Flaskaland
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Blues Journalist Ready to Jam
'"Deep Inside the Blues" with a special afternoon of music and conversation with musician and award-winning blues journalist Ted Drozdowski and his Mississippi juke joint style band Scissormen. The concert and live musical presentation on Sunday, April 24, at 2 p.m. will use Margot Cooper's blues photographs on display at the museum as a springboard for a discussion of the lively history of the music, which will also be reflected in Scissormen's performances of classic and original songs. Thanks to a grant by the Lowell Institute, admission is free.
'Drozdowski is a freelance journalist and musician living in Boston. He writes about popular culture, specializing in music. His work has appeared internationally in a wide variety of publications including Tracks, Rolling Stone and Musician. Before freelancing he was associate arts editor at the Boston Phoenix, where he remains a frequent contributor, and an editor at Musician. He is co-author of The Best Music CD Art and Design and appears regularly on television and radio offering commentary on music. He was a research consultant for Martin Scorsese's PBS-TV series "The Blues" and has been awarded the Blues Foundation's Keeping the Blues Alive Award for Journalism as well as other commendations.' ¶ 3/31/2005 05:54:00 AM
'"Deep Inside the Blues" with a special afternoon of music and conversation with musician and award-winning blues journalist Ted Drozdowski and his Mississippi juke joint style band Scissormen. The concert and live musical presentation on Sunday, April 24, at 2 p.m. will use Margot Cooper's blues photographs on display at the museum as a springboard for a discussion of the lively history of the music, which will also be reflected in Scissormen's performances of classic and original songs. Thanks to a grant by the Lowell Institute, admission is free.
'Drozdowski is a freelance journalist and musician living in Boston. He writes about popular culture, specializing in music. His work has appeared internationally in a wide variety of publications including Tracks, Rolling Stone and Musician. Before freelancing he was associate arts editor at the Boston Phoenix, where he remains a frequent contributor, and an editor at Musician. He is co-author of The Best Music CD Art and Design and appears regularly on television and radio offering commentary on music. He was a research consultant for Martin Scorsese's PBS-TV series "The Blues" and has been awarded the Blues Foundation's Keeping the Blues Alive Award for Journalism as well as other commendations.' ¶ 3/31/2005 05:54:00 AM
Post of the Week
Go ahead -- weep and moan about the abysmal state of radio in the US.
But take time to explore some vigorous listening experiences that persist in the airwaves today.
from A Good Guide to Some Cool Radio at the Rock n Roll Report:
'When writer Mark Morford, columnist for the SF Gate, lamented the state of rock radio in his column "All hail the death of radio -- Clear Channel suffers and rock radio is gasping its last and, more importantly, does anyone care?", he sounded the death knell for rock radio in 2005 but readers let him know that, although there is plenty of crap on the dial these days, there are still a number of very cool radio stations out there and there is a radio revolution a brewing.
'In his column "And now for some real radio -- Readers extol some glorious alternatives", he lists a number of great stations that you can listen to that prove the point that all hope is not lost. A great list of some really amazing radio, it just goes to prove my point that radio done well is the most intimate and yet the most community-forming media out there.' ¶ 3/31/2005 05:15:00 AM
Go ahead -- weep and moan about the abysmal state of radio in the US.
But take time to explore some vigorous listening experiences that persist in the airwaves today.
from A Good Guide to Some Cool Radio at the Rock n Roll Report:
'When writer Mark Morford, columnist for the SF Gate, lamented the state of rock radio in his column "All hail the death of radio -- Clear Channel suffers and rock radio is gasping its last and, more importantly, does anyone care?", he sounded the death knell for rock radio in 2005 but readers let him know that, although there is plenty of crap on the dial these days, there are still a number of very cool radio stations out there and there is a radio revolution a brewing.
'In his column "And now for some real radio -- Readers extol some glorious alternatives", he lists a number of great stations that you can listen to that prove the point that all hope is not lost. A great list of some really amazing radio, it just goes to prove my point that radio done well is the most intimate and yet the most community-forming media out there.' ¶ 3/31/2005 05:15:00 AM
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
No better post found anywhere on the innanet today on world music than this breathy piece exhaled by a most fired up Jason Gross: "We are the Whirled -- Spin on World Music."
