Tag Archives: Music

Revolution in the Arab World: Why We Can’t Just Stand Aside

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Rhapsody playlist: Democratic Revolutions in the Middle East

Here’s a little play list I put together inspired by the wave of democratic revolutions sweeping the Arab world. The play list includes songs celebrating people power and a small sampling of songs from the region. Today, on receiving news from Libya, I added a few songs that go some way, insofar as anything can, to expressing the pure horror and sadness I felt on seeing images of death in the streets of Libya. The images have been shocking, the ruthlessness of the regime truly appalling. This music expresses the pure sadness and outrage I feel.

It is amazing and inspiring to watch these demonstrations! It has been horrifying and shocking to watch the response of the Libyan regime!

It is considered naive to suggest that foreign policy should be based on principle. We are told it is necessary to be Machiavellian in safeguarding our national interest, and in the realm of foreign policy, realpolitik often trumps principle. I disagree. Perhaps I am, indeed, naive, but I believe that democracy, with protection for the rights of the minorities, is a principle that trumps almost all, and our policy ought to reflect that.

In the current wave of peaceful democratic revolutions sweeping the Arab world, US support of the citizen demonstrators has been slow and tepid. This in spite of the fact that sticking to our principles and unequivocally supporting the pro-democracy demonstrators is what is in our best economic and strategic interest. To do otherwise is a risky strategy, a strategy that, should it not go the way proponents believe, will have grave consequences.

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Artists to Check Out: Cory Branan and River City Extension

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I checked out Cory Branan playing at Paradise Saturday.  He was one of the acts that played before headliners Dashboard Confessional, and so the set was disappointingly short, only about  short, 1/2 hour.  Branan took to the stage before a rather quiet audience.  Dashboard sometimes do a version of his song “Tall Green Grass” when they play live, but clearly this audience didn’t know who he was.  Once he started though, he had their attention.

He has an impressive stage presence.  He was last in Boston in October at Great Scott where he played a similar but longer set opening for Drag the River.  John Snodgrass helping out on some vocals.  But in both cases he followed a similar pattern.  Branan’s genuinely a humble guy.  He comes out, acoustic guitar in hand, looking the part of the humble  singer/songwriter, folk artist.  He apologizes to the audience for taking their time, and then proceeds to deliver a set that rocks like you would never expect an acoustic set to do.  His fingers slide up and down his guitar, he strums or picks hard and fast, and his voice wails.  It’s powerful and masculine, a real rock and rollers voice.

He’s a hell of a performer.  He whips through songs like “A Girl Named Go” steadily picking up pitch and speed.  volume as the girl name Go picks up speed in her car.  “Tall Green Grass” he plays with with a humor and mirth.  He played a new song from a forthcoming album, but gave no sense when it might be released.
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Michael Needs New Shoes

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New Shoes from Michael Toler on Vimeo.

The Musical World of Roger Kuhn Around X-mas Time

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Cover Art for "Every Year Around XMas Time"

Singer / Songwriter Roger Kuhn will be at the American Indian Community House in lower Manhattan tomorrow, Friday, December 3, for a concert marking the release of “Every Year Around Christmas Time”  a collection of original Christmas songs available at most online music outlets. (Click here for information on the show.)

The record marks a return to the studio for the farm boy from North Dakota, turned New Yorker, who’s now become a Boston resident since moving here with his husband in May, 2009.  He has spent the last year reading, studying yoga, meditating, and enjoying married life off the road.  But now “he’s got the bug again,” and the Christmas collection is just some of the new music coming our way. A new single, My Vow to You, is already available on iTunes.

In this video interview he talks about his childhood, becoming a musician, the importance of music in negotiating his identity as a gay man of mixed Native American  and White heritage, his spirituality, his career thus far, and what is still to come.

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Life is Good Festival, Day One

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Today was the first day of the the Life is Good Festival in the Blue Hills in Canton, MA.

The festival is a two-day celebration of music and optimism, featuring three stages of diverse live music, hands-on games, interactive arts activities and the “Good Kids” zone — home to the top acts in kids entertainment. The Life is Good Festival is a unique music event that every age group can enjoy.

