Murdoch

When your life is as raw and mixed up as the scrambled eggs they make in our mess, you need solace somewhere.Alexi is the man.The daredevil blind-lawyer. The giver of justice and calm in times of crazy twisted darkness decending everywhere.

Living here I have a feeling of constant tiredness, like a wave who is tired of smashing against the rocks and never really reaching the shore. My beach is scatterd with ugly shells whose ugliness made the creatures inside them leave and never return. Dreams are mingled with the dirty sand, too sticky for comfort, to hard to build castles with.

At such a juncture, there is a tune that sticks in your head. A wafting smell of pure air in the stench of incompetence. Dillusion turns into a less desperate state of numbness. You breathe once more. The tune catches you by the hand and gets you out of the bog you are sinking in and puts you on cold hard land. But land nevertheless. I am sitting and writing this, taking a holiday. Digging my heels in the dirt, stopping, slowing.

Alexi is singing me a soft song, the cells in my head are rearranging themselves to their optimum configuration.

I may not like much that is around me, but at least inside me, the garden is flourishing once more, nourished by music.

Thank you Bob Dylan and Mr.Murdoch for bringing me back. In the liner notes of Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits the guy writes that music is the background score to our lives. I agree, but I think it goes beyond just that. It sometimes shapes and twirls and jitterbugs our lives and above all makes us feel the way we want to.

Alexi Murdoch – All of my days [mp3]

Alexi Murdoct – Blue mind [mp3]

Bob Dylan – All I really want to do [mp3]

Society

Check out this nice little piece by Eddie Vedder. It’s from the Into The Wild OST, the whole of which Vedder essentially performed. The movie is nice enough– apparently it’s a true story, which is interesting. It has some nice nature shots, an appropriate score, and Sean Penn as producer/director. The IMdB triva section tells me that Penn considered Leonardo DiCaprio for the lead role, and even before I read that it struck me that DiCaprio would have been well-suited for it. But then it would have become a DiCaprio Movie. As it stands, Emile Hirsch’s performance has shades of DiCaprio in it anyway. Especially the accent, in parts.

‘Guaranteed’ is the song from the soundtrack that won a Golden Globe and was nominated for a Grammy (best original song), but I like the slow chorus of this one better.

Eddie Vedder – Society

Folk Britannia

Some months ago I dicovered British folk music, via a brillant BBC documentary called Folk Britannia. I chanced upon a whole world of music and musicians that fall just below the standard pop culture radar. These musicians were involved in the Folk Revival that began in the 1950s on both sides of the Atlantic.

Davy Graham was the first of the British folkies to catch my attention. Right at the outset, at the dawn of the 60s, he proved to be much more than a folk guitarist. He incorporated the blues, and jazz, and eastern influences. All this was way before the hippies got in on the act. In fact, American artists like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon picked up several techniques and ideas from Graham, as well as his contemporaries Bert Jansch and Martin Carthy — who were also visionary guitarists. Paul Simon learned ‘Scarborough Fair’ from Martin Carthy, and then promptly copyrighted it. (He did this by including new lyrics. What a guy.) Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page also pinched a few ideas from these trailblazers. I’m posting some tracks from Davy Graham’s 1964 instrumental album The Guitar Player. ‘Anji’ was covered by Paul Simon on Simon & Garfunkel’s debut album, and quickly became an acoustic standard. I’ve included Davy Graham’s cover of Dave Brubeck’s brilliant ‘Take Five’ — one of the few jazz tracks I really like. Then there’s ‘She Moves Through The Bizarre’ which is his attempt to show a connection between Irish folk and Indian/Middle Eastern music. To fully appreciate what he’s done, go to youtube and look for the original folk song ‘She Moves Through the Fair’, sung by various people, including … er … Boyzone. Jimmy Page shamelessly copied Davy Graham’s version on the Yardbirds/Led Zeppelin track ‘White Summer‘.

Davy Graham — Anji

Davy Graham — Take Five

Davy Graham — She Moves Through The Bizarre

Next up is a track by Bert Jancsh called ‘Blackwater Side’. Jimmy Page takes “inspiration” from it on the track ‘Black Mountain Side’. Glorious stuff.

Bert Jansch — Blackwater Side

Bert Jansch was part of the band Pentangle in the late 60s and early 70s. Their debut album has been on heavy rotation recently. It’s not folk-rock. More like folk-jazz. I really think this band could be my window into the world of jazz — a world that I just haven’t been able to come to grips with. ‘Waltz’ is really something. Dig them drums. Apart from the music, I really like the album cover. Hehe. They really look like the cool crowd. The people you might want to hang out with.

Pentangle — Waltz

Two more tracks. They’re from Fairport Convention’s album Liege and Lief. Sandy Denny was the lead singer — she’s the one who duets with Robert Plant on ‘The Battle of Evermore’. Quite a voice. Fairport is more of a folk-rock band, which is a good thing. Too much noodly jamming can be quite off-putting.

Fairport Convention — Come All Ye

Fairport Convention — The Deserter