Michelle Shocked

2008-03-27T03:07:00.000-07:00

ToHeavenURide
Mighty Sound

By M.D. Spenser

Whoda thunk we’d ever read about punk folkster Michelle Shocked in a blues review? But she makes a deserved appearance here with this excellent gospel album.

This set was recorded live at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2003. From its song selection, to its musicianship, to Shocked’s vibrato-soaked singing, almost everything about this album makes it worthwhile.

It opens, fittingly, with “Strange Things Happening Every Day,” a song that cracked the Billboard Top 10 in the U.S. for Sister Rosetta Tharpe in 1944. It was Tharpe, with her mix of churchifying and bar singing, who brought gospel into the mainstream.

The choice tells us much about the contradictions within Michelle Shocked. Her parents, understandably divorced, could hardly have been more different. Her father introduced her to dirty blues. Her mother was a Mormon fundamentalist who committed her to a psychiatric hospital.

Shocked has somehow allowed her father’s blues and her mother’s religiosity to coexist inside her.

Other cuts are equally strong: a moving rendition of Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child”; The Band’s “The Weight”, with delightful pedal steel; a bitter original, “Quality of Mercy,” attacking a president who claims to value life while having, as Texas governor, presided over numerous executions.

The album has one false note – and a clunker it is: a three-minute spoken paean to mixing religion and politics. Shocked’s politics come from the left, but this will still grate on some ears, as it should.

One other oddity: Shocked is just missing from one track, presumably having wandered off to take a break or maybe a pee.

The album ends with a reggae song called “Can’t Take My Joy.” This album offers a lot of joy. No telling why it took four years to make it from stage to CD. If you have any gospel feelings, don’t wait that long to buy it.

CD Review - Lizz Wright

2008-03-23T16:48:00.000-07:00

The Orchard
Verve Forecast

By M.D. Spenser

This beautiful album transcends genre. It has elements of blues, gospel, R&B, jazz and folk; but more than these, it has a gentle honesty that's deeply moving.

It’s tempting to talk about the musicians (wonderful) or Craig Street’s production (flawless) and especially Wright’s voice, a rich and vibrant instrument.

But what makes this an album for all time are the songs and Wright’s interpretation of them.

The album begins with ‘Coming Home,' a song that refers to the orchard of the album title -- a place of truth remembered from Wright’s small-town Georgia childhood. The other songs detail the nuance and subtlety of love.

The emotional peaks are ‘I Idolize You’, a scorching Ike Turner blues about infatuation, and ‘Leave Me Standing Alone’, a sizzling, gospel-inflected original in which the lover is sent packing -- the two opposite poles of love. From these twin peaks, like the towers of a suspension bridge, the other songs curve in a graceful arc.

The record describes the changing colours of a relationship with sweetness and sadness but almost no anger.

One gorgeous song follows another. We meet the girl who loses the battle to protect her heart and is “quite well pleased.” We see love’s risk: “And what if the water's cold when I fall?”

We watch someone heal the pain of lost love in the waves of the ocean and all things eternal. We understand when the lover leaves but the love remains.

Whether with originals or covers, Wright is brave enough to open her heart with an honesty both bittersweet and true.

Treasure this album for life.

Big Brother Runs Amok in the U.K.

2008-03-16T17:21:00.000-07:00

By M.D. Spenser

The British government, believe it or not, wants to examine every single purchase I made in the course of a year. And I have no choice but to let them.

It is yet more evidence that George Orwell, when he imagined the future in his novel “1984”, did not go far enough. Big Brother is watching us – and entering much of what he sees in computer databases.

The immediate cause of my dismay is that my tax return is being audited, having apparently been randomly selected for the privilege.

In my grumpier moments, I might suppose this is being done just to keep some bureaucrat busy. But I oppose tax fraud. I recognize the government has a right to do this.

I am by no means an anti-big-government fanatic. I believe government has a strong role to play in fighting poverty and preserving the environment, in building schools and protecting the rights of individuals.

I grew up in the United States, where a strong central government told state officials that, like it or not, they had to allow black people to vote. I have in the past benefited personally from government raising the minimum wage – something conservatives often portray as interference in a private agreement between employee and employer.

Process on its head

But information is power. And too much information in the hands of government is a bad thing.

Take my taxes. Of course, I must supply Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs with records showing how much I earned. But beyond that, the process is turned on its head.

I have done nothing wrong. And I was brought up to believe it was the government’s job to prove a person was guilty of wrongdoing, rather than the person’s job to prove his innocence.

Not anymore, apparently.

During the year in question, I was living in the U.K. whilst employed by an American company. U.K. tax officials have demanded that I give them monthly statements for all British bank accounts I had, whether personal or related to business expenses.

And they want monthly statements for all American bank accounts I had, whether related to the U.K. or not.

In addition, they’ve said I have to give them statements for every credit card I used on either side of the Atlantic.

Need to prove innocence

In this day of debit cards, that means that some bureaucrat now feels entitled to pore over every single purchase I made during the course of an entire year, with the possible exception of an ice cream cone or two.

To have government bureaucrats looking at whether I bought lingerie (I didn’t) or gambled on the internet (didn’t do that either) is unjustified and ultimately dangerous to individual liberty.

What is the difference between this and police searching my house, with no warrant and no suspicion, just randomly looking for stolen goods?

"If you’ve done nothing wrong, Mr Spenser, surely you won’t mind us rummaging through your underwear drawer . . . "

This not the worst of it. Little by little, we have got used to government recording our private activities. But it is so pervasive that Orwell would have considered it unrealistic even for a novel.

Constant observation

For example, we know that someone who works in London appears on camera several hundred times per day.

If he lives outside the city, he may be observed by speed cameras whilst driving to the train station. His pacing on the platform will be recorded by two dozen cameras or more. There will almost certainly be a CCTV camera in his train carriage, recording every time he picks his nose.

If he arrives at Waterloo, a couple of hundred CCTV cameras will greet him. And he will pass still more of them between Waterloo and the office – on the underground, in car parks, on storefronts and elsewhere.

And that’s not all. Oyster cards allow authorities to know what bus or underground trips a person makes during the course of a day, and when.

Authorities can determine what Web sites we visit, at what time of day, and for how long.

Biometric passports will mean that government officials will be able to determine, with the click of a mouse, whether a person is in or out of the country and how many times he or she has travelled over what period of time.

Mobile phone records, which governments are forcing companies to retain for longer and longer periods, pinpoint our location at all times.

And a frightening proposal by the British government to tax drivers according to what roads they drive at what hours would involve, presumably, satellite tracking of all vehicles in the U.K. 24 hours a day – and storing that information in computers so the proper bills could be sent out.

Is surveillance beneficial?

Two arguments are commonly used to convince people not to worry – or even that all this surveillance is actually a good thing.

The first is that on occasion it helps solve crimes. This is undeniably true. CCTV footage helped identify the failed bombers of the London underground. Mobile phone records helped track one of them to Italy.

But that argument is not good enough. It has been reported that robberies, murders, and other violent crimes were far less common in the Soviet Union than in the United States. But that does not make one long for dictatorship. Crime prevention does not justify repression.

The other argument, often made by implication, is that this government is benign, so all this information-gathering is OK. People often say, “I’m not doing anything wrong, so I don’t mind.” They leave unsaid the rest of the sentence, which is, “. . . because this government won't hurt me.”

That argument is not good enough, either. What business is it of government if a married woman has a boyfriend on the side or a salesman goes to a pub when he tells his boss he’s working?

To have that kind of information is to hold power over the person involved.

We have been inattentive as the surveillance society crept up on us. Who’s to say we won’t be equally inattentive in monitoring our politics?

What if the next government is slightly less benign than this one, and the one after that is less benign still? We could slide toward a government whose intent is not good at all – and that government could find itself in possession of a wealth of blackmail-style information with which it could cow citizens and discourage dissent.

We need to wake up and curtail government intrusiveness. We need to put an end to the surveillance society.

Government has a strong role to play in regulating society. But information is power – and freedom, by definition, requires that government’s power be limited.

CD Review -- Black River Bluesman & The Croaking Lizard

2008-03-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

Rat Bone
http://www.bluesman.fi/

By M.D. Spenser

This CD attempts to sound raw and unpolished but winds up sounding dreary and uninteresting.

It’s a slow-motion distortion-drenched collection of bass-heavy songs so similar you wonder why the band bothered to stop playing in between.

The Black River Bluesman himself, Jukka Juhola, wrote all of them. They have names like the title cut, ‘Rat Bone’, and lyrics like, “Rat bone, rat bone, rat bone, rat bone”.

Juhola has apparently been playing since the 1970s without making much of an impression, though the band’s web site does feature a rapturous article from the Himalayan Times.

Juhola is assisted by three fellow Finns; he plays guitar and sings, while the other band members add drums, harmonica and baritone guitar.

The band says it was influenced by rough, raw Mississippi hill country bluesmen, along with Jim Morrison and Black Sabbath.

The songs are noisy and droning, with lots of growling for vocals. But instead of achieving the honest, hypnotic sound to which the band aspires, the songs are loud yet slow-paced and plodding, and they have so much distortion as to make them at times nearly atonal.

There is some relief: In ‘You Can’t Sit Here’, the tempo moves more briskly, bringing the listener briefly back to life.

Maybe it’s the influence of the long, dark Finnish winters, but by and large this album is so dismal it makes you want to jump out a window.

Sleep Eaters, Unite!

2008-03-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

By M.D. Spenser

Sleep eaters of the world, unite.

Together we can share information on what works in fighting this disorder. And together we can show the scientific community that there are far more of us than is commonly known, giving greater impetus to research for a cure.

