Thanksgiving cranberries

The octave overcomes all wrath

Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : Henry (label : subject/Henry).

I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)

Related topics (there are others) : breakdown, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry's books, Shakespeare...

from winter solstice a year ago

chance chords (re)discovered by ignorant musician

(that's me on harp at a concert on Redeemer lawn last summer)

(trying out instant blog recorder)

I've taken what I think is the best music from the 2 Go Little Sparrow cds, and put it on one disc (& reduced the price).

I've done my share of busking, in Providence, San Francisco... but mostly in the London underground. In those days I had a nice Les Paul and a little portable amp. I had to take good care of that guitar, an incongruous instrument for any busker. Ended up selling it one day (back in US) when I was low on funds (still regret that!). Now I play a Korean Les Paul imitation (which isn't too bad, actually), & an old cracked Gibson acoustic.

I took guitar lessons for a while (a short while) with Duke Robillard, here in Providence. Also remember taking some folk-picking lessons, briefly, when I was a freshman in college. Otherwise I am pretty much self-taught on that instrument.

I am not obsessive about music the way I have been at times about writing. & I haven't even been that obsessive about writing. I can't tell you a zillion things about the technicalities or who's who in either area of endeavor. I am generally a person for whom things have always come too easily, & neither do I push myself too hard. I suppose this is a damning admission (at my age you start to recognize where you might have pushed harder). I daydream a lot, I brood a lot.

[p.s. the song over at GLS titled "Down Around Angola" was first composed & performed in the London subway. Too bad I can't remember the rest of the lyrics. The song was about international arms dealing, I think.]

Brand new music over at G.L.S. : "The Martians Are Leaving".

The combination of a bad cold & a music bent has kept me from HG Poetics. But it's curious how blogging gets to be part of your extended self. The word blog sounds vaguely biological.

Like many, or more than most, I've had my difficulties integrating various interests & ambitions. Music remains an undeveloped talent, and writing an unfulfilled ambition. The new technologies, however, seem to encourage or empower amateurs like me.

This can be seen as both positive & negative, I guess. Sometimes we want roughness & authenticity & immediacy, rather than the cult of "clean, tight" music, the seamless, impenetrable aura of professionalism. Then again, sometimes we want that perfection & power, the refinement which comes from a lifelong nurture of talent.

I started piano lessons when I was 6 years old. This was about a year after I started begging my parents for lessons. My mother played piano & flute; my father has a good singing voice. I took lessons til I was 14, and went pretty far with it. I won 3rd place in a state competition when I was 13. Then I started losing interest, to the chagrin of Mrs. Elledge, my teacher.

I started playing guitar when I was 15. I started in on harmonica at 17. I was playing in bands my senior year in high school. Then in college, I pretty much dropped it again - until I dropped out of college, & hit the road, connecting with old high school bandmates & others. Ended up playing on the streets & elsewhere in San Francisco, Denver, NYC (this was in the mid-70s). Went over to England to apply for the opening with the Rolling Stones (Mick Taylor's former spot). (I've told that story before!), played in little coffeehouse bands around London for a few months.

Then when all that came to an end I went back to school. Dropped music again for almost 10 years. Was encouraged by fellow library worker (Jim Chapin) to take up harmonica again, and have played in various jug/blues/country bands with him since then (late 80s). Am learning about "podcasting" partly in order to advance the recording of what we do (the "K.C. Moaners" - Jim, Colette & me). Jim is a very fine musician, a kind of homegrown Hank Williams, who can play & sing hundreds of traditional tunes.

- But I see now how so much of what I've been able to do, in writing and music, is based on those 7 years with Mrs. Elledge - that hour every day practicing at the piano. Tone & tempo, expression & pacing... learning to write is as much a matter of training the ear, as it is learning grammar & hermeneutics.

Go Little Sparrow is a new blog I've started in order to experiment with "podcasting". Don't really know what I'm doing with it yet. Was up til 2 in the morning last night, formatting some primitive old recordings into some music editing & podcast software. Wonder if I've set it up right for mp3 access (feedback is welcome on that, since I don't have an mp3 player!).

