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Saturday, January 15th, 2011
 A long post below the fold, a bunch of disparate thoughts about music and links to music that seem like they should be in a post together:
- I've been listening this week to Crooked Still's record Shaken by a Low Sound. Just magnificent, jazzy bluegrass, a nice mix of tradition with innovation -- if you haven't heard them before you ought to take a few minutes right now and listen to some of their music that's on YouTube, and then buy some of their records. Here's one of my favorites, their "Railroad Bill":
(Lead sheet)
- While I was listening to "Railroad Bill" I found myself singing lines from a couple of other songs -- "Bob Dylan's Blues" and "99 Year Blues" both share chord structure and melody with this song. I got interested in blues stock phrases: compare the lines from "99 Year Blues", "Get me a pistol, 3 round balls/ Gonna shoot everybody I don't like at all" with "I'll find me a pistol as long as my arm/ Gonna kill everybody's ever done me harm" in this song. I was recently reading John Jeremiah Sullivan's article Unknown Bards: the blues becomes transparent about itself, which contains some interesting observation about variations in stock phrases in blues (and which is highly recommended reading for those of you with an interest in American music).
- In the same vein, I'm having a good time tracing common threads of chord structure in blues and folk music. Crooked Still covers Robert Johnson's "Come on in my kitchen", which has the structure and melody of "Sitting on top of the world" and a couple of other blues tunes; and a lot of the songs I've been listening to lately (probably including some of Crooked Still's, though I could not swear to it) are variations on the They're Red Hot structure, including Two Man Gentlemen Band's hilarious "Me, I get high on reefer".
- While I was browsing around YouTube for some takes on "Railroad Bill", I was reminded what's one of my favorite features of YouTube, which is the great number of amateur musicians who upload home videos of songs they are working on. Me and John have started doing a bit of this lately, though our skills are not nearly on the level of a lot of these. Check out RivrRidr902 performing a medley of "Railroad Bill", "Freight Train", and "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor":
- I went to the Rent Party show at the South Orange Elks Club last night and was overjoyed to hear the 4th Street Nite Owls playing hot jazz, with my sometimes partner in crime Jerry sitting in on bass. Hoping to hear a lot more of them in the future.
↻...done
posted afternoon of January 15th, 2011: Respond
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Monday, May 24th, 2010
Ellen and I had dinner Saturday at an extremely promising new restaurant, Munchie's on Irvington Ave. and Ward Pl. Main dishes are standard Jamaican fare, oxtail, escovitch, various forms of stewed and jerk and curried meat. We had the very good curry goat and the less-good (pretty dry and not flavorful) jerk chicken. What really stood out about the meal for me was the excellent quality of the side dishes -- rice and peas, steamed cabbage, mango salad -- they were just great and kept us there and interested in every bite. Definitely recommend giving this place a try! Although maybe don't order the jerk chicken. Also they are open for breakfast. I hope they last -- I got the sense from being there that the proprietors are really into what they are doing. It is great to have Caribbean food back in town after the closing of the lamented Trinidadian place on First St.
posted evening of May 24th, 2010: 2 responses
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Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
 Ellen has a new article up at South Orange Patch, about the house tour she went to on Saturday. Every spring there is a tour of some notable houses in town -- looks like fun!
posted evening of May 5th, 2009: Respond
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