NanciNet Digest 7-26-01
// A review of the new album, and we mourn the passing of an
// author who influenced our favorite singer.
// Enjoy! [BP
_________________________________________________________________
Subject: NN: Clock Without Hands
From: "Mike Barrett" (mikebarrettuk@hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 22:38:38 +0100
I've played the album through several times now, and firstly, it's VERY
good - I can't imagine anyone not liking it. I realise that not everyone
will have heard all the tracks yet, but it's due out in the next week, and I
just can't resist setting down my thoughts!
The only song I knew beforehand was "Travelling Through This Part Of You",
which I'd heard at a couple of concerts, and the recorded version is a
confirmation of how excellent it is.
Several of the other songs impress immediately on first hearing - "Midnight
in Missoula", "Lost Him In The Sun"( very much the stand out track
for me at the moment), "Truly Something Fine" and "Armstrong" for instance -
and others very quickly worm their way into your mind, like "Where Would I
Be", "Pearl's Eye View" and "Clock Without Hands". The bright performance
of the latter belies the fact that its lyric is unremittingly sad and
bleak - a quotation that springs to mind which seems particularly relevant
to this song is "The life of the happy is all hopes, the life of the unhappy
is all memories" (per Charles Maturin, from his novel "Melmoth The
Wanderer", a book I read a quarter of a century or more ago but that line
always stuck with me....)
I like the way that as usual, Nanci makes the covers she records all her
own - I recently got an interview on tape where she said that she normally
only sings other people's songs when she feels that she could have written
them herself, and certainly these seem to suit her perfectly.
The two tracks on the album that I'm not sure about are "Cotton", pretty
enough but lightweight, not seeming to me to be much of anything, and
"Shaking Out The Snow", although I'm starting to like the rawness of that
one after three hearings. "Last Song For Mother" is not as maudlin as
it may sound, and that is made clear at the very start when she says
"One, two, three, cry" ! And the next track - "In The Wee Small Hours"
- is gorgeous, emphasising what a really fine singer Nanci is. In fact,
the whole album ably demonstrates that her voice is better than it's ever
been.
A wonderful album - no one's going to be disappointed by this one.
Mike Barrett
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Subject: NN: British NanciNetters
From: Martin Jack (gatesuk@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:30:08 -0700 (PDT)
hi all,
I was just wondering if the other NNers who live in
England, would be interested in meeting up at a
pre-arranged locale. I myself I'm hoping to see Nanci
in Canterbury at the beginning of Oct, as I am
starting university there in Sept. doing a 4-year
degree course in American Studies-Literature. So if
any NNers are going to that concert, it would be great
to meet up there. Anyway, just an idea.
Take care,
Martin Jack
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Subject: NN: Eudora Welty
From: Reid Mitchell (reidmitchell@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:36:57 -0700 (PDT)
I've just learned that one of Nanci's literary heroes
Eudora Welty died this afternoon. She was 92. Eudora
Welty was one of the giants of American literature;
arguably (that _arguably_) the best American short
story writer; certainly one of the best. About
fifteen years ago I had the great privilege to hear
her read at a celebration LSU put together in honor of
THE SOUTHERN REVIEW; the other featured authors were
Walker Percy and Robert Penn Warren--Warren was too
frail to read however.
The NEW YORK TIMES obit. can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/23/arts/AP-Obit-Welty.html
Sadly,
Reid Mitchell
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Subject: NN: Nanci and Eudora Welty
From: BMiller224@aol.com
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:15:47 EDT
I was sad to see the news just now that the great Mississippi writer Eudora
Welty just passed away at age 92.
The article on her death in Salon.com mentions Nanci:
(( She was adored by critics, fellow writers and even some musicians.
Country star
Nanci Griffith cited her as an influence and an incident from Welty's
memoir, "One
Writer's Beginnings," inspired Mary Chapin Carpenter to write the song and
children's
book "Halley Came to Jackson." >>
The full article is at:
http://www.salon.com/books/wire/2001/07/23/welty/index.html
I couldn't help noticing the reference to Nanci as a "country star."
Bruce Miller
Oakland CA
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Subject: Re: NN: Nanci and Eudora Welty
From: Georgie Girl (georgie_girl61@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:48:26 -0700 (PDT)
i must emerge from lurkdom to comment on the death of
the great eudora welty. she truly was one of the most
gifted and talented writers/storytellers to ever pick
up a pen. as a mississippi girl and an aspiring
writer, i cannot express to you what a great impact
eudora welty has had on my life. it brought tears to
my eyes when i read reid's suggestion of a sort of
tribute to the phenomenal writer who is one of my
greatest inspirations.
it hurts me that all of my favorite authors are
dying...first willie morris and now eudora
welty...who's next?
thanks for reading my ramblings,
lacey
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Subject: NN: Re: [moonpie] Eudora Welty
From: "Tina Shackleford" (tshack@sprynet.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:44:02 -0500
Most obituaries haven't mentioned an interesting fact about Welty, that the
email program Eudora was named for her. Here's a link (which also has a
link to the story "Why I Live at the P.O.":
http://art-bin.com/art/or_weltypreface.html
If you haven't read the story, you should.
