Gordon Vincent visits the show

(MQ Murphy photo)

The Saturday, August 13 show featured a visit from a real live singer/songwriter. Gordon Vincent, of New Jersey, Tennessee, and New Jersey again. Gordon released a new CD last week and stopped by the studio to talk about the disk and play a couple of selections live.

Gordon has recorded four CDs now - varying his production approach each time - his last disk, "Confessions of a Hummingbird Farmer" was self produced and Gordon played all instruments himself. The latest - "Mechanical Breakdown" - was also self-produced and recorded but also features singers and players from Cape May and Nashville. His own guitar and keyboard playing are masterful and well crafted - the 13 cuts on the disk (plus one surprise cut and a brief homage to John Cage) show a broad range of well-absorbed influences from the delicate "Annie's Garden" to the happily bopping "Happy" and the Prince-evoking "Reason to Leave - Alt".

His website provides a schedule of appearances and links to venues.

Gordon previously visited Six Degrees on March 26th of this year, along with Pete Mroz, Rachel Owen, Jim Counter and J.M. Kearns.

Long time since last post . . .

(image stolen and modified by MQMurphy)

You might guess there's been a lot going on. You'd be right. So much to catch up on - we must be somewhere near 200 broadcasts of Six Degrees (the show that keeps the 'tic' in eclectic) by now.

Since last post the Singer/Songwriter Cape May has rolled through town again - March 26th and 27th, 2011 found our little town crawling with old and young instrument-toting folks. It's a delicious and slightly agonizing event - delicious for obvious reasons - agonizing because there's no way to catch it all.

The 3/26/11 Six Degrees show played host to almost half a dozen songwriters who had a history of writing and playing together when they were all living in Nashville. They were reunited for the weekend as a few of them were scheduled to perform at SS Cape May. The show featured live performances by Pete Mroz, Gordon Vincent, Rachel Owen, Jim Counter and J.M. Kearns. You might've been one of the lucky folks who caught the impromptu (thanks to Vickie Watson) performance at The Merion Inn on Saturday afternoon.

J.M. Kearns (he who writes books) was also a guest on the Six Degrees "Unlimited New Year's Day" show. JM played a few of his favorite tunes.

JM and Gordon have been playing a lot in the Cape May Area - JM (Mike to his friends) can be heard on a regular basis this Summer at the Pilot House on Tuesday nights, sitting in at the fabulous Barry Tischler-hosted Open Mic on Fridays, hosting Open Mics occasionally at the Mad Batter and appearing with the Song Slingers a couple of times at The Batter this Summer.

Gordon has been making pretty regular appearances at Higher Grounds Coffee House and Hawk Haven Vineyard in Cape May and traveling up to Espressit Coffee House in Haddon Township, NJ for Sunday morning gigs. Gordon also drops in occasionally at the Pilot House Open Mic Night (PHOMN) and pretty much leaves everyone stupefied with his masterful performances.

Me, I've been trying to spend my Sunday mornings doing my favorite kind of research - sitting up in bed with a fine cup of coffee reading my favorite music blogs like Music Fog, the LA Times' Pop and Hiss and the Guardian UK music blog.

Been promising friends that the SixDegrees.FM website would be up soon - still promising. Stay tuned.

SS Cape May - Friday, March 26, 2010

"How can you be in two places at once when you're really nowhere at all?" - Firesign Theatre.

So, this Singer Songwriter Cape May thing swept through town last weekend and I'm still kind of drained and jazzed. Met some great folks - heard some great music - missed some great music, too. (see above, though there wasn't any 'nowhere' to be found this weekend - it was all great. Thank you for letting me tell you that.)

I was so wiped out by the experience (I'm old) that I was even still recovering on Monday from Saturday night's festations. (Festipravities?)

This was go-round #3 for SSCM - it seems to be gaining momentum, and I'm very happy about that. I was a little bummed last year when Julie Gold ("From a Distance") was a no-show at one of the discussions, but I'll get over it eventually. I was really hoping to get some insights on the nuts-and-bolts of a top selling record.

