Go download.

I found a lot of great music perusing the various Best of 2010 lists, so much so that 2010 listening is going to bleed way, way into 2011. I also (followed a link from somewhere lost in the tubes of internet time now, apologies) found the Freight Train Boogie podcast a weekly survey of what's new in Americana, roots and country (does that cover everything?) It's hosted by Bill Frater who keeps the commentary personable and informative and still gets in a good 10-15 songs each hour long show and it's a good mix of well known or established artists and a bunch of folk I've never heard of (it even skews a little to the independent since all the tracks are played with permission and they're the most likely group to respond to a request), many of whom have become Must Acquires.

I've been listening religiously the last few weeks, starting with the end of 2010 and first couple for 2011 and going back to download everything in the iTunes archives. This guy is going to cost me some serious money. There's a related blog with each week's new releases. So yeah, can't say enough about it and you should check it out.

Eight free tracks from Tom Waits' upcoming live album, Glitter and Doom Live. Just gotta give them your (an) email address.

I've been listening to the audiobook of Michael Conolley's The Scarecrow and the moral is all about how easy it is for freaky serial killers to track your every move via the Internet. Like, you can know exactly what I'm listening to when via my lastfm page which updates what I'm playing live. Have at it, stalkers! Incidentally, this is the first novel I've read where people actually use the Internet the way I do -- not that I stalk people and hide them in the car boot, but I mean, look any and all things up in Google Image Search as second nature. Anyway.

There were the heady days of 26-28 August where I listened to Nina Simone straight for two days. You can never have two much Nina, but this Philips box set is quite indispensable as the definitive collection of the Nina force, force of personality and force of musicianship. The peak of her vision realised (not that she had troughs) and a sublime listen from beginning to end.

More lately, I had a big raid on eMusic which I haven't done since the changes in July. But a few things showed up I particularly wanted and they started giving people 50 "loyalty" credits - more than a whiff of desperation about that move but I'll take 'em. I more or less get every new Afrobeat or Afrorock release that comes up, the latest is a really fabulous collection called The Legends of Benin. The label Analog Africa is always a solid bet. The first track "Dadje Von O Von Non" by Gnonnas Pedro & His Dadjes Band is pretty much the perfect (to me) family reunion between African and "western" funk. Here's Honoré Avolonto - Na Mi Do Gbé Hué Nu on YouTube. More such meetings are on Many Lessons: HipHop, Islam, West Africa from the "world" music specialists Piranha out of Germany (as so many of these labels are), I listen to a bit of hip hop but my tastes are quite narrow (so far) and lean towards the fusiony end of the spectrum and it's good if you like such things.

And then I got Town and Country by Humble Pie. Going through a 60s British blues/rock supergroup phase. Still chucking on Blind Faith a lot. Using this ripper music search engine an eMusic subscriber developed I discovered Humble Pie. You plug in an act and it spits back a heap of similar/related artists. It brings up a lot of artists I know which is good because you can see how well calibrated to the original name it is, but also heaps of new folk. It's optimised for eMusic (clicking on the photos takes you to their eMu page and greyed out photos means no albums on eMu) but it's great just to find people generally. Anyway, Humble Pie, apparently "hard rock" (70s performances on YT bear this out) although this is their acoustic blues-rock album. I don't really know anything about Peter Frampton and Steve Marriott, apart from their names (years of reading Mojo and Uncut cover to cover) but this is pretty good in a generic late 60s British rock blues type way but it's one of the generic sounds I like.

Natural Born Boogie:

El Barrio: The Bad Boogaloo Nu Yorican Sounds 1966-1970 brings the music of Spanish Harlem to you. Features La Lupe, the Queen of Latin Soul.

