NanciNet Digest 7-19-01
// Bits and pieces...
// Enjoy! [BP
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Subject: NN: re: review of CLOCK
From: PRobin5478@aol.com
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 11:28:07 EDT
Here's a review of CLOCK WITHOUT HANDS from INTERVIEW magazine:
"Like grown-ups in footed pajamas, there's something not-quite-right about
Nanci Griffith's maudlin, sing-songy country/pop/folk ballads - here often
about the psychological residue of 'Nam and the hell of emotional numbness.
Her 16th album contains little that's new or challenging, and no camp value,
either. Unless you're a die-hard Griffith fan and know you need this, it
might be best to skip it."
Caveat: INTERVIEW is a silly, shallow magazine that used to have a good
music
column by Greil Marcus. It's still mainly ads and articles that look like
ads.
I posted this in the interests of completeness.
Peter Robinson
(a die-hard NG fan who'll be at my local Tower on the 31st, with ready
money)
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Subject: NN: LA - House of Blues
From: "Susan Krauss" (susankrauss@earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 06:55:17 -0700
Is anyone going to see Nanci at the House of Blues in LA on 8/25? I can't
see her re-scheduled northern California show due to previous commitment I
cannot break (since I'm running the program). I was thinking of heading
down to LA but have never been to HOB and don't necessarily want to go alone
(my S.O. is camping that weekend).
susan in oakland
susankrauss@earthlink.net
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Subject: NN: RE: LA - House of Blues
From: "Herve" (aequalis@wanadoo.fr>
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 16:15:01 +0200
Susan wrote:
>Is anyone going to see Nanci at the House of Blues in LA on 8/25? I can't
>see her re-scheduled northern California show due to previous commitment
For those who can't attend, House of Blues has a great website and video
archives in all musical genres.
Just watched Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Jim Lauderdale and Jerry Jeff Walker.
Maybe Nanci's show will be webcast?
Check the website at http://www.hob.com
Herve, pAris pAl
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Subject: NN: re: Nanci at the LA HOB
From: PRobin5478@aol.com
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:28:24 EDT
I can't believe it! I'm going to be out of town when NG is at MY FAVORITE
CLUB. (EVERY show I've ever seen at the HOB on Sunset has been GREAT -
including Nanci a couple of years ago.)
Damn. Don't you hate it when that happens - Nanci is in town, but YOU'RE
NOT. This happened a few years ago, when Nanci's opening act was Iris
DeMent. I really regret missing that: Iris would've have been the best
opening act for NG that I would have seen.)
Well, I have a good excuse: I'm taking my son off to his freshman year of
college. The beginning of the empty nest.
I'll have to make up for my multiple losses with a quick trip to NYC to see
the all-star THE SEAGULL in the park (with Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, John
Goodman, etc.) Man does not live by music alone.
Peter Robinson
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Subject: NN: Roots music on PBS
From: Steve Robertson (stever@mindspring.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 09:13:47 -0400
PBS liked my little newsletter so much, they decided to make a multi-part
documentary about it. Just Kidding! Here's a news story about the actual
show:
http://cdnow.com/allstararticle/fid=277966
I finally got around to doing a major update on the web site connected to my
printed newsletter. The web site now either contains all the content from
all issues of the newsletter, or contains links to that content on other web
sites. Most of the newly added material went straight to the Archives page.
I still plan to add a page covering Texas Music (which seems to demand its
own separate category) and pages for a couple of performers who don't have
much presence on the Web.
--
>From the Georgia Pines,
Steve Robertson
====================================
_________Fiddlin' Around____________
The Journal of American Roots Music
on the web at
http://www.starchart.com/
====================================
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Subject: NN: Sad news
From: "Panchyshyn
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 15:16:08 -0400
Just in off the wire.
(((
JULY 19, 13:34 EST
Joan Baez's Sister Mimi Farina Dies
By RON HARRIS
Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Joan Baez's sister Mimi Farina, an accomplished folk
singer in her own right and founder of an organization that brought free
live music to the sick and imprisoned, has died. She was 56.
Farina died Wednesday at her Mill Valley home of complications related to
lung cancer, surrounded by family and friends.
She had a modestly successful folk duo with her husband, Richard Farina, in
the 1960s but was perhaps best known for founding Bread & Roses in 1974. The
organization produced 500 shows annually for audiences in senior centers,
prisons, psychiatric facilities and centers for abused and neglected
children.
"Mimi filled empty souls with hope and song," Baez said in a statement.
"She held the aged and forgotten in her light. She reminded prisoners that
they were human beings with names and not just numbers."
As part of the San Francisco Bay area's folk music elite, Farina drew many
musical luminaries to perform. Artists including her sister, Jackson Browne,
Taj Mahal, Bonnie Raitt and Peter, Paul and Mary all volunteered their
services to make Bread & Roses a long-running success.
In the 1960s, Richard and Mimi Farina cut two albums for Vanguard Records:
"Reflections in a Crystal Wind" and "Celebrations for a Grey Day." Among
their songs were "Pack up Your Sorrows," "Raven Girl" and "Bold
Marauder."
Richard Farina, who also was the author of the well-known counterculture
novel "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me," died in a motorcycle
accident in 1966.
Their romance is chronicled in the new book "Positively 4th Street: The
Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard
Farina" by author David Hajdu.