Those who suffer from this problem need no description. For those who have never heard of it, it involves compulsive eating while one is fully or partially asleep. The episodes, as in my case, can take place almost every night. Recollection of them can be fragmentary; sometimes there is no recollection at all, only empty food wrappers and a distended belly as evidence.

In television documentaries on sleep disorders, insomnia and night terrors are treated as serious problems. Sleep eating is used as comic relief.

But there’s nothing funny about it. Not when you are afraid to sleep at a friend’s house for fear you’ll empty the refrigerator or take a bite out of tomorrow’s wedding cake. Not when it affects your weight and therefore your health. Not when you have to start each day of your life poorly rested and bloated.

Nightly episodes

I am 54 years old, and I’ve had sleep eating since I was about 20. I eat in my sleep every night, and have for decades. A night with one episode is a good night. Nights with four or five are bad.

I have a successful career. I’ve even managed often to keep my weight down through vigorous gym work and lots of running. But an injury guarantees significant weight gain. And it is hard to charge out of the house full of ambition when you wake up sick from overeating.

Having sleep eating is not the end of the world. But it is a handicap.

If you don’t believe this is a real disorder, Google it. Try NSRED, for nocturnal sleep-related eating disorder. You’ll find that it was first officially described in 1991 (after I’d already had it for 18 years); that it is now being researched at a few institutions around the world; that statistics show that sleep eaters often also have restless legs syndrome; and that sleep eating rarely if ever responds to psychotherapy.

Researchers suspect neurological or chemical problems may cause the syndrome. Some people have had success with some drugs. Sometimes the syndrome subsides on its own. But the cause is not known and no cure has been found.

A common disorder

Estimates are that as much as 3 percent of the population suffers from sleep eating. But many sufferers assume they are the only person afflicted. Shame prevents them from telling their doctors. Because of that, some experts believe the estimates are too low.

Even assuming the number is 3 percent, that’s a lot of people – far more than many non-sufferers would suspect. The tendency is to think this syndrome is something unheard of, or at least very rare indeed.

But we know now that this is not so. Godalming, the town in southern England in which I live, has a population of 21,000. If the number really is 3 percent, that means that there are about 630 fellow sleep eaters living near me – most of them, presumably, suffering alone in embarrassed silence.

In Greater London, where I work, 225,000 people can be presumed to have the disorder. That’s a lot.

Uninformed experts

Those who find the gumption to tell their doctors are usually in for a frustrating experience. I have been to sleep disorder centres on both sides of the Atlantic only to realize quickly that these so-called experts had never heard of my disorder.

In Atlanta, the sleep expert began by prescribing me clon-azepam, an anti-convulsant some-times used to treat epilepsy. In the mornings, I felt as groggy as if I’d been hit on the head with a hammer.

When I told the doctor that drugs with a sedative effect make the problem worse – something anyone who’s dealt with this disorder can tell you – he prescribed Ritalin before bed. Taking a stimulant just as I hit the sack solved the problem after a fashion – because I didn’t sleep at all. No sleep means no sleep eating.

But that solution was obviously not sustainable in the long term. In frustration, the sleep expert dismissed me.

“You quit smoking,” he said. “And when you’re ready, you’ll quit this, too.”

It was an offensive remark, and an ignorant one.

In the U.K., it also became clear that the sleep disorder expert I saw in Oxford was unfamiliar with sleep eating. But that didn’t stop her from offering her opinion as to the cause. She was positive the problem arose because my childhood had been less than perfect.

I have no objection to psychological counseling. I’ve benefited from it. But there were two problems with this expert’s proposed solution.

The first is that various studies, while failing so far to identify a cure, agree that counseling has no effect on sleep eating.

The second was that the sleep expert proposed to cure my deep-seated psychological problem by talking with me for 20 minutes once every three months. That’s stupid.

Different cures tried

Usually, I try not to focus on my sleep eating, preferring not to waste time on a problem that cannot be solved. It’s not the worst affliction in the world; I could be paralyzed or even deaf – which would be a big problem for a music critic. Better to concentrate on what is good in my life and push sleep eating into the background than to have my hopes dashed time and again.

Still, if there were a way to cure the disorder, it would noticeably improve my quality of life (and that of the other 1.8 million residents of the U.K. who presumably have it, as well, not to mention 9 million sufferers in the United States).

So occasionally I troll the Web, seeing if researchers have come up with anything yet. And I have found a doctor forthright enough to acknowledge he knows nothing about the disorder – and willing, when I present credible research, to allow me to try drugs normally prescribed for other things.

I read on the Web that some sleep eaters had responded to SSRIs – selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors – a family of antidepressants that includes Prozac.

It was nearly a miracle. About a week after I started on Prozac, the sleep eating stopped, as if someone had turned off a switch. It was incredible. I went to sleep in the evening and I woke up in the morning, refreshed and hungry.

About three weeks later, however, the sleep eating returned. Nothing I could do – not switching to a different SSRI, not increasing the dose – would bring effect back again.

It was a cruel blow. It was almost better never to have experienced normal sleeping and eating patterns than to have elation turn to dismay.

Topiramate ineffective

Next up was topiramate, another anti-epilepsy drug. Dr. John W. Winkelman – an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and medical director of the Sleep Health Center of Brigham and Women's Hospital – claims to have had encouraging results with it.

Topiramate is a very powerful drug. Patients have to start with small amounts – which nevertheless addle the brain – and work their way up to massive doses. The drug often scrambles the vocabulary.

I tried to tell someone once about an article I had written, but I said instead that I had written a song. The wrong word would pop out of nowhere; sometimes no words would come to mind at all.

That is not good for a writer. But, desperate for a cure, I persisted. If the results were as good as Winkelman reported, maybe the side effects would become manageable.

But my sleep eating did not abate. Finally, I got so tired of feeling stupid and inarticulate that I had to quit.

Most recently, I have tried bupropion, an antidepressant of a different class than Prozac. It is marketed in the United States as Wellbutrin, and prescribed in the U.K., under the name Zyban, to help people quit smoking.

Bupropion is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor. According to an article by Scott Eveloff, assistant medical director at something called SomniTech Inc, in Kansas, sleep eating and restless legs may both be rooted in dopamine deficiency.

The relationship between the two disorders, which so commonly coexist, needs to be explored. If Eveloff had identified the connection, that was good news. So I was particularly enthusiastic about trying buproprion.

Alas, no result. The drug had no bothersome side effects for me. On the contrary, it seemed to have a slight stimulant effect that was mildly pleasant. But there was no reason to keep taking a drug that wasn’t curing what ailed me, so I stopped.

Pooling our resources

Sooner or later, a cure for this disorder will be found. I think there are two ways we can hasten this discovery.

One is to come out of the closet. If someone mentions that I’ve gained weight since I hurt my knee and stopped running, I’ll have no hesitation in saying, matter-of-factly, “I have an eating disorder.”

This is not a failure of will, not a character flaw. There is no shame in this whatsoever. And by coming out of the closet, by telling our friends and our doctors, we can make the world aware of how many of us there are.

Researchers and drug companies should realize that there is big money to be made in finding a cure.

Secondly, we can share information. If anyone has found something that works, please leave a comment. Others of us can try the same thing.

Together, we can make sure that, one day, sleep eating is a thing of the past. For all of us.

CD Review - Taj Mahal

2008-02-25T03:49:00.000-08:00

Oooh So Good’n Blues/Recycling The Blues & Other Stuff
Raven

By M.D. Spenser

Taj Mahal is one of the great Blues revivalists. The two early ’70s albums collected here capture him in peak form, devoted to reviving – literally, giving new life to – country Blues.

Taj’s interests over a 40-year career have ranged from reggae to Hawaiian music, from West African to R&B – all in his own inimitable style. But underpinning his music at all times has been the Blues.

Mahal is the progenitor of a whole generation of Bluesmen, from Eric Bibb (right down to the hat) to Keb’ Mo’, Guy Davis, Corey Harris and Alvin Youngblood Hart. Those of us who love the Blues today owe him an immeasurable debt.

This CD is primarily acoustic – simple yet intense, traditional yet unmistakably Taj Mahal. On many tracks he is backed by the then-unknown Pointer Sisters – loosely and raucously, for example, on ‘Little Red Hen’, one of the originals that fit perfectly beside songs by Robert Johnson, Willie Dixon and Mississippi John Hurt.

Much of “Recycling The Blues,” the second album on this CD, is live. Few performers excite a crowd like Taj.

He opens by playing the conch, of all things. On the second track, he plays kalimba, an African thumb piano. Then on to the 12-bar Blues of ‘Bound to Love Me Some’. Then a tune on the banjo. He follows that with an a cappella gospel number that really gets the house rocking. Darn few people in this world can rock the house with just a voice, no instruments.

Purists have sometimes turned up their noses at him, but like the great Bluesmen before him, Mahal is an originator, an irrepressible creative force. Purists be damned, nobody does Blues better than Taj Mahal.

This is a fine place to start a Taj collection, and a welcome addition to an existing one. Highly recommended.

CD Review - Jimmy Blythe

2008-02-24T02:56:00.000-08:00

Messin’ Around Blues: Enhanced Pianola Rolls
Delmark

By M.D. Spenser

Jimmy Blythe was one of the originators of boogie-woogie piano. Hats off to Delmark for producing this amazing and valuable album of his work.

Little is known of Blythe’s life other than that he was born in Kentucky around 1901, moved to Chicago in his teens, and died of meningitis in 1931.

An esteemed sideman, he accompanied Louis Armstrong and Ma Rainey, among many others. He also had a solo career, part of which involved producing player piano rolls.

Early piano rolls were crafted by hand. But the more advanced method used for Blythe’s rolls involved a pianist actually playing on a special piano that reproduced the notes for the rolls.

