The SongCircle

Songcircle playlist, 9/10/10

2010-09-11T00:13:00.000-07:00

Winter Hours - Roadside Flowers - Winter Hours Collector's Edition
Mike and Ruthy (formerly of The Mammals) - Covered - Million to One
Fred Eaglesmith -Careless - Cha Cha Cha
Peter Himmelman - This Lifeboat's on Fire - The Mystery and the Hum

Brian Wilson - I Got Rhythm - B.W. Reimagines Gershwin
The Beach Boys - Slip On Through - Sunflower
Francis and the Lights - In a Limousine - It'll Get Better
Dion and the Wanderers - Now - Wonder Where I'm Bound

Corin Tucker - Doubt - 1,000 Years
Lucinda Williams - The Ballad of Lucy Jordan - Twistable Turnable Man: A Musical Tribute to Shel Silverstein
The Unthanks - Lucky Gilchrist - Here's the Tender Coming
Carolina Chocolate Drops - Why Don't You Do Right? - Genuine Negro Jig
Martha Wainwright -Non, le Monde N'est ce pas Triste - Sans Fusils, Ni Souliers, en Paris: Martha Wainwright's Piaf Record

Leonard Cohen - The Traveler (early version of The Stranger Song) - 92nd St. YMHA, New York, 2/14/66

Bob Dylan - It Ain't Me Babe - USF Sundome, Tampa, FL 9/30/10

Kicking off the dust...

2010-07-23T17:12:00.000-07:00

OK! A mere three years after my last post here, I guess it's about time to freshen up the blog, especially since I am once again starting to occasionally host The Songcircle on KBOO, and because dozens of peeps commented on my LocalCut review of Adam Lambert's concert and may follow the link here. So, hello if you have, sorry about the bare-bones blog, and I'll start posting here more regularly, or trying to..!

Meanwhile, I have been sharing rare music on my spiffier other blog, The Rare Stuff. Feel free to stop by and have a look around!

Thanks,

Jeff

Howdy again

2007-05-30T17:49:00.000-07:00

Hello to any newcomers who followed the link over from LocalCut. Pour a cup and have a seat. I know the digs aren't too spiffy around here right now but pardon our dust, etc. Scroll down and you'll still find a couple of worthwhile things to read. And definitely click on the Archives for June of '06 for my Thorn Festival Hit Parade of songs about P'town. The article actually dates back to 2004 however.

I promise I'll post tomorrow's playlist promptly, as well as last month's and what I can reconstruct of the Neil Young special too, as requested by the commmenter to the March show's list. I'll also post the list on the KBOO site for the first time.

Tomorrow I welcome not only Portland's great Richmond Fontaine, but Virginia's swell Devon Sproule. I'll also touch on Memorial Day as well as tributes to Bob Dylan's birthday and the 10th anniversary of Jeff Buckley's death, not to mention of my arrival in Portland.

Join the Circle!

Songcircle playlist, 3/29!

2007-03-30T01:22:00.000-07:00

Well, that was a fun show! Came nowhere near my fundraising goal, but that's no fault of the music I played.

Patti Smith -- Gimme Shelter -- from her forthcoming covers album Twelve out 4/17
Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers -- God Gave Me a Gun -- Americano -- coming to town in the next week or so

Dad's Gonna Kill Me -- Richard Thompson -- from his forthcoming Sweet Warrior out 4/10, "Dad" is soldierspeak for Baghdad
Randy Newman -- A Few Words in Defense of Our Country -- iTunes single
Graham Parker -- Stick to the Plan -- great post-Katrina satire from GP's new Don't Tell Columbus

The Roots -- Masters of War -- from NYC Dylan tribute early this year; first verse sung to the tune of Star Spangled Banner, end quotes from Jimi's "Machine Gun" -- absolutely brilliant!
Solomon Burke -- Maggie's Farm -- from the master as a young man
Dylan Hears a Who -- Green Eggs and Ham/Tombstone Blues -- internet-posted recording
Schvere Togedike Nacht -- Glenn Tenney -- Yiddish Klezmer version of A Hard Day's Night -- big fun (happy passover)

Hamell on Trial -- Values -- clean version of song from Songs for Parents who Enjoy Drugs; Mississippi Studios tonight 3/30!
Avett Brothers -- Shame -- forthcoming album Emotionalism; Avetts return to the Pickathon this August!
The Gourds -- Education Song -- from their Heavy Ornamentals album; new disc out soon; Doug Fir on 4/8

... and that's about it, short show cuz of pledge drive! Any questions?? Neil Young special next week 4/5!!!

