Buck Owens
Alvis Edgar Owens Jr. professionally known as Buck Owens, was an American musician, singer and band leader who had 21 No. 1 hits on the Billboard country music charts with his band the Buckaroos. They pioneered what came to be called the Bakersfield sound, named after Bakersfield, the city Owens called home and from which he drew inspiration for what he preferred to call American music. While Owens used fiddle and retained pedal steel guitar into the 1970s, his sound on records and onstage was always more stripped-down and elemental, his signature style was based on simple storylines, infectious choruses, a twangy electric guitar, an insistent rhythm supplied by a drum track placed forward in the mix, high two-part harmonies featuring him and his guitarist Don Rich. From 1969 to 1986 Owens co-hosted. According to his son, Buddy Allen, the accidental death of Rich, his best friend, in 1974 devastated him for years and halted his career until he performed with Dwight Yoakam in 1988. Owens is a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Owens was born on a farm in Sherman, Texas, to Alvis Edgar Owens Sr. and his wife, Maicie Azel née Ellington. The stretch of US Highway 82 in Sherman is named the Buck Owens Freeway in his honor. "'Buck' was a donkey on the Owens farm," Rich Kienzle wrote in the biography About Buck. "When Alvis Jr. was three or four years old, he walked into the house and announced that his name was "Buck." That was fine with the family, the boy's name was Buck from on." He attended public school for grades 1 -- 3 in Texas. His family moved to Arizona, in 1937 during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Owens co-hosted a radio show called Buck and Britt in 1945. In the late 1940s he drove through the San Joaquin Valley of California, he was impressed by Bakersfield, where he and his wife settled in 1951. Soon, Owens was traveling to Hollywood for session recording jobs at Capitol Records, playing backup for Tennessee Ernie Ford, Wanda Jackson, Tommy Collins, Tommy Duncan, many others. Owens recorded a rockabilly record called "Hot Dog" for the Pep label, using the pseudonym Corky Jones because he did not want the fact he recorded a rock n' roll tune to hurt his country music career.
Sometime in the 1950s, he lived with his second wife and children in Fife, where he sang with the Dusty Rhodes band. In 1958 Owens met Don Rich in Steve's Gay 90's restaurant in Washington. Owens had observed one of Rich's shows, went to speak with him. Rich started to play fiddle with Owens at local venues, they were featured on the weekly BAR-K Jamboree on KTNT-TV 11. Owens' career took off in 1959, when his song "Second Fiddle" hit No. 24 on the Billboard country chart. Soon after, "Under Your Spell Again" made it to No. 4 on the charts and Capitol Records wanted Owens to return to Bakersfield, California. Owens tried to convince Rich to go with him to no avail. Rich opted to go to Centralia College so that he could become a music teacher while tutoring and playing local venues, but after a year of college, he decided to drop out and join Owens in Bakersfield in December 1960. "Above and Beyond" hit No. 3. On April 2, 1960, he performed the song on ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee. In early 1963, the Johnny Russell song "Act Naturally" was pitched to Owens, who didn't like it, but his guitarist and long time collaborator, Don Rich, enjoyed it and convinced Owens to record it, which he did with the Buckaroos, on February 12, 1963.
It was released on March 11 and entered the charts of April 13. By June 15 the single began its first of four non-consecutive weeks at the No. 1 position. It was Owens' first No. 1 hit. The Beatles recorded a cover of it in 1965, with Ringo Starr as lead singer. Ringo Starr re-recorded the song as a duet with Owens in 1988; the 1966 album Carnegie Hall Concert was a smash hit and further cemented Buck Owens and the Buckaroos as more than just another honky tonk country band. They achieved crossover success on to the pop charts. During that year, R&B singer Ray Charles released cover versions of two of Owens' songs that became pop hits: "Crying Time" and "Together Again". In 1967, Owens and the Buckaroos toured a then-rare occurrence for a country musician; the subsequent live album, appropriately named Buck Owens and His Buckaroos in Japan, was an early example of country music recorded outside the United States. In 1968 Owens and the Buckaroos performed for President Lyndon Baines Johnson at the White House, released as a live album.