¶ 3/09/2005 11:48:00 AM
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Book Alert
The fine folks at the Association of Music Writers and Photographers send us sizzling hot tips, nudge us towards fascinating articles, and even send along job leads to their members! And yes, if you're a music writer or photographer, we strongly recommend you associate yourself with them.
Today, AMWP alerted us to the existence of this intriguing new book,
THE SONG READER
By Lisa Tucker
In her debut novel, journalist/waitress/computer programmer/professor and tour groupie Lisa Tucker presents Mary Beth Norris, a young woman who turns her small town on its ear by figuring out the meaning of the music it hears every day. Though she is kept plenty busy raising her adopted son and taking care of her younger sister, Mary Beth always has time for music. She spends hours each day going over the lyrics of favorite songs. Soon, she begins to offer her sonorous services to neighbors, as a way of helping them deal with issues they may not even consciously realize they have. As word of Mary Beth’s special talents spreads, more and more people become inextricably linked to this sympathetic musical entrepreneur. Eventually, Mary Beth’s odd calling turns on her, and it is up to those she has tried to help to return the favor, even if they do not fully understand it. Along the way, the town rediscovers many of its members, seeing them what they are, often for the first time. ¶ 3/08/2005 04:49:00 PM
The fine folks at the Association of Music Writers and Photographers send us sizzling hot tips, nudge us towards fascinating articles, and even send along job leads to their members! And yes, if you're a music writer or photographer, we strongly recommend you associate yourself with them.
Today, AMWP alerted us to the existence of this intriguing new book,
THE SONG READER
By Lisa Tucker
In her debut novel, journalist/waitress/computer programmer/professor and tour groupie Lisa Tucker presents Mary Beth Norris, a young woman who turns her small town on its ear by figuring out the meaning of the music it hears every day. Though she is kept plenty busy raising her adopted son and taking care of her younger sister, Mary Beth always has time for music. She spends hours each day going over the lyrics of favorite songs. Soon, she begins to offer her sonorous services to neighbors, as a way of helping them deal with issues they may not even consciously realize they have. As word of Mary Beth’s special talents spreads, more and more people become inextricably linked to this sympathetic musical entrepreneur. Eventually, Mary Beth’s odd calling turns on her, and it is up to those she has tried to help to return the favor, even if they do not fully understand it. Along the way, the town rediscovers many of its members, seeing them what they are, often for the first time. ¶ 3/08/2005 04:49:00 PM
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Sunday Reading Room
Dem ol' kosmic blues again
BOOK REVIEW BY CHARLES TAYLOR
March 6, 2005
A BAD WOMAN FEELING GOOD: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them, by Buzzy Jackson. Norton, 319 pp., $25.95.
In "A Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them," Buzzy Jackson fails to give any sense of what the singers she is writing about - Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Etta James and Aretha Franklin among them - mean to her. Jackson's less-than-generic theme is that the blues allowed women a way of escaping stultifying racial and gender roles. To this end, Jackson mixes biographical sketches of the artists with the sort of by-the-numbers social history that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of A&E's "Biography":
This boilerplate blandness would be forgivable if Jackson had dug into the music of the women for whom she obviously cares, had found a way to make it live on the page. Part of the problem with "A Bad Woman Feeling Good" is that it began life as Jackson's master's thesis, and it still bears the strictures of academic writing. ¶ 3/06/2005 11:35:00 AM
Dem ol' kosmic blues again
BOOK REVIEW BY CHARLES TAYLOR
March 6, 2005
A BAD WOMAN FEELING GOOD: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them, by Buzzy Jackson. Norton, 319 pp., $25.95.
In "A Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them," Buzzy Jackson fails to give any sense of what the singers she is writing about - Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Etta James and Aretha Franklin among them - mean to her. Jackson's less-than-generic theme is that the blues allowed women a way of escaping stultifying racial and gender roles. To this end, Jackson mixes biographical sketches of the artists with the sort of by-the-numbers social history that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of A&E's "Biography":
This boilerplate blandness would be forgivable if Jackson had dug into the music of the women for whom she obviously cares, had found a way to make it live on the page. Part of the problem with "A Bad Woman Feeling Good" is that it began life as Jackson's master's thesis, and it still bears the strictures of academic writing. ¶ 3/06/2005 11:35:00 AM
Thursday, March 03, 2005
(thanks to Bob Sarles for this)
Cellars by Starlight: Back to school
Chas Sawyer Teaching blues at Harvard
BY TED DROZDOWSKI/The Boston Phoenix
It's the final day of class at Harvard Extension School, and the
waitress is bringing a couple of well-drawn pints of Guinness and a
Jameson's straight up to one pair of students. Others are quaffing
beer and eating burgers and buffalo wings while the band on stage charge
into a version of Paul Butterfield's gritty blues classic "Born in
Chicago."