Because a collector, Mike Montgomery, had some of Blythe’s rolls, Delmark was able to record Blythe’s playing on modern equipment. Through the miracle of antiquated technology, we hear Blythe’s playing as if it were recorded today, without the hiss of recordings laid down in the 1920s.

The result: a unique opportunity for a high-fidelity listen to original Jazz Age music.

And what fun. The 19 cuts are mostly ragtime or its relative, boogie-woogie, a genre that relies on a repeated walking bass pattern together with a lively right-hand lead characterized by syncopation and triplets.

Some tracks are credited to Blythe, some to other writers, and the origin of the rest is unknown. No matter. This is about as entertaining as piano gets. A fine recording.

CD Review - Warner Williams and Jay Summerour

2008-02-11T00:16:00.000-08:00

Down ’N’ Dirty
Patuxent

By M.D. Spenser

This is an enjoyable and good-humoured CD, featuring low-key acoustic Blues interspersed with low-key acoustic country.

The album is based entirely on a singer with a guitar backed by a guy with a harmonica: think Cephas & Wiggins. This may be the Blues, but there’s no anguish, no intensity – just laid-back good times.

Williams, a retired government official, is a dexterous if conventional fingerpicker with unpretentious vocals. Summerour, far younger, adds bouncy harmonica, contributing to the general aura of fun.

It would be an understatement to say the album includes old chestnuts. After starting with a very Bluesy ‘Black Cat Bone,’ the duo work their way through such standards as ‘My Blue Heaven’ (a song recorded not only by Fats Domino but Bing Crosby), ‘I’m Gonna Move Way On The Outskirts Of Town’ and ‘Blueberry Hill’.

‘Georgia On My Mind’ is surely a song that has been recorded often enough – not to mention definitively – but the duo manage a nice version, with Summerour’s harp sounding gentle and mournful over Williams’ slow, melodic picking.

Mixed in with the Blues are country numbers – a Hank Williams tune, a song made famous by Loretta Lynn, even one popularized by Billy Ray Cyrus.

And the album concludes with a lively Blues with plenty of instrumental breaks to give both players a chance to show off their skills.

This stuff would sound fantastic played live in someone’s living room. As a CD it’s quite pleasant, but it’s not the most ground-breaking album you’ll ever buy.

CD Review - Blind Willie Johnson

2008-02-10T03:21:00.000-08:00

Nobody’s Fault But Mine: Original Recordings 1927-30
Rev-Ola

By M.D. Spenser

Blind Willie Johnson recorded just 30 songs over three years, yet his influence remains pervasive. Twenty-three are collected on this fine CD.

They’ve been covered by people from Ry Cooder to The Grateful Dead, Taj Mahal and Chris Thomas King. Johnson’s gruff, agonized singing surely influenced Howlin’ Wolf, who in turn influenced others – including, perhaps, Corey Harris, another modern artist who’s covered Blind Willie.

Johnson perfected bottleneck slide; the slide plays lead while his percussive strumming provides the rhythm. Johnson used, it is believed, a pocket knife for a slide, at least initially.

On all songs, he is accompanied only by his guitar and, occasionally, a background singer thought to be his wife.

The songs are pure Blues but with unremittingly religious lyrics. “His blood makes me whole,” he growls in ‘Church, I’m Fully Save Today’.

It’s exciting to hear Johnson on the original versions of so many songs that have become classics: ‘Dark Was The Night (Cold Was The Ground)’, ‘Mother’s Children Have A Hard Time’ (usually rendered ‘Motherless Children …’), ‘It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine’; ‘If I Had My Way I’d Burn The Building Down’ and others.

Little is known of Johnson’s life other than that his step-mother blinded him with lye when he was 7, and he died of pneumonia at 45 after a house fire left him homeless. But this CD, with excellent liner notes and a stellar collection of songs, offers a wealth of knowledge for those wanting to understand the origin of the Blues.

CD Review - Dennis Binder

2008-02-08T23:18:00.000-08:00

Hole In That Jug
Earwig Music Company

By M.D. Spenser

The basic structure of the 12-bar blues is so rigid that it imposes on the performer special demands of individuality. And this is where Dennis Binder fails.

You want to like the guy. His album’s got a snappy title. He wears an even snappier green jacket. He sounds like he’s having a good time.

But something’s missing – namely anything that would distinguish this from, oh, a thousand similar releases over the past 60 years.

This is standard 50s electric blues, pleasant as far as it goes, with Binder tinkling happily on the piano, and sidemen adding decent guitar and sax work.

Most of it was recorded in 2006, though two songs – tracks 7 and 9 – were laid down a mere 46 years earlier. No matter. It all sounds the same. All 13 songs written and arranged by Dennis Binder (and anyone else who ever recorded the blues).

The CD comes complete with boringly detailed liner notes, name-checking everyone for whom Binder ever opened a show or with whom he ever shared a studio. The names roll on and on: Freddie King, Lowell Fulson, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, Al Green, ad infinitum.

Binder has been on the fringes for a lifetime. And there’s a reason he’s been on the fringes. He’s competent, but there’s nothing that sets him apart.

He turned 79 in November; his web site reports he’s taking a break. If he resumes touring and comes to a venue near you, it might make a fun night out. But in a decent blues collection, this CD would just get lost.

CD Review - Root Doctor

2008-02-04T23:39:00.000-08:00

Change Our Ways
Big O

By M.D. Spenser

Root Doctor’s web site declares that the band offers “Blues for what ails ya!” And it’s true.

This enjoyable album offers ’70s-era Blues, soul, R&B and bit of funk – mostly designed not to make you feel blue but to make you feel better.

Root Doctor is not a person, by the way; it’s the name of the band. The album features the vocals of Freddie Cunningham who, though long in the tooth, still sings a soulful song.

But the band’s sound is defined largely by the funky Hammond B3 organ of Jim Alfredson. Add to that some fine guitar, cool backing vocals and a tasty horn section – two trumpets, a trombone and a sax – and what more could you ask for?

Most of the cuts are originals, but there’s nothing very new about them. They include lots of familiar riffs, but they’re great ones, well-played.

And the lyrics don’t break new ground, either. The first cut namechecks Muddy Waters and Freddie King. On cut 2, ‘Root Doctor’, the band namechecks itself. But that’s OK. Root Doctor is better uptempo with conventional lyrics than when it slows things down and reaches for meaning.

‘Keep Our Business Off The Streets’, for example, is a fine song, good beat, great backing chorus, highly danceable – a guy’s ultimatum to his girlfriend to keep things private or the relationship is through. You almost have to sing along.

Root Doctor might not be cutting edge but, gosh, it’s good fun.

CD Review - Swingadelic

2008-02-03T11:08:00.000-08:00

Another Monday Night
Mediamix

By M.D. Spenser

This is not a proper album; it’s a sampler for a high-class wedding band, helpfully arranged for easy browsing – all seven instrumentals first, followed by the five vocal numbers.

It’s mostly big-band jazz – think Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Tony Bennett. The web site says the band “adds just the right dose of some swingin’ Sixties grooves to come up with the most listenable and danceable music for your wedding, party or special event.” By “swingin’ Sixties,” they seem to mean the occasional James Bond-like progression.

All of that said, these are impressive musicians. The songs feature tight horn arrangements and 10 or 11 musicians. On track one, for example, it’s eight horns along with bass, keyboard and drums.

These guys are good enough; it’s a shame they didn’t put out a real album. Some of the stuff does swing.

If you’re going to have a retro cocktail parity, with men in tuxedos drinking martinis, this CD could be just the thing. But be sure to put it on random play to mix up the vocals and instrumentals.

CD Review - Jon Bickley

2008-02-02T02:52:00.000-08:00

House Carpenter
Tiger

By M. D. Spenser

Unfortunately for Blues lovers, this album owes as much to traditional English folk as it does to Blues. And that adds a touch of dreariness that makes this album a chore to listen to.

Bickley styles himself a poet as well as a songwriter. But he should take to heart an observation by the poet Ezra Pound: “The poem fails when it strays too far from the song, and the song fails when it strays too far from the dance.”

Most of these songs, believe me, are a hell of a long way from the dance.

Take the lugubrious five-minute number called, ‘She Moved Through The Fair’ – a traditional song that is boring beyond all measure: The couple plan to get married. She walks off through the fair. Then she dies.

The tale is punctuated by ultra-slow, self-important strumming, conveying the idea that there’s deep meaning in there somewhere. But it’s an emperor’s new clothes type of thing.

Throughout the album, Bickley accompanies himself on guitar and mandolin; he’s a competent player. And the Blues numbers offer some relief from the tedium.

‘Wolf Mountain Blues’, an original, features a very slow-stepping base line. “Well, tonight I am as lonely/As a wolf prowling in the trees,” Bickley sings. “These teeth keep people/Away from me.”

Man, that’s deep. And the song only gets deeper from there, but I’ll spare you.

Blues fans might want to give this one a pass.

CD Review - Tim Lothar Petersen

2008-01-30T00:21:00.000-08:00

Cut To The Bone

By M.D. Spenser

Evocative guitar and haunting vocals grace this impressive collection of Delta Blues.

Petersen, a Dane, recorded this debut in his living room, and it was well worth the effort. The album does more than echo the past: seven of the 10 cuts are originals, and a fine batch of songs they are.

The opener, ‘Easy Baby’, is gentle yet insistent, propelled by Petersen’s acoustic guitar: He urges a woman to leave her no-good man.

And there’s the mournful, sparsely sketched ‘Highway 424’, in which the singer searches for the words to tell a friend in trouble, presumably with drugs. “The road ahead sure is rough/ Tell me, don’t it hurt to lie to the ones you love?” he asks.