Setlist! SongCircle, 2/22/06

2007-02-23T14:50:00.000-08:00

Hallelujah, it's a new SongCircle setlist! Yesterday's show had a lot of brand new music, much of it by women. Good stylistic diversity, too (though nothing by the Stylistics). * is a new release, ** an '06 release.

Bruce Springsteen - Bring Em Home (live) - The Seeger Sessions: American Land Edition**
Old Crow Medicine Show - I Hear Them All - Big Iron World**
Tom Russell - Who's Gonna Build Your Wall? - Hightone single**
Martyn Joseph - How Did We End Up Here? - Deep Blue*
Patty Griffin - No Bad News - Children Running Through*

Rickie Lee Jones - Falling Up - The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard*
Kristen Hersh - Winter - Learn to Sing Like a Star*
Shawn Colvin - These Four Walls - same**

TV on the Radio - Province - Return to Cookie Mountain**
Michael Franti and Spearhead - Yell Fire! - same**
Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars - Livin' Like a Refugee - same**
Solomon Burke - Up to the Mountain - Nashville**

Harry Nilsson - The Cast and Crew - Skidoo! (to promote the film screening)

Lucinda Williams - Words - West*
Ruthie Foster - Phenomenal Woman - The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster*

Norah Jones - My Dear Country - Not Too Late*
Rickie Lee Jones - I Was There - The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard*

I'll be catching up on posting previous playlists just for the heck of it. Today I returned a message about last month's show by a listener who was enchanted by Emily by Joanna Newsom and needed to know her name to track it down. I pointed him Ys-wards even though the version I played was a live one.

Any questions? : )
Jeff

Return of the grumpy old man?

2007-02-21T15:19:00.000-08:00

Well, after my curmudgeonly last post months ago, I've gone and come across as a boring old fart in the comments to the post about the Rocket on localcut. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Jeff is 38.] But hey, maybe I can at least welcome a new reader or two here, and futher bloviate on related matters, blah blah blah. More to come.

Man, that was annoying.

2006-11-06T00:26:00.000-08:00

I just walked out of the Bonnie "Prince" Billy concert after just three songs. No, he didn't suck, exactly. He struck me as a bit of a self-indulgent performer, like the show was kinda some private joke between him and his band, and maybe a few people in the audience. But, not being familiar with his material already, it was difficult for me to get engaged with it since the stupid, drunken, twentysomething hipsters populating the Mission Theater saw fit to talk, and talk and talk, throughout the performance (well, at least throughout those three songs). I really don't understand the point. Obviously, I'm one of the few who didn't pay to be there. And, while he was accompanied by a band instead of solo, it's not like this was some kind of loud rock n' roll concert -- don't these idiot kids realize they're seeing a singer-songwriter? That he's crafted lyrics, not to mention lyrics that have been celebrated for their literary mojo, which he's attempting to communicate to his audience? The rudeness and self-defeating stupidity of these people boggles my mind. Oldham isn't the singer with the clearest diction around, and the not-used-to-music venue resulted in a muddy mix, so it was already a bit of a challenge to make out the words. With the added chatter, it was impossible for me to focus, so I left. I've tried to get into Will Oldham's stuff before and fallen short so far. Maybe now I'll at least have a better reference point to what he's all about when I listen to his discs in the future. I'm just glad I didn't pay for a ticket tonight. Also, it's a Sunday night -- why the hell would you wait until 11 PM to put your headliner on? Bah, humbug, kids today, etc.

Circling back

2006-11-04T14:11:00.000-08:00

Hey, what's new?

Not much here... not for a while anyway. But let's change all that!

I've got a passel o' new music to review, and some old writings to publish, and setlists from recent shows, including the big Bob Dylan special I put together last month.

But to prime the pump, as it were, "for the first time ever" here's the full version of my eulogy to Stuart Adamson that Paul Williams published in Crawdaddy. Only a few friends who I mailed it to at the time have ever seen the whole thing. I like the tighter version Paul edited, but there's some nice stuff he left out. I'll also leave in the first short paragraph that he put in, which was initially just the intro to the email, not part of the piece itself. It always tickled me that he included it, since it so closely resembles his groundbreaking style of subjective, plainspoken, first-person music criticism. Thanks, Paul, I hope you're doing well.