Now this is the way school should be conducted, but it's especially
appropriate for a class in the blues, a music with a relationship to
booze that goes well beyond rhyming.
But of course there's more to the style than stories about
whiskey-drinking women and guzzling canned heat. And there's more to
this class than a good time out in a Cambridge bar on a Tuesday night --
not that any justification is required for that. The class, a fall
program called "History of Blues in America," meets 15 or 16 times a
semester, ordinarily under the bright lights of a classroom on the
Harvard campus. This is the second year it's been taught, by the
instructor who designed it, Charles Sawyer, who is also the author of
The Arrival of B.B. King (Da Capo) and a helluva harmonica player. In
2003, Sawyer ended the class with a visit by King himself, who held
court in a lecture hall speaking about his life and music and playing a
couple of tunes. This year, it's Sawyer who did the playing at the
class finale, which took place a week ago last Tuesday, along with his band
of local aces 2120 South Michigan Avenue, whose line-up includes the
respected guitarist Peter "Hi-Fi" Ward and drummer John Hoik.
It's improbable enough that Harvard, America's leading Ivy League
university, would have a course in the blues, even in its
open-admission evening extension school. More improbable still that the final session would be an all-night jam at the Overdraught, an amiable pub on
Cambridge Street that's splitting bookings between roots music and
rock and roll. But Sawyer and 2120 Michigan Avenue took the stage for their
first set at 7:30 and didn't let it go for two and a half hours.
After the band had thundered through "Born in Chicago," the song that first
sent Sawyer along the blues trail, they invoked the spirits of harmonica
kings Little Walter Jacobs and Junior Wells with close-to-the-bone
renditions of "Last Night," "Blues with a Feeling," and "Snatch It Back
and Hold It," all powered by Sawyer's beautiful bent harp notes and
Ward's subtle perfection. Then guests started hopping on stage. "2120
South Michigan Avenue" had the Chicago sound covered. By the time
guitarist/harmonica player/singer Chris "Stovall" Brown, vocalists
Francine Calo, Sweet Willie D., and Kassie Buckley, guitarist Brad
Faucher, and other local heroes had taken the stage, the music had
swung from New Orleans to Texas to Memphis and to the Delta.
"I'm an evangelist," Sawyer told me after the musical travelogue had
concluded. "I want to secure the place of blues in the history of our
culture. When I'm really snookered by something, I want everybody to
feel the same way. Listen, this music is gonna knock you sideways
because it knocked me sideways. When I show a video in class and the
lights come up afterward, I secretly hope everyone will be on the floor
because they've been knocked down by what they've seen and heard. I
do get that kind of reaction to this music in more subtle ways. I've
seen people cry under the bright fluorescent lights of the classroom because
they've been touched by something in the music. Who cries in an
economics class? My feeling is that if I can impart something that
students can carry with them through life that will sustain them,
enrich them, give them comfort, and rouse their curiosity like the blues has
done for me, that's wonderful."
Sawyer was first "knocked sideways" when he was driving along the
Connecticut Turnpike in the mid 1960s and heard the Paul Butterfield
Blues Band's "Born in Chicago" on the radio. "I had been listening to
rock and roll, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but I felt like I
had no real reference points for this sound. I didn't really know about
Little Walter or Muddy Waters at that point. But when I bought the
Butterfield Blues Band album, it was a very solid slice of the music,
with songs by Elmore James, a Willie Dixon tune, very traditional stuff
along with two originals." Butterfield became Sawyer's first
harmonica inspiration, though later Little Walter, Big Walter, Junior Wells, and
others would follow, including hands-on instruction from Mike Turk,
Adam Gussow of Satan & Adam, and Mark Hummel, who got Sawyer to write liner
notes for one of his albums by offering him lessons. Although Sawyer
has performed for decades, he assembled 2120 South Michigan Avenue about
five years ago.