This year featured Nicole Atkins and Steve Forbert as headliners. That's fine, but I missed the headliners because the 'downcard' performers* kept me away from the Congress Hall ballroom to catch performances at venues like the Merion Inn, The Pilot House, The Mad Batter and The Ugly Mug.

(Sorry, east end of town, but I know my limitations by now.)

I started the weekend at the Merion with a couple of friends. The young woman at the piano was earnest but couldn't catch our ears. Before her set ended we headed up to The Pilot House and caught David Falcone - a great guitarist with lots and lots of hair. And craaazy fingers. Good stuff. Caught a few minutes of the John Byrne Band afterwards but didn't stay long because we wanted to entrain another music fan and head to The Brown Room to hear Suzi Ragsdale. Got there a little late but still in time to hear half a dozen wonderful tunes including a song about a plastic Jesus figurine that she dug up in her back yard while setting up a teepee. Suzi produced said figurine from her bag and set him up on the piano - just like a Dashboard Jesus - where he remained for the rest of her set.

I was lured to the Boiler Room (downstairs from the Brown Room) by tales of a Bela Fleck type band (did I hear 'PsychoBela', or did I make that up?) but never really heard them because I was introduced to Keith Burnstein and Ethan Shorter (of The Mumbles) and Sabrina Chap. These fine folks had come all the way down from Brooklyn to appear at SSCM - we chatted for a while and I was deeply impressed with their matter-of-fact low hype vibe. Pictures were taken and I promised Keith that I would seriously try to do a phone interview with him the next morning. So what if I'd never done one before? BTW - after doing a bit of homework I'm convinced that Six Degrees has got a "Brooklyn" show in its future.

We ended the evening back at the Merion but Jesse Lynn, the last performer, had finished and was chatting with Vickie Watson and George Mesterhazy about ghosts. Everyone at the bar who had seen a ghost, or knew someone who had seen a ghost, or even knew what a ghost was threw in their two cents worth and we wished Jesse an uneventful night.

I stayed for a bit, chatting with Vickie and George and Glenn McBrearty and bar manager Carol Queenan before heading home to spend a couple of hours (ouch!) getting Saturday's Six Degrees show together.

Next post: Saturday Morning - Saturday Night 3/27/2010

* I swear that I've heard that term referring to the 'lesser' bouts at a boxing match, but I'll be damned if I can find a boxing slang site that'll back me up!

Michael Kearns

I've been listening to "Death or Life" - the disk from Michael Kearns and the Lonely Mammals for a few weeks now. Got it from a friend, which is also the way I like to get books. Someone gets an idea of your tastes and says,  "I think you'll like this . . . ".

Well, I like it. A happy find - Michael has a great touch. From sweet ballads like "And Then Some" to wry rockers like "Lose My Job" and bittersweet school-of-life songs like "Nashville Will Teach You" and "A little Rain", Michael and his backing band The Lonely Mammals are masters of the genre we've been calling Americana.
In the true spirit of that genre, this album is the band and their guests actually playing and singing together. (Says so right in the liner notes " . . . recorded the old fashioned way. We all played at once.") 

I haven't got anything against highly produced studio artifacts - it's just that there is something more human (more Mammalian?) about a roomful of people playing and singing together.

Comparisons? How about Neil Young ("That Much Love")? Todd Snider ("Lose My Job")? Maybe even Johnny Cash ("Shortcut to Arthur").

I've been working these tunes into the show for the last few weeks. Hard to believe this is a first effort. Of course, Mike spent a lot of time producing disks for other folks - I hope he'll find the time to bring us more of his own gems soon.

Headline: DJ Gets Older!

