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 $$$.