Our title is a 1990 Mercury album by Johnny Cash or a description of the sound his band, The Tennessee Three made. Take your pick.
My interview with Marshall Grant from last year's debut Pardon Johnny Cash Festival is finally up at Perfect Sound Forever.
They printed an abbreviated version of My Best of 2007 list.
Here's some categories that got left off:
Best Songs
Ex-Supermodel, "Death or Glory" (Clash cover)
Jasion Isbell, "Dress Blues"
The Persians, "Chuck of 8 Chins"
Radiohead, "Wierd Fishes/Arpeggi"
Von Südenfed, "The Rhinohead"
The White Stripes, "Bone Broke"
The Wu-Tang Clan, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
Neil Young, "Bad Fog of Loneliness"
Young Agent Jones, "She Just Happens Sometimes"
Best Reanimated
Pylon, Gyrate Plus
Sly & The Family Stone, Life + Stand!
Muddy Waters, Johnny Winter, & James Cotton, Breakin' It UP, Breakin' It DOWN
Neil Young, Live at Massey Hall 1971
Young Marble Giants, Colossal Youth 3 cd set
Any/All of the Monterey Jazz Festival Records on Concord
I'm working on an appreciation of the London Musician's Collective and an interview with the living relatives of Sonny Boy Williamson II.
Showing posts with label Pardon Johnny Cash Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pardon Johnny Cash Festival. Show all posts
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Saturday, November 03, 2007
I was there when it happened.
9:04 AM Starkville Public Library
Kicking off Day 2 of the inaugural Johnny Cash Flower Pickin' Festival is a reading and book singing by long time Cash bassist and founder of the Tennessee Two, Marshall Grant. He'll do his thing at the Starkville Public Library at 9am; afterwards I'll do mine and interview him about his place in music history (he is, after all, that famous "thwacka thwacka" "Train Keep a Rollin'" standup bass sound incarnate, more often inaccurately described as the "boom-chicka-boom" sound).
"THIS is Starkville . . . ." I blog this live at 9:10 am CST from Starkville Public Library, where Johnny Cash plays in the background, a TV DVD set is showing the new Johnny Cash TV show, and Marshall Grantb is singing his book prior to a 10 AM reading. not quite Edward R. Murrow on a London rooftop during The Blitz but the best I have to offer.
O.k. after that bit of Tiffany Network anglophilia back to the Man in Black, The Tennesse Two, and Flower Pickin'. Right now Marshall Grant is telling his version of the Flower Pickin' story. "2:30 in the morning May 12, 1965. Cash is in the jail kicking at the door and broke his little toe. Next morning at 8 o'clock Sherriff told him 'I went home last night and told my wife I had you in jail and we prayed for you . . .' Gave him his little pills back. Had a termendous impact on him. For the next five years, he stayed sober."
Right now Krista Vowell is questioning Grant currently focusing on Cash's famous prison concerts. The Folsom prison album is one of the Top 5 selling of all time according to Grant; "It was huge for us.". Now he's talking about San Quentin. "A Boy Named Sue was born there . . . . We (the band) had never heard a 'Boy Named Sue.' . . . .the songwriter had it in his briefcase. Took it out and sat it in the middle of the floor in the dressing room . . . . so he said 'Kick it off Carl' and then he sang 'My Daddy feft home.' . . . We spent about 30 cents on this one for production."
"The first song we auditioned with at Sun was 'I Was There When It Happened.' He [Sam Phillips] turned us down and told us 'come back when you have something new.' That's why I chose it for the title of my memoir. . . . It's the only book written from the inside out."
During the Q&A Grant tells the story of how Sam Phillips suckered "Cash a & the 2" to do one take of "I Walked the Line" uptempo instead of as aballad for their wives as they originally intended. Unbeknownst to them who were performing at the Louisiana Hayride, He cut an acetate and released the fast version to radio stations. Grants said, "Sam was right, but we'd never admit it to him."
12:15 pm Donwtown Main Street
The festival really kicked off with the 2 primary blocks of main street closed to traffic, lined by food vendors and the main stage at the Western end between The Courthouse and The Abbey.
WMSV had a tent broadcasting their 12 hour feed of special Johnny Cash-related programming. Here News Director Anthony Craven mugs for the camera.
Superstar Donkey Donkey made quite a racket for a two piece.
Friday, November 02, 2007
A boy named sue.
This weekend was the 1st annual Johnny Cash Flower Pickin' Festival here in Starkville. The event kicked off with a Coummnity-wide social at the Pike house in the gloaming.