(MQMurphy photo)

This Saturday's show (10/31/09) is The DeeJay's Choice Show.
It’s the DeeJay’s choice because the deejay turns 58 on the 30th. Forty years ago in 1969 I was eighteen.
In 1969.
God – for how many of us did it seem like we’d never find our way out of those years from 16 to 18?

For some reason the Byrds tune "Eight Miles High" has become something I've focused on in this playlist.

Tunes like Eight Miles High – you heard them – they mixed the rock and roll that you knew with the jazz that you didn’t know and the images of faraway places – “Rain gray town, known for its sound - in places, small faces unbound” - Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, Gene Clark.

That tune was written in 1965. It was all new. Small Faces – that phrase became the name of a rock and roll band. There was so much going on – everything influenced everything else, it seemed.

This, from Wikipedia:

Jim McGuinn's twelve-string guitar playing, particularly the introductory solo, was inspired by John Coltrane's saxophone playing on the song "India" from his 1963 Impressions album.[3] McGuinn is very guarded of the effort that went into his approximation of Coltrane's technique to guitar.[citation needed] The song is driven along by Chris Hillman's bass line, while the rhythm guitar work by Crosby and fast drumming of Michael Clarke add dramatic turbulence. In a 1966 promotional interview, which was added to the 1996 CD re-issue of the Fifth Dimension album, Crosby said that the song's ending made him "feel like a plane landing".

Coltrane’s “India” – on Impressions – was a live recording from sessions at the Village Vanguard in November of 1961.

I didn’t know where that melody had come from – all the times I listened to the cut – but you knew – we teenagers knew - there was something there that you hadn’t heard before.

Fill 'er up.

This morning I looked at the NY Times and there was an article about the 'cash-for-clunkers' program and how it is such a success that it has run out of money already. The article was titled "Running on Empty".
I got to thinking about how the phrase ‘running on empty’ is linked – for many of us – with the song by Jackson Browne. I believe that the phrase predates the song, but the song made it real – gave it an additional ‘concrete-ness’ – in a way that enriches and extends its allusions.
I’d love to write a song like that – one that would become woven into the culture’s psyche in a permanent way. Also, it’d be nice to get the checks.

The Past and the Future

The “Past and the Future” Show

Reading through a 30+ year old New Yorker magazine – looking at the ads, thinking about how these were predictions – in a way – about what we’d be using and doing as time went on. Some of those things are just gone. Some of the ads are kind of quaint.
I think there’s a show in this idea. The not-so-distant past and the future it anticipated as seen through the ads and the articles in a popular magazine.

31st Cape May Jazz Festival Show

(Bernadette Matthews photo)

MQM, Carl Grubbs, Tim Price at WCFA studio

4/18/09
On the radio show, did a special Jazz Festival show with interviews – Monnette Sudler, Carl Grubbs and Tim Price. Three fairly different kinds of artists. All from the Philadelphia area, Monnette is a guitarist and Grubbs and Price are sax players.

I really think that serious musicians are spiritual people – I believe that it would be hard to be in touch with a talent/impulse/gift like that within yourself and not somehow have a spiritual experience.
Carl Grubbs in particular reminded me of some kind of a wandering saint. He had a quiet patience that seemed deep. I felt in him a recognition and an acceptance of the sacrifices that dedication to an art requires.
I felt honored to sit and talk with him.

Robbie Fulks

(Image found at RobbieFulks.com)

I ran into my friend Barry Seetoo-Ronk at the Cape May Singer-Songwriter thing last night. We talked about our favorite music a bit and Barry told me he really likes this guy's stuff. I just checked out his website and read a bit on his blog.
"Countrier Than Thou" was one of the tunes that Barry mentioned - totally cracked me up. At the risk of marginalizing my show even more, I've got to get this music into a playlist soon - I love it.
Here's a paragraph from his site:

"Hi, I'm Robbie Fulks and this is my website. I play and write music, mostly country of one stripe or another. I think you knew that if you came here, but if you're unfamiliar, click below to hear and see examples of my style. Otherwise click around as you please and let the magic that is me enfeeble your defenses."

