New music, old music.

Folk music, roots music and all that is not for high days and holidays. It is for everyday and that is why I have chosen to mention this now. When the great and the good of the BBC decided that Mike Harding was "too long in the tooth" he had other ideas.
I'm currently listening to the 76th edition of the Mike Harding Folk Show and I haven't missed a single one. It is on-line so that is not a problem; you can listen to it anywhere at any time you choose. You can also listen to the shows on Mixcloud here but his own pages also provide a cornucopia of information about the artists played as well as links to forthcoming events such as folk clubs and festivals.
Another thing that I'm enjoying these days is the vital interchange of 'Americana' (home-grown or otherwise) across the Atlantic. This is apparent in the artist lists of all the festivals that I am attending.

The Mike Harding Folk Show Number 76 by Mike Harding on Mixcloud

Marnhull Acoustic Session - Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin

This is an important update on my previous post concerning Marnhull Acoustic Sessions and the event this coming Sunday (23 February). Ninebarrow are still supporting and Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin are still headlining but the big change is that the latter have just been awarded the 2014 BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for 'Best Duo'. That was in The Royal Albert Hall this evening but, if you are quick, you could see them play live in Marnhull Village Hall (capacity ~100) this coming Sunday evening. Litotes is self-defining.
Tickets, while they last, are £6 + £0.60 booking fee on-line and delivered by e-mail. I wouldn't bet on getting one on the door (£7). See you there!
Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin the first time that I saw them live...

Acoustic+, Frome, Cheese and Grain, 25 March 2011.
This an older song, Queen Gwendolen, but none the worse for that.

Phillip on dobro and Hannah on fiddle and vocals here.

The Mike Harding Folk Show

Don't get me wrong here, I love the BBC and it is a Great British institution. It has taken a beating in 2012, for a number of reasons. It also made a misjudgement of a less sensational kind that, while it did not make headlines around the globe, certainly annoyed some of its followers.
I refer, specifically, to the axing of Mike Harding's Folk Show on Radio 2. He had built it from a mere niche curiosity that filled some airwaves to the point where it had an audience that would have seemed quite improbable. Maybe that was the problem...

He has done what anyone might do in such circumstances. The first entirely free-of-all-influence version goes live at 17:00 UST (in less than 20 minutes time) here, assuming Sputnik and the aerial made from a coat-hanger both work as they should. Heady days.

[To be continued - after listening]
  

Indeed after not listening. It was one of those glorious disasters - so successful was the launch that it overwhelmed the servers and the result was almost nobody could actually get to receive it at all!  Teething problems are to be expected and the cross-forum banter hints at nothing less. It was a very British triumph.
  
Indeed it is. It may have arrived slightly late but here it is - the very first independent Mike Harding Folk Show! The rest of the site seems to be working as intended too - its a spoiler but this is the playlist, much debated, so just go listen:
01 DOON REEL – FRANKIE LAINE
02 THE RAMBLING SIULER – THE MIGHTY DOONANS
03 MUIREEN NIC AMHLAOIBH – BO NA LEATHDHAIRCE
04 HERE’S THE TENDER COMING – DAVE BURLAND
05 SHOVE THE PIGS FOOT – BRUCE MOLSKY
06 WIND AND RAIN – THE BE GOOD TANYAS
07 WINE AND ROSES – HEIDI TALBOT
08 GENTLEMAN JACK – O’HOOLEY AND TIDOW
09 BYKER HILL – JED GRIMES
10 BONNY SHIP THE DIAMOND – A L LLOYD
11 JACOB’S LADDER – CHUMBAWUMBA
12 THE MONTH OF JANUARY – MARY DILLON
13 WORKING AT CHRISTMAS – PAUL BRADY
14 LE SOUHAIT – LE VENT DU NORD
15 NO GODS AND PRECIOUS FEW HEROES – GAUGHAN
16 BABY WANTS TO BOOGIE – HANS THEESINK
17 DOON REEL – FRANKIE LAINE

I'm getting the idea that this might be something more than it seems. With the inclusion of 'Wind and Rain' - Be Good Tanyas it is hard to conclude otherwise in the current situation.
Just in case you didn't hang on long enough to record this event, I did. If that were to prove a disappointment then I'd have felt it. I'm listening to it again now...

A battle we should not have to have ...

The BBC is, I would unreservedly contend, a bastion of public service broadcasting across all formats. It is also, in many of them, available at no cost to those in much of the free world on radio (including the World Service in many languages) or via internet.
It now needs your input and support, wherever you may be and whatever you like about it, more than ever before. Becoming insular, in the modern world, is the last thing anyone needs...

http://twitter.com/rpgreenhalgh

I was determined to say at least something right now. Idealism is a virtue; if only an seemingly unattainable one.

IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS!

In a year that will see the UK voting for a government here is the chance to practise and, with good fortune, make a real difference. If you think that broadcasting matters then so does politics; more than ever one cannot now have one without the other and this applies whatever political opinion you may, or may not, hold. The important thing is to have an opinion whether or not others agree with it.

