Lists...

I'm still here and still very much listening, watching, and reading too.  The lists seem to start earlier each year, or maybe that is just me becoming older each year. On the other hand, if I'm honest I actually start thinking about them at the time I first go to an outdoor festival, so late June!
I've looked through a few already and, with mine in more-or-less in the bag now but they will not be revealed until about the start of December, the common ground and the contrasts are interesting to me and in some cases rather surprising.
In the meantime here are two playlists, each about the length of a typical CD album, that compile some of my favourite songs of 2015:

• Tracks of 2015 #1
• Tracks of 2015 #2

These playlists represent a mixture of all those things and also other things that I have liked along the trail this last year. It is quite likely that 'Tracks of 2015 #3' will follow in the next week or so. There is no implied ranking-by-merit by list or indeed within them. 

An astonishingly good song, or even two, does not necessarily make an album; equally an album can be all the more astonishing for not having any particular stand-out track. This is why I am so much heartened by the resurgence of the EP, whether physical or digital. It allows the emphasis on quality over quantity. It is also much more affordable for new and independently minded artists. I shall be including a more in-depth list of EPs and mini-albums this year. The lists of LPs and EPs and mini-albums will be as heretofore presented in alphabetical order by artist.

I almost forgot to mention this - The UK Blog Sound of 2016. I am part of the voting for that for the fourth year and my three choices are now submitted; the resulting 'Top 15 list' will be revealed, here and on other participating blogs, on December 3. The winner (and the four runners-up) will be announced on January 5, 2016.
The considerable organisation and time that this involves is undertaken by Robin Seamer who is also responsible for new music blog Breaking More Waves, which I highly recommend that you visit.

An interesting dilemma.

About this time last year I mentioned that I was going to start listening over again to all of my long-list of music (EPs and albums together) that I had noted should be considered for those end-of-year rituals. In the end I did that, twice over, and the result was that I whittled that list of fifty-something down to just twenty LPs and a handful of EPs. Some were something between; let us agree to call them mini-albums for sustained quality, not length, is the defining criterion here. That process now needs to commence all over again.

I'm fine with that but there is a nascent problem. I'm pretty sure that my qualifications for inclusion on this long list are every bit as discerning as was the case last year. It is absolutely vital that this is so; as it stands today my long-list currently runs to one-hundred-and-eight items. A quick survey suggests that on average each is 40 minutes in length. To put it another way, if I were to start listening now (21:15 Tuesday) with no breaks at all I would get to the end of it early on Friday evening!
I'm not planning to do that, not least because I also have live music to go and see tomorrow evening.
It also brings me to another issue. That of all the live music that I have seen in 2015 and the discussions, both in person and remotely, about that. The good thing about this is that I certainly have a lot to reflect on!

My next two posts will both be in the series 'New Music 2015'. Both about albums released in the last couple of weeks, that should logically be included in the category of UK folk, and yet they are two very different beasts indeed.
I shall aim to make sure that both posts are published simultaneously. The order in which they actually appear will be decided by the toss of a coin. I'll get someone else to do that for me and with the outcomes known to them beforehand.
What remains true from the start is that, even as my taste in music has evolved over these last nine years and it most certainly has and in ways I might not have anticipated, I will not chose to write posts about things that I don't much care for. I do make comparisons in order to explain why I favour one thing over another. I regard that as something inevitable.

Carpe diem quod tempus fugit.

To put it simply - December beckons and it is soon to be time for those ubiquitous lists. I have already made a contribution to one that concerns bloggers' 'Artists To Watch 2015', about which more to follow. All talk of this is currently subject to embargo.
It is also time to start seriously considering the festival options in 2015 - though some seven months out that seems a strange thing to relate - and indeed I am actively doing so.