I started playing guitar when I was about 15, with the encouragement of a school friend, Jeff Greenspoon, who was already an accomplished jazz guitarist. (Had studied piano previously.) Jeff introduced me to a lot of music & musicians around the Twin Cities area. But in my first band, with the silly name Spur of the Moment, I played harmonica & a miniature stand-up piano which we miked. That band had a spangly Elvis-lookalike lead singer, and 2 blond guys from Wayzata who did the "Cream"-imitation endless guitar/bass solos. We played a lot of proms & frat parties. I remember we did the tune "Heat Wave" in Hinckley MN, a farm town mostly famous for the terrible Hinckley Fire in the 1880s or so. So we changed the wording of the song (instead of "heat wave.. heat wave... HEAT WAVE" it was "Hinckley..."). I know this is fascinating, everybody. Tom Davis, of Davis & Franken fame on Sat Night Live, was our groupie. The back of the van smelled strongly of marijuana, thanks to Tom. It was my dad's van so that worried me much of the time.

I learned harmonica the usual way, from old Sonny Boy Williamson & Sonny Terry records. Tony "Little Sun" Glover, of Koerner Ray & Glover, was based in Mpls; I studied the little purple handbook he wrote. (I am lucky to have heard the terrific Spider John Koerner in concert a few times.)

In college I didn't do much music. Getting back into it was part of my "missionary activity", in a way (but only in a way), after the mysterious-weird "Shakespeare/Bible flip-out" when I was around 19 yrs. (written up partially, as you know, in Glass of Green Tea). I was "full to bursting with the Spirit" in those days. The plan was actually to bring that message to/with the Rolling Stones (which is why I introduced Biblical studies into my conversation with Keith Richard). Can you believe this stuff?

In a way, though, getting back into music was liberating too. My newfound faith-visions gave me "permission" to drop out of college & wander around the country.

But I allus came back t'SCHOOL, fer some reason!!

I started playing again, after many music adventures in London, in the early 80s, with a country-blues guy named Jim Chapin. We have gone through several music formations since then. Jim was just given a cache of almost 100 old "Recordio" home recordings his father & family made in their kitchen back in the 50s (his dad also played guitar & mandolin). A treasure-trove of folk, country, popular music, some wonderful singing on there. The Smithsonian or somebody should take an interest.

I got the reminiscence blues today, sorry folks.

Jim Chapin wants me to play harmonica & countrified piano for a new CD this fall. This will be fun. The 3 of us (Jim, Colette & I) have been playing farmer's markets this summer. The jug band fits in well. People come up & ask for obscure old 20s tunes, which of course Jim knows. He has a homemade songbook the size of a phone book. He is the thing itself - sort of a Hank Williams/Brownie McGhee. Colette is also the real thing. She plays her grandfather's violin, which he made himself in his chicken coop-workshop up in Quebec, back in the 20s or so.

I'm not exactly the real thing but I'm a good improvisor. It helps (occasionally) if the harp player is a little bit of a ham.

Music notes from Little Rhody: Band practice in Woonsocket Monday night, with Bill the new keyboard player. Self-employed piano tuner. Has four pianos & an organ in one not-so-large room on 2nd floor. Plus dog & 2 flying cats. Not sure how this is done.

We talked about how quite a bit of complex-sounding music actually stems from hands finding the easiest way to make the chords. Bill's wife sang us a poem she had written about the man recently arrested in a supermarket there for licking a woman's feet.

audblog audio post - the harmonica part.

audblog audio post Another old rough n'ready HG musical experience. The subtext for this song, titled "Go Little Sparrow", is the story told (in the Venerable Bede, I think) of the first conversion to Christianity of the British king. The king said to the missionary, "Our life is as when, on a cold winter night, a sparrow flits through a window into the warm feast hall, and then out again. If your God can give me confidence in what comes after, I will believe." [or something like that]

Once again the 2-min. limit means I've had to split the song proper & the harmonica coda into 2 separate posts.

audblog audio post

Oh, this is fun! Soon you'll be able to read along the entire 99-sonnet Island Road, with that annoying Minnesota mosquito twang in the background! But while you wait, here's another old tune of mine.

audblog audio post

& here's the harmonica part at the end. Hope it all sounds OK.

audblog audio post

OK, here's the same song, in its entirety. Only I've had to divide it into 2 segments, as this audblog only allows 2-minute takes. This is the 1st part, up to the harmonica close.