Also features the track Happy Soul With a Hook by Dave Cortez which I seem to have on about five different compilations by now. For Latin but with a much deeper level of pure funk, try Si Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba. Waxing Deep is/was a great Latin soul/funk podcast, the podcast is in hiatus but they've branched out into being a label. Si, Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba Volume 1 was a great collection of 60s and 70s tracks, and so I immediately bought Volume 2 and even bought a hard copy. Having the liner notes is fine, and it's nicely put together all round.

I've got the new Allen Touissaint record Across The Bright Mississippi on order so I went revisiting his oeuvre, which basically means ... take your pick of any New Orleans music from the 1960s on. Super Bad by Don Covay is according to Herr Doktor Guugle a collection of the soulmeister's 70s cuts and its quite an intriguing mixture of styles from rock (one song sounds like mid 60s Stones), country ballad touches to varying flavours of soul and funk a la New Orleans. Allen Toussaint - Saint Of New Orleans is a compilation with a couple of songs sung by Touissaint and a stack of others written and produced by his. This Lee Dorsey/Toussaint track isn't on there but it's just too good.

And finally, a version of "Sea of Heartbreak" from Rosanne Cash's forthcoming album featuring Bruce Springsteen got released on iTunes this week. Sea of Heartbreak is one of my favourite songs. Cash slows it right down, for a song about how sad, lonely and adrift the singer is, it's usually done in a very bouncy way. Bruce might be trying too hard to croon in the background, let Bruce be Bruce and not Ray Price but I like it more each time I hear it. The chorus is still one of the most singalongable in history.

Country music death beats fear not because I have the new Delbert McClinton, the new Guy Clark, the new Kris Kristofferson and some others coming up in the rotation!

Despite Sony Music Australia being on my Enemies List for wrecking eMusic, I've been trying out their download service bandit.fm. Only because they offer special promos each month that make it a good deal. Before I went to America they had a "buy your first album, get $20" deal so I exploited that with a couple of accounts.

Got some nice stuff, the Blind Faith record, some Ray Charles, a Flying Burrito Brothers set and cherry picked the new K'Naan (Somali-Canadian rapper) which is very good and a few other singles. In August they are having "buy an album and get $20 credit." So I bought Marianne Faithfull's Broken English for $10. With that, I got a Nine Simone box set which is thirty some dollars but the $20 made a nice discount.

Without these deals however and all other things being equal, I would stick to iTunes for the occasional purchases I normally make this way. The bandit.fm site is pretty and shiny but sometimes a pain to use. iTunes is not without its annoyances but at least the info is presented in a no frills style that makes scanning and picking easier. The artist pages at bandit.fm have too many giant graphics and too little easily accessiable information. You can click one extra time and get to a list of albums available, but that stuff should be right up front. There are also some technical issues. When you click on an album, a box pops up to listen to it and the rest of the screeen whites out until you close the box. Fine, except I sometimes get the whited out screen with no box and can't get out of it without shutting the tab and reopening the site entirely. The downloads are at 320kpb so audiophiles may applaud the quality but it also makes your average album a huge size in MBs. If you only have, say, a 1 or 2GB MP3 player who wants one album to take up 500MB. Don't need it, and would like a choice of formats.

So in short, the price is almost always the same as iTunes and there is no other reason to use it over iTunes - except for the special discounts each month, which is presumably why they offer them.

So, the eMusic issue. I didn't jump in and blog here about it for a few days because I wanted to be more measured in my response. It's entirely over the fold so as to not bump the Flatlanders down at the expense of a rant most people won't be interested in. It is long and rambly, assumes knowledge already of the eMu model and entirely about me, me, me. Fair warning...

A reminder the annual Bob Dylan Birthday Marathon is on tomorrow night, Saturday 23rd May 7.30pm-2am on 2SER FM, in Sydney but you can listen online.

Now in it's 25th year of broadcast, 2SER's Bob Dylan Birthday Marathon celebrates the 68th birthday of the rock and folk legend. We will be playing the choicest cuts from Bob's 50 year career and will feature the new album Togther Through Life as well as the recently released Tell Tale Signs. There will be a review of Bob's own Theme Time Radio Hour and selections from Patti Smith's authoritive audio biography of Bob, news, reviews and interviews - and ALL THE BOBSONGS THAT FIT!