Between 1968 and 1969, pedal steel guitar player Tom Brumley and drummer Willie Cantu left the band and drummer Jerry Wiggins and pedal steel guitar player Jay Dee Maness were added. Owens and the Buckaroos had two songs reach No. 1 on the country music charts in 1969, "Tall Dark Stranger" and "Who's Gonna Mow Your Grass". In 1969, they recorded a live album, Live in London, where they premiered their rock song "A Happening In London Town" and their version of Chuck Berry's song "Johnny B. Goode". During this time Hee Haw, starring the Buckaroos, was at its height of popularity; the series envisioned as country music's answer to Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, outlived that show and ran for 231 episodes over 24 seasons. Creedence Clearwater Revival mentioned Owens by name in their 1970 single "Lookin' Out My Back Door". Between 1968 and 1970, Owens made guest appearances on top TV variety programs, including The Dean Martin Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Jackie Gleason Show and seven times on The Jimmy Dean Show.
In the early 1970s, Owens and the Buckaroos enjoyed a str
Spin Alternative Record Guide
Spin Alternative Record Guide is a music reference book compiled by the American music magazine Spin and published in 1995 by Vintage Books. It was edited by rock critic Eric Weisbard and Craig Marks, the magazine's editor-in-chief at the time; the book features essays and reviews from a number of prominent critics on albums and genres considered relevant to the alternative music movement. Contributors who were consulted for the guide include Ann Powers, Rob Sheffield, Simon Reynolds, Michael Azerrad, Robert Christgau; the book did not sell well and received a mixed reaction from reviewers in 1995. The quality and relevance of the contributors' writing were praised, while the editors' concept and comprehensiveness of alternative music were seen as ill-defined. Nonetheless, it inspired a number of future music critics and helped revive the career of folk artist John Fahey, whose music was covered in the guide. Spanning 468 pages, Spin Alternative Record Guide compiles essays by 64 music critics on recording artists and bands who either predated, were involved in, or developed from the alternative music movement.
In the book, each artist's entry is accompanied by their discography, with albums rated a score between one and ten. The book's editors, critic Eric Weisbard and Spin editor-in-chief Craig Marks, consulted journalists such as Simon Reynolds, Alex Ross, Charles Aaron, Michael Azerrad, Ann Powers, Rob Sheffield, who wrote most of the complete discography reviews; the artist entries are accompanied by song lyrics and album artwork. Although "alternative" had been used as a catchall term for rock bands outside the mainstream, Spin Alternative Record Guide covers 500 artists from a variety of genres considered relevant to alternative music's development; these include 1970s punk rock, 1980s college rock, 1990s indie rock, noise music, electronic, new wave, heavy metal, synthpop, alternative country, hip hop, grunge and avant-garde jazz. Most artists associated with classic rock are not covered, while some mainstream pop artists are given entries, including Madonna and ABBA. Other non-rock artists reviewed in the book include jazz composer Sun Ra, country singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett, Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Weisbard and Marks have said the book was meant to be "suggestive", rather than "comprehensive", of alternative music. An introductory essay on alternative rock and "alternative sensibilities" was written by Weisbard. In it, he explains alternative music as a category whose principles are "antigenerationally dystopian, subculturally presuming fragmentation", "built on an neurotic discomfort over massified and commodified culture", he and Marks consulted a number of artists for their top-ten record lists, which were interspersed throughout the book. They curated a "Top 100 Alternative Albums" list for the appendix, ranking the Ramones' 1976 self-titled debut album at number one. Spin Alternative Record Guide was published by Vintage Books on October 10, 1995, was the first book compiled by Spin magazine. According to Matthew Perpetua, the guide was "not a huge seller". Reviewing the book in 1995, Adam Mazmanian from Library Journal recommended Spin Alternative Record Guide to "both public and academic libraries".