The covers are great, too. Petersen deploys a lovely slow slide on Charley Patton’s ‘High Sheriff Blues’. Ledbelly’s ‘Bound To Go’, by contrast, features lively fingerpicking – technically superb and great fun.

If you’re going to base an entire album around your solo acoustic guitar, versatility is critical – and Petersen has it. Each song has a different feel.

But it’s the originals that set this album apart. ‘Don’t hesitate’ – a song fully imagined but lightly painted – is a mellow folk-Blues about falling in love. The song is a joy.

Petersen understands that the first Delta blues artists were creators. One cannot emulate them through imitation, but only through innovation. By taking the Blues forward he honours its past. Tim Lothar Petersen is an artist from whom we can expect a lot.

CD Review - Jim Murray

2008-01-25T08:58:00.000-08:00

My Time To Be Alone
Jim Murray

This collection of pre-war Blues makes for a pleasant but undistinguished CD. It features fine acoustic guitar work – old-timey, relaxed, but remarkably proficient.

It’s the solo debut for Murray, a long-time sideman in his mid-50s. “I now feel for the first time that I have something to say solo,” he writes in the liner notes.

Well, not really, other than that pre-war Blues is great music. He includes chestnuts from Robert Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson and others. But do Blues aficionados really need another faithful rendition of ‘32-20 Blues’?

And, despite the different songwriters covered, there’s a sameness to Murray’s vocals. He uses a variety of guitars, but there’s a sameness in his picking, too. One wishes he’d found a friend who could play harmonica on a couple of cuts, just for a different sound.

Murray apologises in the liner notes for not reproducing each note exactly as it was first recorded. But he should deviate from the originals more, not less. This is the Blues, for Pete’s sake.

Let’s not be too harsh: This is not a bad album. It’s a nice record to put on, maybe when you’ve got friends over for conversation. But pretty soon you’ll forget which song you’re listening to. And you’ll probably have to pick up the CD case to figure it out.

Music Interview - Solomon Burke

2008-01-23T02:40:00.000-08:00

Soul Great Looking Toward The Future at Age 67

By M.D. Spenser

The phrases roll off his tongue like songs, no less heartfelt for having been polished over the years. Solomon Burke is one of the greatest soul singers in history; he knows how to communicate from the heart.

“The wonderful thing about being in England and being in Great Britain,” he says by telephone from his home in California, “is that you feel the royalty, the magic. You know that there’s something special happening there. The people are who they are. Everybody’s real.”

Burke has returned from the Led Zeppelin gig in London, a tribute to Ahmet Ertegun, the founder Atlantic Records, for whom Burke recorded decades ago. At a private party after the show, Burke performed with other soul greats, including Ben E. King, Percy Sledge and Sam Moore, who was half of Sam and Dave.

Burke’s hit-making heyday was 40 years ago. His place in the pantheon of soul artists is assured. He’s had himself crowned in innumerable concerts “The King of Rock and Soul.” One could be forgiven for thinking he might be a tad pompous, a bit blasé, a man living on the glories of the past.

Nothing could be further from the truth. He will not begin an interview without asking about your family and responding warmly to a question about his own. (“Wonderful!” he exclaims. “Blessed, blessed, blessed.”) You feel that he wants to make friends.

At 67, he still lives for the future, for the record he is about to record, for the songs yet to be sung. And he is nothing if not enthusiastic – about life, about this conversation, about the channel tunnel – “To be able to do that in my lifetime!” – and about the Zeppelin gig.

“It was one of the most exciting moments of my career to be part of that,” he says.

Soul was founded in part by shouters like Wilson Pickett and Joe Tex. Burke, blessed with a powerful voice, could shout with the best of them. But he brought a sweetness to the genre as well. One of his early hits was ‘Just Out Of Reach,’ a wonderfully lush ballad that had been recorded earlier as a country song.

What made his contribution to the creation of soul different? No words could be better than his own:

I think the idea of me born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and coming from a very religious family, and locking into all phases of music – enjoying country music and pop music and rock and Blues and jazz and opera. My mind was open to every ounce of music. I wanted to know and wanted to hear – and I’m still learning – about music.

And knowing that music is a healer, and that there’s a magic that music has that can cross nations and language barriers, oceans and seas, and calm wild beasts. And this is the magic of music – if it’s right, if it’s the right chord and the right tone, and if it’s the right sound, the right words.

You know, there’s something so special about just that word, music – I believe it’s heavenly. I know that this is something that God has given many of us a chance to be part of. Because it’s such a heavenly thing; it’s something that the angels endure and are part of. Music!

Although Burke was a sensation in his teens, he was at one point blacklisted by an influential DJ, and unable to get his songs on the air. He quit music and worked in the family funeral home.

At length, he was lured back into the business – a producer blockaded the funeral home with a Cadillac and would not move it until Burke agreed to record again. He was revered by fellow artists but he never crossed over into the white audience, the way singers like Aretha Franklin and Wilson Picket did.

But his career was given a boost when the Rolling Stones recorded two of his songs, ‘Cry To Me’ and ‘Everybody Needs Somebody To Love’ on their early albums.

Some soul singers – notably Irma Thomas, from whom the Stones took ‘Time Is On My Side’ – were bitter. Audiences wanted black songs, it seemed – but only if they were sung by white folks.

But bitter is not what Solomon Burke is about. Just ask him whether his career was helped or hurt by what Americans call the British Invasion of the 1960s:

Mine was helped! (He laughs heartily.) Yes, please – you know, one more time! Do it every month, if you can! It was wonderful for me. My music was widened to a greater audience by so many great artists, taking our music around the world and opening doors that I could never open, and giving me the opportunity to walk into those same doors: Being an artist that says I performed at the Royal Albert Hall over five times in my career – that’s a triumph!

Burke first toured Britain in 1964. The travel opened the world to him to such an extent that he now believes all kids, before they go to university, should spend a year touring the world – a radical thought for the United States, where, for much of the population, the rest of the world remains a mystery.

The memories are still fresh:

I came over with Doris Troy. We were with Atlantic records and she had a great record called ‘Just One Look.’ And I was so thrilled and excited to meet people like The Undertakers (a ’60s Liverpool-area band). I did get a chance to meet a lot of great people – Tom Jones. And being in the great country was just so overwhelming, so magical to me, where the queen was! It was as royal as it should be.”

When the radio play waned, Burke toiled on in relative obscurity. Video from his middle years shows him to be an enormous man, but still an agile dancer and extraordinarily vigorous.

The 1986 album, “A Change Is Gonna Come,” recorded when Burke was in his 40s, may have gone largely unnoticed. But it reveals a soul singer in peak form, the vocal power undiminished, the sweetness more poignant than ever.

Like many soul singers, Burke dabbled in Blues. And just what does he see as the relationship between soul and the Blues?

“The feeling,” he replies. “The experience. The moment. The time. The pain. The hurt. The joy. The expression that releases the confidence or the sadness.”

Film soundtracks helped return his name to wider attention. His rendition of ‘Cry to Me’ was used in “Dirty Dancing.” The Blues Brothers covered ‘Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.’

Then one day in the airport in Portland, Oregon, in 2001, Burke found himself being pestered by a funny-looking guy. It was the beginning of an extraordinary career renaissance:

I was blessed by a gift from God that a man came along in Portland, Andy Kaulkin, and said to me, “Hey, man, I want to talk to you.” And I thought he was some guy from a football team or something. He didn’t look like a record president. He looked like a young teenager, you know – hippie.

“Hey, man, I got an idea!”

And I said, “Oh, my God. Is this the same guy again?”

When he finally caught up with us, we were on the same plane together. And when he told me he was with Fat Possum, I said, “Oh, my God. Another football team wants me to be a mascot. Prior to that, somebody wanted me to be a mascot of the Big Bears. Now here’s some guy wanting me to be a possum. This is my week for animals, I guess. And when he told me it was a record company, I almost turned around and kissed him.

“Record company! That’s the name of your company? Great!”

The resulting album was titled, appropriately, “Don’t Give Up On Me.”

Produced by Joe Henry, it included songs written for Burke by Dan Penn, Van Morrison, Tom Waits, Brian Wilson, Elvis Costello, and Bob Dylan. Almost 50 years after his career began, Burke won his first Grammy, for best contemporary Blues album. And he won a new generation of fans, as well, thanks to Kaulkin pestering him on the plane.

It was one of the greatest things in the world. We have become great friends. I talk to him all the time. We talk to one another, and we share – and he’s such a warm person.

Because, he’ll call me and say, “Solomon, just heard your record, I love it.” You know, and it’s not even on their label.

It was the first label that ever gave me my royalty checks, my first real royalty checks. Fat Possum.

C’mon, man, would you believe that? You know, you say here’s a guy that’s been on all the labels in the world, and his first real royalty check is with Fat Possum? But how wonderful! How usual life can be if you live it.

His most recent album is called “Nashville” – a country album recorded in Buddy Miller’s living room, featuring duets with Dolly Parton, Gillian Welch, Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris and Patty Loveless. It brings Burke full circle – “Just Out Of Reach” having been a country song – and he ranks it among the best of his career.

As a kid, I used to listen to the country music of Gene Autrey and Roy Rogers, Hank Williams and all those great people, and, oh, just on and on and on.

And later on, I loved so much Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. To me these are just legends. Patsy Cline. Incredible.

And to have the opportunity to go to Nashville and actually record with Buddy Miller and some of the great musicians, and to meet the queens of country, to perform with me, and to sing with me?

I’ll tell you, the honour was mine.

Country music is so special, because it tells a message immediately, within the three-minute period. You know what happened, from beginning to end.