Enjoy!
_________________________________________________________________
Subject: NN: Re: Eudora Welty
From: Ron Beffa
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:46:41 -0400 (EDT)
I recently purchased a nice hefty tome, "The Collected Stories of Eudora
Welty", and it sat at my bedside the last couple weeks vying with other
books for it's turn. I had only gotten a few short stories into it, not
quite to "Why I live at the PO" when I heard the news of Eudora's passing.
And this news made me think of Nanci, and the nancinet and then of deb
thornton who adored Eudora and I thought it might be time to check in for a
while.
I'm greatly looking forward to Nanci's new album. There are only a handful
of
artists at or near the top of my list - Nanci is there, as is John Stewart,
who has three of his songs on the new recording, as I'm sure you all know.
So
perhaps "looking forward to" is a bit of an understatement.
The NN seems a bit quieter than the old days, but that's alright.
Ron Beffa
Clack's Cellar
http://www.clackscellar.com
"I've learned to love the night 'cause the light's gonna get ya"
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Subject: NN: Nanci at Bob Harris
From: James Wilson (J.Wilson@ucc.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:09:55 +0100
Hi all,
Just to let everyone in the UK know that on Bob Harris's website there is
listed a
Nanci Griffith session on 9th August.
I guess everyone will be tuning in...
Jim
Portsmouth
UK
_________________________________________________________________
Subject: NN: Nanci On Dave
From: "Jack Webb" (jwebb714@hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:48:42 -0500
According to next week's TV Guide, Nanci is scheduled to be on David
Letterman Monday night, the 30th.
Jack
Nashville
_________________________________________________________________
Subject: NN: Nancinetters in New Orleans?
From: Reid Mitchell (reidmitchell@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:53:33 -0700 (PDT)
Are there any other Nancinetters here in New Orleans?
I'm looking for somebody with whom to play music.
Reid "restless" Mitchell
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Subject: Re: NN: Nancinetters in New Orleans?
From: DvBGardner@genelogic.com
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:58:35 -0400
Reid -- If you'll put me up somewhere cheap in New Orleans, I'll travel
down there to play music with you. Coming from a strong jazz background
with my family in Germany, New Orleans had always been one of the places
I've been dreaming about visiting. My brothers don't understand how I
could have lived in "Amerika" for almost 20 years now and not been to N.O.
yet.......
On the other hand, why don't you come and visit us here in Washington, D.C.?
Fellow nancinetter Gordon and I recently formed a music group and we
would welcome other talented musicians..........
I know the "restless" feeling.......
Donate
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Subject: NN: non-Nanci: Kristen Hersh
From: Martin Jack (gatesuk@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:27:33 -0700 (PDT)
One album I would heartily recommend is Kristen
Hersh's 'Sunny Border Blue', a great mixture of
acoustic music blended with alternative (dating from
the heyday of Pixies/Throwing Muses kind of sound.)
There are many standout tracks, 'Flipside',
'Candyland', to name a few. And it really is worth
checking out, as are Hersh's previous albums, 'Hips
and Makers' in particular.
-Martin
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Subject: Re: NN: non-Nanci: Kristen Hersh
From: Poetmuse@aol.com
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:30:27 EDT
I wholeheartedly agree with Martin. Kristen has been a long favorite of mine
and the new album is excellent. If you fell in love with Hips and Makers or
any of her other efforts, you'll enjoy this one. She is one of the most
wonderful- spur of the moment-heart of the matter-emotional writers out
there. Her songs always leave me breathless. :)
-Christina "the poet in me is the poet in you?" Myers
Now Playing: Walking Wounded/Everything But the Girl
Followed by Man Under the Influence/Alejandro Escovedo
_________________________________________________________________
Subject: NN: non-Nanci: Muses and Radiohead
From: Martin Jack (gatesuk@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:11:29 -0700 (PDT)
And if you fall in love with Kristen Hersh's solo
stuff, there's always the Throwing Muses lol.
'Hunkpapa' or 'The Real Ramona' are good places to
start. The latter probably wins out as my fave Muses
album.
Anyone with an opinion on the new Radiohead album?
