October 27, 2012
comment 0

No Happy Mining Songs

As you know I like all kinds of folk music. There are rich and complex traditions of songs about work. Working on the Railway. Farming. Working as Sea. I was thinking there are no happy mining songs, but I was wrong. First let’s here some gut-wrenching ones.

Here’s The Miner’s Lullaby

This next one, a Merle Travis tune, is going out to all the bluegrass freaks out there today. I can’t listen to this without welling up.

Here’s a cover – Levon Helm singing a tune first recorded by Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band, The Mountain

Finally, the happy one….here’s Sun Ra and the Arkestra, direct from Saturn, performing Hi Ho. If I’m not mistaken, the Dwarfs were miners.

October 27, 2012
comment 1

Starsky’s on a rainy Saturday morning

I didn’t teach this morning, so I headed over to Starky’s to pick up a few things, primarily some of their delicious Goralska sausage.  For those wondering, Starsky’s is unrelated to the bad television series Starsky anbd Hutch. Most people will tell you that Starsky’s is a European grocery store, but in fact it’s a portal to some kind of parallel universe. Preparation for entry into the portal begins in the parking lot, which is full at any given time. Sometimes there are two or three cars cruising about like strange metal vultures watching for a spot to open up. I lucked into a pretty good parking spot remarkably  easily this morning and headed inside through the rain.

The only way to shop at Starsky’s, at least if you want to buy some sausage, is to immediately go up to the deli counter to get your number, and then leisurely do the rest of your shopping while you wait for your number to come up.  Today it was like Christmas or Easter in there. The sign read: NOW SERVING 12. I grabbed my number: 76. This was almost too much to bear. The folks at Starsky’s keep the wolves at bay by putting out samples of various sausages for customers to sample while they wait. This creates a feeding frenzy, customers elbowing through, in some cases grabbing enough samples to constitute lunch.  Before entering the Starsky’s parking lot, these are regular humans, just like you and me. The parking lot starts the desensitizing process and by the time they get to the deli counter they’re transformed into alien creatures in search of sausage. While I was waiting, one lady ran over my foot with her shopping cart on her way to grab some samples. She apparently didn’t even notice.

The good news is that I demonstrated the requisite incredible patience and got my sausage. The universe is now safe.

October 25, 2012
comments 2

Robert Pete Williams

I think I first heard Robert Pete Williams’ music in 1980 in the Listening Room at the York University library. They had a great collection of blues music there and a bunch of turntables. You could sign out records (some of you may remember those) and headphones. I used to take my homework up there as if I was going to do the homework while listening to selections from their collection, but I always forgot about the homework part when I started listening to the music. It was magical. I heard all these performers I had never heard of before playing these wonderful idiosyncratic blues. It was magic.

October 23, 2012
comments 3

Bromberg

I was thinking about the music of David Bromberg, so I figured it was time to dig up some cuts from the YouTube machine and share them here tonight. Let’s start with a bittersweet song called Watch Baby Fall.

In this next video Mr. Bromberg talks a bit about Rev. Gary Davis and then plays Maple Leaf Rag.

Here he is playing a really great tune by Weird Bob Dylan – It takes a lot to laugh it takes a train to cry…

And finally, here’s a lovely version of Ian Tyson’s Summer Wages (a favourite tune here at 27th St.)