The Blues tells you, “Hey, I’m hurt. I’m in pain. I’m suffering. You mistreated me. You misused me.”

But sometimes the Blues leaves us hanging. You don’t know if the person’s ever going to get well. You don’t know if the person ever came back: “Baby, you’ve gone, you’ve gone, you’ve gone.”

Well, did she ever come back? Did she ever call you? Did she ever write you? Did you ever see her again?

At least with a country song, the guy says (he starts to sing into the phone): “Baby, you’re gone, and I saw you had a richer one. And y’all had two babies and that’s OK, because the baby looks just like me.” You know? Boom! It leaves you with a thought.

The last few years, Burke said, have been immensely satisfying, bringing renewed acclaim, new fans, more record contracts and performing opportunities. Great artists wait in line to record with him.

Brand new day. Brand new way. New way to step. New way to move. New way to breathe. New places to go and new people to meet. New hands to shake. And what a gift! After 50-some years it’s been – I started recording in 1954. How many people today can say that? That are still recording? That still have a record deal. This is amazing! A gift from God! And I’m still waiting to do more. And to do better. And I’m still learning.

The word is to move, and to keep moving, to keep going forward, never backwards, and always believe that there’s a greater way and a better way. There’s no yesterdays. Everything is tomorrow. Because today is almost over.

Burke uses a wheelchair now. He performs seated, but he dances up a storm on his special concert throne.

He says his health is fine. But he has severe arthritis and needs hip replacement and knee replacement. He must lose 140 more pounds before the surgery can be done. He has spent most of his life very large but very vigorous – his 21 children attest to that – but he has at last decided to do something about his weight.

He is working out in a pool under medical supervision. “I’m loving it,” he says. “Oh, you should see me in that pool. I’m dangerous. I could be in a dance marathon in that pool!”

And when he says “Nashville” is among his best albums ever, he means, of course, until the next one, which he is about to start recording. Talking about it, he sounds like a kid opening a Christmas present.

“I have a great producer, Steve Jordan, which I’m very excited about,” he says.
He pauses to ask his manger, “Can I mention somebody?” But he doesn’t wait for the answer, and plunges ahead.

“I have great songs that are just so incredible,” he continues. “And I just – I can’t help it. I got a song from Eric Clapton that I can’t keep still about, that he wrote for me. Oh, my God, I’m telling you. If this song is not a hit, I’m going to just walk around with a baseball bat.”

He laughs a great belly laugh.

Some soul singers have been at the mercy of their labels, and willing to record any song put before them. Not Burke, who rejects some songs and demands the lyrics on others be changed.

Every song that I record must have meaning and a story. And I must be able to feel that story and be able to relate to that story.

Because there’s no other way for me to sing it, if I can’t relate to it to tell the story to someone else.

Because knowing that every hurt that I’ve had, someone else has had 20 times more the hurts. For every tear that I’ve cried, a million tears have been shed. To be able to say, "I understand."

Before you can say you understand, you have to go through the paces. You have to go through the hurt, you have to go through the pain. You have to know what love is about. You have to live it, to understand it, to feel it, to sing about it.

That’s why so many of the young people today are stuck on songs that only have one line. Because that one line is all they know. "No, no, no, no, I don’t want to go to rehab." That’s it!

Burke hopes to return to Britain soon. He’s great friends with Jools Holland, on whose New Year’s Eve Hootenanny he appeared two years ago. He remains friends with Tom Jones, whom he met on that long-ago tour in 1964.

And even if not so many people know his name, he’s excited that his songs have become part of the popular culture, not only in America but over here, as well.

I’m thrilled to come on the television in England and hear ‘Everybody needs somebody’ being sung for a candy commercial. C’mon! It’s incredible! I wanted to go out and buy the candy! Celebrate! C’mon, gimme some of that candy! How wonderful that is.

As the interview ends, Burke thanks you for having spent so much time with him. During the conversation, he has asked about your family and your travels. He has laughed, cracked jokes and told stories. He has sung. Before ringing off, he asks you to keep in touch with him.

He has done everything he could to make a connection. You feel you have a friend, one who has opened himself to you, one to whom you, likewise, could open yourself.

With skills like that, it’s no wonder the man know how to put a song across.

Pain, Me and the Voodoo Doctor

2008-01-20T07:58:00.000-08:00

By M.D. Spenser

I lay face down on the treatment bed whilst a man I’d met only a few minutes before used his forefinger like a hammer to drive needles into my flesh.

He chatted all the while, trying to divert my attention.

“What do you do for a living?” (Thwack!) “Oh, that’s so interesting.” (Thwack!) “How long have you been doing that?” (Thwack!)

I’m a sceptic by nature and a bit of a traditionalist. I like things that have proven themselves over time, like old shirts, my favourite running shorts, and what some people refer to as “the germ theory of disease.” I shy away from change, the occult and medical treatments that smack to me of shamanism.

Yet here I was with my face lodged in a hole in the bed, letting some guy try to fix my hamstrings by using the pin cushion theory of treatment. How, I wondered, had it come to this?

The story began months earlier. Training with Julian Goater, a former world-class runner, I had gotten into my best shape in a dozen years. The training improved my mental toughness, too. In the Taunton Marathon on April 2, I flogged myself through the final six miles with what I realized in retrospect was not mere fatigue but genuine injury.

I took time off from running after the marathon, of course. But when I returned to the familiar routes around Frensham Ponds, I could not get my hamstrings sorted no matter what I did.

I rested. No luck. I tried to build back up. No luck. I saw a physiotherapist who inflicted painful deep tissue massage and prescribed stretches. (I had neglected flexibility in my training; by this time, I’d had a stiff neck for months.) But the pain persisted. Week by week, my hard-earned fitness left me.

One evening, as I ran through the woods with the club, a fellow member of Farnham Runners, the club to which I belong, came up behind me.

“Are you injured?” she asked out of the blue.

“Yes,” I said. “Why?”

“You’re running sideways,” came the reply.

It was a shock to realize I was sidling down the path looking more like a pretzel than an athlete. I had to do something.

Months earlier, Julian had recommended that I see David Reynolds, a registered osteopath, acupuncturist and Chinese medical herbalist with an office in Cranleigh, in southern England. The sceptical part of me had rejected the idea out of hand. But the just-in-case part of me had pocketed the card Julian handed me. I dug it out now.

And so it was that on Sept. 5, more than five months after my marathon, I found myself chatting with a man who was hammering needles into me.

“Had any interesting assignments recently?” Dave asked. (Thwack!) “Really? What did you think of the situation there?” (Thwack!)

When he had finished his hammering, he sat down to continue the conversation, leaving me lying there bristling like a porcupine. I asked how many needles were in me. The answer was 26 – 10 in my stiff neck and shoulder and another 16 in my right hamstring and buttock.

I tried to be polite, but inside I wondered grimly if I had handed myself over to a practitioner of voodoo. Forever after, when I told my wife that I had another appointment with the voodoo doctor, she knew who I meant.

Dave turned out to be an extraordinarily sharp, well-informed and engaging guy. He broke his leg when he was 17, and then spent the next nine months in hospital because his case was mismanaged.

“It put me off trying to go to medical school,” he said. And the episode also spurred his interest in alternatives to traditional Western medicine.

He qualified as an osteopath in 1983 and began his career in a practice in London where acupuncture was also used. He started his study of the technique there. In all, he studied acupuncture for five and a half years, learning from Chinese, Vietnamese and Western teachers.

Now 47, he has treated competitors in various sports, including rugby, football, golf, motocross, Formula 1 – and, of course, running.

“People you’d know, as well,” he said.

He did not just begin by sticking needles into me. He had me stand in front of a mirror. One of my shoulders sloped downward more steeply than the other. He had me lie down on the bed. My left leg, he said, was shorter than my right.

This problem he attacked by performing an adjustment on my pelvis. He wrapped his arms around me, then twisted me with a sudden, powerful jerk. My hips cracked with a noise so loud that people two doors down must have jumped out of their chairs. I let out an involuntary yell, not from pain but from surprise.

He cracked my back, as well, and popped my neck once to each side, making a noise that sounded like sniper fire coming from over the hill.

Having corrected my structural problems, he worked to heal my hamstrings with acupuncture. He used needles .25 millimetres in diameter, threading them through guide chutes before thwacking them in with his finger. The ones in my backside he was driving in to a depth of an inch an a half.

That, though, depends on the patient. “On a very large person from Florida, we could be using four-inch needles,” he said.

It seems odd that sticking a bunch of needles into someone could cure injury. But, according to Dave, the process is not that complicated.

“In acu-puncture, directly needling affects the injured tissue, which triggers a healing response,” he said. The effect, he said, is “biomedically measurable.”

None of it hurt. Not the pelvic adjustment, not the neck cracking, not the needles. Actually, I felt loosened up a bit.

In the following days, very gingerly, I began training again. When I returned to Dave a week later, I thought maybe I felt a little better, but I couldn’t be sure. Maybe the effect was just psychological.

Over the ensuing weeks, as I continued my appointments with Dave, I increased my training and even ran a couple of races. Little by little, it became evident that I was getting better. In time, I even returned to training with Julian, which involves hard effort and speedwork.

Finally, I realized that I could train at any level I wanted to. After six months of injury, I was elated. I felt like I’d won the lottery.

Dave said he occasionally sees people who have tried a raft of treatments first and come to him only as a last resort. But these days, as the benefits of acupuncture and osteopathy are more widely accepted, those cases are rare. Most people come sooner rather than later.

I’m just behind the times. And, the sceptic in me remembers, you can’t prove anything with a single case. Perhaps my hamstring was just ready to heal after a few months. And maybe my year-long stiff neck just decided to go away at the same time.

