A friend of mine told me about going to an audiophile convention, where all these people hunt for sound machines that extend beyond human hearing, and cost lots of money. I think there are times when we go too far. To have a sound system that costs thousands of dollars is like going to concerts and talking through the music, complaining the band isn’t as good as at the previous concert, or calling someone on your cell, to complain that the music is too loud to be able to hear. Sometimes I think humans are too pretentious, but if I have a chance to listen to my musical heros, I’ll do what I can to be there.
My funny friend Chuck used to collect records for his Victrolla on Saturdays. We would shop and then open them all up and play them for the entire day… Is it 75’s they use?
Cab Callaway, Big Band stuff and lots of jumpin jive. :dancing
Victrollas are beautiful and a part of listening history.:flower
I hope to have a new hole drilled and plugged in my head by TBF. If it is working, I will be a cyborg, I suppose. It will have digital sound and will ring in the bones of my head, I hope it will mean I can hear in stereo again.
As a musician, I feared for my fingers, never knowing that the most important biological tool is the ear.
“You don’t know what you’ve got 'til its gone…”
Each of us has a story that moves, slow or fast, creating context, hanging our old shirts on the hook of our history. There are places we get to know over time that have the feel and comfort of home. TBF has given me moments that reside in my head, even though most of the moments are a blur of sight and sound, a mandala, if seen from the road that starts near the museum and goes up the canyon wall. The mandala moves as a thousand feet, step toward a place, wither to sit, dance, go eat, hunt for friends, head to town, or camp, or to the vendors, weaving with the flow, against the flow, with a friend, or family, or without reason, no place to go, but for the beat that drives the feet. Your eyes, fed images of faces, of mountains, places you may never go, up high near the horizon of where earth meets sky, rioting color, and red rock and trees, a breeze dancing with the music, and I can feel it now.
Although I look outside, seeing piles of snow, and hoping the solstice is warmer by far than this day, although its okay as days go.
A river of beautiful… yes I can feel it now. :medal
I figure that I can scream from this tiny screen that people can choose or not, to see. i have decided that, due to all those years of sunburn, rain, snow and wind, and the ultimate beauty of TBF, I can yell, in my quiet way, by the time I arrive on warner field, I will be able to hear stereophonically. For the vast majority of humankind, that is a given, but in my very unique case, I will be able to hear in my left ear. I will be a cyborg and I hope I have extra batteries in my sweaty hand to reconnect me to my bone-grafted hearing device. I will forever (only as long as my body breathes) be in debt to the universal entity that oversees this tiny entity, or, maybe there are connections upon connections that open this door to allow me to come to TBF and be able to hear through both sides of my head. I intend to enjoy it so much that I will go to folks festival and listen to all those words set to music. I wish that I could go to song school, but, I’ll be dancing on rainbows for the next five years or so. And if none of you understand this, its like getting a plate of food in Haiti, today.
I’m so happy for you Dan. :flower See you in June!
I am thinking about a few different ideas that have crossed my mind recently. The search for The Steam Powered Areo Plane reminds me that there is an amazing amount of music that has been recorded and is hidden from view or your ears. there are albums that take me months to find, and a few that eventually cross my path after years of searching. I’ll admit that I am addicted to music, and I love new sounds, although there are some things that don’t hold my interest. TBF has helped me expand my horizons.
After seeing the African Project, I found people like a retired judge, a school teacher, friends, and others that were thoroughly fascinated by the music, and I talked with a banjo player that found the show to be “too far out” to enjoy. Another person said that Bela’s banjo playing just doesn’t sound “right”. I think that to some, an “Odd Sound” is not music, if it doesn’t fit their expectations, or rules, while to others, music can be heard anywhere and the sounds from across the globe help to further peace and understanding, even if you don’t know the words, or it won’t be heard on Bandstand, to be judged by some kid that can barely count to four, over and over.
I am listening to Jennie Lewis sing “Acid Tongue”. Its a nice simple tune and I like it.
I found a cd of music that Joni Mitchell liked, jazz, world, rock and blues, folk, and I got stuck by Bob Dylan’s “Sweetheart like You”. “what’s a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this.”
It reminds me of this: We festivarians, the two or three of you that read this dribble I write, have a responsibility to be conscious. Music helps. Sometimes the words make messages that may or may not be intended. Humans appear to be the only species that makes garbage and trash…a dump like this… its an odd sound that reaches us and gets us to behave differently than a “normal” human, by making less garbage, eating real food, and lessening our effect on the planet. Keep listening for that odd sound.
I too have had the Aero Plane search gently on my mind (pun intented), and it was thrust to the forefront when I was reading nodepression.com last evening.
[b][i]In music, we talk and think about and stalk moments in time. Pure moments of music, when the sound and the emotion and the sense of the words sway together within both the audience and the maker; or when the illusion of that is so masterfully presented as to make the illusion a shimmering and believable thing.