A couple years ago, Dave Eggers published an essay on Big Country in Spin which was widely celebrated. I've always wondered if Dave was a Crawdaddy subscriber five years ago and read my piece. Not that they're that similar, but there are some resonances in common.

It's interesting that, two posts in a row (albeit three months apart), I'm posting stuff I wrote after people died. It seems I always wax the most eloquent on those occasions.

Besides the thrill of being in Crawdaddy, one of the nicest things about this essay is that it helped inspire a wonderful song by my good friend Timothy Hull, called "Sister Power." He emailed me the lyrics a few days after I'd sent him the piece, saying "here's what I wrote because you wrote what you wrote and it meant a lot." One line of the song goes, "You say hearts have eyes, so you wear yours on the outside." Timo's just about my favorite songwriter whom I know personally, so it was really an honor to have provided a little bit o' bullshit to fertilize his musical imagination! : )

Stuart Adamson: In Memory

by Jeff Rosenberg

This is the first eulogy I've ever been moved to sit down and write. I share it here in tribute to a man who really touched my life when I was a kid.

Into the lifeless, synthesizer-besotted era of popular music that was the early 80’s, emerged a handful of bands whose sound and spirit rang out like a clarion call of the heart. Among these groups were U2 and the Alarm, but far more visible on MTV and the radio than either, early on, were Scotland’s Big Country. Their anthemic first hit sang not of the emptiness then in fashion, but of primal, spiritual survival: “In a big country, dreams stay with you, like a lover’s voice fires the mountainside – stay alive!” Tragically, we learned this week that the man who wrote and sang those words could no longer bear to take his own advice. Stuart Adamson was found dead Sunday, all alone in a hotel room in Hawaii, a victim of alcoholism and depression, a month and a half after having left his home and family without a trace.

But back in my youth, Stuart Adamson was a zealot of the human spirit, and his fervent politics of the heart were only made more explicit on his band’s powerful second album, Steeltown. Ever since then, and despite their subsequent fall from grace, I always suspected Big Country were a great band. Now, with the death of one of their members, it’s confirmed. All the great bands, it seems, have at least one dead member. Which means that even INXS, in the final analysis, is a great band. Their leader, Michael Hutchence, died, himself, like Stuart, alone in a strange room, either directly by his own hand or, just as directly, by his own heart. His suicide confirms that there was real pain, to invoke a now-tainted phrase, behind the music. And Bono’s song for his dead friend Michael will have to serve today as eulogy for his old cohort Stuart as well. You’re “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” sings Bono, his voice never having bled with more compassion, and we see past the trappings of rock stardom to the heartbroken poets often caught in the middle of it all. And we know that alcoholism and depression are diseases so powerful they need no backstage pass to gain access to their famous victims, they need no private jet to remain right on their tail. And, then, we look to our musician friends here in our own community, the celestial bodies of our own tiny musical solar system… and we find the same pain hiding here. The same diseases. For musicians, singers, songwriters, poets, the heart is an external organ. And so, easily susceptible to conditions such as these.

We seek our musical heroes, our rock stars, out there in the distant night sky. And often, we take our hard-earned money and place it in the hands of those distant stars’ corporate benefactors. Which takes the money we’re spending on music away from those musicians in our local orbit, who might rely on it to earn a living. So we need to rededicate ourselves to finding the balance between following those faraway stars, who certainly do have their place in our cosmology, and supporting those who share their hearts and souls with us through their music in the bar right down the street.

And in the same way that our music dollars flow outward and faraway, we also give those distant stars our compassion, as Stuart Adamson’s death has touched and saddened me so deeply this week. But I know that these same illnesses of addiction and depression that killed him are indeed preying today on the hearts and minds of musicians and non-musicians alike, right here in my community. On my friends, your friends, our brothers and sisters. And so I want us to rededicate ourselves as well to cultivating our powerful compassion – powerful for the strength it can give us to do heroic deeds in the service of others – and bringing it to bear in hope of healing the victims of these diseases, in the here and now. If you have a friend who has a real problem with alcohol, please, as hard as it is… don’t not talk to him about it. If you suspect someone you know is depressed… ask her if she is, and listen closely to the response. If there are musicians, or others, in your life who move you, whose very presence you feel makes your world a better place, please let them know. Today. Because these diseases thrive in solitude and silence.