But I don’t think so. And you can bet that, the next time I’m hurt, I’m going to get my sceptical self into Dave’s office a lot quicker than five months.

CD Review - Craig King

2008-01-20T07:53:00.000-08:00

Breakthrough
Bonedog

If you have any feelings for classic soul-blues, Craig King’s debut CD could be one of the better albums you’ve run across in years.

King’s impassioned vocals make him sound like Robert Cray before he lost his way, only grittier. King is backed by a fine horn section, with killer guitar, sizzling organ and a good chorus of back-up singers.

The thing here is the funky beat. There’s a bit of ‘Superstition’-era Stevie Wonder here, a bit of Stax there. There’s the obvious mix of faster songs and slower ballads.

Best not to concentrate on the words; they can detract from the fun. (In ‘It's On The Inside’, the message is that you should judge a person by what’s on the inside – duh.)

It’s hard to find much information about King. A web search yields the facts that he’s from Pittsburgh and he ‘fell in love with music at a young age.’

But King is not the real issue. In the notes, he thanks Mike Sweeney and Jeff Ingersoll for the call. Ingersoll, guess what, is the owner of Bonedog Records, and Sweeney often writes songs for Bonedog. He wrote 9 of the 12 songs on this CD.

They were looking for a singer and they rang up Craig. This is essentially a factory production.

So? Motown and Stax were factories, too. Some of the best in history have been in-house songwriters.

Bonedog’s web site says it “was created to help artists who were pioneers of 40's 50's, 60's and 70's and contemporary artists who embrace these roots.” Whatever. This is great stuff.

You might want to buy this CD and wait eagerly for King’s sophomore effort. But from the sound of it, go for more Bonedog CDs. They've got something going on at that shop. Check ’em out.

Music Interview - Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir

2008-01-09T13:03:00.000-08:00

Canadian Band Combines Blues, Bluegrass for Raw, Honest Sound

By M.D. Spenser

Out of Canada, howling like wind through the chinks of a cabin, comes a sound so traditional it evokes something primal and yet so new you’ve never heard it before.

It is the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir, a four-piece band from Calgary that combines Blues, bluegrass, Appalachian folk and attitude into a rough, raw sound all its own. At its best, this music creates a hypnotic effect in which players and instruments and audience all become one, where nothing else matters but everything is included and you don’t wake up until the music stops.

The band was formed early in 2001 and played its first gig on only a week’s preparation – three rehearsals. Members had in mind playing small clubs in the area, nothing more.

“We accepted from the start that our music is, well, odd – by which I mean it’s not ever going to be popular, exactly,” said Judd Palmer, one of the founders.

But after that first impromptu gig, people kept asking them to play more. And more. So, three or four gigs down the road, the members started to talk seriously about what direction the band should take.

Nearly seven years later, AMGC’s music is still odd. It’s never going to outsell Britney Spears, nor even, for that matter, Keb’ Mo’. But the band has moved far beyond the local club scene. Based in part on its 2005 release, “Fighting And Onions,” and in part on the intensity of its live performances, AMGC has won an international following – not least in the U.K., which it toured in September.

“The U.K. folks seem to like us,” said Bob Keelaghan, another of the band’s founders. “We get a lot of interest. We haven’t had a stinker of a gig over there yet.”

The band’s origins lie in a near-hallucinatory experience Palmer had one day as he staggered around the mountains, perhaps in the grip of altitude dementia.

“I found myself bellowing oaths at the crags that there were Gods in the rocks, and that they deserved a gospel music of their own, a mountain gospel, in fact,” he said.

But this wouldn’t be the same as the traditional gospels, he told himself. This would be an agnostic gospel. As the dementia really took over, he imagined he could form an agnostic mountain choir, good people who would join in loud and raucous hallelujahs – not exaltation of religion but enthusiasm for mystical feelings, the kind that can grip us all, religious or not.

“I clambered down from the mountaintops,” he said, “with this big plan for a huge band of people who would stomp and holler and bang and clang and shout and therefore be overwhelmingly entertaining.”

In the end, only four people showed up for rehearsals. The huge choir remains more an aspiration than a reality.

But bang and clang they do. The first drummer, Jason Woolley, who plays on “Fighting And Onions,” had a drum kit that included pots, pans and, said Keelaghan, “a big piece of metal that looked like an Italian car’s muffler.” Woolley left, having felt the need for a more stable job. But his replacement, Pete Balkwill, is no more conventional. On one of his cymbal stands hangs a Belgian army helmet.

And the band stomps and hollers, too. Palmer and Keelaghan handle the lead vocals; neither will ever be mistaken for Sinatra. With voices that sound like five miles of gravel road, their singing can evoke wind howling at the mouth of a cave, or maybe someone in therapy giving a primal scream.

Keelaghan, a guitarist, never sang until he got into Delta Blues, songs that didn’t work without vocals.

“Since it was the Blues that got me going, I wanted to get a throaty resonance,” he said. “Many stores don’t sell throaty resonance, so I had to find it on my own.”

But he found inspiration in the singing of Don Van Vliet, otherwise known as Captain Beefheart, and that of the renaissance Bluesman Alvin Youngblood Hart. And both of them, Keelaghan believes, were influenced in turn by the great Delta country Blues singer Charley Patton.

Keelaghan describes his own style as “Delta Blues yowling laced with high lonesome wailing.”

Patton was active in the 1920s and ‘30s. And, for all its volume, clatter, Italian mufflers and Belgian helmets, AMGC’s music has the feel of that era. Palmer plays banjo, harmonica and fiddle; Keelaghan contributes his Delta Blues guitar; Vladimir Sobolewski anchors the mix with his upright bass; and all of this is played, of course, over the clang and bang of the current drummer.

Four of the 18 cuts on “Fighting And Onions” are covers. One, “Look Up Look Down That Lonesome Road,” is traditional. The others were written by Son House, the Rev. Gary Davis, and Skip James – all Bluesmen whose careers date to the ‘30s.

But these covers are not musicologists’ cerebral revivals, faithful note-for-note to the originals. Far from it. These are old Blues songs warped through the unique sensibilities of this band.

For Keelaghan, the process of making someone else’s song his own starts with mistakes. He doesn’t sit with the CD and try to get every note perfect. Sometimes he learns the song from memory, as it has been filtered through his mind, then revises it later when he learns the lyrics. He’ll turn a major chord into a minor, or change the tuning, using a drop-D, for example, instead of an open tuning. But he does want to keep the feeling of the original intact.

The sound of these covers, traditional yet original, can best be described as Delta Blues meets old-time Appalachian folk.

“Those types of music have a lot of crossover,” Keelaghan said. “Both are intense forms of music. Many of the songs are modal, in that they mess with major and minor while hanging on one or two chords. Our theory is that, at some point in the evolution of those musics, they mingled and interbred, but for political and social reasons, America split them apart. I guess we’re reconciling that.”

The originals are in the same style. The album “Fighting And Onions” opens with a violin slowly sawing out of tune, as it might sound on the front porch of a tumble-down shack. The song, with no words until it is reprised to close the album, is “Stay Here For Awhile – fittingly, an invitation.

Some cuts are frenetic, bluegrassy, rough and noisy, like “Buried Them In Water.” The music to that song is original but the lyrics are from the late Howard Finster, a minister and acclaimed folk artist who lived in north Georgia, in the American South. Finster lived in the grip of life-long obsession – or inspiration, if you prefer – creating art like a madman and painting pictures, his own words and biblical verses over anything in his path – bicycles, automobiles, buildings and what have you.

Finster and AMGC make a good fit – inspired, artistic, crazy perhaps but eclectic and utterly unconcerned with fashion.

Other originals – “Oh Sorrow,” for example – are slower and more haunting, Bluesy but still twangy.

There’s no template here. Five of the cuts on “Fighting And Onions” are under a minute long; a sixth is only 1:04. The longest is 5:25. This band does whatever the hell it wants, whatever feels right – a lot like Finster. There’s freedom in knowing you’ll never outsell Britney.

The music is so rough and genuine that almost every note, intentionally or not, carries with it implied criticism of the glossiness and shallowness of contemporary culture.

“I’m not a fan of consumer culture,” Keelaghan said. “The masses get hung up on the product and not the ingredients. Sugar and fat are no good for you? No kidding! And it’s in nearly every damn pre-packaged food product! Do they realize that many celebrities are retards and what they do in their personal lives means not a stitch more than what regular folks do in theirs?”

And so it is with popular music, too, he said. People who listen to what’s on the charts give no thought to how the music is made, what the ingredients are. They don’t know that some bands don’t play their own music, that some singers have their voices altered with pitch correction, or that the musicians aren’t even in the same room at the same time.

But the ingredients affect the music. “To me, most of it sounds devoid of feeling,” Keelaghan said.

The album title “Fighting And Onions” comes from “Under Milkwood,” the radio play by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (from whom Bob Dylan took his adopted name). In the play, a sea captain is haunted by the spirits of drowned sailors. They come to him in the night and ask if life is still as they remember it, if their favourite things are still around.

“How’s it above?” one asks.

“Is there rum and lavabread?” asks another.

“Bosoms and robins?” asks a third.

Yet another, thinking of what he misses most, asks, “Fighting and onions?”

These are symbols of life. This is a music that is pungent, flavourful, full of life and full of fight.

But what is AMGC’s music, sometimes cacophonous, always off the beaten track, about? It’s not dance music; it’s not meant to soothe the savage breast; these are not love songs or serenades.

What, to these players, is the purpose of music?

It’s a hard question to answer directly. Keelaghan and Palmer have talked about boogie hypnosis, the trance that rhythmic, one-chord songs bring on. And the music is about communication, too – union, a form of oneness.

