Brother Jesse's Morning Music

[keith]

Wow, I did not realize how many times Promised Land was covered. Before all of them was the Cannonball:

[Dave]

I remember when Mr. Sunshine used to play that song on WRUN radio in the early 1950's, or was it the late 1940's?

Wiki says the song has been in sheet music since 1882.

[keith]

Reading in the cellar sent me searching through the attic this past weekend, a singer and a group neither of which I remember hearing previously, John Michael Talbot & Straight No Chaser. If this is the first time they have appeared in the Monk or More Stories, they're great.

If they have appeared in the past, one advantage to getting older is that one hears so many new jokes & new songs.

[keith]

And a new to me song by a pair of familiar faces & and odd vocal pairing:

[Dave]

The O'Connor/MacGowan piece is interesting. McGowan is a name that is somewhere in my wife's gallery of relatives.

I thought I used Straight No Chaser before, or was going to. I know I probably did not use Talbot because all I could find on Youtube is his later stuff which is too much for me. You know, gooey religious, altough I do like his message much of the time., but not consistently. Suite seems considerably toned down. Too bad. I liked his music when he was a Rocker, but when I found this Prepare Ye The Way I could hear that it is much closer to his original spirit than his later work. I threw out all my vinyl before I moved after finding it was worth next to nothing on ebay, my old turntable had frozen up and I couldn't find anyone who wanted the records. I had a couple of Talbot's and Prepare Ye the Way and Suite were among the selections.

[keith]

My kids got me a new turntable a few years ago when I said I was going to convert all my vinyl to digital. I found it to be way too much work but I still have things that are not available in digital format.

[keith]

I should have also included Helplessness Blues & Put Your Lights On in the list above.

[Dave]

Great Songs! I just used them somewhere ... Lunarticks or Monk.

[keith]

Electric cellos & light sabers, what's not to love?

[Dave]

Cool!


Count me as a new fan of The Piano Guys. Creating your own brother electronically is a neat idea!

Here's more.

[keith]

Yes I listened to that one & the Cello Song.

In a bread upon the waters situation, a friend to whom I had sent a Piano Guys link returned the favor by sending me this link:

[Dave]

Thanks! That is terrific! I sent it to my daughter, labeled "A Silent Night for a Tired Mother At Christmas time."

[Dave]

Kenny Loggins

I always thought Kenny Loggins was a musician's musician and watching him perform just adds to that belief. His melodies are always catchy and I enjoy his showmanship. Here are two selections from the 1992 "Outside From The Redwoods" concert. This first with Michael McDonald. Made popular by the Doobie Brothers, I really like this rendition, done with feeling.




And here's Loggins with one of my favorites. That's Sonny Landreth (wearing glasses) playing the slide guitar solo. Pretty mild guitar work compared to what Sonny can do. I'll post something of his next. Does anyone know who the guy is in the "first violin" position on Kenny's right? Vest, doing guitar and voice? He looks familiar. Anyway, here's "This Is It" with the stage band.




Loggins hasn't been treated as well by life as one might expect. Or maybe he didn't treat himself right. Here's a very short interview of him that begins on this page:

www.bankrate.com/finance/celebrity-money/qa-kenny-loggins-1.aspx?ic_id=most_shared


As a long aside, I came across a few videos I found interesting from a production point of view. I remember from my short career as a musician that nothing sounds on stage to the performer as it does to the audience. One of the reasons for the large "feedback" speakers is so a singer can hear himself and not go flat and also so the musicians can get into the feel of the band by hearing more than just their own instruments. If you're standing backstage, however, it all sounds quite unbalanced, as it did to small bands of the 1950's because we couldn't afford all of that gear on stage.

You don't need to watch these videos in their entirety, but notice the differences among the three and compare between what the audience hears of Angry Eyes at a live concert and what you would hear on-stage without benefit of standing in front of the speakers.

Here's the studio of Loggins and Messina's Angry Eyes. Just as a baseline.



Here it is from "out front." Unfortunately, from someone's flip phone.



Here it is (I think the same concert or similar) from back stage.



Some observations. At 1:50 Loggins calls the tech out and threatens to tie his children to the back bumper of the tour bus and drag them down the Freeway if the SOB doesn't fix the tremolo. This while Messina goes to the footlights and checks to see if there is really an audience out there while ostensibly clapping them up.

During the sax solo, if you look over his shoulder you'll see the audience looking dead asleep and/or distracted. They always look like that in seated venues. Down front the real estate is pricey and the folks have been crammed in like sardines and can only nod their heads to the music and do baby claps. Again, the sax sounds almost alone, like your neighbor's kid practicing in his bedroom next door. But your neighbor's kid is nowhere near this good and we can't hear the accompaniment in this video. The sax player may not be hearing it very well either. He might be hearing nothing but the thumping bass, but he has to fake his involvement with the music.

I gotta get some coffee. It's early yet.

[Dave]

Here's Sonny Landreth with Eric Clapton at the 2010 Crossroads doing one of the other Promised Lands. On his second solo, Sonny uses the slide, fingers, thumbs and he'd use his toes if he could get them up there. Clapton wakes up and does wonderfully, of course. Looks like he's working, which doesn't come naturally to a guy who makes it look easy.

[Dave]

Joe Cocker


I just ran this over on the Monk blog, but I gotta copy it here, just to make it part of Morning Music. (I haven't done Joe Cocker before?)




Wiki: John Robert "Joe" Cocker, OBE (born 20 May 1944) is an English rock and blues musician, composer and actor, who came to popularity in the 1960s, and is most known for his gritty voice, his idiosyncratic arm movements while performing, and his cover versions of popular songs, particularly those of The Beatles. He is the recipient of several awards, including a 1983 Grammy Award for his #1 hit "Up Where We Belong", a duet he performed with Jennifer Warnes. He was ranked #97 on Rolling Stone's 100 greatest singers list.[1]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Cocker





I like his later appearances, where his hand movements have calmed down, but not always.





And one of my favorites .....




I like this.




Can't end without this.....