'Stunned' is how I put it.

(Image found at Jennifer Warnes.com)

3/15/09
So – I did the Jennifer Warnes/Famous Blue Raincoat show yesterday on Six Degrees. 

Right now – even with the errors that occurred I committed - it is ranking up there as one of my favorite shows. Attributable, certainly, to the quality of the material.
I’ve written elsewhere about how I recently came to discover the album twenty-two years after it was first released. By the end of the show yesterday I was thinking “You could fall in love with this voice!”.
Listening to the album I found myself wishing that I could have been there when it was being made. Such a stellar group of players and singers – they made Cohen’s material more than it had ever been, in my opinion.

One of the things that I love about doing this show is how I’m led to discover music and players that I wasn’t aware of. I started out with the similarities of ‘Bird on a Wire’ and ‘Nightshift’ thinking that they must have a producer in common in addition to having a drummer in common. I was wrong about that, but was led to discover C. Roscoe Beck. He’s a bassist and he did the production on Famous Blue Raincoat.

My best word to you: if you thought you knew who Jennifer Warnes was based on the soundtrack hits, do yourself a HUGE favor and get this disk.

3/15/09 11:30 PM
PS – Sent a fan letter to Jennifer Warnes through her website earlier today – received two responses from her portal guardian, a very warm person named Dee Perez. Later in the evening my socks were blown off by a personal response from Jennifer Warnes herself. Such graciousness and a gorgeous voice to boot! Too much.
I’m smitten, for sure.

LPFM in the news.

On Facebook there's a group called Local Radio Now! that is spreading the word about Low Power FM stations - they posted a link to a Bill Moyers article about it. Check it out:

Atmosphere

Just a brief entry here -
listening to John Hiatt's 1987 album "Bring the Family", there's a great line in "Memphis in the Meantime":

" . . . sure, I like country music and I like mandolin,
but right now I need a Telecaster through a Vibrolux turned up to ten."

2009 Grammy Show

Sunday, February 1, 2009

The Grammys is (are?) next Sunday night – I’d better get going on this.
Last year I did a Grammy show after the awards ceremony – this year I’ll be doing my show the day before – shall I prognosticate? On the air? (Sounds like something Howard Stern would do . . . )

Let’s go looking for the file from last year . . .
Found it – I went back 50 years – uh, no – 40 years to 1968.
Then covered ’78, ’88, ’98 and ’08.

Difference: last year did the show after the awards were given – this year I’ll be guessing at the winners. Might be fun.

Categories covered last year:

Record Of The Year, Album OTY, Song OTY, Best New Artist, . . .
Jazz categories changed over the years – as of 1998 they had broadened a bit. Here’s what I chose for last year’s show

Jazz – Performance by a soloist
Jazz – Performance by a group
Jazz – Perf. by a big band
Jazz – Best Vocal Perf.
Jazz – Best Contemporary Jazz Perf.

On another note, it seems that I’m using a larger font in my Word docs lately. Getting older. :0(

Technology rears its head . . .

. . . and many citizens are frightened in Sectors R and S. (With apologies to Firesign Theatre)

I made the first mp3 recording of the show today. (Wild applause sound) 

Not got it all worked out yet - the output that I tapped for the feed to the digital recorder seemed to be heavily loaded into the left channel, with little or no signal in the right hand channel. I'll be checking into that. 

What's next? A list of tasks: load the mp3 file into my computer and maybe load it into the "Audacity" program for a bit of editing - get online and get my domain Six Degrees.fm pointing to the chunk of bandwidth that I pay for (but never use) at Mac.com. - whack together a quick website for said chunk of bandwidth (or maybe it's just server space???)

If I knew what I was doing, I might be dangerous.

SummertimeWindBreezeBlues . . . in the City.

Ira Gershwin, George Gershwin and Guy Bolton.