He found its reviews superior in "length and scope" to The Rolling Stone Album Guide, which offered complete discographies of artists ranging from Jonathan Richman to Throbbing Gristle. Mazmanian further argued that "this guide fills a gap in the literature of modern music" at a time when "alternative" has developed a ubiquitous presence in the marketing of popular music. In New York magazine, Kim France called it "a well-edited and comprehensive look at all the crazy stuff the kids are listening to these days". Booklist critic Gordon Flagg was more qualified in his praise, he applauded the accuracy of the artist entries and the quality of the contributors' reviews, but found Weisbard's conception of "alternative" ill-defined and recommended The Trouser Press Record Guide as a more comprehensive option. More critical was Billboard magazine's Beth Renaud, who called much of the writing biased and the organization unencyclopedic, she said Weisbard's "obligatory" essay is outdated and vague in defining alternative rock and that the contributors "gush" over artists covered by Spin's magazine publication, with many relevant artists omitted in place of more perplexing additions.
Having edited the book, Weisbard put his pursuit of a PhD at UC Berkeley on hold and accepted a job offer from Spin, which marked the beginning of his career as a rock critic. Meanwhile, the guide's entry on folk guitarist John Fahey, written by Byron Coley, helped renew interest in Fahey's music. According to Ben Ratliff from The New York Times, this led to substantial interest in the guitarist from record labels and the alternative music scene, helping revive his career. American pop culture critic Chuck Klosterman cited Spin Alternative Record Guide as one of his five favorite books, saying in 2011, "I fear this might be out of print, but it's my favorite music book of all time. Since its 1995 publication, I doubt a year has passed when I didn't reread at least part of it." Robert Christgau, who contributed to the book, wrote that while most music guides and encyclopedia books he has consulted were unremarkable, Spin Alternative Record Guide was one of the few "useful exceptions" because of what he felt was the "sharpest writing" from contributors such as Weisbard and Sheffield.
Maura Johnston, on the other hand, said in retrospect that the book's list of the 100 best albums catered to "hipper, Gen-Xier tastes". In 2011, Spin Alternative Record Guide was included in Pitchfork's list of their staff's favorite music
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is an American monthly magazine that focuses on popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California in 1967 by Jann Wenner, still the magazine's publisher, the music critic Ralph J. Gleason, it was first known for political reporting by Hunter S. Thompson. In the 1990s, the magazine shifted focus to a younger readership interested in youth-oriented television shows, film actors, popular music. In recent years, it has resumed its traditional mix of content. Rolling Stone Press is the magazine's associated book publishing imprint. Straight Arrow Press was the magazine's associated book publishing imprint, Straight Arrow Publishing Co. Inc. was the publishing company that published Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone magazine was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Ralph Gleason. To get it off the ground, Wenner borrowed $7,500 from his own family and from the parents of his soon-to-be wife, Jane Schindelheim; the first issue carried a cover date of November 9, 1967, was in newspaper format with a lead article on the Monterey Pop Festival.
The cover price was 25¢. In the first issue, Wenner explained that the title of the magazine referred to the 1950 blues song "Rollin' Stone", recorded by Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan's hit single "Like a Rolling Stone": You're wondering what we're trying to do. It's hard to say: sort of a sort of a newspaper; the name of it is Rolling Stone which comes from an old saying, "A rolling stone gathers no moss." Muddy Waters used the name for a song. The Rolling Stones took their name from Muddy's song. "Like a Rolling Stone" was the title of Bob Dylan's first rock and roll record. We have begun a new publication reflecting what we see are the changes in rock and roll and the changes related to rock and roll."—Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone, November 9, 1967, p. 2 Some authors have attributed the name to Dylan's hit single: "At Gleason's suggestion, Wenner named his magazine after a Bob Dylan song." Rolling Stone identified with and reported the hippie counterculture of the era. However, it distanced itself from the underground newspapers of the time, such as Berkeley Barb, embracing more traditional journalistic standards and avoiding the radical politics of the underground press.
