I think it’s fair to say that we at the River are mostly on Team Conan, but we’re still psyched to learn that Elizabeth Mitchell (of Ida, and now an amazing family musician who will be playing at our Meltdown event in just a couple of weeks) will be performing with Ziggy Marley on the Tonight Show on Monday, March 15!
To tide you over until the Meltdown, you can see her (without Ziggy or Leno) here:
“I had begun playing in the subway full time because I needed money and it was better than being a waitress (which I never would have been good at anyway)..and one of the main focuses was on songs by Shawn Colvin..I absolutely adored her. She also had no record out yet (remember…this was WAY before internet and there was no place to find the music if there was no record out yet)..so, I deemed it my mission in life to play her lovely songs as to the delight of people who wanted to hear awesome songs…I did this for a long time until her first cd actually came out!..(over the course of that time, she was to become one of the best friends I’ve ever had the pleasure of having)…so, Shawn’s songs were alive and well, and certainly didnt need me playing them to be alive..Yay Shawn!
About this time 1989, I met a fella named Jim Neill in a record store in Salem Ma. I heard hime talking to the guy at the front counter and I decided I wanted to meet him. My strategy was to ask the counter guy in a really loud voice (hoping jim would hear my question and if HE (jim) were interested in my question, I decided that would make me interested in him!)..so I asked “Hey, do you guys have the new Shawn Colvin cd??” ..Jim’s head spun around “You like Shawn Colvin”?? (remember, NO ONE knew her yet)…”ah yes, she’s a friend, and I adore her” said I….Jim and I instantly bonded. Turned out Jim was working for a company called Ryko disk in my home town of Salem. I had just returned from College in London, and we decided to move to lower Allston and be room-mates.
In November or so of 1990 Jim was driving to work. I had hitched a ride with him to visit my parents that day. At around 8 in the morning a SONG came on the car radio. “what is this Jim”? (Jim knew everything about music)(still does - jaz)..he didnt know what it was. No cells at the time to call in radio station and ask, and dj never said…BUT that song stayed in my head.
A few weeks later I met a guy named Dave Gwiazdowski who was a dj on wers. I met him in the subway at Park st (well, I din’t actually “meet” him… I thought he had great hair and there was just something cool about him, so I decided to follow him). Yep, right there and then I packed up my busking shit and hopped on the same train he got on. I followed him all the way to central sq. He went into the middle east. I followed him into the back room where the bands played. I had no idea who he was, or who he was going to see..I didnt balk at the cover charge, just HAD to know this guy…Later that night after about 2 hours of stalking him (he’s the ONLY guy I’ve EVER “followed” by the way), I finally I got up the guts to say hello…Turned out that he was a dj on WERS (the same station I had heard THAT) song (the one with Jim in the car) weeks before that I couldnt get out of my head. Dave turned out to be an awesome , awesome guy, and we have remained great friends to this day. We had lots of fun fun times back then…seeing band after band, talking about music, making tapes, etc. I would ride him on the back rack of my bicycle from Cambridge to boston night after night!! I was very very strong back then. Went to the gym 7 days a week, ran 4 miles a day…you getit. (Glad I had the good sensabilities to stalk Dave Gwiz!) “
It turns out there’s no great mystery to the song “Norway” by Beach House. According to a two year old blog post I stumbled across, the band was touring the country when a Norwegian TV reporter asked them to “memorialize their trip from Bergen to Oslo by recording a brand new song.” They recorded the results in a train station in Oslo.
We’re got just under a month until the Meltdown takes place — Saturday, March 27, 10 am to 4 pm at JFK, all free! Between now and then, I’ll try to post some stuff from the musicians and authors we’ll have at the event. Today, the amazing Grace Lin, who just won a Newbery Honor!
We’ve got an annual family music and book festival — The River’s Family Music Meltdown and Book Bash. It’s just over a month away, on March 27, at JFK Middle School, from 10 to 4. I figured I’d start posting some videos from the amazing family musicians and kids’ book authors we have coming. First up, local hero Mister G from a Halloween show at Impish:
The event features, along with over a dozen bands on three stages and a bunch of readings from amazing authors, local vendors, activities (bounce houses! hula hoops!), and much more. And it’s all free.
I’ve never played three songs from the same album for Bloodlines but this makes it all worthwhile. The best in New Orleans live jazz teamed up with some pretty impressive musicians, singers, songwriters, whistlers.
Today’s BloodLines begins at the taproot of Roy Orbison who became known as the Caruso of Rock. His operatic four-octave range was unhead of in the early sixties. I kicked it off with 1960’s Only the Lonely.
Then we hand it off to his 1980s inhertior of that sweeping vocal range and powerful dramatic punch, Chris Isaak. Here’s a recent concert performance of his “Only the Lonely.” He still looks like he could roll around on a beach naked with a fashion model.
And at the end of the root we have British singer-songwriter and former knuckle boxer, Findlay Brown with his new song Love Will Find You. (If you haven’t joined the Riverlution yet, do so this week and you win his new album Will Find You.)
Here’s that interview with Patty Griffin I mentioned. She gives some very sweet anecdotes about the recording process for Downtown Church, her new gospel-heavy album she recorded in a downtown church.
Read on for the one about how Regina McCrary, whom Patty refers to as gospel royalty, helped pick her up when Patty was at a low point during recording.
When it came to finding cool music in high school, everybody knew you had to go into Boston to do the serious record shopping. My hometown of Plymouth had one tiny record store in the basement of the sporting goods store. It was okay for some mainstream 45’s, and I did manage to get a copy of XTC’s Mummer and Skylarking there. But the best find ever was discovered while poking through the rather incongruous, and tiny, import bin. I stumbled across an album by a band I had never heard of. I had no idea what the music was like, but I figured if it was anything like the album cover, I’d like it. And so it was I ended up buying what to this day is still one of my favorite albums:
Cocteau Twins was like a gateway drug into the world of goth for me. I also found more swirly, shoegazey, atmospheric music: This Mortal Coil, Lush, The Cranes…Plus, during my stint as an English major at UMass, it was my preferred paper-writing music, since anything with lyrics would distract me from my own words. Luckily, I couldn’t understand a word Elizabeth Fraser was singing.
Just the way a scent can transport you back to a different time, music has that power for me. When I hear something remotely similar to the Cocteau Twins, I recall that thrill of discovering, literally, an unknown Treasure in an unexpected place.
Which is kind of how I feel about Beach House:
I’ll admit, it took me a while to be able to listen to this song without feeling something I can only describe as motion-sickness. As a DJ, I’m attuned to pitch changes meaning that there’s something wrong with the equipment (I’m told by my friends in the industry that I’m not the only one having that problem with the song). But the song’s sound intrigued me, so I forced myself to acclimate.
In the whole 80’s revival that’s been going on in the past few years, I’m glad this sound found some champions.