As Keelaghan studied pre-World War II Blues, he was struck that no one sang or played half-heartedly. AMGC wants to communicate that same intensity – whether the emotion is sorrow, fear or joy – without relying too much on amplification. When audience members sing along, or stamp their feet, or roar with approval, then that has been achieved.

“For the last few years, I’ve been big on the idea of transcendence through music,” Keelaghan said. “Those are the moments when we play, or I play, that are so good nothing else is noticeable until the song ends. The fingers and the strings are one. You don’t make mistakes. You take musical chances in the moment and they succeed. Everyone is on the same page and you know it. The audience knows it, too. That’s pure communication through music. It doesn’t happen very often, but I’ve had that more with this band than any other.”

Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir will record over the winter and hopes to release a new CD next spring or summer. They hope, also, to visit the U.K. in 2008, this time for a longer tour.

The band’s success has surprised its members, given that their ambition was just to play local clubs. But they know they’ve got something going.

“We’re in it for the long haul,” Palmer said. “I think there’s plenty more to explore about the forms of music that inspire this band.”

CD Review - Bessie Smith

2008-01-09T13:00:00.000-08:00

Blues Queen: The Definitive Collection
Definitive

Tutored by Ma Rainey and an inspiration to Janis Joplin, Bessie Smith was vital to the development of the Blues. This superb overview of her recording career, which began in the early 1920s and lasted a decade, gives voice to all the emotions that make up the Blues – sadness, defiance and joy.

“I swear I won’t call no copper/When I’m beat up by my papa/Tain’t nobody’s business if I do,” she sings, years before Billie Holliday. It’s an assertion of power. Sometimes the only defiance available to the oppressed is handling misfortune the way they alone decide.

Smith, who lost both parents by age 9, became the highest-paid black performer of the ’20s. She’s backed on these 24 tracks by a who’s who of the era’s musicians, from Louis Armstrong to Benny Goodman.

But her singing’s the attraction. She had a voice so true the hiss of records made 80 years ago falls away, unnoticeable. As the excellent liner notes say, Smith, the Empress of the Blues, had “a strong personality which she imposed on every tune she chose to sing.”

The tunes she chose stand the test of time. Wonder where Clapton got “Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out”? Smith recorded it in 1929 as she was about to enter her own lean years.

The Blues gave way to jazz. Smith sank into alcoholism. She died in a car accident in 1937, aged 43. Her grave remained unmarked until 1970, when Joplin, herself months from death, bought her a headstone.

This collection illuminates the arc of Smith’s career, from the Dixieland joy of “Cakewalkin’ Babies (From Home)” to the sorrow of “St. Louis Blues.” One can imagine the tears that flowed from seeing her in person.

But this is what’s left to us, and it’s well worth owning.

CD Review - porterdavis

2007-12-30T14:19:00.000-08:00

Live At Eddie’s Attic
Independent Release

There’s a rare magic in music when exceptional players mesh perfectly.

Porterdavis’ music is deeply traditional yet totally new. It is of no genre yet of them all – Blues, folk, jazz, bebop. Before every show, band members pour a drink on the floor in homage to their heroes: Ray Charles, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Elvin Jones, Miles Davis, Townes Van Zandt, Muddy Waters and Little Walter.

This CD captures the trio – a guitarist and drummer, both Americans, and a British harmonica player – live at a club near Atlanta.

Key to their sound is Simon Wallace, who won the U.K. National Blues Harmonica Title at age 17. His harp takes the lead on more songs than not. Sometimes his harmonica and Daniel Barrett’s guitar track each other exactly, an octave apart.

On other songs, Barrett provides rhythm or slide-played bass. The sound is complemented by Mike Meadows’ creative, intelligent percussion. This is a tight, tight band.

Lamentably, there are no credits on the promotional CD, but the album seems to mix covers and originals.

Muddy Waters’ ‘I Can’t Be Satisfied’ is transposed into a minor key, barely recognizable but deeper, blusier, more cutting than the original.

Robert Johnson’s ‘Come On In my Kitchen’ is eerie and true – brilliantly reworked, completely new.

‘Long Legs’, apparently an original, is aching folk, pure poetry: “I could see that freckled, bonesy girl would one day be my world. Would you be my world? … I dare not dream so dangerously. You could be the death of me.”

And ‘Diamond Eyed One’ is a delightful finger-poppin’ ode to desire: “I want to cook your favourite dish. I want to kiss your favourite kiss.”

With heartfelt singing by men who follow their own muse, this album is a revelation. Porterdavis is a band worthy of your attention.

CD Review - Toby Walker

2007-12-30T14:17:00.000-08:00

Just Rolled In
Toby Walker

This is a fabulously fun CD, featuring acoustic blues guitar the way everyone should play it – with precision, gusto, and sass. You won’t hear better picking than this.

Walker, a Long Islander, was raised far from the Mississippi Delta. But his passion for blues and rag prompted him to head south. He tracked down musicians from an earlier era, learning from the likes of Eugene Powell, James "Son" Thomas, Etta Baker and R.L. Burnside.

His repertoire, a mix of covers and originals, is, he says, “99.9 percent songs of thieving, lying, stealing, cheating, murder and mayhem” – leavened, thankfully, with a large helping of humour.

Walker’s vocals rarely rise above serviceable, though they grow on you. The thing here is the guitar. Whether it’s blues or ragtime, the syncopation and rhythm make it hard to sit still when he plays.

With his funny between-song patter, Walker is a born storyteller; his guitar is an extension of that. His playing is not frantic and overfull, but still technically astonishing. He senses when the spaces say more than notes, and when a single bent note can move the story along.

‘Blame It On The Bass Player’ – an instrumental paean to those underappreciated musicians – is humour without words. Walker’s thumb gleefully picks out classic bass lines while his fingers tell another story up top.

And when Walker sings, the interplay between his vocal storytelling and that of his guitar is guaranteed to raise a smile.

Most of the album is light-hearted, but it ends with two barnburners – notably the defiant ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’, on which Walker’s voice, playing and blues come into their own.

This CD is 98 percent happy and 100 percent blues. If you think that’s a contradiction, just listen a while – and smile.

CD Review - J. Dorsey Blues Band

2007-12-30T14:11:00.000-08:00

Worried Blues EP
Independent Release

By M.D. Spenser

Let’s be upfront about it: If you want to buy this CD, it’ll be tough. You won’t find it at HMV, nor on amazon, and the band’s web site – on myspace – had, as of late December, not a speck of information.

But that’s OK, because there’s no reason to buy it anyway, unless what you need to fill out your collection is a complete lack of originality.

This CD is not horrible, but it’s not good, either. The five tracks are a melange of styles that don't really mix.

The title track is a droning one-chord version of a song listed as ‘Worried Blues’ and called “traditional”. In fact, the title of the song is ‘Someday Baby’ and it was written in 1935 by Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon. It’s played with some slide guitar and a whole lot of racket.

Track 2 is the only original, a one-chord number so slow it sounds like an LP played at the wrong speed. It is topped by Jimi Hendrix-like vocals and descends into distortion. Clocking in at 8:22, it’s about eight minutes too long.

From Hendrix territory we jump improbably to Nina Simone: the cover of her ‘Do I Move You’, slinky and sexual, is the EP’s one high point.

Then we hop to a dreary Chuck Berry cover. Chuck Berry with the fun taken out? What’s the point?

The CD closes with a Fred McDowell number, which is fun in a Fat Possum, Mississippi hill country sort of way. The song has a driving rhythm, but there is still a tendency to confuse cacophony with musicality.

The verdict? Twenty-three minutes of mishmash.

CD Review - Fried Okra Band

2007-11-24T07:09:00.000-08:00

This Is Your Chance, France Baby!
Gateway

By M.D. Spenser

Think of this fine CD as Denmark does Mississippi – or, more specifically, as Fried Okra does Fat Possum. Four of the first five cuts are from artists featured on Fat Possum, a label that has single-handedly brought deserved attention to blues performers from the Mississippi hill country.

That rough, raw, rural and determinedly unpolished style is captured well by this quartet from Copenhagen. Don’t look for the standard blues progression. These songs have one chord – two, if you’re lucky. The thing here is the relentless rhythm and the unvarnished emotion.

“I been working seven days a week/Still can’t make ends meet,” Morten Lunn sings on R.L. Burnside’s “Poor Black Mattie” (misspelled on this CD cover as “Maddie”). The sound here is noisier and more electric that on the Fat Possum originals (Junior Kimbrough and Robert Belfour are also covered), but the slide stings, the drums clatter, the vocals are gruff, and the gritty feeling is exactly the same.

The tracks were recorded live, but have some overdubs. The result is the best of both worlds – the immediacy of live performance combined with the discipline of the studio.

Other songs by Corey Harris, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and Tom Waits fit right into the mix. “I was stirring my brandy with a nail,” Lunn growls on Waits’ “Get Behind The Mule” – and he sounds like the kind of guy who would do just that.

The album ends with a brilliant, slowed-down reading of Johnson’s “Crossroads.”

This album goes to show that Americans have no monopoly on the blues. You can create a genre but you can't own it. No spit, no shine, no polish – this is 100 percent real blues.

CD Review - Pura Fe'

2007-11-24T07:06:00.000-08:00

Hold The Rain
Dixie Frog

By M.D. Spenser

The album begins the beat of the human heart, or at least a solitary drum that sounds for all the world like it. On top of the heartbeat a chorus builds, Soweto-like. Then the voice of Pura Fe’ keens high over the chorus, wordless, emotional, and you know this album is going to be something different.

It is challenging – and rewarding in a way that only that which challenges us can be. Pura Fe’ is an American Indian, and an artist courageous enough to tread her own path.