That's where Johnny played before the night he spent in "Starkville City Jail." Then there was to be an auction. Followed by a tribute band, Ring of Fire at Rick's co-presented by WMSV 91.1.FM. Your intrepid reporter will be interviewing Marshall Grant after his book signing tomorrow for an upcoming issue of
Young Agent Jones rocked the side courtyard and closed the social from 6 to 7 pm CST.
Jason as "The Shadow"
Phil C. would be so proud . . .
The Ring of Fire Johnny Cash Tribute band plays Rick's.
Kitchen Blues Band, "Red House" solo
Direct and live from New Joisey, for one night only . . .
(White man) in hammersmith palais.
And so it began
Intro text
The first kernel of this Seconds essay
I wrote this paper for a one-off experimental class on British History after 1945 taught by John Brewer. The course had a fun music party night in the wood-panneled Union Annex (long before the Barker Center came into being) First Floor History and Literature Great Room featuring everything from Tenpole Tudor and Lonnie Donegan through the Pistols right up to the Smiths (it was 1985 after all). The mix tapes (remember cassettes kids? they came before downloads, mp3s and CDs but after 10" 78s, 8 track Tape and vinyl LPs) were expertly curated by one famously hirsute TA, J P Montaño. I chose the other TA's section only for variety's sake, as I had John's excellent section for Brewer's famous History 1410 The Hanoverian Golden Age 1680–1790 class. We also had a great film festival portion of the class: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, I'm All Right Jack, Georgy Girl, If . . ., Gregory's Girl, and The Long Good Friday to name but a few of the gems we saw. Karen Monger was a visiting scholarship visiting graduate student from Oxford and my TA then. Now she's a journalist and radio producer, who did this fantastic show on File on 4.
Anyway, so how big a nerd was I? Well, I spent the spring break of my senior year in college not in Fort Lauderdale or PCB— closer to my hometown of Tallahassse, Not in South Padre or Mazatlan. Instead I flew to London for a week. Cool; the dollar was historically strong against the pound in March 1985, virtually 1 to 1 instead of the normal 1.5 to 1 or the current attrociously low rate of something like 2.08179 USD to 1 BP. Of course, my billfold got lifted on the Tube between Heathrow and central London. Fortunately I had only cashed $100 in travellers cheques there. Still I had to economize. So I walked everywhere instead of tubing it for the week including one memorably mammoth Sunday walk from South Kensington along the Brompton Road round Hyde Park Corner down the mall into Trafalgar Square on through Covent Garden to Bloomsbury, the British Museum, and Russell Square. My bad luck proved good as I learned London well above ground following my trusty A to Zed and understanding how "neighborhoods" connected in a way you can't when you're "going underground." So how did I spend this "vacation"? 9-5 the first three days in the British Library's Musical division which back then was on Exhibition Road SW7 between the Royal Albert Hall and the Science Museum. Basically I read any and every music paper/journal I could get my hand on from 1977 and 1978, even Sounds as shocking as that might seem. Somehow (perhaps following Simon's muse) I settled on Melody Maker as the source of the best quotes re: punk, even if NME was more famous and also namechecked by Johnny Rotten. Yes, I spent my spring break vacation in a library researching a term paper. Yowzah. Now! That's What I Call Music. The result was the paper of which you've seen a few JPEG captures. It is only later that I would get copies of seminal books by Caroline Coon and Jonathon Sage aka Jon Savage: 1979 and England's Dreaming
And "Here's Where The Story Ends" at least for today. As I have to head down to the Pi Kappa Alpha house for the Community-wide social to kick off The Johnny Cash Flower Pickin' Festival here in Starkville. Stay tuned same bat station, same bat channel tomorrow for my updated review of "(White Man) In Hammesmith Palais."
Intro text
Dateline 1977. British punk rock and the new wave seemed poised to alter the world. In that year, the new wave's three most influential bands got their initial break: The Clash, The Jam, The Sex Pistols. Dateline 1985: New wave is gone replaced by the vapid sythesizer antics of Duran Duran, Frankie, et a1. The Sex Pistols were long since disbanded with Sid Vicious dead on heroin. The Clash as a Jones-Strummer axis has failed; Paul Weller has escaped The Jam for billowy jazz, The Style Council, and claims that he "once said a couple of words one behalf of his generation." Still in the crucible that was 1977 and following these bands garnered nationa1 attention, especially for their seeming political messages. As Simon Frith says, "the sociology of rock is Inseparable from the sociology of youth." If one accepts the premlse that the youth movement sought to criticize the establishment, what role did the new wave play? For that matter, can one speak coherently of a consistent new wave "rhetoric"?
