Giant Donut Discs ® – Yule 2012
15. 12. 2012 | Categories: Articles,Giant Donut Discs
[by Ken Hunt, London] When you get past a certain age (or succession of them) – usually they are pretty arbitrary but they come with a zero – you will be spoiled for musical nostalgia ideas. The one has a lot to do with thinking about rhymes, rhythms, mythologies and conversations. The music is from Lal Waterson, Peter Bellamy, Commander Cody & The LPA, Scarlett O’, Folk & Rackare. The Pogues, Muzsikás, Jiří Kleňha, Tom Waits and The Watersons. Last updated 28 September 2013.
[by Ken Hunt, London] The glories of work-related listening and escaping from the same know no bounds. This month’s special deliveries come from Abdulkarim Raas & Kuljit Bhamra, Joan Armatrading, The Fraser Sisters, Katy Carr, Sam Lee, Bert Jansch, Roy Bailey, Sandy Denny, The Owl Service and Miya Masaoka & Joan Jeanrenaud.
[by Ken Hunt, London] Imagine an ideal world in which no two concerts by a principal song-delivering vocalist were ever the same. That would mean repertoire, in fact an extraordinary breadth of song repertoire and, naturally, the interaction between composed and spontaneous composition – not just jamming or busking it.
[by Ken Hunt, London], Miya Masaoka, The Chieftains, Getatchew Mekuria & The Ex & Friends, Harpo Marx, Gee En Tong, Barb Jungr, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Josef Režný, Serafina Steer and Kala Ramnath are the musicians who conjure and provide the fun this month, as ever much of it work-related or work avoidance-related.
[by Ken Hunt, London] Séamus Ennis, Yasmin Levy, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Peter Bellamy, David Crosby & Graham Nash, Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Everly Brothers, Marty Robbins, the Grateful Dead and Leonard Cohen populate the isle this month.
[by Ken Hunt, London] Nightingales serenade and sing us back home. In between come Hedy West, Joni Mitchell, Marianne Faithfull, Chavela Vargas, Radhika Mohan Maitra and Mike Seeger. This is, to some extent, a confluence of memories, dreams, reflections and applied coincidence inspired by Marianne Faithfull and her 2007 book (with David Dalton) entitled memories, dreams & reflections.
[by Ken Hunt, London] Woodrow Wilson ‘Woody’ Guthrie (1912-1967) was born the day before my father. He was born on 14 July 1912 and Leslie Hunt wasn’t, so to speak. Both of them were hugely influential figures in my musical, creative and political development. Here’s a celebration of Guthrie’s work, with a little help Cisco Houston, Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Madeleine Peyroux, Billy Bragg and Utah Phillips.
[by Ken Hunt, London] Another month with varying degrees of noise and loads of work-related choices. This month summons Jackson Browne, Mehdi Hassan, Jefferson Airplane, James ‘Iron Head’ Baker, The Radiators from Space, Neil Young, Sam Lee, Rokia Traoré, Country Joe & The Fish and back to Jackson Browne to do their bit to keep a freelance music writer sane.
[by Ken Hunt, London]Aged 50, Joe Strummer died of a suspected heart attack at home in Broomfield in Somerset on 22 December 2003. In the warm glow and slab reality of his death, he seemed to have changed people’s perceptions of ‘reality’ more than most ever do. He was never the Bob Dylan figure that some claimed him to be after his death, though. Mind you, he did get to guest on Dylan’s Down In The Groove (1988). Strummer and co-creator Mick Jones were the nearest thing to Dylan than Britain ever spawned, as it were, the other side of Lennon and McCartney. As partnerships go, theirs was a keeper.
[by Ken Hunt] Ahmet Ertegun will predictably be most remembered for the big acts and platinum hit-makers. He and Nesuhi Ertegun also pay-rolled a project of immense significance for the worlds of US vernacular music – folk, blues, gospel, work song and beyond. That project was Atlantic’s Southern Heritage Folk Series (1960), seven LPs, also released in Britain, culled from 80 hours of field recordings made sometimes under the most arduous, sometimes the most exhilarating of circumstances.
