I heard Michael Penn’s No Myth in the supermarket (!) the other day, and I can’t get it out of my head. Maybe it’ll help if I put it in yours…
I’ve always loved the song, and remembered the MTV video as being a good one. Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t have it, but they do have a pretty good version from MTV Unplugged.
No Myth was on Penn’s debut album, March, released in 1989. Since then he’s done a record every five years or so, a schedule not calculated to produce commercial success. There are rumblings that another one is due for release next year, and the likely presence of Aimee Mann (now married to Penn) might broaden its audience a bit. Let’s hope so.
In the meantime, here’s Michael Penn (from around 1989) with No Myth. Please enjoy!
It’s official – the Chicago Cubs will not win the World Series this year. This isn’t really big news, as they’ve been not winning the World Series for 101 years in a row, an unmatched record of futility. The last time they were champions, Theodore Roosevelt was President and the big hit songs were Shine on Harvest Moon and All She Gets From the Iceman is Ice (really). It’s not easy to be that bad for that long, but the Cubs have pulled it off.
Despite (or perhaps because of?) this long victory famine, the Cubs have a fan base as large and loyal as any in the game, and such a group has to include at least one great songwriter. The Cubs’ own songwriter was the late, great Steve Goodman, who died of leukemia in 1984 at the absurdly young age of 36. Steve’s best-known song is City of New Orleans (Arlo Guthrie’s version is the definitive one) but A Dying Cubs’ Fan Last Request just might outlast it. Steve’s illness had very little effect on his sense of humor (he nicknamed himself “Cool Hand Leuk”) and Last Request manages to be very funny and very sad at the same time.
Steve died over 25 years ago, but, unfortunately for those Cub fans who have survived him, Last Request remains as timely now as it was then. He never (for obvious reasons) sang it inside Wrigley Field, but here he gets pretty close, singing on one of the Waveland Avenue rooftops across from the park. Please enjoy, and, if you’re a Cubs fan, wait till next year.
Mary Travers has died at the age of 72. Not much to say except “Thank you, Mary!”
Here are Peter, Paul and Mary at Newport with a rousing If I Had a Hammer. That old hammer and that old bell and that old song still have something to say to us, so listen and remember and say your own goodbye to a great performer who touched us all.
I know it’s short notice, but I only found out about it yesterday myself. Greg Klyma and Anthony DaCosta will be there too, and the show starts at 8 tonight (Friday September 11) at the Unity of God Church near Davis Square in Somerville, Mass. Directions to the church are here, full details here. Tell them Harry sent you.
For those of you who don’t know Jonathan Byrd, he’s tough to pin down in a few sentences. His first band was a heavy rock outfit he described as “Bad Brains meets King Crimson,” but he’s covered a lot of ground since then, through old-time and folk and country and Americana. The new CD, titled The Law and The Lonesome, comes out on the other side of genre – Byrd has found his voice with this one, and all he needs now is to find an audience as big as his talent.
Byrd himself wrote the perfect blurb for The Law and the Lonesome: “the ghost of Townes Van Zandt meets Hank Williams on the high plains.” I’ll be damned if I’ll try to top that. You’ll just have to listen.
Here’s a video of Wild Ponies, direct from Byrd’s YouTube channel, where you’ll find a bunch more. There’s a different version of this available as a free download on Byrd’s website, too along with more free music, a tour schedule, and much more. Please enjoy.
To get you all set up to listen to President Obama’s health care speech tonight, here’s a song that gives us a (probably incomplete) narrative of the singer’s visit to his family doctor. His symptoms (“feelin’ so bad”) are vague, but I have a hunch that the doctor’s prescription is going to clear things up just fine.
The song is Good Lovin’, the band is Long Island’s own Young Rascals – Felix Cavalieri taking the lead vocal. I used to see them play at the Action House in Island Park and they would tear the place up every time. No lip-synching here, this is live. Enjoy the music and stay healthy!
It’s a tough time to be a worker in the good old USA. Unemployment is high, working conditions are bad (if you don’t believe it, check this out), and there’s not much prospect of things getting better real soon.
“Too big to fail” means you get all you need and then some, “just struggling to get by” means you’re on your own. That’s the way it is and how it’s always been, I guess.
The soundtrack for today’s video is Merle Travis singing his classic Dark as the Dungeon, from the equally classic Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Some of the pictures you’ll see were taken long ago, but the way miners work hasn’t changed all that much over the years.
Here’s to better times for all workers everywhere, whether they’ve got a job to go to today or not. Enjoy the holiday.
