Best use of [blank] in a song

Lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass, drums: This has become the de facto standard for rock and roll band instrumentation. Is there some unwritten rule about this? If a band shows up at the bar for a gig and one of the members is carrying, say, a banjo or a saxophone, are they barred at the door? Bouncer says “We didn’t hire no bluegrass band and don’t allow no jazz, neither.”

To encourage them (yeah, like they read this blog), here are just a few examples of atypical instruments or sounds in some songs I like. Additional nominations are encouraged.

Best use of a banjo: Bob Dylan in "High Water" on his 2001 Love and Theft CD. That song is excellent for many reasons, and the banjo is a nice bluegrass reference. Honorable mention to Jim White in his song "Handcuffed to a Fence in Mississippi" on the 2001 No Such Place. Favorite lyrics from that song:

My Trans Am is missing
My Trans Am is missing
I guess no more kissing
the girl who loves my car

Best use of a siren: Joni Mitchell in "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" from the 1991 CD Night Ride Home. If a siren can be subtle, it is on this tune, adding to the foreboding tone. Makes me shudder. Honorable mention to John Hiatt for "Tennessee Plates" on the 1998 release Slow Turning. Clever phrase from that song:

We crossed the Mississippi like an oil slick fire.

Best use of a cricket chirp: Joni Mitchell again, for "Night Ride Home" on the CD of the same name. Story is that the recording engineer leaned out a window of the building that housed the studio, sampled the cricket chirp, then put it on a loop behind the song. Nature's own tambourine.

Other stuff: The jazz combo Oregon used an udu drum to great effect in "Vessel" on the 1979 record Roots in the Sky. That’s appropriate because the udu is a clay vessel slightly modified to become a unique instrument. The flamenco group Ojos de Brujo uses a staggering array of percussion instruments up to and including the kind of turntable (for ‘scratching’) found in hip hop music. My favorite is the cajon. That's a picture of a cajon, also known as a box drum, at the top of this post.

I try not to miss the annual recital of the St. Olaf College percussion ensemble, in part because I'm a washed up former percussionist but really because it is always an enjoyable musical experience. Under the direction of David Hagedorn, the ensemble's next recital is Thursday, November 15, 2007 at 8:15PM in Urness Recital Hall.

I want a cajon drum for Christmas.

Posts & Pots

Paragraphs are back! (see previous post)

The solution is almost as big a mystery as was the problem. As the songwriter Jim White said: "Miracles abound, now more than ever."


Here's a bowl I made a while ago. The grey-blue glaze is called Acme because the Acme catalogue was Wile E. Coyote's favorite supplier. It's also an acronym for A Complete Mystery to Everyone because it's a mixture of about five old leftover unlabeled glazes from the Arts Guild studio. It's a very pretty semi-matte glaze that will never be duplicated, which adds to its attraction.


I hit something of a milestone as a potter recently when I realized that I could do again what I'd done before. If I want to make this bowl again, I'm pretty sure I could do it (until the Acme glaze runs out, of course). This is a good thing for a production potter (which I assuredly am not) and it's a good thing for an instructor (which I am intermittently), but it's not necessarily a good thing per se. Making pots (or poems) is a balance between serendipity (chance, dumb luck) and control. It's exciting to just see what happens (ooh! that turned out well) but it's also satisfying to have a particular end in mind and to get those results.