First, however, come the lists of 2014 of which I shall contribute my own as I have done every year since 2006. I'm not planning to make many changes to the format of the last few years but, as I promised at the start of the year, and it is one of the few New Year resolutions I have ever kept, I have listened to more new music - be that live, recorded, via radio, streaming or suchlike - than ever before. I set myself a weekly target that seemed ambitious at the time. I have comfortably exceeded that. This has however caused new problems all of its own making!
Once-upon-a-time the category of EPs was a niche concern and I used to start with that list as it was easy and self-contained. It is now a huge issue. I am going to choose six, at least that is my current thinking, and that's going to involve some pretty harsh choices.
A more recent development, and I might start with this on November 30, is the rise of albums that are recorded live...  It is a genre the zenith of which was between the early 1970s and early 1980s. Its return is in part a result of the revival in popularity of live music in general but also, and in practical terms most importantly, the available and affordable options to record live in almost any venue.
Occasionally I have wondered whyever it was that I started writing; this year I think it is true that I have never done so.

How humans attempt to label and list music (and enjoy arguing about it)...

This became a topic, off-line, yesterday evening.
How are 'folk', 'roots' 'bluegrass' and others actually defined? Indeed are there any clear boundaries at all, when it comes to what may, or may not be included? This is a topic that I just know could run forever.
It came back to mind just now as I am thinking about, and  listening to, the 2014 recorded music I have acquired. Here's a picture of the first tranche (and yes, that is an Island 'pink label' on a 2014 vinyl release)...

It has also made me consider that which I wish to listen to or more problematically regret having missed live, which is a matter of self-questioning.
Above all this, however, it throws up a wider metaphysical question. Why do we tend to favour the process of 'classification' and why is such comfort gained by associating the very diversity (which we also tend to like) of things with a rather small number of 'boxes' in which we aim to 'put' them?
Digital devices are all very good for making and storing lists, assuming we are organised enough to store the stuff on them. Digital devices don't argue about the lists we chose to inflict on them and as an example I can find no reliable report of a digital device that has unilaterally declared that it can't abide U2.
Amazon's algorithm is quite good at suggesting things that I might like but not because it knows me and how I think. It simply knows about other people and what they have purchased or browsed and therefore, indirectly, how they think. What digital networks are not yet any good at is what humans are innately good at. That is spotting apparently curious connections or comparisons that are not within any logically associated domain but which very often our fellow humans can relate to. We humans do so endlessly, much to our mutual delight and annoyance.

This is where we get to the arguing part of it. Folk/roots music does not work by rules - it evolves and it does so unpredictably. That is important because if that were not so then it would be a dinosaur. There would be nothing new, original and incisive about it.
When Bob Dylan was pilloried for going electric others such as Fairport Convention took the idea and ran with it. It was ever thus. One other important point is that until quite recently folk/roots music was seen at best to be a minor genre managing decline as best it could.
In a few years, and due to changing technology as much as changing taste, that concept has altered quite remarkably. It is now possible to record and release music without the expenditure, in equipment, facilities or even travel and other sundries such as it recently was. It is true that many fine labels - Topic Records and Fellside Recordings being just two that spring to mind - had continued to release such music and while it is most certainly still not easy to make even a modest living from it, the balance of power has shifted and also in another very important way - the traffic in folk/roots/Americana has also become fully fledged two-way traffic as the often perceived insularity has broken down.

