"There's a time in life for Hoagy Carmichael. There's a time in life for Claude Debussy. There's a time in life for Jerry Lee Lewis. There's a time in life for Destiny's Child. All these things have their moment." ~Elvis Costello
Bruce U. Utah Phillips combined the folk balladry of Woody Guthrie, the pro-union activism of Pete Seeger and the storytelling gift of Mark Twain. His songs about railroads and hobos were sparsely adorned but always entertaining.
I was exposed to little folk music as a youngster, unless you count my dad’s record collection, which offered the safe, sanitized version: The New Christy Minstrels (who were pointedly lampooned as the “New Main Street Singers” in A Mighty Wind) and the Serendipity Singers (ditto). Not that I have a problem with The New Christy Minstrels, who happen to have recorded my favorite Christmas album of all time.
But true folk music made it into my life in a limited way, so what I heard was bound to carry a lot of weight in my assessment of the genre. I’m grateful to have been exposed, by my oldest brother, to Utah Phillips and to “Moose Turd Pie” in particular. It helped broaden my world a little, even if I had few (or no) friends at the time who cared to have their horizons similarly broadened.
I’d like to think that whatever your musical persuasions you’ll appreciate “Moose Turd Pie.” Give it a taste.
It was one of those 70’s things: a box of cereal with an actual record on the back that you could cut out and play on a record player.
The Archies, the Jackson Five, The Monkees and Bobby Sherman seemed to be the artists whose music most often found its way onto a box of Alpha Bits or Super Sugar Crisp. Which contained more sugar, the music or the cereal?
The Famous Beatles Songwriter and Musician Speaks to Sir David Frost About His Life in the Spotlight
(Source: Aljazeera)
Paul McCartney, one of the most famous musicians of all time, rose to prominence 50 years ago as part of the British pop sensation The Beatles.
From humble, working-class beginnings, McCartney, 70, is now one of the richest men in the world. He has even topped the bill at the White House, playing for Barack Obama, the US president.
He sits down with Sir David for a full hour to tell his own story of the band, and its break up; to discuss some of the highs – and a few lows – of his life; and to provide a glimpse into his world behind the headlines.
The Beatles – John, Paul, George and Ringo – helped to define the 1960s, transforming modern music. They played sell out concerts all over the world, in front of hysterical fans. At the height of “Beatle Mania”, fans screamed so loud that the band said they could not hear their own music.
With more than 20 number one hits through the 1960s, they were seemingly unstoppable.
But the glory days did not last and the group split in 1970. However, the songs written by McCartney and the late John Lennon continue to live on through the generations.
“John and I wrote together something like 300 songs, just short of 300. We would meet up, sit down to write and three hours later we would have a song. And never, never did we have a dry session, we always wrote a song …. It was a great thing. Looking back on it I really feel blessed to be the guy who wrote with John. Because he was pretty hot stuff. And writing with me, I was pretty hot stuff too, so the two of us gelled,” McCartney says.
Recalling the break-up of The Beatles, McCartney says: “I think it was time for John certainly to leave. It was a bit of a shock to all of us, he just announced ‘oh I am leaving the group’. We all said ‘are you sure about this?’ We tried to keep it together but he was definitely going to leave, so that was basically what did it.
“But I think, in a way, then we realised that we had come full circle, we had kind of done everything we wanted to do … So in actual fact it wasn’t that bad a thing.”
On Yoko Ono, Lennon’s then-wife who is often blamed for the break-up of The Beatles, McCartney says: “She certainly didn’t break the group up.”
“The group was breaking up and I think she attracted John so much to another way of life that he then went on to, very successfully, add a sort of second part to his career, writing things like ‘Imagine’ and ‘Give Peace a Chance’. I don’t think he would have done that without Yoko.”
On his own enduring career in music, McCartney says: “I saw something the other day where I was quoted as saying ‘It will be pretty sad to be prancing around on a stage at 40’.
“But no, I am still prancing,” he laughs. “And enjoying it.”
German bandleader and composer Max Raabe champions the German dance music of the 1920’s and 30’s with his Palast Orchester, which has become a worldwide touring attraction. His original music also appears regularly in German films.
But he’s arguably at his most cheeky and entertaining when he’s covering English language pop stars like Britney Spears, Salt-n-Pepa and Tom Jones. In a world where Grammy voters had a clue, Max’s version of “Let’s Talk About Sex” would have been honored for its genius clash of song and style. Check out a few highlights:
I offer this into evidence in the case of Bart Davenport vs every musical style imaginable. Bart was last heard perfectly channelling Crosby, Stills & Nash in the previous post. Here (as mentioned there) he fronts a trio that also includes drum programmer Tony Sevener and keyboardist/arranger RV Salters and trades the breezy 70’s folk rock sound for something akin to the retrosoul of Gnarls Barkley.
Exhibit B is this (low quality–sorry) video wherein Bart gets in touch with his inner Mick Jagger. This guy is about as multifaceted as anyone I can think of.
