Category Archives: Music

Welsh Music: Ar Log’s Goreuon Ar Log, Meic Stevens’s Icarws and Steve Eaves’ Moelyci 

The more I am exposed to the various traditions of the world’s art and music, the more I credit Joseph W. Campbell’s observations, from The Flight of the Wild Gander, on the processes of folklore: in spite of the urge to … Continue reading

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John Noise Manis’ Trance Gamelan in Bali

“Trance” as denoting a specific type of music is pretty much a Western concept, although it recognizes the power of music to alter our mental state. In other traditions, music is not always, or even usually, a separate event — … Continue reading

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Bob Dylan’s Together Through Life

There’s a funny thing that happens whenever Dylan releases an album that the critics like (I think it averages out at one every three releases). When they fall all over themselves praising an album, as they did 2006’s Modern Times, … Continue reading

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Christos Govetas: Pasatempo: Rebetika with Christos Govetas

“Greek blues.” Yes, and no. While several commentators have typified rebetika that way, I don’t think that really gives a clear idea of what this music is like. Rebetika (sometimes known as “rembetika“) is a style of music that came … Continue reading

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Flight Plan: A look back at the Jefferson Airplane

A little over forty years ago, some people got a few friends and a few bands together, and threw a party. It went down in a farmer’s back forty in Bethel, New York, and things got a little hot and … Continue reading

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Patrick Humphries’ Richard Thompson: The Biography

Biographies of musicians are always dangerous propositions. Too many are tell-alls that insist on concentrating on lurid details and scandal, to the point where the reader forgets that the book is about a musician. Others go the other way, and … Continue reading

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Maddy Prior’s Flesh & Blood

Nothing in life, we are told, has any business being perfect. Maddy Prior clearly understands this lesson, otherwise she wouldn’t have marred an otherwise near-perfect CD with an oddball cover of Todd Rundgren’s a capella moaner “Honest Work.” That being … Continue reading

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Outback’s Dance the Devil Away

If there is ever an official movement founded to prevent the inclusion of the digeridoo on Celtic-styled recordings, I’d be first in line to join. I am a firm believer that one should not be allowed to put digeridoo on … Continue reading

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Oysterband’s Deserters 

Contrary to what the liner notes in the recent  Pearls from the Oysters  compilation suggest, the finest period in the Oysterband’s long and illustrious history was the 3-CD arc that began with  Deserters  and culminated in  The Shouting End of … Continue reading

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XIXA’s Bloodline

XIXA’s dual frontmen, Brian Lopez and Gabriel Sullivan, seem to have internalized the Tucson musical ethos of collaboration and inclusivity epitomized by Giant Sand and Calexico. It’s no mystery, since the two have played with both of those bands, the … Continue reading

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