You can always find the Sydney Dylan meeting dates at our website ('scuse the dodgy temp site, I'll fix it one day)

In celebration I offer Bruce and the band doing "Like a Rolling Stone" (11MB) live for the first time the other night in Pittsburgh.

And a couple of Bob himself from April in Europe, via Croz. Get the rest there.

Workingman's Blues No. 2
Nettie Moore

All of thee are good some of them are really great but I'm not in the groove right now so I'll come back later with notes.

Country/Folk/Blues/Rock/Dylanalia/Cohenalia
Nancy & Lee 3 by Nancy Sinatra And Lee Hazlewood
Down In The Boondocks & Other Favorites by Billy Joe Royal
Comes In Twos by The Webb Sisters
Roger The Engineer / Over Under Sideways Down by The Yardbirds
Delta Blues by Son House
Live On Breeze Hill by Rick Danko
Broadside Ballads, Vol. 6: Broadside Reunion by Various Artists - Smithsonian Folkways
Live From Austin, TX by Eliza Gilkyson
Havilah by The Drones
Gala Mill by The Drones
Custom Made by The Drones
South Austin Sessions by Jesse Dayton
Country Soul Brother by Jesse Dayton
Boxer by The National
Never Going Back by Shemekia Copeland
Teasin' You by Snooks Eaglin
Singing Through the Hard Times: A Tribute to Utah Phillips by Various Artists - Righteous Babe Records

Jazz
Notes From The Underground by Medeski Martin & Wood
The Dial Masters - Original Choice Takes by Charlie Parker
Soul Pools by Babatunde Lea
A Night At The Jazz Rooms - Compiled by Russ Dewbury by Various Artists
Dig by Miles Davis Featuring Sonny Rollins
Nothin' But Soul by Gene Ammons
Reincarnation Of A Love Bird by Charles Mingus
Chet Baker & The Boto Brasilian Quartet by Chet Baker
West Coast - A Nice Day by Various Artists
Duet by Chick Corea & Hiromi

These three records were Grammy winners
Song For Chico by Arturo O'farrill & The Afro-latin Jazz Orchestra
Monday Night Live At The Village Vanguard by Vanguard Jazz Orchestra
Randy in Brasil by Randy Brecker

RnB/Funk/"World"
Rise Up! by Lonnie Smith
Texas Funk by Various Artists
A Promise by Myriam Makeba
The World's Rarest Funk 45s by Various
Senegal 70 - Musical Effervescence by Various Artists
People Sure Act Funny by Lee Dorsey
The Hard Way by James Hunter
Afro-Jaws by Eddie Lockjaw Davis

This EP from the Webb Sisters dropped on eMusic today so I had to get it immediately. They are part of Leonard Cohen's current touring ensemble. It includes a live version of "If It Be Your Will" including the intro and recitation at the beginning LC has been doing in concert. Me like much.

I haven't had much chance to listen to the rest and am running out the door again now but "In Your Father's Eyes" surprised/pleased me by being a Dixie Chick-esque banjo-lead number. So I'm looking forward to hearing that again properly and the other songs.

"If It Be Your Will" was recored at one of the O2 concerts in London, and a CD and DVD from those gigs are being released in March. I had ordered copies on Amazon, but then read Australian editions are being released at the same time. Woot. The "Suzanne" part of the DVD is on Amazon for your edification.

Will update with notes later. Updated with notes.