In the first edition, Wenner wrote that Rolling Stone "is not just about the music, but about the things and attitudes that music embraces". In the 1970s, Rolling Stone began to make a mark with its political coverage, with the likes of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson writing for the magazine's political section. Thompson first published his most famous work Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas within the pages of Rolling Stone, where he remained a contributing editor until his death in 2005. In the 1970s, the magazine helped launch the careers of many prominent authors, including Cameron Crowe, Lester Bangs, Joe Klein, Joe Eszterhas, Ben Fong-Torres, Patti Smith and P. J. O'Rourke, it was at this point that the magazine ran some of its most famous stories, including that of the Patty Hearst abduction odyssey. One interviewer, speaking for a large number of his peers, said that he bought his first copy of the magazine upon initial arrival on his college campus, describing it as a "rite of passage".
In 1977, the magazine moved its headquarters from San Francisco to New York City. Editor Jann Wenner said San Francisco had become "a cultural backwater". During the 1980s, the magazine began to shift towards being a general "entertainment" magazine. Music was still a dominant topic, but there was increasing coverage of celebrities in television and the pop culture of the day; the magazine initiated its annual "Hot Issue" during this time. Rolling Stone was known for its musical coverage and for Thompson's political reporting. In the 1990s, the magazine changed its format to appeal to a younger readership interested in youth-oriented television shows, film actors and popular music; this led to criticism. In recent years, the magazine has resumed its traditional mix of content, including in-depth political stories, it has expanded content to include coverage of financial and banking issues. As a result, the magazine has seen its circulation increase and its reporters invited as experts to network television programs of note.
The printed format has gone through several changes. The first publications, in 1967–72, were in folded tabloid newspaper format, with no staples, black ink text, a single color highlight that changed each edition. From 1973 onwards, editions were produced on a four-color press with a different newsprint paper size. In 1979, the bar code appeared. In 1980, it became a large format magazine; as of edition of October 30, 2008, Rolling Stone has had a smaller, standard-format magazine size. After years of declining readership, the magazine experienced a major resurgence of interest and relevance with the work of two young journalists in the late 2000s, Michael Hastings and Matt Taibbi. In 2005, Dana Leslie Fields, former publisher of Rolling Stone, who had worked at the magazine for 17 years, was an inaugural inductee into the Magazine Hall of Fame. In 2009, Taibbi unleashed an acclaimed series of scathing reports on the financial meltdown of the time, he famously described Goldman Sachs as "a great vampire squid".
Bigger headlines came at the end of June 2010. Rolling Stone caused a controversy in the White House by publishing in the July issue an article by journalist Michael Hastings entitled, "The Runaway General", quoting criticism by General Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of the International Security Assistance Force and U. S. Forces-Afghanistan commander, about Vice President Joe Biden and oth
Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that has six strings. It is played with both hands by strumming or plucking the strings with either a guitar pick or the finger/fingernails of one hand, while fretting with the fingers of the other hand; the sound of the vibrating strings is projected either acoustically, by means of the hollow chamber of the guitar, or through an electrical amplifier and a speaker. The guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either gut, nylon or steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning; the modern guitar was preceded by the gittern, the vihuela, the four-course Renaissance guitar, the five-course baroque guitar, all of which contributed to the development of the modern six-string instrument. There are three main types of modern acoustic guitar: the classical guitar, the steel-string acoustic guitar, the archtop guitar, sometimes called a "jazz guitar"; the tone of an acoustic guitar is produced by the strings' vibration, amplified by the hollow body of the guitar, which acts as a resonating chamber.