Photo found at PBS.ORG

Saturday, July 5, 2008
Yow – long time no be here. Lots of notes typed in specific show pages, but nothing here on the blog. Today’s show was the “Summer” show, of course.
Summertime, Summer Breeze, Summer Wind, Heat Wave, Summer in the City (Hot Damn!) . . .
Played many versions of Gershwin’s “Summertime”. Did you know that it was originally known by the name “Moontitties”? Wait! Maybe this is a Wikipedia hoax! Any schmuck can make that stuff up for at least a little while before it is corrected . . . and I read it on the air! Whoops. Well, maybe that's a for-real story - time will tell.
Had a pretty good time with the show, despite almost being late due to a needed-to-be-reloaded printer driver. (See: re-installation of OSX).
I whined – on the air – about being hungry. I asked anyone passing by to leave a bag of hot buttered groat clusters on the porch and knock on the door.
I whined again (of course changing the reference to ‘goat custards’) during another break and it payed off (paid off?) – Hope Gaines came over to the studio with a plate of blueberry pie and a couple of peaches. I love this town.
It started out being one of those shows that I didn't feel really sure about, but turned into the kind of show that leaves me with a little buzz. That is why I do this. That, plus the huge $$$.

From Bob's lips . . .

I might do a feature on the show – The Word of Bob. That'll piss off the religious right, center and left I guess. 

(cue organ music) " . . . and now, Six Degrees brings you . . . The Word of Bob."
A little quote each week from Bob Dylan – lately the one that’s been popping up for me is from “My Back Pages” –

“ . . . in a soldier’s stance I aimed my hand
at the mongrel dogs who teach, fearing not that
I'd become my enemy in the instant that I preach.”

It is a precarious and peculiar conversation that I have - sitting in the deejay chair.

Like the profile says," . . . I like music and I like to talk."

Anyone who knows me will agree with that. Especially the talk part.

I'm having fun there, and I hope that the listeners are enjoying it - but it's a funny thing from week to week, deciding what to leave in and what to leave out, as Bob Seger said so well.

The show evolves slowly . . . I'm younger than that now.

Lo-Powa

There was a piece on NPR today that touched on Low Power FM stations, among other things.
According to the program there are about 800 FM-LP stations in the country. I think it should be a growing thing - it seems like something that fills a real void. I mean, how many different stations do you need that play top 40 and have those SHOUTSHOUTSHOUT commercials?

Emmylou in the pivot.

I put the power to another challenge for yesterday's show (2/23/08).
CCA boardmambo David MacKenzie sent the Jim Kweskin to Peggy Lee challenge to me back in January. At the end of the month he smacked down another. (No money on the table . . . but that's not why we're here.)
Dennis Quaid to Janis Joplin. And, Dave had a specific path between the two in mind when he sent this to me. I struggled with it for a while and put it aside. Somehow it seemed to loom over my head for more than the three weeks it took me to put it together.
Quaid has plenty of footprint as an actor - it's harder to come up with concrete evidence of his well known sideline. Nothing on ITunes - the All Music Guide can't find him. Google serves up a reference to his band, The Sharks, but their website seems to require a plug-in that I haven't the patience to track down.
Dave stopped by the studio a week ago and delivered another hint to me. He said that the connection did start with a film.
I thought the key would be in the movie "Great Balls of Fire", where DQ played Jerry Lee Lewis. There is at least one YouTube-posted video of Quaid and Lewis amidst balls of fire, pounding out the title tune on pianos. Harder to find actual footage of Quaid singing a song that I could manage to include on the radio show. There was a clip of him singing a song called "If You Don't Know Me by Now" (no, not that one . . . )
Through the magic of computers and the internets, I used that YouTube clip over the air.

