Giant Donut Discs ® – July 2012
11. 7. 2012 | Categories: Articles,Giant Donut Discs
[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.
Running On Empty - Jackson Browne
You know what it's like when you seek solace in music? This month this one hit home mainly on account of those miles rushing by under the wheels and exhaustion - and most important of all because Jackson Browne and his magnificent seven lift the spirits.
Let's hear it for David Lindley (guitar and lap steel), Russell Kunkel (drums), Leland Sklar (bass), Craig Doerge (keyboards), Danny Kortchmar [...]
[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 cold 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).
The son of Ronald Mellor, a British civil servant in the Foreign Office who went where the diplomacy of the day posted him, he was born John Graham Mellor in Ankara, Turkey on 21 August 1952. Strummer, as he later 'became', had a wider understanding of other cultures than most Brits of his, or indeed previous, generations. He expressed it gloriously, dressing it in a [...]
[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. It was the work of the white Texan folklorist, author and broadcaster Alan Lomax (1915-2002) and the Sussex-born folk singer Shirley Collins. Collins' America Over The Water (2004) and her Arts Council-supported multi-media talk of the same name home in on that 1959 field trip.
In her book she recalls [...]
[by Ken Hunt, London] No blurb, just straight into this month's music. This month summons Mahsa & Marjan Vahdat, Al Andaluz Project, Hedy West, The Ex, Scissor Sisters, George Mraz and Iva Bittová, Fairport Convention, Big Mama Thornton, Bill Monroe with Pete Rowan and Little Feat. As usual, loads of work-related currents. There's a greater element of noise than usual this month. That's down to other currents flowing around the fictitious island.
The Brown Girl - Hedy West
Hedy West was one of the most impressive musicians to emerge from the US folk scene in the early 1960s. For me, it is a marvel that so few people are aware of her massive contribution. The first album of her I heard was Ballads (Topic, 1967) and I bought a white-label test-pressing of the album at a folk record shop [...]
[by Ken Hunt, London] No blurb, just straight into this month's music. This month summons the shades of The Band, Julie London, John B. Spencer, Andy Irvine & Dónal Lunny's Mozaik, Khameesu Khan, Judy Collins, the Kronos Quartet, Emily Portman, Andy Irvine and the Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah) Band.
Tears of Rage - The Band
Dwelling on Levon Helm's death on 19 April 2012 threw me into the kind of reflective mood that rarely occurs to me at least. The music that he played had been part of my growing. Like you do, I played a number of recordings that he appeared on while re-reading slabs of his autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band, co-written with the esteemed Stephen Davis. In it Helm fulminates about the divisions that occurred, prompted by the Band's [...]
[by Ken Hunt, London] Bass player Chris Ethridge (top right in photograph), who died on 23 April 2012 in his birth town of Meridian, Mississippi was one of the sidemen whose curriculum vitae was lit with musical magic and yet overshadowed in some way by one of his early excursions into working as a musician, even though he played bass with Willie Nelson during in the 1970s and 1980s.
Born John Christopher Ethridge II on 10 February 1947, he first made an impression with the Flying Burrito Brothers on their remarkable debut LP, The Gilded Palace of Sin (1969) with his bass playing and song credits. This group also included Gram Parsons on guitar (top left in photograph) and lead vocals, Chris Hillman, one of the founding members of the Byrds, playing stringed instruments. The pedal steel [...]
[by Ken Hunt, London] More music for a balmy life on the fictional desert island. April's selections come courtesy of Christy Moore with Declan Sinnott, Madeleine Peyroux, Gangubai Hangal, Janis Joplin, Santana, The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock, Chumbawamba, Sheila Smith, the Grateful Dead and The Animals. Lots of Irish thoughts and thoughts about Ireland ripple through this month's selections.
Gortatagort - Christy Moore with Declan Sinnott
John Spillane wrote Gortatagort (The Farm) about the place in Bantry, Co. Cork where his mother came from. Christy More imparts a real sense of presence to this song, though it took me seeing him perform it in concert for the song's fuller magic to be uncorked.
The 6 April 2012 issue of The Irish Times carried Derek Scally's article 'Bucolic bliss [...]
[by Ken Hunt, London] Originally written on the eve of London's post-Valentine Peace March on 15 February 2003, this with little taken out or added.
Ace's catalogue is a growing and contracting - call it pulsating - reminder to reinforce why I decided to specialise and limit my listening and writing habits for sanity's sake.
6 It Was Just A Dream - Big Bill Broonzy with Albert Ammons
on Spirituals To Swing (169/71-2)
I was raised on jazz, swing jazz in particular, by my saxophone-tooting/toting father. Semi-pro at 14, he actively fought the Musicians' Union last-ditch fuckwit prohibition of semi-pro musicians. I get cross when music journalists pick big-box sets as their best-ofs - and I've done it - as if forgetting that most punters only get to put them on Christmas, Diwali or [...]
[by Ken Hunt, London] Sometimes life gets in the way of unpaid writing and technical (internetmabob) matters in the way of uploading. Hence skipping a month. Not that February 2012 was so bad a month. More like the hours got rationed and paying work intruded. This month's selections are from the UK-based band Durga Rising, the Czech vocalist-violinist Iva Bittová and Wilmar de Visser (bassist with the Nederlands Blazers Ensemble), the Carolina Chocolate Drops' Rhiannon Giddens, Wizz Jones, El Hachemi Guerouabi, Shamim Ahmed Khan, Judy Collins, Phoebe Smith, Celia Hughes, Belinda O'Hooley and Heidi Tidow. Slaap zacht.
Go Down Easy - Durga Rising
Kuljit Bhamra (percussion), Russell Churney (piano) and Barb Jungr (vocals, harmonium, mandolin) deliver this album. Smoochy, sultry, saucy and [...]