And we might not be able to reach those distant musician heroes of ours who may be in pain, other than by our prayers, lacking, as we do, the backstage pass and the private jet. But for those within our circle, we can do so much more. We can reach out, and we can help each other heal. So in memory of one more fallen hero of mine, I ask you, please, to resolve to do your part.

Stay alive.

12-18-01

Dave Carter, four years on.

2006-07-20T14:04:00.000-07:00

Here's the piece I wrote for Willamette Week after Dave died. I'm proud of getting that quote from Joan Baez, and of the paragraph about Dave's music. Hope you're resting in peace, Dave.

IN MEMORIAM: DAVE CARTER

"Dave's mysticism, vast knowledge, humor and curiosity wove themselves into his dreams, and from the dream state came the material for his masterful songs. The songwriting community has lost a real treasure. I will miss him." --Joan Baez, July 24, 2002

How many people get to speak about their own death in the past tense?

When acclaimed Portland songwriter Dave Carter regained consciousness for a fleeting second before succumbing to a heart attack July 19, he told his musical and personal partner, Tracy Grammer, "I just died...Baby, I just died."

Count on Carter to come back and tell us about the other side. Those last words, spoken in a wonder-struck tone, were as utterly original as the words to the dozens of celebrated songs he left behind.

Carter's songs re-imagined the American West from a physical landscape into a spiritual one; the flash of his vision exposed, in the uncharted realms of the modern psyche, all the peril and possibility of the open frontier. His work realized the best possibilities of contemporary songs in a folk idiom, easily borrowing the tradition's mantle of moral authority, yet never straining to evoke anything other than precisely who, where and when he was.

Populist humorist Will Rogers, who perhaps first defined the particular American archetype that Dave embodied so well, once said he never met a man he didn't like. More remarkably, it could be said that nobody who ever met Dave Carter didn't like him.

If I didn't tell her...

2006-07-05T17:57:00.000-07:00

Just one line distinguishes the third verse of John Phillips' "California Dreamin'" from the first, but it's also the line that distinguishes the song as a stone cold folk-rock/singer-songwriter classic, far beyond the limits of a mere groovy pop single.

Sure, the dynamic vocal arrangement and timeless, evocative first verse almost immediately make an indelible impression on a listener, and the second verse definitely ups the ante with its precise scene-setting and deft, telling character sketch and interplay ("you know the preacher likes the cold/he knows I'm gonna stay").

But it's that third line of the third verse that's the clincher. The lyrics of the song's opening have returned, sung this time with even more emotional conviction from John, Cass, Michelle, and Denny. But instead of repeating "I'd be safe and warm if I was in L.A.," the singer suddenly and in passing introduces a third character besides him and the supporting role of the preacher, expanding the song's range exponentially in an instant. "If I didn't tell her," he sings, unaccompanied, "I could leave today."

"Her." The missing dynamic in the entire drama of the song, kept as a secret until its penultimate line. It's the line that doesn't let us off lightly, doesn't let us glibly say "Well shoot, dude, just get on outta there" in response to the character's frozen lament. It's what separates this tune from the likes of Phillips' "San Francisco (Flowers In Your Hair)", taking it out of the realm of nostalgia trip today or glorified sonic travel brochure back then. From the first note we've already heard, in John and Denny's twinned lead vocal, the character's desperation -- and now this explains it. There's something at stake here -- two people's hearts. It suggests a whole, real life being lived outside the bounds of the song.

It might be the most effective, economical lyric line in pop music history. Which is why it totally burned my britches in 1986 (even as an ornery 18 year old) when the Brian Wilson-less Beach Boys recorded their perhaps inevitable, thoroughly disposable version of the great song. The idiots!! They get to the third verse and just repeat the first verbatim! "I'd be safe and warm if I was in L.A.," sings the transcendentally bland Al Jardine, and they're out. That way, the song just adds up to one big "so what?"! Precisely nothing has happened from its beginning to its end! Conceptually, this could have been a great cover, but it ends up just one more embarassing late-period (as in, "the late") Beach Boys moment. Either none of their toadies present dared to mention that the beached bozos had flubbed the words to a song that everybody knows, or the telling line was deemed "a downer" by someone with their eye on the charts. If the latter, their judgment was horribly rewarded as this piece of crap was indeed a "hit" in the Age of Reagan.