If you don't act on it by voting, or otherwise participating, you can hardly then claim that the outcome was a travesty. The time to act is now and it has never been easier to do something.

http://www.petition.fm/petitions/6musicasiannet/1000/

If all this seems a bit direct, perhaps because you have not campaigned on such an issue before, let me assure you that this is not going to put you on some 'list' of traitors and terrorist suspects.

It most certainly won't. What it will do is show that you care about democracy and that you are are actually prepared to put it in to words and that need not be a scary prospect. Here is a link that explains how to go about it in a persuasive, professional way...

http://www.jrhunt.co.uk/2010/03/02/how-to-save-6music/

This advice also applies to BBC Asian Net too, of course, and indeed any other service on a far wider plane that is also threatened. We have become too used to grumbling in private while contributing little that is focussed on the wider, often political, debate.

It is a typically British fault, in many respects, and accordingly I'm not advocating revolution for one moment or even suggesting other less drastic direct action, such as strikes or boycotts.

Popular revelation, even revulsion, can be the most powerful force for change.

From The Outside Looking In - Glastonbury 2009

There has been some fuss in the press today. It is said that the BBC spent as much at £5 million on their coverage of Glastonbury across TV, radio and on-line. How many millions do they spend annually on soaps and sport, none of which I watch? I don't watch much TV as a rule, but I certainly still pay the same licence fee. This weekend I watched enough to almost make it worth it alone. I'm not saying that everyone should feel the same way but I'd like to thank the BBC - this is precisely the never-ending dilemma faced by a public-service broadcaster. Please stick to your guns...

This must be also true of choosing acts for a festival but from all accounts it was quite some festival, even by it's own standards. There was rain, and the concomitant mud, but only in reasonable proportions and would it be the same without it?

Starting as it didn't go on... Friday dawns over one of the many camp sites.

The festival atmosphere should electrify but someone left the charger on too long. By lunch time on Friday the sun had appeared and so it remained for all three days! Thanks to all the aforementioned BBC coverage I soon came to one conclusion - I should have tried to get a ticket!

I thought all three headline acts were excellent and enjoyed every moment of each. What however impressed more was just how much the newer acts were gathering coverage and large crowds. The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs - though not very new as they recently released their third LP, It's Blitz, were show-stopping. Three genuinely new artists in 2009 were:

La Roux, whose début album would have been a run-away at the top of the UK charts on Sunday were it not for the demise of Michael Jackson. As it was it made #2, which was an incredible result for the duo of Elly Jackson and Ben Langmaid and single 'In For The Kill' has already become one of the signature sounds of 2009.

Little Boots was another obvious winner and also deservedly so I think.

The third artist that I put in this category will be no surprise either, even though that first album, 'Lungs', is not physically released until this coming Monday (in the UK). Florence and The Machine were simply on another planet.

It would be hard to persuade anyone who had come across them for the first time, that fifteen months ago they were almost unknown outside South London. As well as the main set, which was on TV, they also recorded an acoustic BBC6 Music Hub Session on Friday:

BBC6 Music DJ was Cerys Matthews and she joined them for a duet with Florence Welch.

The ghost that carried us away...

Proud though I am of UK music you may have realised by now that I'm almost equally at home delving into that which comes from beyond these shores. Somewhere, almost in the middle of the nowhere that divides Europe and North America, is a nation that in its entirety has a population (~300,000) no greater than a modest city or just about 60% of that of the state of Wyoming. The latest from this land of musicians that has come to my attention is the band Seabear...


In musical terms Iceland is somewhere strange indeed: in 2007 the better known artists Bjork and Sigur Ros have both released much anticipated albums and we should not forget other Icelandic artists such as GusGus (who - first pub quiz fact - are unique as the only Icelandic act to have had a #1 hit single in Mexico) and their erstwhile female vocalist Hafdis Huld. She is now a solo artist and released her first solo album, Dirty Paper Cup, in 2006 (and it was one of my top-ten albums of 2006) and bands, such as Múm that have taken a more acoustic approach to their music.

Seabear are another Icelandic act worthy of note and this album, their first, sees them recently signed to the Berlin-based independent label Morr Music. It is actually sung in English nearly free of any accent, as if that matters, which is actually by far the least of its virtues because it is almost impossible not to like every one of the twelve tracks; at least at the moment track 2, Cat Piano, has my vote but only by a whisker.

There is more: the album is currently readily available on 12" vinyl and their recent single is also available on 7" and is a cover version of a song that one might deem should never be covered by anyone --- it is nothing more sacred than the post-punk angst of Teenage Kicks by The Undertones. Despite the apparent minefield it has actually been widely covered down the years and KT Tunstall sometimes performs it in her live set. Here is some additional, and quite useless, pub-quiz trivia...
Teenage Kicks was apparently John Peel's favourite song ever and, apocryphal as that may be, it was certainly performed at his funeral and also was, on his show in 1978, the the first song that was ever deliberately played twice back-to-back on BBC Radio 1.