Mimi Farina went on to record other albums after her husband's death,
including an album called "Solo" in the mid-1980s, but turned most of her
efforts to Bread & Roses.
"I suffered from comparing my voice to my sister's," she said in 1999.
"In the end, it was a great relief to stop singing."
Farina was born Margarita Mimi Baez in Palo Alto, Calif., in 1945. She and
her older sisters, Joan and Pauline, were raised as Quakers.
Mimi learned the guitar with her sister Joan during the folk music revival
of the late 1950s and frequently played the folk scene around Harvard Square
in Cambridge, Mass.
She met Richard Farina in Paris and they married in 1963.
After her husband's death, Farina married hippie radio entrepreneur Milan
Melvin in 1968 at an improvised outdoor ceremony at the Big Sur Folk
Festival. They divorced two years later.
The idea for Bread and Roses came in 1974 when she and her sister attended a
show by bluesman B.B. King at New York's Sing Sing prison. "It was
phenomenal to watch the place go silent, which doesn't happen that much in
prison," she said.
Farina is survived by her parents, sisters and her partner, Paul Liberatore.
>>>
---
On the Net:
http://www.breadandroses.com
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Subject: NN: Songcatcher (No Nanci Content)
From: RoanInish@aol.com
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 13:59:39 EDT
If this movie is playing near you (check your local arthouse or independent
theater, if you have one) you'll want to check it out. It isn't a perfect
movie, but the flaws it has are easily overshadowed by the spectacular music
contained within. Iris DeMent has a small speaking part, and will send
chills up your spine with her rendition of the old ballad "Pretty Saro."
The soundtrack album features many of the songs from the film (including
Iris), as well as several cuts not in the movie, including songs by Rosanne
Cash, Emmylou Harris, Julie Miller (an all acoustic re-recording of her song
"All My Tears") Dolly Parton, Maria McKee, as well as Gillian Welch and
David Rawlings among others. Some really lovely stuff here.
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Subject: NN: Nanci/Clock Without Hands
From: Tony Bloomfield (tonyb@reading.u-net.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 09:20:42 +0100
>A nice little feature about Nanci/Clock Without Hands in one of
>the Times supplements (although it manages to get her age >wrong!).
Mike,
Nearly all UK bios of Nanci say she was born in 1953. Most US ones say
1954. But I was brought up by my near-Victorian parents to believe that it
was rude to discuss a lady's age, so I won't...
Cheers,
TonyB.
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Subject: NN: Re: Nanci/Clock Without Hands
From: "Mike Barrett" (mikebarrettuk@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 21:28:36 +0100
Tony Bloomfield wrote:
> Nearly all UK bios of Nanci say she was born in 1953. Most US ones say
> 1954. But I was brought up by my near-Victorian parents to believe that it
> was rude to discuss a lady's age, so I won't...
Ever the gentleman Tony :)
I have heard/read/seen many interviews/concerts, and Nanci has never been
reticent about her age. Several times she's mentioned 1954 as her year of
birth, and I'm sure that's right. And anyway if she wanted to understate
her age she'd do it by more than a single year!
Mike "not so gentlemanly" Barrett
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Subject: NN: Music Industry News
From: BMiller224@aol.com
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 01:14:31 EDT
Interesting piece about the current decline in record and concert sales in
*Salon* magazine by investigative reporter Eric Boehlert:
http://www.salon.com/ent/music/feature/2001/07/19/industry_downturn/print.html
There's also a link at the end of the article to other pieces of his on the
music industry.
One implication of this report, which covers much the same ground as a *Los
Angeles Times* piece three or four weeks ago, is that the demise of Napster
has not boosted record sales. On the contrary, the earlier *Times* piece
said that the decline in CD sales actually began about the same time that
the
court started shutting down Napster's music-sharing services in March.
This could be a coincidence related to the economic downturn.
But it certainly doesn't lend any credibility to the record industry's
argument that Napster was hurting record sales. It may even be that Napster
was stimulating interest in popular music generally - "growing the market"
as the marketing folks might say - and therefore helping retail record sales.
And while we're on the subject, the demise of Napster - along with the
dot.com crash and the problems in the telecommunications business that are
delaying the rollout of broadband Internet links - seems to be encouraging
the major labels in their slow-paced ways of responding to new technologies.
*Business Week* of 7/9/01 reports:
(( With less pressure from start-ups, established companies have less
incentive to develop new products and services. After several music sites
folded and Napster was straitjacketed by the courts, most of the major
record
labels scaled back their plans for peddling music on the Net. "The studios
and the labels don't really have much pressure now," says Frank Biondi, the
former CEO of three entertainment companies - Viacom, Universal Studios, and
HBO - who is now senior managing director at venture fund WaterView Advisors
LLC. >>
And it's not as thought the majors were falling all over themselves to sell
music over the Net anyway. Maybe the sales figures showing that their whole
industry is in danger of stagnating will focus their attention a little
better. But don't count on it.
When I was a kid, there was an oil company, long since merged away, that I
believe was called Sinclair Oil. Their brand logo included a green
brontosaurus. I remember having a blow-up Sinclair Oil brontosaurus beach
toy.
The record industry should consider adopting that brontosaurus as the mascot
for the entire industry.
Bruce Miller
Oakland CA
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