Spent all day yesterday at the Rockford Celtic Festival. Drank much Guinness. Saw many friends, several of whom are disreputable musicians.

The following three photos are of the Conklin Ceili Band , a traditional Irish group. They put on a great show wherever they go. Natalie (the fiddle player) had her first go at singing at the Celtic Festival, and performed wonderfully.

The next three photos are of local band Craic Wisely . They have more than a little of The Pogues in them (stylistically, not politically) and had the whole audience jumping well into the night.

Today I feel a wee bit hung over. Funny, that.

What do you get when you bring together the following people: A grunge bassist; a grunge drummer; a soul/jazz singer; a Christian-rock guitarist; an electric violinist with anger-control issues; an indie-rock percussionist; and an ex-factory worker with a theremin?

An amazing version of Rocket Man . (linked .mp3)

And a great story , too. (linked RealAudio file)

“Oh,” says Red Molly to James, “That’s a fine motorbike.
A girl could feel special on any such like”
Says James to Red Molly, “My hat’s off to you
It’s a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952.
And I’ve seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favourite colour scheme.”
And he pulled her on behind and down to Boxhill they did ride

“Oh,” says James to Red Molly, “Here’s a ring for your right hand
But I’ll tell you in earnest I’m a dangerous man.
For I’ve fought with the law since I was seventeen,
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine.
Now I’m 21 years, I might make 22
And I don’t mind dying, but for the love of you.
And if fate should break my stride
Then I’ll give you my Vincent to ride.”

“Come down, come down, Red Molly,” called Sergeant McRae
“For they’ve taken young James Adie for armed robbery.
Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside.
Oh come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside.”
When she came to the hospital, there wasn’t much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
He said, “I’ll give you my Vincent to ride.”

Says James, “In my opinion, there’s nothing in this world
Beats a ’52 Vincent and a red headed girl.
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeves won’t do,
Ah, they don’t have a soul like a Vincent 52.”
Oh he reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
Said, “I’ve got no further use for these.
I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome,
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home.”
And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride.

Richard Thompson
1952 Vincent Black Lightning

While driving around yesterday I caught a show on PRI called The Next Big Thing, a weekly exploration of New York…sort of. I caught the tail end of the show, just in from the beginning of an essay by Bruce Odland on a project he and partner Sam Auinger have been working on for almost fifteen years: turning cities into musical instruments.

The tool they use is an aluminum pipe of a specific length – similar to an organ pipe – which resonates at a specific frequency; in this instance, a low B-flat. Microphones are mounted at specific distances along the inside of the pipe. They pick up the overtones generated by the vibration of the pipe. This data is sent to concrete speakers which feed the note and overtones back into the environment.

The result is something extraordinary.

Traffic becomes a chorus of Tibetan and Franciscan monks backed by cello and didgeridoo. Rough edges are smoothed and the crude instruments of industry become bellows in a gigantic pipe-organ.

There is a sample .mp3 at the bottom of this page .

The audio from The Next Big Thing is here . The Odlund piece is at the end of the hour.

A little digging at the O+A site uncovered a link to some more audio clips of their experiments in Germany (German site).

Warren Zevon died yesterday. Go buy his new CD, “The Wind”. It is beautiful.

Last night I saw Peter Gabriel in concert at DTE Energy Center Pine Knob. Pete puts on a hell of a show.

The set was an exercise in minimalism; just the band and equipment with a half-dozen screen behind, on which was projected different colored light. Overhead was a large circular screen. Everyone was dressed in black.

The concert covered pretty much all of Gabriel’s career from So to Up , with everything in between. My favorite bit was when Gabriel and his daughter wheeled themselves around the stage on Segways to Games Without Frontiers . I gotta get me one of those things!

Only microscopically less nifty was Growing Up , with PG inside a twelve-foot inflated sphere, bouncing in synch with the music. Actually, that might have been slightly cooler than the Segways. Other songs: The Tower (from Ovo ), Steam, Shock the Monkey, Digging in the Dirt – PG wearing a head-mounted camera focused in extreme close-up on different parts of his face, Sledgehammer – PG wearing the spotlight shirt, Salsbury Hill – in which PG and the band did a walkabout through the crowd, and a wondrous nifty encore of In Your Eyes , accompanied by opening singer Sevara Nazarkhan from Uzbeckistan, whose voice is without compare.

I apologize: My usually poetic tongue is dulled with fatigue and awe.

After listening to Peter Gabriel for over fifteen years, seeing him in concert was…extraordinary.

In other news…

A week ago I bought This is Spinal Tap . Great movie. During my post-movie shower I realized something: In Spinal Tap, Christopher Guest, as Nigel, has an amp that “goes to eleven” (watch the movie). In The Princess Bride , Christopher Guest plays Count Rugen, a.k.a. the Six Fingered Man. Six fingers plus five fingers equals (you guessed it!) ELEVEN! Coincidence? I don’t think so !

I’m on to something. I can feel it in my spleen.

I have just learned that Potato Moon and the Conklin Ceili Band will be at Billy’s on Wednesday, June 11, starting at 8pm. A better show is not to be had in all the world.

As a warm-up for that folk/Irish music evening Styx, (yes, Styx) will be at Schuler Books and Music on 28th Street at noon promoting their newest album, Cyclorama . This event earns the “What the…?” award for June 2003.

In the interest of promoting both music and Music, I have a few things to share with you.

First, there is an excellent Intellectual Property Weblog over at Berkeley, which is much more interesting than the name implies. As you can imagine, many of the articles involve the baby-eating fascists RIAA.

Second, I just received my first package from CD Baby . If you have not heard of them, they are an online music distributor, unaffiliated with the apocalyptic scumbags RIAA. They stock only independent artists, or the work of more “known” artists (eg. Thomas Dolby) who want to do personal projects. Over the past week I have spend many many hours browsing through their catalog, and I now have two wondrous new CDs.

The first I cannot easily categorize. A little blues, a little rock, a little jazz, and maybe a little tiny bit of surf-punk. The artist is the late, great Tom Pomposello, the album is [Once Were] The Pastures of Plenty . I have not yet removed it from the CD player.

The second is a fusion-celtic-rock band called the Rogues. If you are familiar with the Drovers (Chicago) or Fonnmhor (West Michigan), then these people will not fail to impress. Actually, they are probably closer in sound to Wolfstone. The album is called The Rogues 5.0 , and it Kicketh Much Ass.

Also while browsing around I found that three local bands have their amazing stuff for sale at CD Baby: Fonnmhor , Blue Nebula , and Potato Moon – who have two albums available, Stancil Martin Weber Brown and Midnight Water .

So with that as a starting point, you will never again have to pay another dime to the asshats at the RIAA .

Just uploaded a new page of photographs. River Ice . This is what I do at lunch.

Right now I am listening to the CD American Gypsy by the amazing Tony Furtado. The first track, Oh Berta, Berta gets a lot of play at WYCE . Based on that one track, I ordered the CD. I was not mistaken. Furtado’s stuff is kind of bluegrass, kind of blues, and all kinds of beautiful.

This past Saturday I caught the Conklin Ceili Band (website in production) at Pete Brown’s Office . I have known of them for some time, and have met the lead singer Mick, but this is the first time I have actually heard them. They put on a hell of a show. They have a new fiddle player, Natalie – lately of Fonnmhor – who plays as well as ever. A splendid time was had by all.