That's all ultimately ok, though, because nothing could ever compete with the perfection of the Mamas and Papas' original version, an unforgettable performance which can have just as powerful an effect on a listener from age seven to seventy, the first time they hear it or the fiftieth.

More Soldiers' Songs...

2006-07-05T17:52:00.000-07:00

I keep remembering songs I'd always intended to play on a show collecting songs about soldiers... I guess I'll have to do another one around Veterans' Day. Please add your own suggestions in the comments...

Some Mother's Son by The Kinks from Arthur or The Decline and Fall of the British Empire is a beautiful heartbreaking elegy.

Draft Morning by The Byrds from Notorius Byrd Brothers is a vivid snapshot of a draftee from the moment before it all went wrong into the thick of battle, with sound effects by the Firesign Theater.

Hmm I know there's more but am blogging a blank right now... how about some songs by women or about female soldiers? well there's all those songs about women dressing up as men to fight but that's kind of a whole separate genre...

Tra la,
Jeff

June setlist

2006-07-05T17:39:00.000-07:00

Hi folk folks,

Here's the playlist from last week's show:

Kristen Hersh - Trouble - Sunny Border Blue (4AD) The fabulous Kristen is a new Portland resident!
Dixie Chicks - The Long Way Around - Taking the Long Way (Columbia) They're baaaack...
Wailin' Jennys - Things That You Know - Firecracker (Red House Records) Coming to the KBOO Pickathon first weekend in August!
Jim and Jennie and the Pinetops - Mt. St. Helens (Bloodshot) Great tune with local flavor from NC/SF old-time young-uns
Dolly Parton - Just Because I'm a Woman - The Essential (Sony Legacy)
Willie Nelson - Cherokee Maiden - You Don't Know Me: Songs of Cindy Walker (Lost Highway)
Johnny Cash - Paradise - Personal File (Columbia) An amazing, intimate audience with the Man in Black - private solo recordings!
Greg Graffin - Don't Be Afraid To Run - Cold as the Clay (Anti) Strong solo work from Bad Religion frontman, backed by The Weakerthans

Ramblin' Jack Elliott - Careless Darling - I Stand Alone (Anti) Lucinda Williams guests on this too-brief track
The Waterboys - Nobody 'Cept You - Fisherman's Blues: Collector's Edition (EMI UK) Import only but well worth it for fans of this great album!

Paul Simon - Wartime Prayers - Surprise (Warner Bros.) From new Brian Eno collab album, political tune reminiscent of...
Paul Simon - Peace Like a River - Paul Simon (Rhino) From his first solo album
Leonard Cohen - Villanelle for Our Time - Dear Heather (Columbia) Lyrics by Canadian poet F.R. Scott
Tim Easton - News Blackout - Ammunition (New West)

Casey Neill & Hanz Araki - The Holy Land - live on-air
Casey Neill - We are the City - Brooklyn Bridge (not yet released) Will we ever see this great album released?
Solas - Lowground - Reunion (Compass) Coulda-been-better cover that nonetheless should earn Casey some $$
Casey Neill & Hanz Araki - Beautiful Night - live on-air
Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint - Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further - The River in Reverse (Verve Forecast) Probably the highlight of this great collaborative album. "What happened to the Liberty Bell I heard so much about/Did it really ding-dong?/It musta dinged wrong/It didn't ding long"

Type to ya soon!

Portland's Greatest Hits

2006-06-05T17:10:00.000-07:00

Yes I know, I haven't yet annotated last month's playlist as promised... but I will, I promise! In the meantime, in honor of the glorious Rose Festival currently upon us once again, here's one of MY "greatest hits," a list of the best songs about Portland which was the main Rose Fest feature in Willamette Week two years ago (6/2/04). I also did an accompanying SongCircle show the week before the article ran. Hope you like it, and as always, use the comments to point out songs I might have missed!

The Thorn Festival Hit Parade

Casual Sex! Drunken Debauchery! Dead Junkies! Lousy Weather! It's Portland on the Radio.