Here is an 8tracks of selections from the list:

Iris DeMent was my entree into Tom Russell. I loved her and her first three albums. This is was the late 90s. I then read she was featured on this album "The Man From God Knows Where" by Tom Russell, so I bought that, never having heard of him. Iris toured Australia in 1998, I was living on the empty fumes of Austudy but I went and saw her live at the Basement, but to do so I had to skip Steve Earle that same week. To even afford to see her I lived on the $1.90 hot dog and slurpee deal at the servo on Alison Rd in Randwick for weeks and walked to Bondi and back to pay my rent to my slumlord landlady who lived in a mansion on Edgecliff Rd, because I couldn't afford the $5 bus fare. A second $50 gig was out of the question, sorry Steve.

A bumper month or so , yeah even more than usual, over the fold. My normal account splus an extra 300 downloads courtesy of cheap promo cards picked up in the US for me by CCRGMac from the eMu boards -- thanks! If anyone was wondering when I would reach the outer limit of my physical ability to consume music every month, I might have done it. I was feeling full to bursting but also light headed at the same time for a while there. I regret nothing!

I did a 8tracks of a selection of the music here. 45 tracks! Click through or:

Country, Folk, Old Timey, Blues, Zydeco etc

Voice of the Spirit, Gospel of the South -- Various
Cherry picked this for the Cash, Crowell and Gill.

Recovery -- Loudon Wainwright III
Re-recordings of old songs. A welcome revisit to the songs and Joe Henry's production it all the right notes.

The Half Ain't Never Been Told - Early American Rural Religious Music Vol. 2 -- Various
Excellent collection of spooky and rough old time stuff. Some tracks a bit scratchy but all listenable.
Danny and the Champion of the World -- Danny George Wilson
Don't think this is quite up there with The Famous Mad Mile but I need to give it more time.
Put it In the Alley -- The Kilborn Alley Blues Band
Another good collection of swaggering blues rock with very tasty soul leanings.
Bogalusa Boogie -- Clifton Chenier
The essential zydeco album. Right weather for it too at the mo.
Everybody's Got a Song -- Donnie Fritts
Funky Donnie Fritts is a familiar sideman. He's not got the greatest voice, but he duets on his solo album with Waylon Jennings, Lucinda Williams, Delbert McClinton and others and it's fun enough.
Ontinuous Performance -- Stone the Crows
Jock rock! I had vaguely heard of Stone the Crows in various edns of Unut or Mojo or whatever on account of their lead guitarist electrocuting himself on stage. Mary Bell really does sound like Janis Joplin and with the 70s rock/blues sound of the band it's just like having another Janis record, which is A-OK by me. Also good summer music.
Dylanblob -- John Wesley Harding
I like some of his stuff very, very much but nothing here really has me reaching for the repeat button. They are the kind of songs that grow on you though.
The High Lonesome Sound -- Roscoe Holcombe
"High Lonesome Sound" about covers it. If you were describing it to people you'd say "O Brother music" but in terms of polish makes that stuff sound like the Three Tenors. Roscoe rocks the banjo, no doubt. The 10 minute "Little Bessie" is his "Nessun Dorma."
Sex and Gasoline -- Rodney Crowell

Most of my extra tracks this month went on "soul jazz" and various other varieties of post-bebop noodling. Which I love, but at the tail end of the month I felt a great need to turn away from the complex layers of organ and sax and listen to the most elemental blues I could fine. So I augmented my collection with the following, all of which are quite essential.
Pure Religion and Bad Company -- Rev. Gary Davis
Praise God I'm Satisfied -- Blind Willie Johnson
Sun Recordings -- Howlin' Wolf
Free and Equal Blues -- Josh White
Jos White doesn't really qualify on the raw blues scale, he's really very smooth and a folk/pop crossover natural.
Blind Lemon Jefferson Vol. 2 (1927)

Protest! American Protest Songs 1928--1953 -- Various
Interesting collection of old timey protest songs from big names like Woody Guthrie and Big Bill Broonzy to more obscure gems, like Texas Jim Robertson's jaunty "The Last Page of Mein Kampf." (which just says PWND!)

Jazz etc
Three Concord "Introductions to ..." discs: Soul Jazz, Jazz Vocals, Jazz Saxophone.