100% of Life is Good’s profits from the Festival will go towards The Life is good Kids Foundation, helping kids overcome life-threatening challenges such as violence, illness and extreme poverty.

It was a great line up today. I really enjoyed Ozomatli, Mavis Staples and Ben Harper. I liked Dr. Dog, too. But I didn’t get to hear as much of it as I would have liked as I was working as a volunteer and had to get back to the Bocce station!

More check-ins at Prowse Farm

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I’ll Never Understand Musical Genres

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Cory Branan

I thought maybe it was time to put together a new play list, so I went off searching for tracks on Rhapsody.  The genres of the songs that came up amused me.  I was surprised by the variety and by the nature of many of them.  Some were simple and frequently used, like Vocal Jazz, Folk, Pop…  Then there were other genres that I knew, but that it was hard to tell the difference between.  Like what is the difference between Americana, Folk Pop, Alt Country and plain old Folk?  And there were the bizarre ones that I had never heard of. What about Pop Punk, Post-modern Pop, Adult Alternative and Alt/Punk?  What are they and what is the difference between them? Anyway, here is the play list.  Enjoy!

Share 8-24

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“Depression” by Ryan Bingham

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The album, Junky Star, releases in three day on August 31st.  The first single, “Depression“, is available now.  I know this sounds like advertising, and it would be if I were getting paid.  I’m just excited!  I’ve heard most of the tracks on the record, and it’s going to meet expectation.  Here’s one.

Here’s a little clip in which Ryan talks about the disc.
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Faves: Sharon Jones, Avett Brothers, Swell Season, Tim Barry and Gaslight Anthem

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The Newport Folk Festival dates back to 1959, but has always adhered to a somewhat loose definition of “folk.” Among the people who played there in the early days of the festival and early in their careers were Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash and Howlin’ Wolf. More recently people as diverse as Jakob Dylan, The Decemberists, The Low Anthem, Jimmy Buffett, Nickel Creek, the Allman Brothers Band, Agenlique Kidjo, and Emmylou Harris have played the festival that now takes place annually at Fort Adams State Park.

This year’s festival was impressive, as usual. We got there just in time to see Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. As usual they were brilliant. Sharon Jones interacts with her audience more than any other performer I have seen live, and if you get a chance to see her in a small club, do. She’ll bring folks on stage to sing to them, or even to have them sing and dance with her. She singles people in the audience out for recognition when they show affection, and she handles unruliness with particular dexterity. I wasn’t sure how that would play out in the noonday sun on the highly elevated stage in Fort Adams State Park.
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Music in the Clouds

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Source: My Grafitis in Tehran (http://my.opera.com/nbt4u/blog/)

There was an interesting piece in PC World yesterday about an iPhone app called Cloud Music that allows you to store your music in Google Docs and stream it through your iPhone. Google Docs now allows users to store files of all types, so this app takes advantage of that fact. I’ve yet to play with it, but its an interesting response to the restrictions the Digital Rights Management puts on our music. Since users can share things in Google Docs, presumably they can also share the music in their digital collection, provided it is not protected by DRM measures they are not able to break.

A day before that the American Public Radio program Marketplace had an interesting segment on cloud computing and streaming music, but from a totally different angle. This time it is not the users that uploads and access their own files, but rather rather the users subscribe to a huge digital library of music and stream what they want. Most of these services also offer the opportunity for downloads for users who want to be able to take their music offline. The best known examples of this are Rhapsody.com and Lala.com, recently purchased and shut down by Apple. For a monthly fee you can listen to whatever you wan in the order you want. In essence it is a vast online digital library.

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Thematic playlist: Whiskey and Moonshine

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A while back, I got a lot of peoples help to create lists of train songs that I posted in this blog. That was a fun project, and I’ve been eager to start another. I subsequently indicated that my next list would be Protest Songs and Corporate Greed. It seemed relevant given the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, the banking crisis, and so many other current issues. I haven’t gotten far on that, but am still working on it. It’s just that it’s such a heavy topic.

So I’m going to lighten it up a bit and start another project at the same time, this one on one one of my favorite things: Whiskey. Just to keep it interesting, lets not limit ourselves to whiskey, but also moonshine or, the name I like, “White Lightening.”
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