Personally I think its stronger than 'Kid A', an album
I'm slowly warming to, mainly because of 'Amnesiac'.
- Martin (wondering what Christine's fave song off the
new Kristin Hersh is, mine is either 'William's Cut',
'Candyland' or 'Flipside')
_________________________________________________________________
Subject: Re: NN: non-Nanci: Muses and Radiohead
From: Poetmuse@aol.com
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 07:57:02 EDT
Yes! I forgot about the Muses! D'oh! hmmm The Real Romona is my favorite as
well.
Although I really like to play University nice and loud. Bright Yellow Gun
seems to always make it onto compilations I'm making.
As for Radiohead- I've not yet gotten the albums, although I have listened
to
both on the headphones at the stores...my plans are to buy them next time I
have
some free money. (they are on a long list of things I need to buy) Right now
I've been listening to the new Travis a great deal. And the new REM. So my
quota for guitar rock/pop is still filled. :)
I would have to say off the new Kristen Hersh my favorite is Summer Salt.
But
it changes on a weekly basis as each song opens and blooms for me. :)
Christina "wow, an off topic I can respond to" Myers
Now Playing: Simple Soul/Eddi Reader (a great slide into the morning)
_________________________________________________________________
Subject: NN: LIVE MUSIC ALERT! Mike West and Myshkin in England,
Ireland, and the Netherlands
From: Reid Mitchell (reidmitchell@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:19:33 -0700 (PDT)
Two of my favorite musicians here in New Orleans will
be playing in England, Ireland, and the Nethersland
now into August. They'll be in Dorset, Sussex, Cork,
Limerick, London, den Bosch, Eindhoven, Kent, and
other places.
See their web page
http://www.mojono.com/cgi-bin/calendar/calendar.pl?dept=mm
I wrote a piece on each of them for Steve Robertson's
FIDDLIN' AROUND.
http://www.starchart.com/FAC/RMC/rmc.html
If you go to see 'em, be sure to say Reid Mitchell
sent you so you can watch them frown and say, "Who's he?"
Reid Mitchell
_________________________________________________________________
Subject: NN: Woodie Guthrie/Deportee: Janice form the UK
From: Greg Young
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:06:12 -0700
I forwarded the attached along to Janice from a Woodie
Guthrie/Deportee Website she may mot have connected with. But I wanted to
add a personal note as well.. . .
I was born a few years after that fateful day in 1948 when the plane
crash that inspired Woodie's song was penned, but I have not escaped the
shame born of our treatment of people from all over Latin America whose
powerful hands are the instruments that deliver much of our produce to the
table.
My father worked for a major agricultural packing company in
California from the end of the depression until shortly before is death in
1968. He was a 'dispatcher,' tracking crops from planting through their
eventual sale to retailers. We'd spend many of our summer weekends driving
through the San Joaquin and Central Valleys, visiting farms and ranches,
cold storage depots, packing warehouses and shipping terminals. Oftentimes
we'd stop and talk with field supervisors and workers about how the weather,
the work and the crops were going. From the vantage point of a child I saw
the back breaking stoop labor involved in harvesting asparagus, strawberries
and other root and bush vegetables, and the constant motion and skill
required of fruit and other handed-pick crop workers. The laborers were
mostly Mexican, some who'd been in the Bracero program, others their
relatives and descendants. Later, I worked alongside veterans of 30 and
more years of Migrant labor in a large centralized packing warehouse. That
was hard work - but I heard few complaints with a Spanish accent.
Anyway, to this day I can't listen to Woodie's song without
remembering that despite the crash Juan and Rosalita are still with us...
and they still deserve the respect, dignity and the pay that has been
denied them.
Joe Offer (Joe-Offer@msn.com) provided this info on rec.music.folk
on Jan 29, 1997:
The New York Times of January 29, 1948 reported the wreck of a
"charter plane carrying 28 Mexican farm workers from Oakland to the El
Centro, CA, Deportation Center.... The crash occurred 20 miles west of
Coalinga, 75 miles from Fresno."
I got out my California map book, and found a Los Gatos Road and Los
Gatos Creek northwest of Coalinga, near the Fresno/San Benito county line.
That's one of the most desolate areas of California, and I'm sure it was
even more desolate in 1948.
In Summer, the hills there are brown and forbidding, and the heat
oppressive. That's how I pictured the crash site.
However, the crash took place in January, and in January those hills
west of Coalinga are a beautiful green, splendid with wildflowers. Perhaps
it is some slight consolation that these poor people died in a place of
breathtaking beauty.
May they rest in peace, and may we never forget them.