Sacred Ground -- David Murray Black Saint Quartet
I got this because this bloke is playing at the Basement later in the year and is apparently the generations greatest tenor sax dudes or something. I like it a lot so will probably go.

Bluesy Burrell -- Kenny Burrell
Dexter Blows Hot and Cold -- Dexter Gordon
Sides of Blue -- Various
Misterioso -- Thelonious Monk
Blue Seven -- Shirley Scott

Lonely and Blue and Don't Go to Strangers -- Etta Jones
To Etta With Love -- Houston Person
Etta Jones is a favourite newly-discovered jazz vocalist now. Real cocktails after midnight stuff. Houston Pearson is her long time accompaniest (sax) and the third album is one he recoreded in tribute to her after her death.

In San Francisco -- Cannonball Adderley
Gene Ammons and Friends at Montreaux
I got this because I found this on YouTube.
The Chase -- Gene Ammons and Dexter Gordon
Tough 'Duff and Legends of Acid Jazz -- Jack McDuff
Mr Soul - John Wright
Black Coffee -- Johnny "Hammond" Smith
The New Scene of King Curtis
Bags's Groove -- Miles Davis
A Little New York Midtown Music -- Nat Adderley
Jam Miami: A Celebration of Latin Jazz - Chick Corea, Arturo Sandoval, Pete Escovedo, and Poncho Sanchez
The Great Jazz Piano of Phineas Newborn, Jr
Giants of the Organ Come Together -- Jimmy McGriff & Groove Holmes
This is duelling Hammond B3s (or whatever) and I think I prefer some sax or something in the mix more, one organ will be enough for me. It's good though.
March of the Jazz Guerillas -- Babatunde Lea
This is a really excellent album of Afro-Cuban type jazz. "Abuse of Reality Mambo" is a great song title, too.
I'm Thankful -- Spanky Wilson and the Quantic Soul Orchestra
One of my faves for the month. There have been a lot of songs about Hurricane Katrina,. "That's How it Was" has got to be the coolest.
Workin' -- Miles Davis
Quiet Kenny -- Kenny Dorham
Heading in the Right Direction: Soul / Jazz From Australia 1973-1977 -- Various
Brotherhood -- Various
Elemental Soul -- Marlena Shaw
Another jazz/soul songstress discovery.
Sides of Blue -- Various

Soul, Funk, R&B, Hip-Hop etc
The Cpt Theorem and The Compton Effect -- Greydon Square
Atheist hip-hop!

Rhythm'n Girls -- Various
Great collection of 50s/60s R&B, will be exploring more of the people on here.
Soul of a Man: Al Kooper Live
The Koopster is quite prolific and I enjoyed this double CD a lot.
Soul Explosion -- Daktaris
Wattstax: The Living Word -- Various

Funky Funky Houston -- Various
No link 'cos the whole label has disappeared. ;-(

The Skeptic Zone podcast -- a relaunched version of the previous Skeptic Tank and put together by friends of mine -- is now out and about. I'm part of the "Think Tank" team, where we will be gathering with alcohol to drunkenly rant have serious discussions about the news of the day. I missed the last recording session but will be there from the next one. If you are inclined to be interested in such topics, I have also started a new blog with one of the other Tankers, The Sceptics' Book of Pooh-Pooh, although there isn't anything really there yet. I won't be mentioning it here again -- non-overlapping magisterium! -- so bookmark if you want.

Get this. Via Expecting Rain, the Grauniad is offering a download of "Mississippi" from Tell Tale Signs. Even if you're gonna get the whole thing anyway, you want to hear this. Very stripped back and swinging version, compared to album and is great.

The photo of Rev. Gary Davis and Alice Ochs has nothing particular to do with things, I just like it. The Rev. was a Carolinas man, not MS.

Paul Cashmere asks re: iTunes, "If it doesn`t work for Estelle or AC/DC or The Beatles or Kid Rock, then who is it working for?"

