Category: Episodes

627. Fairport Convention

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(January 2025) Episode 627 is FAIRPORT CONVENTION, the best known popularizers of British folk-rock. Their first album has a groovy West Coast 60s sound (which suits my taste the best). Sandy Denny* joined for the second album and helped move them in a folk direction. The early albums feature a combination of interpretations of traditional British folk songs, covers of America folk artists (Dylan, Mitchell) and original material, reaching the apotheosis of British folk-rock with Liege & Leaf. The first four albums are excellent and the next couple of albums have some interesting bits, but to me the quality declines precipitously after Richard Thompson left in 1971. Lineup changes were constant. Fairport Convention is still around with three members dating from the 60s. But what was once innovation becomes cliché (a dynamic afflicting other genres, notably 70s electronic music devolving to New Age). With Denny, their folk had a mystic quality; later albums merely sounded like something you’d hear in a pub.

Favourite album: Fairport Convention

Best album: Unhalfbricking

Favourite song: A Sailor’s Life

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: The first four albums (Fairport Convention to Liege & Leaf) are excellent and all you need here.

* classic rock fans will recognize her as the female voice on Led Zeppelin’s “The Battle of Evermore”

626. Son House

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(January 2025) Episode 626 is SON HOUSE. Mississippi blues legend and contemporary of Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. His music is marked by an emotional voice and slashing guitar style, often in slide. He did a number of recordings in the 1930s and early 1940s, including for the Library of Congress, then retiring and returning to performance in the 1960s when “rediscovered” in the blues revival – a path similar to others. The quality of the early recordings seems better than those by many contemporaries.

Favorite album: The Legendary Son House: Father of Folk Blues

Favorite song: Death Letter Blues

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: You can’t go wrong with any of it. The album above is a good mix of early/later recordings. The Library of Congress sessions disc is also good.

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625. Pharoah Sanders

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(January 2025) Episode 625 is PHAROAH SANDERS – a good example of how this Project, despite its laboriousness, is helping me discover new worlds of music. In this case, Pharoah Sanders’ spiritual jazz. The saxophonist got his break recording on John Coltrane’s watershed free-jazz Ascension album (my favorite of his), influencing him to chart his own path in that direction. Sanders’ sax voice is different than Coltrane’s, and his music (in the late 1960s and early 1970s) became more mystical, incorporating world music and vocalizations. Over the decades, his recordings returned to more conventional jazz styles and even R&B, although he did experiment with electronic and orchestral formats. But to me those spiritual jazz albums are magic.

Favorite album: Karma          

Favorite song: Village of the Pharoahs

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Pretty much any album from Tauhid (1967) to Village of the Pharoahs (1973).

624. Judy Collins

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(December 2024)  Episode 624 is JUDY COLLINS, who is still performing and recording in a career that has spanned seven decades. She got her start in the Greenwich folk scene. Her initial recordings featured traditional folk songs, then those by Dylan, Ochs, Seeger, et al, then broadening to the Beatles, Cohen, Newman, Mitchell. This was her peak period, where her clear, direct voice provided interesting interpretations of famous songs. Over the years her recordings branched out into pop, rock, country, showtunes and standards. But to me, after a while her voice doesn’t add anything. It’s not flat but also not dynamic. Gets boring.

Favorite album: In My Life   

Favorite song: Both Sides Now

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: Albums from the 60s, particularly In My Life and Wildflowers

623. Strawberry Alarm Clock

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(December 2024) Episode 623 is STRAWBERRY ALARM CLOCK. The ubiquity of their Summer of Love anthem “Incense and Peppermints” might lead you to think they were a one-hit wonder. But they were a real (albeit dysfunctional) band with three good albums of psychedelic-flavored LA-style sunshine pop. There’s a manufactured intentionality to the psychedelia (I mean, look at the album covers) but it’s still a good hippy trip. The fourth album goes into forgettable proto-boogie rock and there was a reunion album decades later.

