Not For U.S. Audiences

I'm going to add this to my bag of tricks for sure.

Cats/ Dogs/ Pianos/ Skateboards

Nora is a cat who likes to play the piano. I find it pretty remarkable... not so much that the cat has any musical ability, but just that she takes any interest at all. Not everyone is impressed though.

Even cooler, though, are dogs who skateboard! Wow!

Apparently, Nora, Tillman, and Tyson have all been on TV, but as usual, I didn't know that. :-)

Bob Dylan in Town

One of my many New Year's resolutions this year was to not miss good musicians when they come to my back yard. So, obviously, when Bob Dylan came to the fairgrounds that was a total no-brainer. The opening band was pretty cool... I can't remember the name now but they played a lot of bluesy, Stevie Ray Vaughan -esque stuff. Dylan and his band came out around 8PM and put on a great show. But I've always thought of Dylan as a singer with a thousand voices, and it seems he only brought one of them to Vermont.... just the dry growly one. For most of the show I just thought surely he'd bring out his ballad voice or something before it was over, but then, all of a sudden... it WAS over. A good sign that I was enjoying it nevertheless. But I went away a bit sad, as I realized that Dylan's original voice is gone, and I missed it. Oh well. He must be like 65 years old... which hardly makes him an old man, but not exactly young either, and various "substances" probably haven't helped. I guess I was just born too late! But not really, because there's a lot of singer/songwriter talant coming out of the woodwork these days. I'm going to make sure I at least catch them in their prime. In the meantime, I still say Dylan is one of the best ever. Even now, though he may now be more of a cover of his own music... I gotta say he and his band still put on a decent show.

Anyone else seen Dylan lately?

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

I was driving home from somewhere listening to The Point as usual, and on came a cool old maritime song that sounded very vaguely familiar... so vaguely that I was not certain I'd ever heard it before... but wondered. Trying to piece together the lyrics as I drove, I could tell it was something about a shipwreck, but assumed it was probably about an old, perhaps legendary, sailing shipwreck from long ago and far away.

I liked the song, so I hurried home so I could log on to the station website and see who was singing it, and lo and behold, it was Gordon Lightfoot! Ah!! Of course. Gordon Lightfoot is one of those musicians I've always known I'd like based on the very few songs regularly played on the radio, but never really looked into it. I did some searching around, and wow, I never realized he did so many maritime songs! Cool! Nor did I realize how many songs of his I DID know, but were more famously covered by others.

Well, this song, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald turned out not to be about an old sailing ship at all... as most of you already probably knew... but hey, I didn't know, ok! A chill ran down my spine as I found that it is not about something long ago and far away, but is about a 729-foot-long cargo ship that hauled iron ore for the car manufacturers on the Great Lakes, that went down in a storm in November 1975. That's in my lifetime (albeit barely). Many of the wives and friends and most, if not all, of the children of the 29 men who died that November night are still very much alive today. This is a huge ship (for a lake) equipped with radar and radio, presumably met all coast guard requirements, and isn't even ocean-going, and the wind and waves of Lake Superior took it down. Hearing the song for the first time (that I remember) after my relatively minor sailing incident the day before, I took it as a not-so-subtle reminder that the water demands great respect... perhaps more than I've been giving it.

Without further ado, here is Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, courtesy of my otherwise-mostly-unused myspace page. You can view the lyrics here.

You can also listen to five other representative Lightfoot songs in their entirety, and for free, between his two myspace pages (I assume one is legit and one is not. Not really sure which is which.) Most will be familiar from radio-listening. A couple of them might not be.
Gordon Lightfoot Myspace Page #1
Gordon Lightfoot Myspace Page #2

By the way, I emailed The Point to thank them for edumicating me, and the next day they wrote me back a short but custom-written reply, which I thought was really neat: "That was Carrie Henry's own pick... great song. Thanks for your kind words... and thanks for listening! --Zeb

New Old Young

The Point has been playing tracks from the new Neil Young CD, Live at Massey Hall. All I can say is wow. I've liked Neil Young for a long time, but like many I was unsure at first. I can't remember when I first figured out who he was... I guess I was probably 12 or so. My first reaction, like many, was like how did a guy with a voice like that make it in singing? Over time he grew on me and become one of my favorites, but I still kind of thought of him as someone who made it "in spite of" his voice. What little I've heard so far of this new release of an old live show has convinced me that, no, he in fact has an amazing voice. Not that its any different here than previous albums, its just that hearing some songs that are fresh to me gave me a fresh outlook. Just took a little getting used to I guess.

Gotta hand it to this guy. When the cheezy 80's came around he kind of laid low (as far as know... can anyone enlighten me as to what he was up to in the 80's?). His old partners Crosby, Stills, and Nash had their piece of the 80's cheese. The great John Fogerty came out with the "life is like a rodeo" song (which I can't even find with google)... ouch. These all recovered, but to my knowledge (someone correct me if I'm wrong) Young managed to ride it out without such embarrassment and my my, hey hey, good music came back and so did he!

Get this CD. I'm going to.

A to Z!!!

The Point is playing its total library from A to Z (by title) starting today! You've already missed some of the A's! Don't miss the rest! It'll probably take all week, they've got a lot of music. And they're not even doing the music from the jazz specials, the Sunday morning bluegrass stuff, five-oclock shadow music, etc. Just the regular playlist, which is huge in and of itself. They say that'd take too many years to get through ;-) Its streaming now so click here and listen now! Unless you are in range, in which case tune in. 104.7 in the Burlington, VT area. Other areas listed on the site.

Music For Apartment and Six Drummers

This is the coolest U-tube video ever.

Wow! The Hammond Organ is 70!!

I had trouble deciding whether this should fall under organic or inorganic music, but decided to put it here since the Hammond organ certainly fits the pop and jazz categories just fine and and my inorganic music page has been badly neglected because it began life at a time when my blog slowed way down.

So without further ado, here's a very well done 10 minute you-tube documentary on the history of the legendary Hammond organ.

The Zeroth Post

So I've noticed that music seems to come up a lot around here. So time for a music page. I already had an organic music page but not an inorganic one, so here it is. I have a first post in mind already. I guess this is post zero. Here I will point you to past posts throughout my site that have been related to inorganic music (music that does not involve pipe organs):

Dave Matthews Band (June 16 2006)
Camera Obscura (April 29 2006)
Semi-Horn Truck Choir (February 7 2006) (This one is only marginally inorganic)
John Cage Outdone (January 29 2006)
Southern Cross (August 16 2005)
Blues Traveller "Four" (August 5 2005)
CSN and sometimes Y (August 1 2005)
We've Got Tomorrow (May 23 2005)
... and there are a few in the "old sayings" page... too much work to link individually.