So. We were rewinding a tape and watching what was happening on WGBH when the image of a grey-haired man in a black suit and fedora holding a mic appeared. Although I hadn’t seen him in many many years I knew immediately it was none other than the inimitable Leonard Cohen! Can’t remember the song but I was transfixed and listened till the end of the concert without moving! It was a presentation by WGBH of his concert in London.
The soundtrack of my life has been provided by the irascible Van Morrison; there was a Van Morrison song for every occasion, every mood, every feeling. My experience with Leonard Cohen’s work was (unfortunately) limited to Suzanne, Bird On a Wire, etc., the popular songs covered by other artists. Thank you Judy Collins, Joe Cocker, and Johnny Cash!
I lost track of Leonard but checked into his life occasionally, learning about his severe depression, his stay in a Zen monastery and his loss of a significant amount of money. It was not until this concert that I realized what I’d missed. Leonard was dressed in a suit, as were his band members and three female back-up singers, all of whom were at least half his age.
He moved sensuously through his songs; at times with an impish grin, at times with a burning intensity, taking us to a place he knew quite well. His phrasing and expression of each lyric were impeccable. So Long Marianne was way different at 73 than at 20 something. It was mind-blowing. In a quiet voice he repeatedly thanked the audience, stated his pleasure at being able to play for them and introduced his back-up band and singers several times, making sure we knew that it wasn’t all about HIM.
Of course I immediately went out and bought the CD Leonard Cohen Live in London. The music was again, transfixing and the banter between songs humourously revealing. (I’ve taken Wellbutrin, Effexor, Paxil, Ritalin….) He could laugh at himself while presenting his message quite seriously. He is, at 73, so much more than I think he thought he could be, and perhaps more than WE thought he could be. Hallelujah!
The video of Closing Time is from a 1993 appearance on the CBC’s Friday Night show. Please enjoy!
The Everlys’ superb 1968 album, Roots, begins with the voice of their dad, Ike Everly, introducing the boys (Don was 15, Phil 13) at the start of the family’s radio show. Don first had his own spot on the show at age 8, and they started singing together not long after that. By 1952, when the show we hear on Roots was broadcast, they were old pros, and by 1957 they were teen idols. Their run at the top of the pop charts lasted until about 1962, when the brothers joined the Marines, and never really resumed, although they made some good music even into the ’80s.
The Everlys were the culmination of a long tradition of close harmony country acts, many of them brothers: the Delmores, Monroes, Louvins, Bolicks. The Everlys’ translation of that tradition into rock and roll terms made their influence on the new music immensely important. The Beatles owed them a lot, the Hollies owed them everything but their name.
I saw the Everly Brothers perform only once, in 1970, at the Wollman Skating Rink in New York’s Central Park (the opening act was John Denver!). It wasn’t one of their better nights, as onstage bickering cut their set short. But as beautifully as their voices meshed, I’m sure that even their arguments would have eventually fallen into that unique harmony of theirs; no sounds they made together could have stayed harsh very long.
The video is a truly lovely performance of two of their greatest hits, Cathy’s Clown and All I Have to Do Is Dream, from a 1961 episode of British singer Alma Cogan’s TV show. Please enjoy!
What they do at “Exclusive First Listen” is post an about-to-be-released CD, in its entirety, for your streaming (but not downloading) enjoyment. The music goes away as soon as the CD is available for purchase.
Playing through my Macbook’s speakers as I write is this week’s exclusive feature, Joe Henry’s new one, Blood From Stars. One of these days I’m going to do the Joe Henry post I’ve been thinking about for a long long time, but today is not that day, so for now, just hop on over to NPR.org and listen. Next week they’ll be streaming a 1967 live set from Tim Buckley (I want to hear that now!) and the week after that the 50th Anniversary package from the New Lost City Ramblers.
If you want to see Joe Henry as well as hear him, here’s a video of him singing Time is a Lion from his 2007 CD, Civilians. Please enjoy.
Mike Seeger has died at the age of 75. He was a man whose contributions to folk music, and through that music to the world at large, are impossible to measure. His impact as a human being was no less. The New York Times obituary is here.
I can’t imagine what my own folk music education would have been like without the work Mike Seeger did. The New Lost City Ramblers introduced me to the vast and unendingly beautiful world of old time music, and his work as a folklorist introduced me to Dock Boggs among many others.
Here’s a video of Mike Seeger performing Walking Boss at the Smithsonian Folkways studio in 2007. Mike, we’ll miss you.
Please enjoy the music and take a moment today to remember this great man.
