Music
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An interesting evening with PBS
I Tivo’d Speaking Freely on a whim and was amused to see that Charlie Daniels was the guest. I actually learned quite a bit.
- He’s a very good fingerpicker, I thought he only played fiddle
- He was on Nashville Skyline I thought that Norman Blake did all of the guitar work on that.
- He is a very articulate and charming guy, which is not the impression I had of him before. Although after 30 years as an entertainer I shouldn’t be surprised he knows how to work a room.
Then it was on to Unfiltered with Tucker Carlson, which is rapidly becoming my favorite of the talking head shows. At first I was surprised when by the quality, since Crossfire was terrible. It opens with a monologue, then on to 2 rounds of interviews with experts of some kind. The absense of politicians reciting canned responses is quite rereshing.
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I’m blown away
I searched for Gillian Welch on Google, and discovered CMT bluegrass radio. CMT generally features the dregs of soccer mom country music and is generally best ignored. However, I now see they have a bluegrass station and I’m utterly blown away. It’s absolutely superb, both in audio quality and in selection.
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Just got back from Blind Willies
Where I saw the lovely and talented combination of Bill Sheffield, Beth Casner, and Roger WhateverHisLastNameIs (featuring Ralph Lutrelle on Dobro) for a lovely evening of country blues. For some reason this cell photo turned out very grainy.
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In place of a longer thought
Songs for John Doe was an anti-war record put out in the early 40’s by dutiful Soviet apparachiks the Almanac Singers (Pete Seeger, Woodie Guthrie and the rest). For a brief period Stalin and Hitler were allies (and invaded Poland together, a little known fact). This record was their take on the matter, taking the position that America should not go to war for US Steel and JP Morgan, which was of course the only possible reason it would. They changed their tune the moment Operation Barbarossa began.
I have quite a few thoughts about this topic, but in general it would seem that the human condition is indeed timeless. I’ve got a quite a few thoughts on the matter that I’ll get into words over the next week or so.
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Dreamcatcher Guitar Workshop
The Lawrence Juber workshop at Dreamcatcher was interesting. There’s no denying that he’s an incredibly talented and innovative player, as well as a master of different tunings. He seemed to be playing a bit too much for the guitar nerd (which is his market) and it wound up being something of an acoustic Satriani, which is good, but not to my taste.