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.

Music (short version)

Rob Hardy recently wrote about the importance of music as part of a well-rounded education, which got me to reflecting on the central role music has played in my life. I'm working on a long, boring essay on that subject which may or may not appear here someday.

In the meantime, I kindly draw your attention to four music-related links there on the right sidebar.

Fabchannel shows concert videos from the Paradiso in Amsterdam. It is a free glimpse into a much more multi-national venue than exists in this country. It's where I first learned of Ojos de Brujo and Walter Trout and the Radicals. High quality.

Songs:Illinois is a blog devoted to contemporary alt-country, indie rock, nuevo-folk, and a bunch of other cool musical stuff. Very nicely done.

Old Blue Bus has become one of my favorite daily blog stops. Ed from Richmond (VA, not CA) is a one-man encyclopedia of roots music. He opened my eyes and ears to Arhoolie Records, a label based in El Cerrito, CA (where I once ate a lovely meal at a golf club high in the hills overlooking San Francisco Bay). The Arhoolie catalog is full of classic blues from the pre-electric guitar days.

Drummerworld is just that -- everything about drums and drummers. Videos of famous drummers drumming, places to buy drums and drum music and drum records.

So listen or watch the samples on those sites...because I said so!

A Sort of Poem

This started as an essay following a brief visit to Los Angeles. But somewhere along the way it morphed into more of a poem. The main problem (for me) is the ending. The piece feels incomplete, like it needs some kind of profound or clever thought to tie it all up. I don't know. [Edit: The last two lines were added to fix this problem. It's better, but...]

Since I admire Greg Luce's courage in putting his poems out there for comments and suggestions, I'm doing the same with this one, so have at it if you care to.


Shake

Exhaust fumes rise and swirl, merging with the sea mist
The rumble of the surf is overmatched by the growl of engines and the steady hum of tires on pavement

Every vehicle in this town seems to have tinted windows, as if every driver has something to hide

For decades, this place has been called a car culture, which may be a slight understatement
At least one third of the land area in the county is paved, habitable only by vehicles parked or looking for a place to park or on their way to or from a parking place
Pedestrians are rare, and half of them are panhandlers working the exit ramps

They’re saving the fruits of their begging to buy cars

The carcasses of worn out tires pile up in ravines
Huge ships crisscross the oceans hauling cars and car parts and oil
Acres of buildings are devoted to car insurance companies, car repair shops, highway engineers, car rental agencies, chop shops, race tracks, junkyards, DMV offices, car dealers, gas stations, courtrooms jammed with traffic offenders and jail cells with car thieves, emergency rooms, lawyers’ offices

It is a ceaseless, merciless hammering of our senses, yet we cannot seem to quit

We are drawn to the sounds of our own undoing, like the citizens inside a walled city mesmerized by the beat of Attila's battering ram

------

Pastoral, yes?

The Magic of Heat

No, not the Orlando Magic or the Miami Heat. I'm talking about temperatures above 2000 degrees (Fahrenheit) . It transforms dull clay and other inert, inorganic materials into shiny pretty things. These are two pots that came out of the kiln yesterday. They're OK.

I've tried to think of an elegant metaphor for making pots; something that captures the fun and msytery and earthiness of it. I've never been able to find just the right one. That's OK.

Making pots is for me just a nice combination of the artistic and the utilitarian, the subtle and the surprising. It's very pleasant. Maybe it's like fishing -- a bad day fishing beats a good day doing anything else. I wouldn't know, though, because I haven't been fishing since I was about twelve years old. Maybe it's like sailing -- using the forces of nature but at the same time being at their mercy. I used to have a 14' O'Day Javelin on a reservoir in central Ohio, which is to real sailing as Wendy's is to cooking. My only experiences with ocean sailing (off Cape Cod and off the Florida keys) both went rather badly.

See? Why bother?

It's A Pretty Little Town

In Richard Brautigan’s novel ”The Hawkline Monster,” the characters pass through a county in eastern Oregon in which the two principal towns are named Brooks and Billy. Brooks and Billy were founded by two brothers who’d had a falling out, and the towns continued the bitter rivalry long after the brothers were gone. Indeed, the citizens of Brooks went so far as to erect huge signs that straddled either end of their town’s main street. Approaching town, the signs read “Welcome to Brooks.” Leaving town, they said “Fuck Billy.” [Edit: The signs? Not in the book. I had embellished the story in my own mind, I guess. ]

I’ve always been fascinated by place names.