The classical guitar is played as a solo instrument using a comprehensive finger-picking technique where each string is plucked individually by the player's fingers, as opposed to being strummed. The term "finger-picking" can refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues and country guitar playing in the United States; the acoustic bass guitar is a low-pitched instrument, one octave below a regular guitar. Electric guitars, introduced in the 1930s, use an amplifier and a loudspeaker that both makes the sound of the instrument loud enough for the performers and audience to hear, given that it produces an electric signal when played, that can electronically manipulate and shape the tone using an equalizer and a huge variety of electronic effects units, the most used ones being distortion and reverb. Early amplified guitars employed a hollow body, but solid wood guitars began to dominate during the 1960s and 1970s, as they are less prone to unwanted acoustic feedback "howls"; as with acoustic guitars, there are a number of types of electric guitars, including hollowbody guitars, archtop guitars and solid-body guitars, which are used in rock music.
The loud, amplified sound and sonic power of the electric guitar played through a guitar amp has played a key role in the development of blues and rock music, both as an accompaniment instrument and performing guitar solos, in many rock subgenres, notably heavy metal music and punk rock. The electric guitar has had a major influence on popular culture; the guitar is used in a wide variety of musical genres worldwide. It is recognized as a primary instrument in genres such as blues, country, folk, jota, metal, reggae, rock and many forms of pop. Before the development of the electric guitar and the use of synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as being an instrument having "a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, a flat back, most with incurved sides." The term is used to refer to a number of chordophones that were developed and used across Europe, beginning in the 12th century and in the Americas. A 3,300-year-old stone carving of a Hittite bard playing a stringed instrument is the oldest iconographic representation of a chordophone and clay plaques from Babylonia show people playing an instrument that has a strong resemblance to the guitar, indicating a possible Babylonian origin for the guitar.
The modern word guitar, its antecedents, has been applied to a wide variety of chordophones since classical times and as such causes confusion. The English word guitar, the German Gitarre, the French guitare were all adopted from the Spanish guitarra, which comes from the Andalusian Arabic قيثارة and the Latin cithara, which in turn came from the Ancient Greek κιθάρα. Which comes from the Persian word "sihtar"; this pattern of naming is visible in setar and sitar. The word "tar" at the end of all of these words is a Persian word that means "string". Many influences are cited as antecedents to the modern guitar. Although the development of the earliest "guitars" is lost in the history of medieval Spain, two instruments are cited as their most influential predecessors, the European lute and its cousin, the four-string oud. At least two instruments called "guitars" were in use in Spain by 1200: the guitarra latina and the so-called guitarra morisca; the guitarra morisca had a rounded back, wide fingerboard, several sound holes.
The guitarra Latina had a narrower neck. By the 14th century the qualifiers "moresca" or "morisca" and "latina" had been dropped, these two cordophones were referred to as guitars; the Spanish vihuela, called in Italian the "viola da mano", a guitar-like instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries, is considered to have been the single most important influence in the development of the baroque guitar. It had six courses, lute-like tuning in fourths and a guitar-like body, although early representations reveal an instrument with a cut waist, it was larger than the contemporary four-course guitars. By the 16th century, the vihuela's construction had more in common with the modern guitar, with its curved one-piece ribs, than with the viols, more like a larger version of the contemporary four-course guita
Caitlin Cary
Caitlin Cary is an alternative country musician from Seville, Ohio. Caitlin Cary is the youngest of seven siblings, her entire family was involved in music to some degree, with her parents' love for singing and her father's interest in building instruments. She put it aside as a teenager. In addition to the violin, she played her father's harpsichords, where she wrote some of her own songs. Cary went to college at the College of Wooster in Ohio, she began working on a degree in English. During her college time, she picked up playing the violin again, she formed a small'jokey' band called Garden Weasels. After graduating from the College of Wooster, she enrolled in the graduate program in creative at North Carolina State. In 1993, musician Ryan Adams contacted Cary and asked her if she would play violin in a band that he was starting. Cary agreed, they formed Whiskeytown. In 2000, Cary released her first solo EP Waltzie, produced by Chris Stamey. Cary's debut album While You Weren't Looking was released in 2002 and featured Whiskeytown's Mike Daly, who co-wrote and played on most of the songs.