Milnsue (milnsue@aol.com) added the following personal recollections
on rec.music.folk, Mon, Apr 21, 1997:
I was born and raised in Coalinga and can remember going to the
crash site the day after the incident. My father, older sister, and I viewed
the crash and even though I was about six years old at the time, I can
remember it as if it happened yesterday. It was a cold and damp day and even
though the reports were that the site had been cleaned up, this was not the
case. The sadness of seeing the meager possessions of the passengers and the
total lack of respect by those who had the task of removing the bodies, will
be something I will never forget or forgive.
The first version of the song that I heard was by the Whiskey Hill
Singers back in the late 50's or early 60's. They were a short lived group
led by Dave Guard of the Kingston Trio...
He [WOODY GUTHRIE] was writing as many songs as ever, but few of any
consequence. His children's songs continued to be charming... and his other
songs remained perfunctory, with the notable exception of "Plane Wreck at
Los Gatos (Deportees)," which he composed after reading, early in 1948, that
a plane deporting migrant farm workers back to Mexico had crashed. It was
the last great song he would write, a memorial to the nameless migrants "all
scattered like dry leaves" in Los Gatos Canyon, where the plane crashed....
The song, as he wrote it, was virtually without music -- Woody chanted the
words -- and wasn't performed publicly until a decade later when a
schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman1 added a beautiful melody and Pete Seeger
began singing it in concerts...
Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life, London, 1981, pp. 349-350.
secret muse (secmuse@concentric.net) supplied the following info on
rec.music.folk, Wed, Apr 23, 1997:
I was just visiting with John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers
(http://members.xoom.com/elstongunn/newlost.html>... and he told me that at
'Folksong '58' (or '59, the Lomax concert-gala at Carnegie Hall, on the old
UA LP) he wheeled Woody into the audience and sat with him as Seeger sang
"Deportee"... known only as a poem by Woody... and Woody was quite
enthralled as he mouthed the words along with the performance. From what
John told me, this was an astounding concert and one that should be
unearthed in its entirety... The LP, now quite scarce, was only a shadow of
the festivities...
Lyrics as reprinted in Pete Seeger (ed.), The Nearly Complete Collection of
Woody Guthrie Folk Songs, London, 1973, pp. 24-25
© 1961 Ludlow Music, Inc.
Gregory Young
Assistant Director
Health Plan Strategy & Contracting
(415) 353-4803
#150 Executive Park Blvd., Suite 3000 SF CAL 94134
_________________________________________________________________
Subject: NN: musicmatch
From: Dan Gerson (dpgerson@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:42:03 -0700 (PDT)
>From the digest:
// Later comments indicated that this is not a free service, and that
// it may not be Mac-friendly. [BP]
I can't speak to the issue of Mac friendliness, but it
is free, sort of. Once you choose a "radio station"
based on Nanci-like music or Guy Clark like music, you
CAN play it for FREE. The catch is that after 6 songs
you have to close the program, then open it again. It
works fine that way and isn't that much trouble.
_________________________________________________________________
// The last digest included a post from Julie regarding
// hostility against women on the NanciNet. There were
// quite a few responses, which I will be glad to forward
// to any of you who would like them. This is one response. [BP]
Subject: NN: Respect for women on the NN
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:51:11 EDT
From: ChocChippy@aol.com
Regarding Julie's post in the thread concerning the disrespect or hatred of
women on this group, I find this list to be THE most humanistic and respectful of all
the lists and message boards to which I post (which, I think, says something
about the state of the internet, but also about the insight & general attitude of
people who listen to Nanci Griffith's music).
And in response to Julie's remark that "...I remember being shocked when I
first played Flyer, hearing Time of Inconvenience, NG singing out against
pro-abortion protestors (loosely translating here)."
I think the translation is so loose as to be a complete misinterpretation;
the line in the song is:
((An' here I am one lonely woman
On these mean streets
Where the right to life man has become my enemy>>
(I got this off of the lyrics section of nanci-griffith.com)
I think that it's generally accepted that "right to life" is one of the
terms synonymous with the anti-abortion movement. Which would seem to make the
narrator of the song, the "one lonely woman," who may or may not be Nanci G., or a character
she has created, someone who considers herself to be on the opposite side of the
right-to-life/anti-abortion movement.
Which would mean that the narrator is, in fact, someone who does not agree
with "the right to life man."
So far from the song "singing out against pro-abortion protesters," the
words seem to imply the exact opposite.
To think that someone has put away an album for a long time after one
misheard lyric is actually kind of sad.
Kathleen W. (who has been told to "burn, devil child, burn in hell" in
response to a post on a rock message board).
_________________________________________________________________
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