She wrote, in whole or in part, 10 of the 13 tracks. They defy genres: folk, blues and hints of jazz combine to make pure Pura Fe’. Suffice it to say that the songs rely heavily on Fe’s acoustic lap-slide guitar – and on her voice, a beautiful and mellow instrument.

She is backed by a fine coterie of musicians. These songs are not instant toe-tappers – they are richer fare than that – but with repeated play they reveal themselves and grow on the listener. They deal with desire ('If I Was Your Guitar'), love ('Follow Your Heart’s Desire'), and even child abuse ('Little Girl Dreaming').

And the covers? Gorgeous. They include a moving five-minute-plus version of Rogers and Hammerstein’s “Summertime.” A duet with Eric Bibb on his song “People You Love” is just a gem, to die for.

One quibble – on a couple of occasions, Fe’s voice, normally full and expressive, rises to a screech. Following your own path is fine, but so’s a little discipline, whether from a producer or your wiser self.

This album is rich and challenging, one that will stay with you far longer than instantly accessible toe-tappers ever will. The songs work their way inside you until, at last, they become one with the beating of your heart.

CD Review - Marie Knight

2007-11-06T16:11:00.000-08:00

Let Us Get Together: A Tribute to Reverend Gary Davis
Dixiefrog

By M.D. Spenser

Some pairings sound doomed to failure.

Who’d put an elderly gospel singer who hadn’t recorded in 25 years together with Bob Dylan’s lead guitarist? But this album, with 78-year-old Marie Knight backed by Larry Campbell’s guitar, is fabulous. If you have any feelings for gospel, ragtime or blues, if you appreciate incredible acoustic guitar, then buy this CD.

Knight, who sang with Sister Rosetta Tharpe half a century ago, and Campbell, who has backed B.B. King, Roseanne Cash, Lyle Lovett and others, breathe life into the songs of Rev. Gary Davis, the blind bluesman who turned to gospel as his life wore on.

Knight and Campbell wisely chose not to honour Davis through slavish imitation. Knight, who, unbelievably, had never heard of Davis, sifted through his songs, rejecting some, embracing others. Though she changed no words, she sometimes altered the melodies to suit her. She remains in fine voice; her phrasing should be studied by younger singers.

She chose mostly from Davis’ gospel works rather than his blues. But it’s gospel without preachiness. And when she does sing the blues – like ‘You Got To Move’ (a blues with gospel words) – there’s no trace of sadness. This is an exuberant record.

Davis was one of the best ragtime guitarists ever. And Campbell, too, opted not to copy every note, but instead to put some of himself into the record. He captures the intricate syncopation of Davis’ guitar, but it’s the feeling that makes this album what it is.

A couple of tracks are augmented by the harmonica of Kim Wilson, one of the best harpists working today.

Some combinations work wonderfully well: Gospel with exuberance, blues with joy, two artists injecting the work of an old master with new vitality. A better tribute to Rev. Gary Davis could not be imagined.

An American Abroad - Becoming a British Citizen

2007-10-23T04:10:00.000-07:00

By M.D. Spenser

LONDON – I was taught as an impressionable schoolboy that monarchs, all them, were bad. George Washington, our national hero, turned up his nose at any suggestion that he become king of America.

So it is shocking to the wide-eyed boy who still lives within to realize that this week I will swear allegiance to Queen Elizabeth and become a British citizen.

The obvious question is why.

First of all, I’m not turning my back on the country of my birth, any more than I turned my back on Vermont when I moved to Florida. Nor am I fed up with American politics.

I’ve been alive a while now, and I’ve enjoyed some political eras more than others. But the thing to do is vote. I’ll retain dual citizenship and continue to vote in the U.S., just as I always have.

So why?

There are practical reasons, of course. I like living in Britain. Last spring, my family and I took a four-day weekend to the Loire Valley in France. You can’t do that from the U.S.

And taking British citizenship guarantees that, if I accept a journalistic assignment out of the country for a couple of years, I’ll retain the right to come back here.

Besides, my wife and step-daughter are from Moldova, in Eastern Europe. By becoming a British citizen, I’ll make it possible for them to do the same in the near future. Then we’ll be able to travel visa-free to huge swaths of the world. They can’t do that now on their passports; recreational travel can be extremely difficult.

All those things are true. But citizenship is a big thing. The thought of it sent me scurrying to read some of Winston Churchill’s histories, big books I’d carried around for years without reading. There’s more to it, really, it than just the practical.

Part of it is that the analogy of moving from one state to another, while not exact, is not that far-fetched in today’s world. There are a number of international marriages among the small team of editors in my office – a Brit married to an American of Venezuelan heritage, an American married to a Spaniard, me, and others. These unions occasion little surprise, just as few would raise an eyebrow at a marriage between people from Massachusetts and Minnesota.

Are we exceptions, because we are journalists who have traveled a lot? Perhaps. But in London, where I work, more than 300 languages are spoken every day.

In the United States, there is talk of building a wall.

And this, I think, is at root why I choose now to become a British citizen: I have trouble recognizing the world as seen through American eyes.

If I go to the home pages of the BBC or British newspapers, I usually see news of the whole world. There is coverage of Britain, of course, and of the U.S. – an important country, to be sure – but detailed, ongoing, fascinating and important coverage of the rest of the world, as well.

But if I go to the web sites of CNN or many major metropolitan American newspapers, their default home pages, most days, are likely to focus primarily – sometimes exclusively – on American news. You can find international news, but less than I wish, and you have to root around for it.

I realize that on occasion focus groups tell editors they don't want to hear all that much about the rest of the world. And that in turn forces difficult business decisions to be made.

But that’s a shame, because that ignorance is going to come up and bite people at some point. And it's too bad, also, because exciting things are going on that some Americans don't know about.

We are witnessing, in this era of globalization, one of the stimulating movements and mixing of people in history. A Bulgarian just cut my hair. One’s dentist in Britain is likely to be Polish. My step-daughter’s piano teacher is South African. Her best friend in school is from Hong Kong.

And it’s not just London. My wife and I live in the countryside. A woman who answered our questions at a local school today was from Latvia. The guy who leads yoga classes at the gym in our village is from Zimbabwe.

It’s interesting and educational and, yes, in some ways dangerous – no one, after all that has happened, can deny the challenges – and exhilarating and moving.

But the point is that, in the end, it's unstoppable, no matter now many walls are built or fingers are put in the dyke. It’s the future.

And I just want to participate.

CD Review - Zoot Money's Big Roll Band

2007-10-22T00:20:00.000-07:00

Full Circle
R&C Music

By M.D. Spenser

Full Circle is in some ways a fun CD but I can’t recommend you go out and buy it.

It incorporates many weaknesses common to live albums. The songs, clocking in at five, six and even seven minutes, are overlong. There’s the requisite segment where each player is introduced by name and does a solo. There’s some jamming that was cool live but boring on CD.

Zoot was in his early 60s when this was recorded; his voice shows the miles, particularly on ballads. And this is not a blues CD, though there is a bit of blues, which uses Zoot’s voice to better effect.

OK, having said all that . . . to the good parts.

Zoot – original name, George – is a talented guy. He was around at the beginning of British R&B, having formed the first version of the Big Roll Band in 1961. One of the original members was Andy Summers – later, of course, of The Police. Over the years, Zoot made a living acting, performing, writing songs. Now he’s formed a new version of the Big Roll Band – hence the album title, Full Circle.

The musicianship is stellar – swinging sax, great guitar, Zoot’s exciting keyboards. Though his regular voice is ragged, Zoot’s falsetto remains intact.

The songs are a grab bag of generic rock from various eras, some sounding like early Doug Sahm. Chestnuts like Robert Parker’s ‘Barefootin‘’ and Rufus Thomas’ ‘Walking The Dog’, are done as a medley. Makes you want to get up and dance.

Which brings me back to where I started. Zoot’s web site is http://zootmoney.org/. His gigs are listed. Go see him. You might buy the CD as a memento. He’ll probably sign it for you.

But the CD on its own? Naah. Not worth it.

CD review - Percy Mayfield

2007-10-21T02:39:00.000-07:00

The Voice Within: The Specialty Singles 1950-55
Rev-Ola

By M.D. Spenser

A song as fine as ‘Please Send Me Someone To Love’ almost defies description.

You could talk about the vulnerability. ‘If it’s not asking too much . . .’ the singer pleads gently. You could talk about the melody, or the wistfulness.

Or you could realize that it’s been recorded by as many as 200 artists – big names, too, from Count Basie to Fiona Apple, from T-Bone Walker to Odetta, from Dinah Washington to B.B. King, from Ruth Brown to Luther Allison to Maria Muldaur to Peggy Lee to Irma Thomas to Paul Butterfield to Etta James to … you get the idea. That must be a song with a lot going for it.

And here it is, track one, performed by the man himself, with his inimitably sweet vocals and immaculate timing.

The album has 29 cuts from the same era, most nearly as good, as sweet, as plaintive as the first. Mayfield was a giant.

These songs are from his heyday, when he recorded for the Specialty label, before going on to become Ray Charles’ chief songwriter (‘Hit The Road, Jack’). Stylistically, they are of a piece. An upright bass keeps time; a tinkling piano adds colour, two saxes act as the rhythm section. All tracks have one guitar credited but on most, dang, it’s hard to hear.

And above all, Mayfield’s intimate vocals are well up in the mix.

Mayfield belongs in any collection, and these are the songs you need.

One quibble: There is too much hiss on some of the tracks. These were big hits. The originals were recorded with more fidelity than this. After 50 years, the songs are doubtless in the public domain. Too bad Rev-Ola couldn’t – so it seems – get its hands on the masters. These songs deserve better.