BY JEFF ROSENBERG | 503 243-2122

Dating back at least to 1909's "By the Banks of the Old Willamette," our stumpy little town has been memorialized in song numerous times--enough that you could soundtrack your entire Rose Festival experience with them. The soundtrack of memorable Portland songs we've chosen probably won't make your day any brighter, though; most who have sung about our city seem to have been inspired by its seedier side. But in this time of celebration, these songs serve as a reminder that, yes, every rose has its thorns.

Loretta Lynn (feat. Jack White): "Portland, Oregon" (2004)

The Lowdown: Aging country queen and ornery young punk get drunk and screw, reportedly at a Holiday Inn. Song threatens to lure droves of horny alcoholics to town in search of mythical guilt-free one-night stands and pitchers of booze to go.

Timeless Line: "In the morning when the night had sobered up/ It was much too late for the both of us in Oregon."

New Riders of the Purple Sage: "Portland Woman" (1971)

The Lowdown: In a hippie equivalent of Rose Fest shore-leave fever, these Grateful Dead-affiliated longhairs pull into town and make all sweet 'n' sensitive about getting laid. Take heed, sailors: "Portland women treat you right."

Timeless Line: "You know it's very cold in Portland town this time of year."

John Callahan: "Portland Girl" (2004)

The Lowdown: OPB's Oregon Art Beat profiled the closet songwriting of WW's quadriplegic cartoonist in February of this year (see "Hell on Wheels," WW, Feb. 4, 2004). The show focused on this surprisingly moving portrait of abuse, drugs and suicide, with a lyric as subtle as the man's cartoons can be crass and crude.

Timeless Line: "The rain has left its blood in puddles/ The red lights flash, the colors muddle."

Casey Neill: "Sisters of the Road" (2001)

The Lowdown: The story of one Portland girl who survives the streets, though not before a doomed romance with a fellow runaway who "knew every free meal in Stumptown, every dry place to keep warm," but dies an ignominious junkie's death.

Timeless Line: "When he'd offer it to her, you know, she never once took it/ Beneath the I-5 viaduct, his teeth clenched to a tourniquet."

Dead Kennedys: "Night of the Living Rednecks" (1979)

The Lowdown: Improvising over a hipster-strolling bassline, Jello Biafra recounts a harrowing and hilarious encounter with a carload of drunken yahoos outside a "phone booth by the Kentucky Fried Chicken on Burnside." Of course, when the cop arrives, he blames Jello. "So this is Oregon, huh?" he crescendoes indignantly. "Tolerant Oregon!"

Timeless Line: "A lot of people go to bed around here at 10:30 at night."

Cool Nutz (feat. G-Ism): "Portland Life" (1997)

The Lowdown: Portland's premier hip-hop personage and fellow rapper G-Ism argue that the 503 can be just as dangerous as any area code on the West Coast: "You didn't know that Portland niggas biddin' homicide."

Timeless Line: "Schemes and scandals, young niggas gettin' handled."

Allen Ginsberg: "Portland Coliseum" (1966)

The Lowdown: The poet experiences the epiphany of a Beatles concert, as "the million children of the thousand worlds/ become one animal in the new world auditorium."

Timeless Lines: "While a line of police with folded arms/ stands sentry to contain the red-sweatered ecstasy/ that rises upward to the wired roof."

The Replacements: "Portland" (1988)

The Lowdown: Paul Westerberg apologizes eloquently to Portland for an infamous drunken mess of a show, but never mails the letter. This sublime outtake, which only emerged on a posthumous compilation, knowingly traces the downward spiral that ended splat on La Luna's stage.

Timeless Line: "It's too late to turn back, here we go."

Elliott Smith: "Rose Parade" (1997)

The Lowdown: Smith's lyrical references to Portland life were documented here in the WW issue that memorialized his demise last year (see "Elliott Smith in PDX," WW, Oct. 29, 2003), but this might be his best hometown putdown.

Timeless Lines: "They say it's a sight that's well worth seeing/ It's just that everyone's interest is stronger than mine."

Thanks for listening!

2006-05-25T18:47:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

We had a great show today, thanks for the calls or at least the ears! I'll post some more notes to the playlist soon but in the meantime, here's what I played:

Elvis Costello - Oliver's Army - Armed Forces
Neil Young - Flags of Freedom - Living with War
Jimi Hendrix - Izabella - Band of Gypsys: Live at the Fillmore East
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Run through the Jungle - Cosmo's Factory
Old Crow Medicine Show - Big Time in the Jungle - O.C.M.S.