Some of Sawyer's students -- there were about 120 this past semester --
have already been fired by the music. Others are intrigued and looking
to be led deeper into its lore. "There no consistent demographic.
I've had high-school students and a guy in his 70s in class. About
three-quarters of the people who sign up have a real affinity for the
blues. About a quarter of them have a vague interest. What they have in
common is a desire for an intellectual adventure.
"I asked for a show of hands of those who play a musical instrument.
About half the hands went up. Then I asked how many played in public
and about a quarter of the hands went up, so many people in the course are
already involved in making music. "Many people are drawn to the blues
through a particular artist -- a lot of them through Clapton or Stevie
Ray Vaughan -- who gave them an appetite for the music, but they don't
know the foundation. They may love Clapton, but they haven't heard
Freddie King, Albert King, or Albert Collins. Or other people have
delved into one historic figure, like Charley Patton, and want to move
beyond that."
Sawyer says it was surprisingly easy to sell the course to Harvard.
He'd already been teaching software classes (his "Java for Distributed
Computing" is a smash for local enrollment and the University's on-line
studies arm at the Extension School for 13 years when he made his
pitch.
"B.B. and I became friends when I wrote his authorized biography, and I
learned a lesson from him. When he first came to Memphis to play, he
got himself two reinforcing things lined up. He found a place where he
could play, and the lady who owned it said that if he got a radio show, he
could have a regular gig. So he went to the radio station and said he
had a regular gig and got himself a radio program. I talked with B. and
said, 'I'm going to teach a course on blues at Harvard. Would you
come?' And he said, 'I'd be honored.' Then I went to Harvard and said,
'I'd like to teach a history of the blues, and B.B. King said he'll
come.' That plus the fact that I was very well known at the Extension School
did the trick."
2120 South Michigan Avenue play the Red Rock Bistro & Bar, 141 Humphrey
Street in Swampscott, on February 19; call (781) 595-1414.
© 2005 The Boston Phoenix ¶ 3/03/2005 04:55:00 PM
Cellars by Starlight: Back to school
Chas Sawyer Teaching blues at Harvard
BY TED DROZDOWSKI/The Boston Phoenix
It's the final day of class at Harvard Extension School, and the
waitress is bringing a couple of well-drawn pints of Guinness and a
Jameson's straight up to one pair of students. Others are quaffing
beer and eating burgers and buffalo wings while the band on stage charge
into a version of Paul Butterfield's gritty blues classic "Born in
Chicago."
Now this is the way school should be conducted, but it's especially
appropriate for a class in the blues, a music with a relationship to
booze that goes well beyond rhyming.
But of course there's more to the style than stories about
whiskey-drinking women and guzzling canned heat. And there's more to
this class than a good time out in a Cambridge bar on a Tuesday night --
not that any justification is required for that. The class, a fall
program called "History of Blues in America," meets 15 or 16 times a
semester, ordinarily under the bright lights of a classroom on the
Harvard campus. This is the second year it's been taught, by the
instructor who designed it, Charles Sawyer, who is also the author of
The Arrival of B.B. King (Da Capo) and a helluva harmonica player. In
2003, Sawyer ended the class with a visit by King himself, who held
court in a lecture hall speaking about his life and music and playing a
couple of tunes. This year, it's Sawyer who did the playing at the
class finale, which took place a week ago last Tuesday, along with his band
of local aces 2120 South Michigan Avenue, whose line-up includes the
respected guitarist Peter "Hi-Fi" Ward and drummer John Hoik.
It's improbable enough that Harvard, America's leading Ivy League
university, would have a course in the blues, even in its
open-admission evening extension school. More improbable still that the final session would be an all-night jam at the Overdraught, an amiable pub on
Cambridge Street that's splitting bookings between roots music and
rock and roll. But Sawyer and 2120 Michigan Avenue took the stage for their
first set at 7:30 and didn't let it go for two and a half hours.