This fall, my son started college in a small town in Iowa. The long drive down there has opened new possibilities for guesswork, speculation, and daydreaming.

Here is a list of place names we encountered on recent trips, along with some commentary. Kind of like Mystery Science Theatre 3000 – some of it might be amusing.

Raymond: The Chamber of Commerce needn’t spend any time on a slogan because, well, everybody loves Raymond.

Carbon: The fundamental basis for life forms on this planet. In fact, we should stop calling Earth Earth and just call it Carbon. A local entrepreneur started an Internet dating service. She called it Carbon Dating and couldn't understand why so many paleontologists were contacting her.

Manley: Even the girls’ teams at the high school are called Men.

Rembrandt: The choices had been narrowed to two: Rembrandt or Bosch. Idiots.

Lytton: My middle name! Really!

Everly: Everybody in Everly has a brother.

Royal: Just across the creek from Plebian.

Balltown: Not as good as Ball Club, MN, but close

What Cheer: Is this someone’s idea of a joke?

Swisher: The candy store is called Swisher Sweets. So is the tobacco store. Confusing even to the natives.

Persia: No rational or even fanciful explanation. Persia?

Clinton Falls: yes, he does
Nora Springs: yes, she does
Lost Nation: yes, it is

The "OOO" Team needs a catcher

Mikhail Horowitz is a contributing editor of Elysian Fields Quarterly, which began life as The Minneapolis Review of Baseball. Horowitz has constructed many amusing baseball lineups using real players' names. So the idea is his, though the following roster is mine.

Almost every team has somebody with the "OOO" sound in a name or nickname, a name the fans can chant, as in "LEEWWWW " Ford. What if every player had such a name? I suppose the novelty would wear off pretty quickly, but imagine the anticipation on opening day if the PA announcer and the fans could wrap their voices around this lineup:

OF Mookie Wilson

OF Lou Pinella

OF Max “Scoops” Carey

1b Boog Powell

2b Moon Mullen

3b Dave “Soup” Campbell

SS Jimmy “Scoops” Cooney

DH Cecil “Coop” Cooper

C

SP Johnny Lee “Blue Moon” Odom

RP Ugueth “Oogie” Urbina

Mgr Bob Boone

You noticed the missing catcher. I couldn't come up with one. Nominations are open.

PS: It was a thrill to get a comment from Mr. Horowitz himself on an earlier post. Cool!

PPS: Most every player with the nickname Scoops was a first baseman, and most every player with the nickname Soup had the last name Campbell. Sometimes ballplayers aren't the most original lot.

Cellulosic Ethanol in the News

Story in the Northfield News yesterday about Dan Rather himself coming to town to interview David Legvold about ethanol. Legvold, who was a brilliant Daddy Warbucks in the Arts Guild production of "Annie," is also the director of the Cannon River Watershed Partnership and a farmer, so he knows something about the economic and environmental issues in ethanol production.

Story on MPR this morning about how corn-based ethanol isn't a good long-term biofuel solution because of the high energy costs and negative environmental impacts of corn production and how some scientists at the U of M are working on techniques for converting trees to ethanol. Apparently, the barrier to be overcome is that trees have too much cellulose. But one researcher said that problem will be solved within ten years, maybe five.

The forest products industry (read: logging) is in a bit of a slump right now, what with the flat housing market and some competing materials (aluminum framing, composite flooring and decking, etc.), so the loggers are excited about the potential for grinding up trees -- and not just the trunks, but every little piece -- to make ethanol. Somebody said that millions of tons of detritus are left on the forest floors every year after the loggers haul the trunks and big limbs off.

But environmentalists worry (it's what they do best) that not leaving pieces behind to rot and enrich the soil would mean terrible erosion, a blow to biodiversity, a reduction to wildlife habitat.

So, it seems a stalemate is inevitable unless a new source of cellulosic plant life can be found. A source no one particularly cares about one way or another. Leave the corn for people and domesticated farm animals to eat; leave the forests to the Isaac Walton League and Weyerheuser to wrangle over.

My solution: plant buckthorn!

It's perfect. Everybody seems to hate buckthorn, labeling it a "menace." It clearly grows quite well without any help from humans -- no need for tons of chemicals and fertilizers. Farmers can easily convert from other crops, fencing off a portion of their fields for buckthorn. Cut the most mature 1/3 of it down each year, grind it up and ship it off to the ethanol plant. We will have converted a menace into manna, saved the primeval forests, and given the struggling farmers another cash crop option.

Hail buckthorn!