Favorite album: Incense and Peppermints

Favorite song: Incense and Peppermints

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Any of the first three albums are a fun trip back to the Summer of Love

622. Los Shakers

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(December 2024) Episode 622 is LOS SHAKERS, the Beatles of Latin America. Yes I know that tag is extremely over-used and usually erroneous. But not with Los Shakers; they were the real deal. These were two brothers in Uruguay who saw A Hard Day’s Night and immediate created a band to mimic that sound. And they did it better than almost any group I’ve heard, even in the Anglophone world.  It’s not just covers (there were a few); their original compositions are expertly crafted songs in the 64/65 Beatles mode. And they adapted along the way, with fuzzy guitars and backwards effects for a psychedelic sound. Their apex was the creative album La conferencia secreta del Toto’s Bar, called their Sgt. Peppers’ (or Pet Sounds, Village Green or Tommy).  While the song titles were in Spanish, most vocals are in accented English.

Favorite album: La conferencia secreta del Toto’s Bar

Favorite song: Rompan Todo (Break It All)

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Their recordings are hard to find, but Serie de Oro: Grandes Exitos is available and a decent compilation of their early singles.

621. Flipper

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(December 2024) Episode 621 is FLIPPER. I only ever knew them from a high school mix tape that had “Old Lady Who Swallowed The Fly” on it, which seemed like a humorous one-off. But listening all these decades later, I admire what the instruments are doing on the track, building up in a crescendo. And in this you can hear why they influenced grunge and noise rock. The aesthetic is punk but the form differs. Rather than short and fast, the songs are standard length and feature sonic explorations. I can see that they were a big thing in their day, but I did not experience it then, and listening at a distance without nostalgia, it hasn’t aged that well.

Favorite album: Album – Generic Flipper

Favorite song: Sex Bomb

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: Album – Generic Flipper or the early compilation Sex Bomb Baby!

619. Celtic Frost

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Episode 619 is CELTIC FROST, a Swiss group considered influential on European heavy metal and extreme metal. They emerged in the mid-1980s with a tasty thrash metal approach, and ambitiously shifted on their second full-length album to what we might call gothic and symphonic metal. The next album went glam which lost them a lot of their audience. Celtic Frost reunited and put out a doom metal album in 2006, which I like the best although it is different from the sound that made them influential. The sonic attack is good, but the vocalist’s style keeps me from loving them.

Favorite album: Monotheist

Best album: To Mega Therion

Favorite song:  A Dying God Coming into Human Flesh

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: An interesting band for learning what was influenced, but not my first choice to dip into these subgenres.

617. Dave Van Ronk

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(November 2024) Episode 617 is DAVE VAN RONK. There’s a frustratingly large gap between his music and influence and the public awareness of him, which included me until recently. Nicknamed the “Mayor of MacDougal Street” for his presence on the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 50s and 60s, where he mentored and befriended some who achieved greater fame, like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. He was a force of nature with his loud, gruff voice, but he could also make it soft and tender, giving an emotional depth to his songs. His style included blues, ragtime, trad jazz, standards and children’s music. But it’s the spare folk songs, especially with his excellent finger-picking style, where Van Ronk excels. While his focus was on interpreting traditional and others’ songs, he was a talented writer of tune and lyric, as shown on Going Back to Brooklyn, his only album of all original compositions.

Favorite album: Inside Dave Van Ronk

Favorite song: Another Time and Place

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Dave Van Ronk, Folksinger; Just Dave Van Ronk; Inside Dave Van Ronk and Going Back to Brookyln showcase his solo guitar folk songs. Dave Van Ronk and the Ragtime Jug Stompers and Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Stompers are good ensemble albums.

616. Benjamin Britten

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(November 2024) Episode 616 is BENJAMIN BRITTEN, one of the most renowned English composers of the 20th century. Operas and choral works are his most recognized forms, although he composed in a wide range: choral, voice, chamber, orchestral, film scores. Overall the character of his work is rather normie, a “progressive conservatism” as one critic called it. While he was influenced by Berg, Stravinsky and Schoenberg, his music is not avant-garde and does not defy convention. But there is a much interesting to the ear. Characterizing his own style, Britten said composers should aim at “pleasing people today as seriously as we can.”

Favourite piece: War Requiem

Favorite chamber work: Cello Suite No. 3 (dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich)

Favourite choral work: Missa Brevis in D for Choir and Organ

Favourite solo piece: Six Metamorphoses after Ovid

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: War Requiem, his most famous work is a good place to start. I’m not into opera but try Peter Grimes if you are. I like the various cellos works.