After the band had thundered through "Born in Chicago," the song that first
sent Sawyer along the blues trail, they invoked the spirits of harmonica
kings Little Walter Jacobs and Junior Wells with close-to-the-bone
renditions of "Last Night," "Blues with a Feeling," and "Snatch It Back
and Hold It," all powered by Sawyer's beautiful bent harp notes and
Ward's subtle perfection. Then guests started hopping on stage. "2120
South Michigan Avenue" had the Chicago sound covered. By the time
guitarist/harmonica player/singer Chris "Stovall" Brown, vocalists
Francine Calo, Sweet Willie D., and Kassie Buckley, guitarist Brad
Faucher, and other local heroes had taken the stage, the music had
swung from New Orleans to Texas to Memphis and to the Delta.
"I'm an evangelist," Sawyer told me after the musical travelogue had
concluded. "I want to secure the place of blues in the history of our
culture. When I'm really snookered by something, I want everybody to
feel the same way. Listen, this music is gonna knock you sideways
because it knocked me sideways. When I show a video in class and the
lights come up afterward, I secretly hope everyone will be on the floor
because they've been knocked down by what they've seen and heard. I
do get that kind of reaction to this music in more subtle ways. I've
seen people cry under the bright fluorescent lights of the classroom because
they've been touched by something in the music. Who cries in an
economics class? My feeling is that if I can impart something that
students can carry with them through life that will sustain them,
enrich them, give them comfort, and rouse their curiosity like the blues has
done for me, that's wonderful."
Sawyer was first "knocked sideways" when he was driving along the
Connecticut Turnpike in the mid 1960s and heard the Paul Butterfield
Blues Band's "Born in Chicago" on the radio. "I had been listening to
rock and roll, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but I felt like I
had no real reference points for this sound. I didn't really know about
Little Walter or Muddy Waters at that point. But when I bought the
Butterfield Blues Band album, it was a very solid slice of the music,
with songs by Elmore James, a Willie Dixon tune, very traditional stuff
along with two originals." Butterfield became Sawyer's first
harmonica inspiration, though later Little Walter, Big Walter, Junior Wells, and
others would follow, including hands-on instruction from Mike Turk,
Adam Gussow of Satan & Adam, and Mark Hummel, who got Sawyer to write liner
notes for one of his albums by offering him lessons. Although Sawyer
has performed for decades, he assembled 2120 South Michigan Avenue about
five years ago.
Some of Sawyer's students -- there were about 120 this past semester --
have already been fired by the music. Others are intrigued and looking
to be led deeper into its lore. "There no consistent demographic.
I've had high-school students and a guy in his 70s in class. About
three-quarters of the people who sign up have a real affinity for the
blues. About a quarter of them have a vague interest. What they have in
common is a desire for an intellectual adventure.
"I asked for a show of hands of those who play a musical instrument.
About half the hands went up. Then I asked how many played in public
and about a quarter of the hands went up, so many people in the course are
already involved in making music. "Many people are drawn to the blues
through a particular artist -- a lot of them through Clapton or Stevie
Ray Vaughan -- who gave them an appetite for the music, but they don't
know the foundation. They may love Clapton, but they haven't heard
Freddie King, Albert King, or Albert Collins. Or other people have
delved into one historic figure, like Charley Patton, and want to move
beyond that."
Sawyer says it was surprisingly easy to sell the course to Harvard.
He'd already been teaching software classes (his "Java for Distributed
Computing" is a smash for local enrollment and the University's on-line
studies arm at the Extension School for 13 years when he made his
pitch.
"B.B. and I became friends when I wrote his authorized biography, and I
learned a lesson from him. When he first came to Memphis to play, he
got himself two reinforcing things lined up. He found a place where he
could play, and the lady who owned it said that if he got a radio show, he
could have a regular gig. So he went to the radio station and said he
had a regular gig and got himself a radio program. I talked with B. and
said, 'I'm going to teach a course on blues at Harvard. Would you
come?' And he said, 'I'd be honored.' Then I went to Harvard and said,
'I'd like to teach a history of the blues, and B.B. King said he'll
come.' That plus the fact that I was very well known at the Extension School
did the trick."
2120 South Michigan Avenue play the Red Rock Bistro & Bar, 141 Humphrey
Street in Swampscott, on February 19; call (781) 595-1414.
© 2005 The Boston Phoenix ¶ 3/03/2005 04:55:00 PM
