Art is the music we make from the bewildered cry of being alive. ~Maria Popova
15 Jun 2025 Leave a comment
in Video of the Week Tags: jeff beck, stevie wonder, superstition
14 Jun 2025 Leave a comment
in Recommended Albums Tags: amazing blondel, evensong
Amazing Blondel: Evensong (1970)
So much distinctive pop, rock and folk music has originated on that little island across the pond. Where would we be without the Brits and their flair for the idiosyncratic musical niche?
John Gladwin, Terence Wincott and Edward Baird performed what they themselves called “pseudo-Elizabethan/Classical acoustic music sung with British accents”.
And they weren’t jesting.
To wit: they dressed as bards and played medieval-style ballads and madrigals on recorder, harpsichord, cittern, crumhorn, harmonium, and a type of lute called a theorboe.
There being a dearth of acoustic Elizabethan-style bands to tour with, they opened shows for rockers like Procol Harum, Genesis, Steeleye Span and Free. So as you listen the accompanying anachronistic revelries, try to imagine a concert wherein their music was followed by “All Right Now” for example.
Apparently despite the contrast in styles their sound presented as compared with such rock acts, Blondel were well-received by audiences who hadn’t come specifically to see them, their stage banter and bawdy humor winning over audiences and making new fans.
The trio were known to take upwards of 40 instruments onstage–which could require about 5 hours’ worth of tuning beforehand.
Eventually there arose conflict between the band’s desire for studio and writing time and their manager’s insistence on a demanding touring schedule. This led to primary songwriter Gladwin leaving the band in 1973.
Amazing Blondel carried on subsequently as a duo, shortening their name to Blondel, and producing a brand of folk pop that leaned decidedly less medieval and more towards a mainstream sound.
But while Gladwin was the dominant writing voice, the band produced a fairly unique brand of archaic British folk, which sounds even more distinctive half a century removed from the English folk revival that spawned it.
These songs are simple, not challenging. They’re gentle, not bombastic. They’re humble, not ambitious.
Amazing Blondel’s songs don’t rock. They charm and enchant. If rock music wants to knock you down and carry you off, Blondel would rather court you with a medieval suitor’s chivalry.
Listen to: “Pavan“
Listen to: “St. Crispin’s Day”
Listen to: “Spring Season“
Listen to: “Willowood”
Listen to: “Evensong“
Listen to: “Under the Greenwood Tree”
11 Jun 2025 Leave a comment
in Songs You May Have Missed Tags: golden smog, until you came along
Golden Smog: “Until You Came Along” (1998)
From the second full-length outing by the side project supergroup comprised of members of the Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, Big Star and Wilco among others.
The band formed in the Minneapolis area playing mostly covers in local clubs. In its infancy the lineups, setlists and even band name were fluid.
They played mostly Eagles covers as the “Take it To the Limit Band”. They played a Rolling Stones-themed show under the band name “Her Satanic Majesty’s Paycheck”.
But by the time of their first full-length LP in 1995 (following the covers EP On Golden Smog in ’92) they were recording mostly originals, with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Gary Louris of the Jayhawks often contributing the best material.
Golden Smog continued to record in between members’ other projects, hanging around long enough to warrant a Best Of, Stay Golden Smog, in 2008.
The standout track “Until You Came Along” sounds like something straight off a Jayhawks album.
And that’s a good thing.
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2017/12/17/songs-you-may-have-missed-624/
11 Jun 2025 Leave a comment
in General Posts Tags: matthew sweet
(via msn) by David Browne
When one of his eyes doesn’t feel as if it’s wobbling up and down, or he doesn’t feel so depleted that he has to nap, Matthew Sweet still has moments of hope. Until last fall, one of the downstairs rooms in his Omaha, Nebraska, home was his music room, filled with guitars, a recording console, and assorted gear. But since he can no longer climb stairs for the foreseeable future, he now spends a good deal of his time in that room on a newly installed king-sized bed. What remains of his musical setup is still visible, reminders of a life and career on pause.
I guess I have a feeling that I will make music with all of it,” Sweet says, in his first interview eight months after he was rushed to a hospital. “In that way, it’s positive. It’s a vision of the time when I’ll be able to use everything. I don’t feel like it’s that far away. I don’t feel like it will be an impossible thing for me to write songs. Then again, I don’t really feel a burning desire to figure that out, because there’s just so much stuff making it difficult right now.”
For Sweet, 2024 was shaping up to be a reset. After several years off the road after the pandemic, the man who almost single-handedly kept power-pop alive had put together a new band and played shows in the spring. He was in the early stages of prepping his first album since 2021. In the fall, he started another round of gigs, this time opening for Hanson, whom he’s known and worked with for more than 20 years, and doing his own separate shows. “I really felt very positive about it,” he says. “I was doing two-hour-long acoustic shows playing songs from all during my career.”
Then, last Oct. 12, Sweet and his crew – his small acoustic band, his road manager – arrived at their hotel in Toronto. His tour with Hanson was into its second week, and Sweet had just driven up from the previous stop in Baltimore. As they were checking in, the singer, who had turned 60 a week before, felt a sensation he’d never experienced before. “The first thing I felt was really cool, like cold sweat,” he says. “And I remember saying to one of my band members, ‘Feel my arm. It’s freezing cold.’ Something wasn’t right.”
Slumping into a chair behind the front desk, Sweet began hearing what he calls “this kind of tinnitus, more like white noise, and that became really, really, really loud, in both my ears. And that’s the last thing I remember until I was in an ambulance and I heard a guy say, ‘Sir, you’ve had a stroke.'”
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2025/03/17/songs-you-may-have-missed-768/
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2013/10/11/songs-you-may-have-missed-488/
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2013/06/20/songs-you-may-have-missed-430/
Every Moment Has A Song 