There are some instruments that have evolved to belong, even though until quite recently they did not. Bouzouki is an instrument from Asia Minor. By the early 20th century it had migrated and evolved and was found in music of the Balkans, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece. One of the first, and the best known to introduce it to Celtic folk music was Dónal Lunny of Planxty. The band spent time behind the Iron Curtain in the early 1970s and this is reflected in several tracks on the 1974 album 'Cold Blow and The Rainy Night', to which I am listening as I write. Also on the album are several other songs that do not come directly from the UK or Irish folk canon - The Lakes of Pontchartrain and The Green Fields of Canada being two of them.
There are several others that are not native to UK folk but I'd find to argue that they are no longer assimilated, to all intents and purposes.
Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin are at the top of their game, winning best duo at the BBC Folk Awards 2014, and they headline North Dorset Folk Festival this coming Saturday. They extensively play two instruments that do not feature in the traditional folk canon. Hannah, as well as playing awesome fiddle, is a mean banjo player. Quite when it arrived in UK folk I don't know but it is an essential of bluegrass and also Appalachian 'old time' music, especially when played clawhammer (that is with the back of the fingernails rather than traditionally plucked) in the latter case. Phillip is an amazing resonator guitar player and this instrument although probably of Hawaiian origin entered popular music in the early 1920s via Jazz as it was loud enough to compete (unamplified) with the brass section. Often simply known as dobro this is a brand - it is exactly like calling all generic vacuum cleaners hoovers. Any which way the instrument quickly became a feature of both blues and bluegrass too, as they spread north up the Mississippi. Another Hawaiian instrument to gain traction, because of its general versatility is the ukulele. In all cases these instruments were readily adopted because they were very usable within the existing structure but also bought with them new possibilities. Not everyone welcomed these developments, that much is certain, but this is what a living tradition needs to do to flourish. The fast changing USA absorbed and developed all these influences, including those that came from Africa, whether via the Carribean, south and central America or simply directly and new dimensions took shape.
Inevitably the result was exported once again. There would have been no British blues, in the mould of Free and early Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, had that not happened. An interesting corollary to this is 'Black Magic Woman' - the Carlos Santana version (1970) is so well known that it is often forgotten that it is a cover of a 1968 Peter Green original (but only a single and then only released in the UK). It appeared on the Santana album 'Abraxas' by which time it had acquired new parts influenced by traditional eastern European Roma music and also Latin american rhythm. Plenty of the eastern European tradition had also made its way west across the Atlantic and that is evident in much bluegrass and Appalachian fiddle music.

So where does this find us? In a whirlpool that none of us had imagined, I rather think!
I shall continue in a new post if only because Blogger tells me that I can't add any more 'labels' to this one!
What is more, come this weekend I will also have a whole lot of live music to write about and, if I have my way, plenty of photos to go with that. I can't wait.

Thoughts on Music 2014; what it means to me.

This weekend, as the weather finally turned autumnal, my mind strayed to the topic of the music - artists, LPs, gigs, festivals and all - that has made an impression on me in 2014. I know the end of the year, and the inevitable lists that go with it, are both still a long way off. I learned long ago, however, that leaving it all to the last week or two is not the way to do it. I accept that at least some items that make my final lists have not even been released yet - indeed I can think of several contenders that fall into that category. That does not however invalidate starting to consider those that have already been released or indeed that I already have to listen to. It is a sizeable task but a wholly enjoyable one and not least because it requires a degree of comparison with things that I chose in the last couple of years; if only to remind myself why that was and what may have changed since then. I also have the comforting knowledge that nobody can now try to tell me that I should go to Glastonbury 2015.
Yesterday evening, with the rain falling steadily in the darkness outside, I started that quest. I made sure that I was in front of an open fire with home-made pizza, garlic bread and a glass of wine to hand. I do this for my own pleasure, lest you forget, and that is where I have a problem with Glastonbury. It is an institution - and still a wildly popular one as the very recent sales statistics show - but it is not for me. I would implode. Before I even got inside.

I have a pretty good idea of which festivals I shall go to in 2015 and have a ticket for one of them already. I'm planning, as is customary, to go to one that I have never been to before and I know that which I intend it to be. It has been on my list for a couple of years and, thanks to a chance meeting of music and minds at EOTR 2014 it is going to happen.
That said, I have no intention of spending the rest of 2014 merely in contemplation of recorded music, released or forthcoming. Live music matters, whether it is ten minutes walk from home or not.
The next question, and it came quickly, was 'do I listen to the old ones any more?' The answer is, more or less often, yes I do. This is one of the first albums I ever mentioned in 'Thoughts on Music' back in 2006 - and it was Americana albeit that the artist is from Canada...

Honey From The Tombs - Amy Millan (2006). The picture was taken about twenty minutes ago. This album did something that no such other had quite done before. It made sense [to me].

Shameless Winter

Do you remember those mirage summers?
Tousled hair and golden skin
Writing lyrics on the heath and smoking Luckys
It didn't matter what month we were in.

It is that time of year again, the one that invites the writing of lists. Take my word for it, this year the compiling of them has probably occupied my mind more than all the ones that have come before combined, and yet I like that very much.
I simply couldn't resist the lyric from a song from one album and that is why it appears above.
Live music thoughts - well don't even get me started...