A: Um, consumers?

Let's ignore the questionable correlation=causation assumptions underlying the whole thing and the extrapolation way beyond the evidence (is it too obvious to point out that what applies to The Beatles applies to ... well, practically no one else?) Cashmere doesn't mention this section from the WSJ article: "This year, Kid Rock ... has had a massive radio hit with "All Summer Long." Ah yes, commercial, mainstream radio. Nothing at all corrupt or restrictive about that method of promoting music!

And AC/DC's new album which won't be on iTunes? Exclusive to WalMart in the USA. This is a paradigm-busting improvement, how? And who benefits?

Look, clearly there are issues with all the new methods of digital delivery and their impacts on artists and labels and whoever else are many and complex. And by nature I am an album buyer. But am I really supposed to feel sorry for the major labels because they've been outmaneuvered by another big company doing a better job at giving people what they want? Uh huh. The model is going to change again no doubt, but if it changes to what the labels are pushing, I really can't imagine it's people like me who will win.

A selection of songs is up on 8tracks. Full list over the fold.

I was just doing my August eMusic Downloads post and raving about Smithsonian Folkways, so then I decided the entry deserved a whole post of its own. Smithsonian Folkways is Teh Awesome and they're doing a couple of the things I reckon all labels should be doing. Bravo!:

Classic Mountain Songs from Smithsonian Folkways ---- Truly wonderful collection. The music of North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky in all its raw glory. Your old timey legends plus more obscure names (man, those Old Regular Baptists are something else.) Smithsonian Folkways (and Smithsonian Global Sounds) is also brilliant in having its liner notes available for download, with extensive annotations of each song. Worth reading with or without the music. They also have digital downloads (MP3 or FLAC) for a fair price on their site so I'm going to buy things directly from them even though I could get them from eMusic for cheaper 'cause they deserve it. Heaven on earth would be being able to do this ...

So my beloved Muxtape is off line, whether by RIAA fiat or money troubles or both or whatever, I know not. That news kinda sucked although it was not unexpected, being and how the illegality of it was more or less blindingly obvious.

But a great idea and great for the music industry whether it knows it or not. But hark! In the dust of Muxtape, a new service launched called 8tracks which claims to do the same thing but -- gasp! -- legally. I've seen it called "Stracks" too, but I think the squiggly thing is offically an 8. I've signed up but haven't made a mux-er, a ... mix yet. There seem to be more restrictions that with muxtape -- you can't see the whole list before listening for instance -- which are presumably to keep it within the legal requirements. It does look like you can officially create multiple mixes and have them all up at the same time. Which is good, although I was kinda digging the zen-like process of destroying your mux before you could create a new one.

I'm encouraged that it looks uncluttered and simple, but also adds some functions muxtapes lacked -- I like the simplicity of "following" a user and also the ability to add comments to mixes. Will try and maybe get one up tonight.

Update: Did my first 8tracks mix. Painless process and one improvement on Muxtape is you can queue up all your songs to upload rather than have to do them one by one.

I finally got myself organised with a only slightly illegal US iTunes account (in your face, Neil Young) and it is so.much.better than the denuded Aussie version. Got some free TV shows, pre-ordered the new Randy Newman CD, downloaded Keith Olbermann's Countdown vodcast -- life is good.

Browsing the country section I was struck by an ad for a Kurt Nilsen duet with Willie Nelson. Kurt Nilsen ... that face ... that face .... yes! That hobbity Norwegian bloke who boggled the globe when he won the first (and only?) "World Idol" telecast? And, erm, Willie Nelson. Singing, erm, "Lost Highway." So I clicked the preview and ... it was pretty adequate! So I paid a buck for it.

You can see/hear it on YouTube.

Willie is Willie, dude can sing "Lost Highway" in his sleep and probably did. I like it OK, but think it'll go better after a few RTDs. Could really stand to lose some of the strings though.