Personnel included Mike Santoro, Skillet Gilmore, Jen Gunderman. Thad Cockrell, Tonya Lamm, Lynn Blakey provided harmonies.2003's'I'm Staying Out featured guest appearances from Mary Chapin Carpenter, Mitch Easter, Don Dixon, Greg Humphreys, Audley Freed, Jane Scarpantoni. In 2005, Cary released an album of duets with Thad Cockrell with songs composed by the duo. In 2013, Cary co-founded the North Carolina Music Love Army with Jon Lindsay; the collective of NC-based musicians created the We Are Not For Sale: Songs of Protest LP to oppose the regressive actions of the North Carolina General Assembly. The album was released worldwide via Redeye on November 26, 2013. In 2010, Caitlin performed with Matt Douglas in Raleigh's annual Love Hangover show, in which male/female duos sing love song covers, they formed the group Small Ponds, who released an EP on Last Chance Records in September 2010. Cary is an accomplished visual artist, creating fabric collages she calls "Needle Print." Examples of her work are prominently featured on her website.
Cary is married to drummer/artist Skillet Gilmore, they live in South Raleigh, North Carolina. Albums2002: While You Weren't Looking 2003: I'm Staying Out EPs2000: Waltzie 2002: Thick Walls Down 1995: Faithless Street 1997: Strangers Almanac 2001: Pneumonia 2004: Sweetwater 2006: Bloom, Red & the Ordinary Girl 2005: Begonias 2010: Caitlin Cary & Matt Douglas Are The Small Ponds Albums2013: We Are Not For Sale: Songs Of Protest Singles2014: "Stick To The Plan" 2014: "Dear Mr. McCrory" 2015: "The Ballad of Lennon Lacy" 2016: "When You Were A young Man" 2016: Jon Lindsay - Cities & Schools 2016: James Olin Oden - Deeper Dance 2014: Ocean Carolina - All The Way Home 2013: Chris Stamey - Lovesick Blues 2013: Kenny Roby - Memories & Birds 2013: James Olin Oden - The Craic is Free 2012: American Aquarium - Burn. Flicker. Die 2012: The Riverbreaks - Wildfire 2011: James Olin Oden - Samhain's March: A Winter Journey 2010: American Aquarium - Small Town Hymns 2010: Sally Spring - Made of Stars 2008: Yarn - Empty Pockets 2008: Chatham County Line - IV 2008: American Aquarium: The Bible and the Bottle 2008: Monty Warren - Trailer Park Angel 2007: Simon Alpin - On The Wire 2007: Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers - Glassjaw Boxer 2006: Cracker - Greenland 2006: Patty Hurst Shifter - Too Crowded on the Losing End 2006: Sally Spring - Mockingbird 2005: Chatham County Line - Route 23 2005: Chris Stamey and Yo la Tengo - A Question of Temperature 2005: Terry Anderson - Terry Anderson and the Olympic Ass-Kickin Team 2004: Chris Stamey - Travels In The South 2004: Something For Kate - The Official Fiction 2003: Goner - How Good We Had It 2003: Something For Kate - Song For A Sleepwalker 2003: Tangerine Trousers - Dressed for Success 2003: Thad Cockrell - Warmth & Beauty 2001: Alejandro Escovedo - A Man Under the Influence 2001: Greg Hawks & The Tremblers - Fool's Paradise 2001: Hazeldine - Double Back 2001: Thad Cockrell - Stack of Dreams 2000: Kenny Roby - Mercury's Blues 2000: Tami Hart - No Light in August 2004: Various Artists - Por Vida: A Tribute To The Songs Of Alejandro Escovedo - disc 2 track 11, "By Eleven" 2002: Shannon Lyon - Dharma - track 12, "Houses On The Hill" co-written with Ryan Adams 2003: Joan Baez - Dark Chords On A Big Guitar - track 3, "Rosemary Moore" Official website Artist Page on CMT.com Official Small Ponds site Caitlin Cary at AllMusic Caitlin Cary discography at Discogs
Hokey Pokey (album)