The first kernel of this Seconds essay
In their best single, "(White Man) at the HammersmIth Palais," The Clash turn a critical eye on modern British society from a youth's perspective. The inequality is noted, as "White Youth, black youth, better find another solution/ Better phone up Robin Hood and ask him for some wealth distribution." Similarly their own moment per se gets its; "Punk rockers in the U.K., they won't notice anyway/ They're too busy fighting for a good place under the lighting." Finally the tawdry sham of consumerism becomes a symbol of English society: "All over people changing votes along with their overcoats." Note that this phrase coincides with the musical climax of the piece.
I wrote this paper for a one-off experimental class on British History after 1945 taught by John Brewer. The course had a fun music party night in the wood-panneled Union Annex (long before the Barker Center came into being) First Floor History and Literature Great Room featuring everything from Tenpole Tudor and Lonnie Donegan through the Pistols right up to the Smiths (it was 1985 after all). The mix tapes (remember cassettes kids? they came before downloads, mp3s and CDs but after 10" 78s, 8 track Tape and vinyl LPs) were expertly curated by one famously hirsute TA, J P Montaño. I chose the other TA's section only for variety's sake, as I had John's excellent section for Brewer's famous History 1410 The Hanoverian Golden Age 1680–1790 class. We also had a great film festival portion of the class: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, I'm All Right Jack, Georgy Girl, If . . ., Gregory's Girl, and The Long Good Friday to name but a few of the gems we saw. Karen Monger was a visiting scholarship visiting graduate student from Oxford and my TA then. Now she's a journalist and radio producer, who did this fantastic show on File on 4.
The Arts 19900321 Producer: L. ALKER
Next in series: 28 March 1990
Previous in series: PRO-LIFE CAMPAIGNERS
Description
Robin LUSTIG investigates 'funding for the arts'
Subject Categories
documentaries (programme format)
investigative programmes (presentation style)
budgets (state finance)
arts (administration)
Broadcast history
21 Mar 1990 16:05-16:45 (RADIO 4)
Contributors
Robin Lustig
Gerry Northam (Producer)
Karen Monger (Producer)
Peter Hall (Speaker)
Brian Cox (Speaker)
Roy Strong (Speaker)
Richard Luce (Speaker)
Terry Hands (Speaker)
Philip Hedley (Speaker)
Max Stafford-Clark (Speaker)
Colin Tweedy (Speaker)
Ian Rushton (Speaker)
John Stalker (theatre director (spkr)) (Speaker)
Clive Priestly (Speaker)
Ian Brown (arts council (spkr)) (Speaker)
John Doyle (drama director (spkr)) (Speaker)
Recorded on 1990-03-20.
Anyway, so how big a nerd was I? Well, I spent the spring break of my senior year in college not in Fort Lauderdale or PCB— closer to my hometown of Tallahassse, Not in South Padre or Mazatlan. Instead I flew to London for a week. Cool; the dollar was historically strong against the pound in March 1985, virtually 1 to 1 instead of the normal 1.5 to 1 or the current attrociously low rate of something like 2.08179 USD to 1 BP. Of course, my billfold got lifted on the Tube between Heathrow and central London. Fortunately I had only cashed $100 in travellers cheques there. Still I had to economize. So I walked everywhere instead of tubing it for the week including one memorably mammoth Sunday walk from South Kensington along the Brompton Road round Hyde Park Corner down the mall into Trafalgar Square on through Covent Garden to Bloomsbury, the British Museum, and Russell Square. My bad luck proved good as I learned London well above ground following my trusty A to Zed and understanding how "neighborhoods" connected in a way you can't when you're "going underground." So how did I spend this "vacation"? 9-5 the first three days in the British Library's Musical division which back then was on Exhibition Road SW7 between the Royal Albert Hall and the Science Museum. Basically I read any and every music paper/journal I could get my hand on from 1977 and 1978, even Sounds as shocking as that might seem. Somehow (perhaps following Simon's muse) I settled on Melody Maker as the source of the best quotes re: punk, even if NME was more famous and also namechecked by Johnny Rotten. Yes, I spent my spring break vacation in a library researching a term paper. Yowzah. Now! That's What I Call Music. The result was the paper of which you've seen a few JPEG captures. It is only later that I would get copies of seminal books by Caroline Coon and Jonathon Sage aka Jon Savage: 1979 and England's Dreaming
And "Here's Where The Story Ends" at least for today. As I have to head down to the Pi Kappa Alpha house for the Community-wide social to kick off The Johnny Cash Flower Pickin' Festival here in Starkville. Stay tuned same bat station, same bat channel tomorrow for my updated review of "(White Man) In Hammesmith Palais."
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