Grant Alden
No Depression.com[/i][/b]
This has me wondering if we are truly stalkers of odd sounds or moments in time. Maybe moments in time with odd sounds. For instance, last year at TBF, during The African Project, I heard Big Country! I knew I had heard the tune but still strained forward not trusting my own ears. Again the refrain and I turned to Adam and made the whispered announcement. He confirmed I was hearing correctly. How odd to have such a favorite grace me, flow over me and into me, in a different form than the norm, and when I least expected. It only proved to me that I was truly listening to the music, and then I looked around. The attention was undivided across the entire festival field. It was the odd sound of peace and harmony, odd only because it’s rare these days. It’s why I stalk TBF every year, all year, trying to guess ahead of time which moment of music will fill my soul until I can return, once again, return the following year and stalk odd sounds, stalk moments in time with odd sounds, stalk the Moon and the Sun, stalk the odd sound of the Summer as it begins with that hallowed toast of rum and fruit with friends, dear friends that seem to harmonize with the elongated shouts of "RUMBAAAALLLLLLLSSSSS!!! Oh, it’s an odd sound heard no where else in my world, except in my sleep in the dead of Winter nights, when I yearn for the sounds of the Summer to come, and I stalk those sounds.
Touche’ :cheers
I was singing in the laundry room yesterday(love the acoustics in there :flower) and I had just read something that made me sad for a few moments.
My voice had this odd strange hallow depth to it that made me think,
when we sing out, it comes from the depths of us…
We are beautiful :cheers
:wave
I love the last bit of a note
Floating in air, floating somewhere.
Like the last bite of something wonderful,
Cooked to perfection and eaten.
Nothing lasts
enjoy the momentary bliss,
The sound, the smell, the taste, the feel;
Learning how to let it go, so easy, so easy.
Last week end, I got to drive east to Denver through the tunnel on a Sunday afternoon. I listened to George Harrison’s jams from All things Must Pass. It took that long to drive through the tunnel. There is nothing like being in a metal capsule coasting under a mountain at less than 5 mph. The snow on the east side had created a mess for those heading west, causing a bunch of fender benders, and I think there was only one lane open. There is an amazing discord between thinking that the roads are always clear and easy to drive, and being stuck with a few hundred irritated, tired travelers looking for an easy way out. There is nothing like having your expectations dashed by mud, heavy rain, snow, or a large tree or rock placed right where you intend to go. it is at that moment when you need to hear a new tune, to change the way you think. I have my old favorites, but I love listening to new stuff, driving at a walking pace, listening to Jennie Lewis, or the Preservation Hall Band. It is different than when everyone is racing ahead, trying to change lanes and get to the destination, Now. I am hoping this years new music will excite me just as much as I have enjoyed previous TBF’s. I alway need something new to while away my time through the tunnels.
Well said, well said indeed
and I’ve just heard Preservation Hall Band for the first time… They’re great :cheers
During the bad driving conditions, I always think of James Mcmurtry’s song “Holiday”.
It will get ya!
Watch out for the idiots! :thumbsup
Jenny Lewis just tears it up!! OK now I’m in the mood for somethin’ new…
Really curious about Ms. Imelda May not sure if I wanna take a hard listen before fest or not. :flower
I think of two ways to deal with new music. Listen to a cd or record until it is in my head, or go see someone I have never heard and let them take me away. There are times when I am ready and I hear the music the first time around. There are times that I am not connected and I don’t hear what I want in the music. Listening to music all day, in the mountains and having little responsibility other than drink water, find my tent, and enjoy myself, makes music enter my being much easier than taking a cd and trying to hear it while I am cooking or doing chores, or looking for something like my notebook, which may or may not be in the usual hiding place.
Years ago, I had listened to a band, Wolfstone, on a compilation cd, and I knew I wanted to hear them. People were streaming out of the festival, taking things back to camp and their music came on and pulled people back into the festival. They ended up playing their first song again, at the end of their set because they didn’t know what else to play. A lot of people loved them. i hope they sold out their cd’s they brought with them.
The hardest decision is when every band sounds great and I want to take all their music home :cheers
That’s why the TBF CDs are so great. I wish there was one for each year.
Driving in snow, static on the radio, turn on the stereo.
Wipers, chains, spinning wheels, frozen drains, mud remains
floods to the north of us, tornados in the south
Muddy west coast and muddy east coast,
Spring is slowly changing the weather
By the next season,
We’ll be together.
the sky is blue over western Colorado, and most of us are happy. The fruit trees are waking up, and the grass is shaking the frost off each morning. I can hear the sound as faint as an empty tin of last year’s beans, calling out from the other side of spring, and it vibrates the strings of bouzouki from farther than I can recognize the distance. There is a huge pile of snow, waiting for the solstice to go floating by the campground. It stirs in its sleep as a deep rumble of a falling rock, strikes and sinks into the snow, asking “Can I go?” “Only when the wind brings the sound of strings to these high places.”
I’m helping a friend build his house. It took a year to frame it and we are playing with wire. You know the song, “Don’t play with me 'cause you’re playing with wire.”? :huh
My dog is telling me its time for food. I think its time for beer, Who is right?
So, in the continuing drama of the “Odd Sound” and the two readers that wonder at my foolish notions of what sound is odd enough to be mentioned here, today, we could hear high pitched sounds, like birds, sounds from a radio, and people talking, all from the wind. It was so strange, a number of sounds that would demand our attention, for a moment and then I would say, “its just the wind”. There are some sounds from nature that mimic the artificial sounds of stupid human things, which we can hear often enough from the city down below us. We watched a deer this morning realize that humans were too close and 'Run away" around the house and over the hill.
I am waiting for the end of spring, aren’t you?
I went down, down down like a burnin ring a wire :lol :lol Very funny.
Did you know that that song Buring Ring of Fire was written by Johnny’s wife, about her love for him and his struggle with addictions. I love him, but,. great song. Spring is here and I am already tired of it… Mud everywhere!!! Come on June.