Hokey Pokey is the second album by the British duo of singer Linda Thompson and singer/songwriter/guitarist Richard Thompson. It was recorded in the autumn of 1974 and released in 1975. Listeners keen to try to find connections between the albums by the Thompsons and their personal lives may be confused by the delays between writing and release of the early albums. I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight was conceived and recorded prior to the Thompsons' embracing of Islam, but the album's release was delayed. By the time that album was released the Thompsons were living in an Islamic commune in London. In the meantime, the Thompsons had toured as a trio with Fairport Convention guitarist Simon Nicol. Nicol recalls that period: we did the folk clubs as a trio... It was just after they got married, it was lovely. I look back on that period with great affection... It was powerful. You could hear a pin drop at most of those gigs. Rapt attention. Two acoustic guitars, the bass pedals went through a little backline combo amp, we’d use house microphones...
It was stuff from Bright Lights... and Hokey Pokey, in the process of creation, Hank Williams’ songs... So much of the material on the Hokey Pokey album was written sometime before the album was recorded and predates the conversion to Islam. To add to the confusion the release of the eventual album was again delayed and so the song and the themes of the album lagged behind the development of the Thompsons's personal lives; the album is thematically cohesive for the most part. The first eight songs present a bleak world view with constant images of people living a shallow existence and seeking some kind of gratification - in drugs or sexual encounters, or experiencing a hard and cruel life with the cruelty being dealt out by their fellow humans. "Never Again" portrays an old man looking back on a life devastated by the unexpected loss of loved ones. "A Heart Needs a Home", the ninth song, serves as Richard Thompson's declaration of faith whilst harking back to the unfulfilling existence portrayed in the preceding songs: In terms of musical style Thompson's songwriting on this album reflects a number of British styles despite not being in the English folk-rock style of "Bright Lights": Music Hall, English hymns, traditional brass bands, pub sing-alongs and the double entendres of George Formby are all discernible.
In many cases, Thompson juxtaposes an upbeat tune with a bleak lyric. All songs written by Richard Thompson except. "Hokey Pokey" "I'll Regret It All in the Morning" "Smiffy's Glass Eye" "The Egypt Room" "Never Again" "Georgie on a Spree" "Old Man Inside a Young Man" "The Sun Never Shines on the Poor" "A Heart Needs a Home" "Mole in a Hole" "Wishing" "I'm Turning Off a Memory" "A Heart Needs a Home" "Hokey Pokey" "It'll Be Me" All extra tracks are live and unreleased. Richard Thompson - guitar, mandolin, hammered dulcimer, Electric dulcimer, piano Linda Thompson - vocals Timi Donald - drums Pat Donaldson - bass guitar Simon Nicol - guitar, Hammond organ, vocals John Kirkpatrick - accordion Ian Whiteman - piano, Calliope Sidonie Goossens - harp Aly Bain - fiddle The CWS Silver Band Richard Thompson - The Biography by Patrick Humphries. Schirmer Books. 0-02-864752-1 The Great Valerio - A Study of the Songs of Richard Thompson by Dave Smith
Folk rock
Folk rock is a hybrid music genre combining elements of folk music and rock music, which arose in the United States and the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s. In the U. S. folk rock emerged from the folk music revival and the influence that the Beatles and other British Invasion bands had on members of that movement. Performers such as Bob Dylan and the Byrds—several of whose members had earlier played in folk ensembles—attempted to blend the sounds of rock with their preexisting folk repertoire, adopting the use of electric instrumentation and drums in a way discouraged in the U. S. folk community. The term "folk rock" was used in the U. S. music press in June 1965 to describe the Byrds' music. The commercial success of the Byrds' cover version of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and their debut album of the same name, along with Dylan's own recordings with rock instrumentation—on the albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde —encouraged other folk acts, such as Simon & Garfunkel, to use electric backing on their records and new groups, such as Buffalo Springfield, to form.
