One from the Muses

Muses come in great forms and sizes. This music I first heard (for the first time ever) about three months ago and believed upon the first listen that I have had stumbled across a missing chapter of something akin to a dug up chapter of the Dead Sea Scrolls. My world of funk, disco, jazz and pop music was smashed to pieces. Move over Sly, I thought, this woman was coming in for the kill while recording; she had something to say and she was to making sure everyone heard her.
Then, magically, coincidental, oddly, disturbingly, lustfully, whimsically, I was browsing a book store and came across a bio by Miles Davis' son - Gregory. I flip it open and the first words I see is this singer/song writer, genius, enchantress' name - oh did I forget musician. She was what? - married to him, on the cover of File de Kilimanjaro, too - who is she? WOW! Did he really leave her because she was having an affair with Jimi..or did she leave him? Double Wow. So there are there stories behind the stories? This is not Inception everything is out for you to hear. The growl behind the voice, the shuffle of her vibrato. I never looked her up on the Internet when I first listened to her during the late months of Spring. I knew, eventually, fate would guide me to her -

I use to think Mia Farrow -, Puma- from Black Uhuru - and the woman who introduced Fela to American Political Soul music were the greatest of goddesses of the 20th century music (Mia may still win after all who else married Sinatra went to India with the Beatles and married Andre Previn, Woody who?)..who was with Stravinski?

But then I heard Betty.......and nothing was as it was before.....Betty Davis.......sit back and growl....enjoy your ice tea...your beer and chill....



It's been a quiet summer here so I thought I could bring some life back to this wonderful site....

People All Over The World Are Fighting In The War

Craving some Temptations, without the instruments?


Of course you are.


http://www.metafilter.com/92411/like-angels-on-high

Tho Your Dreams Be Tossed And Blown

More Youtube wonderfulness.

Four or Five Times

Last night's Youtube binge, re-created here for your pleasure.




















Also (not embedd-able, but highly recommended):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIVJw8yX6GY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_VRFwz3xTI

She Says She's Found A Way to Make Her Own Light

With teeth like these who needs enemies?

From the land of Turkmenistan I proudly introduce you to Ashkhabad. Here it is the Central Asian album of the decade with it's wonderful mixture of ancient central Asian funk and western string theory weaving around ideas of Asian theater music. Egypt sleeps with Bollywood having an affair with the Kronos Quartet. It's wonderful, it's bold and it's for you. It's what you need tonight.

I lost the notes, written by Peter Gabriel, years ago but the story of the singer, arranger, musician Ashkhabad is one that is hard to forget. A musician who was put off first by the communists and then by the new Muslim authority he went a bit mad- or was said by the authorities to have gone crazy - and spent some time in some kind of gulag sanatorium. Still, even after he was forbidden to play and compose music, he continued to play at weddings, getting any gig he could...I may have turned a one sentence blurb about his troubled and neglected past into something of a myth but I don't think I am far from the truth.
This album was bought in the days when I knew that anything the Real World offered would blow my mind. And this one did. I have taken it everywhere with me. Every time I listen to this album I hear something new; a rhythm blowing me away, a drum I didn't know existed, a note bending with the throat I didn't know could be poosible. I just love this music! It doesn't carry memories of my past but inspires my own ear to listen more intently as I let go and close off the world. This makes me want to dance like a dervish. The drumming, singing and strings will wrap you up and keep you warm though out the night.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/2gemmnc2kyj/CoL.rar

Enjoy the music: City of Light

Sorciere

Freaky folk from the old school: woodsy and darkly mystical.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/khzdjnwdmya/Veronique Chalot- J'ai Vu Le Loup.zip

More about her here: 

http://www.myspace.com/veroniquechalot

Simple Mathematics

http://mosdub.com/

It just doesn't get much hotter than this. Stream from the above link, and be happy.

SXSW 2010: Free Energy

Also, I saw Free Energy. A few times. They're pretty good.



Their new record is out today. AMG review here.

they're coming to take me

http://www.metafilter.com/91499/Now-is-Strange

Freedom's Just Another Word

New Old songs, collected as a new Kris Kristofferson album, streaming. Nonstop wonderfulness.

He crashed a helicopter into Johnny Cash's yard in order to bring you 'Sunday Morning Coming Down'. Dude deserves to be famouser than he is.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126169194&sc=nl&cc=mn-20100427

More Beetles

Still working on my guitar album. Here are some more of those recordings. Sadly, none of them seem like keepers: there are some sour moments, and I was having a mysterious computer glitch of some sort that inserts a crackle here and a pop there. Still, you may enjoy hearing them.
(The first link is a new take on one posted previously.)

http://radunicorn.com/erogray/guitar/April2010/EroGray_4-25-10_EyedElator.mp3
http://radunicorn.com/erogray/guitar/April2010/EroGray_4-25-10_BeautifulMapleBorer.mp3
http://radunicorn.com/erogray/guitar/April2010/EroGray_4-25-10_GrantsRhinoceros.mp3
http://radunicorn.com/erogray/guitar/April2010/EroGray_4-25-10_GreenWoodBorer.mp3

The Lovers Have Told Us

A nice music video from Rafter, an old pal and former boss who's made a bazillion excellent recordings. I saw him do an excellent, if underattended, show last night. He's playing again tonight at Southpaw if any Brooklyn folks are reading this.

Hell, here's another one. Enjoy:

I Just Can't Shoot That Good

This album was an early, transformative, blues experience for me: a cassette (made by the father of a high-school friend specifically as part of a wildly successful program to inculcate my young ears with THE BLUES and JAZZ) that I listened to over and over and over and over and over and over and over. I've heard a lot of Hopkins since, and he pretty much falls into the category of a lot of blues and jazz folks: every recording is excellent, so why pick a favorite? But this album seems pretty perfect in every way to me.

I remember really 'hearing' it for the first time, after many listens, one night while working alone at a tiny ice cream shop in a tourist trap in San Diego. I had the boom-box turned up, no customers were anywhere near, and I was bored, and then cleaning, and then mopping, and then bored again, and meanwhile this was playing. The sound of Lightnin's voice suddenly stopped sounding strange or foreign or 'black' or historical or like 'blues' or even like a recording of someone I'd never met and who'd been dead a long time, and suddenly sounded like THE VOICE, present now and living and true, with all of the sly humour and world-weariness and gentle wisdom and frailty and subtle anger and love, that all of us would sing with if we only knew how to sing with our pure inner selves; it sounded like the sound of my soul and yours. I decided that this was the true meaning of 'soul' music: not just a genre, but any music that really contained so much humanity that it could sweep your soul up into it and carry you along.  

I know now that this effect is a type of magic that can come from nearly any good music (I could make a long list of things that have made me feel this way, but many of them are already posted to this blog...), but that night I was young enough and the music was awesome enough that it really changed my life.

Give this one a few listens. And any time you see a Lightnin' Hopkins record, pick it up.

Here's a randomly selected video: there are other good ones out there but this will give you an idea of the magic.  

Lightnin' Hopkins - Come go home with me

http://www.mediafire.com/file/nozzxzmjmmh/Lightnin Hopkins- Texas Blues.zip