Back to the connection - it turns out that Solomon Burke played a part in the movie "The Big Easy".
I lit out after Solomon Burke and tracked him to a 2006 album called "Nashville", which featured duets with a number of females of the country-music persuasion. One of them was Emmylou Harris. From there I got to "The Last Waltz", the Martin Scorcese film of The Band's farewell concert. She appeared in the film, along with Paul Butterfield. Butterfield's album "East-West" was produced by Paul Rothchild. He also produced albums for Bonnie Raitt, Love, The Doors, Tim Buckley and . . . Janis Joplin. He did the production for her last album, "Pearl".

Noto bene: I am endeavoring to abide by Joe's challenge to lay off the 'songwriter' connection. My guarantee: All of the persons used in the above linking were - at one time or another - in the same place at the same time. And no animals were injured in the making of this link.
Thank you for letting me tell you that.

The Dennis Quaid to Janis Joplin challenge was featured on the February 23 show, which had a secondary theme of "Food".

Grammy-tastic.

Enjoy the clip of Bob and the Soy Bomb from the 1998 Grammy Awards.

So far, my favorite Six Degrees radio show is the Grammy Show that I did yesterday. Didn't include a six-degree challenge, but probably worked on the show as much as I've worked on any show that did include a challenge. I did a sort of very subjective survey of Grammy Winners Past. To keep it manageable I just went backwards in ten-year jumps, back to 1958.

1958 gave us Henry Mancini's "Theme from Peter Gunn" (Album of the Year) and Ella Fitzgerald doing "I Got it Bad (and that ain't good)" from "The Duke Ellington Songbook" which won the Best Jazz Performance-Individual award.

1968 yielded Jimmy Webb's "Up, Up and Away" by the Fifth Dimension and "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", the Joe Zawinul tune by Cannonball Adderly.

1978 - getting into the era of my young adulthood. Songs by Fleetwood Mac bookended a live-in-Europe Al Jarreau recording.
I conciously avoided using anything from "Hotel California" which won Record of the Year. Enough said?
Here is my first rant: Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year? Someone on NPR on Friday had a funny commentary on the Grammys. He likened the Awards Show to a summer camp where everybody gets a prize for something.

1988 was a very fat year for the Grammy Awards. Or maybe I mean it was a fat year for music fans. Record(!?) of the Year was Paul Simon's "Graceland", and Album of the Year was U2's "The Joshua Tree". I'm certainly nailing myself into a particular demographic group now. I was 35 in the summer of 1987 and these two albums are landmarks in my musical world. Very different records, both high points for the artists that made them.

1998's Best New Artist was Paula Cole. Haven't heard a lot from her in the past few years, but recently she did appear - in her role as a songwriter - on a television segment about last year's Herbie Hancock project called "Possibilities".
Album of the Year was Bob Dylan's "Time Out of Mind", produced by Daniel Lanois. Record of the Year and Song of the Year honors went to "Sunny Came Home" from Shawn Colvin.

I played a few pieces by some of this year's nominees - a few from Herbie Hancock's "River: The Joni Letters", a couple of selections from the Robert Plant - Alison Krauss record "Raising Sand", and of course one each from Feist and Amy Winehouse and one each from Raheem De Vaughn and Bruce Springsteen.

I'm sitting in front of the tube now - counting down the next 21 minutes 'till the Grammys starts. You can follow that story here.

Word out.

Photo by MQMurphy 

There's a little article on the Cape May Times website about Cape May County's newest radio station. For those of you more than ten miles from Cape May the best I can offer for my bit is that I'm looking into how podcasts (webisodes?) are done. Last Saturday's show featured no challenge, but the theme was "Royalty". That meant we had plenty of Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin - the Queen of Soul, songs about kings (King of the Road, King of Pain, King of Wishful Thinking), Dukes (Duke of Earl, Sir Duke), and your odd Prince. (Pun-tentional? Your call.)

A challenge was suggested yesterday - Dennis Quaid to Janis Joplin. The challenger says he already has the links worked out - we'll see what I come up with.
There'll be a Grammy themed show on the 9th of February, of course. Want to send challenges or suggest themes? Put them right here in the form of a comment, mes amis.