Paul Simon - Soft Parachutes - One Trick Pony (reissue)
Billy Bragg - Island of No Return - Brewing Up with Billy Bragg
Dick Gaughan - Waist Deep in the Big Muddy - Where Have All the Flowers Gone? The Songs of Pete Seeger
Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA - live/solo, Tower Theater, Phila. PA 12/10/95
Charlie Daniels Band - Still in Saigon - All-Time Greatest Hits

Staple Singers - John Brown - I Shall Be Unreleased: The Songs of Bob Dylan
Jim Page - Johnny Comes Marching Home - Live on the Dharma Wheel Vol. 2
Willie Nelson - Jimmy's Road - Who'll Buy My Memories: The IRS Tapes Vol. 1
Tom Paxton - Jimmy Newman - Wonder Where I'm Bound: The Best of Tom Paxton
Dan Bern - After the Parade - My Country II

Big Country - Where the Rose is Sown/Come Back to Me - Steeltown
The Pogues - The Band Played Waltzing Matilda - Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash
Bob Dylan - Two Soldiers - World Gone Wrong

Thanks for the comment Yaney! Please leave comments everyone! Any soldiers' songs I forgot? I'm already thinking of tracks for a sequel... Veterans Day perhaps?

Type to ya soon,
Jeff

Welcome to the circle!

2006-05-24T19:33:00.000-07:00

Hello, and thanks for joining us here in the SongCircle. Have a seat wherever you feel like fitting in, and relax, when your turn comes around you can add a song of your own, or just listen.

My name's Jeff Rosenberg, and this blog is a companion to my monthly show on KBOO Community Radio in Portland, Oregon, The SongCircle, airing from noon-1:30 PM Pacific time on the last Thursday of every month. I've been doing this show for the past couple of years; it's a "spinoff" of sorts from my friend Robyn Shanti's program, The Dharma Wheel, which I co-hosted for six years. (Spinoff, get it? Circle, wheel? HAH!) KBOO is available to Portlanders at 90.7 FM, and also to Corvallis/Albany at 100.7 FM and some address in the Columbia River Gorge, too. But if you're none of those places, or somewhere in Portland where you can't tune in on the radio, you can stream our signal at www.kboo.fm.

Some of you may know that I also write about music for Willamette Week, Portland's alternative newsweekly and the paper of record for the vibrant local music scene. You can do a search on my name at www.wweek.com to get linked to a bunch of my writing for them. I've also written a piece for the famous Crawdaddy published by Paul Williams, and an internet article that's been mentioned by name in both Rolling Stone and Q Magazine, both of which I'll post here before too long. Meanwhile you can read the latter piece, The First Annual Bob Dylan Ceremonial New Year's Bread Toss, at the Tangled Up in Jews site, here. I'm looking forward to posting a bunch of my older writing, much of it about Bob Dylan dating from the early days of the internet, here on the blog real soon.

Anyway, I've just gotten done planning tomorrow's SongCircle show, which I'm excited about because it's the first show that I've chosen a theme for ahead of time in quite a while, which was my original vision for the show. An idea, that is, not a musical theme. Much like this week's birthday boy himself is doing over on satellite radio with his "Theme-Time Theater" or whatever he's calling it. He being The SongCircle's patron saint Bob Dylan, of course, who turned 65 today. I haven't heard his XM Radio show yet, have you? If so, please post a comment and let us all know your impressions of it!

Feedback is welcome here, of course, so feel free to leave messages with reactions to or questions about anything I play on the show, or other recommended songs along the same theme. What theme? Well, as you've already probably heard if you've found your way here from the radio, this month's show falls roughly between Armed Forces Day (last Saturday) and Memorial Day (next Monday). My calendar also says that last week was Military Spouses Day too. So this month's theme is A Soldier's Song: songs from the perspective of soldiers, from the usual variety of sources. Eclecticism is in vogue here in the SongCircle!

It's the first show I've timed out to make sure everything will fit in a while, too... and it still might go off the rails, so I'll wait until tomorrow to post an annotated playlist here. But I'm excited about the mix I've put together. Hope you enjoy!

Type to ya soon,
Jeff