Dylan's controversial appearance at the Newport Folk Festival on 25 July 1965, where he was backed by an electric band, was a pivotal moment in the development of the genre. During the late 1960s in Britain and Europe, a distinct, eclectic British folk rock style was created by Pentangle, Fairport Convention and Alan Stivell. Inspired by British psychedelic folk and the North American style of folk rock, British folk rock bands began to incorporate elements of traditional British folk music into their repertoire, leading to other variants, including the overtly English folk rock of the Albion Band and Celtic rock. In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term "folk rock" refers to the blending of elements of folk music and rock music, which arose in the U. S. and UK in the mid-1960s. The genre was pioneered by the Byrds, who began playing traditional folk music and songs by Bob Dylan with rock instrumentation, in a style influenced by the Beatles and other British Invasion bands; the term "folk rock" was coined by the U.
S. music press to describe the Byrds' music in June 1965, the month in which the band's debut album was issued. Dylan contributed to the creation of the genre, with his recordings utilizing rock instrumentation on the albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde. In a broader sense, folk rock encompasses inspired musical genres and movements in different regions of the world. Folk rock may lean more towards either folk or rock in instrumentation and vocal style, choice of material. While the original genre draws on music of Europe and North America, there is no clear delineation of which other culture's music might be included as influences; the term is not associated with blues-based rock music, African American music, Cajun-based rock music, nor music with non-European folk roots. There are some exceptions; the American folk-music revival began during the 1940s. In 1948, Seeger formed the Weavers, whose mainstream popularity set the stage for the folk revival of the 1950s and early 1960s and served to bridge the gap between folk, popular music, topical song.
The Weavers' sound and repertoire of traditional folk material and topical songs directly inspired the Kingston Trio, a three-piece folk group who came to prominence in 1958 with their hit recording of "Tom Dooley". The Kingston Trio provided the template for a flood of "collegiate folk" groups between 1958 and 1962. At the same time as these "collegiate folk" vocal groups came to national prominence, a second group of urban folk revivalists, influenced by the music and guitar picking styles of folk and blues artist such as Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Brownie McGhee, Josh White came to the fore. Many of these urban revivalists were influenced by recordings of traditional American music from the 1920s and 1930s, reissued by Folkways Records. While this urban folk revival flourished in many cities, New York City, with its burgeoning Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene and population of topical folk singers, was regarded as the centre of the movement. Out of this fertile environment came such folk-protest luminaries as Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Peter and Mary, many of whom would transition into folk rock performers as the 1960s progressed.
The vast majority of the urban folk revivalists shared a disdain for the values of mainstream American mass culture and led many folk singers to begin composing their own "protest" material. The influence of this folk-protest movement would manifest itself in the sociopolitical lyrics and mildly anti-establishment sentiments of many folk rock songs, including hit singles such as "Eve of Destruction", "Like a Rolling Stone", "For What It's Worth", "Let's Live for Today". During the 1950s and early 1960s in the UK, a parallel folk revival referred to as the second British folk revival, was led by folk singers Ewan MacColl and Bert Lloyd. Both viewed British folk music as a vehicle for leftist political concepts and an antidote to the American-dominated popular music of the time. However, it wasn't until 1956 and the advent of the skiffle craze that the British folk revival crossed over into the mainstream and connected with British youth culture. Skiffle renewed popularity of folk music forms in Britain and led directly to the progressive folk movement and the attendant B
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