Shack Shakers Trailer

The Legendary Shack Shakers were in Nashville today, and here's the news via Geoff Firebaugh

Sometime between 11 and 3 today , th' Legendary Shack Shakers trailer was stolen here in nashville. this is a partial list of equipment that they lost. I will post more later. alot of this stuff is one of a kind so please keep an eye out.. thanks
Geoff-




Gretsch White falcon Bound in silver
Gretsch custom shop 6120 (orange)
King Doublebass Road King Red Sunburst with Metal Flake red on the sides.
fender 800 pro head in Star Case rack w/ korg tuner, Fishman Pre and assorted cables etc.
2 fender 810 pro cabinets
orange pearl drum kit with "shack shakers' kick heads
fender supersonic head and 412 cabinet
Germino guitar head with marshall 412 in 'destroyers' roadcases
Tweed Twin reissue custom shop guitar amp
Fender 59 bassman 410 guitar amp (tweed reissue)
Red 1981 fender P-bass (fernandes neck plate, jazz bass special neck)
hundreds of t-shirts and cds.

if you have any info please call the Nashville PD at 615-862-8600
or email me at Bigbassape@comcast.net

Or check in with the ShackShakers via their MySpace page

Spread The Word. These guys have a great sound. get em back on the road.

Final Round Voting

Final Round Voting has commenced. My Dream App has announced the voting for the chance to have the Application you need to be made by some volunteer software developers. This is the last round here, folks so we are choosing winners here. Six finalists. You can vote for three, though, once you've registered, and you probably know I want you to vote for Whistler coz you'll have more fun with that than most things you can imagine. Good. We can exchange doodles and stuff.

Voters also can avail of two free (Mac) software apps. See the News section linked above, and then go vote.



Go on ...

Samhain New Moon 2

First Up on the October Dark Moon is IckMusic posting the Mojo Workin' with some unusual versions up.
There's a great Steve Earle track (The Devil's Right Hand) up at Mars Needs Guitars plus a bunch of other tracks to put you in the mood for Fear.

Gumbo has had his latest Tale of Death, Rebirth, and Ghoulish Dread, Remixed by Maggie Osterberg (praise her ears) and it kicks some serious butt. And that's just what you need on a night like this.

Straight To Hell MP3

Samhain new Moon

October by slumbering

October, October
Warmer and colder
Summer is over
But she'll keep the Sun
In her big, black cauldron
Tis the season
For death and the night
So say the spell
Make the ghosts tell

Circle the stones
Dance with the bones
Follow the shadows
On All Hallow's Eve
Happily we grieve
Drink to the Dead
In October

When the Sun has just gone down
It is time
To sing the rhyme
Bring them out

Orange glowing embers light our way to November

Waltz through the stones (Through the stones)
Dance with the bones (With the bones)
Death is romancing (It's romance!)
A nightmare perchancing (Spin...)
Spin like the leaves (...like the leaves)
Drink to our friends
Who met their ends

When the Moon glows in the sky
Do they fly?
In the sky...

Circle the stones (Circle the stones)
Dance with the bones (Dance with the bones)
Take Death's hand (Take his hand)
To Underland (Underland)
Raise up a glass (First do no harm)
To souls who have passed (Now work the charm)
Drink to the Dead (Make a toast)
Drink to the Dead (To the ghost)
In October, in October

Ooh, October...

Friday The 13th

I've been wanting to post about bananakiller - the Absolute Club Song all week but MacIDOL has been down since Tuesday (GMT) and it's Friday the 13th, and it's almost Halloween, so I won't. Not Yet.

Instead go and checkTim Curry in The Worst Witch (vid and MP3) over at Looking At Them


And I know some of you will just love Hobo Humpin Slobo Girl and other stuff at Lost In Your In Box

Not me of course. I'm too demure.

So how could I ignore a song title like Too Much Sex (Too Little Jesus) by The Drive-By Truckers

Apparently Votinghas been delayed so a famous judge can comment on the proceedings and actually happens today at My Dream App - I'll keep you posted.


Well that didn't take long. VOTING IS UP. go click on the Vote button and check out the semi-finalists. Walks away whistling ...

Gene Vincent

The 35th anniversary of Gene's death in 1971. RIP

Pipe Dream, Animusic for Fosco.

Dougie MacLean - Caledonia

Keep the Coffee Comin posted the Mary Black version of Dougie MacLean's Caledonia the other day. Maybe you heard it. It got me wondering if anyone knows about this wonderful Scottish songwriter. I'm bushed (no pun intended) so I will just post a couple of songs and some links. He has been called the Scottish James Taylor, which does him a grave injustice (Dougie, not James. James is nice. Dougie gets inside your soul and causes it to expand in all directions. Maybe James does that for you. Perhaps you're in the wrong blog?)



Caledonia MP3
From Craigie Dhu

Stolen MP3
Scythe Song MP3
From Riof

Bunker Hill !!

No Really! Bunker Hill.

Already blogged by The Right Reverend Frost who saved my sadly abused cassette copy of these tracks, now sleuthing through the interweb has found this. The Bunker Hill Myspace page

And the linked article is well worth reading if you have any brain left


Ridiculous I know, but there you have it.

He (or she) who has ears to hear, let him (or her) hear.

Amen.

So is it Hide and Go Seek pt1 or pt2 ??

My Dream App (or what do you get if you cross a guitar tuner with a dictation machine and feed it to a MIDI engine?)

Sorry about the post title - I'm getting carried away - but I have WIFI and I can still type

MWAhahahahahaa_Ahem.

Where was I?

Oh Yes.

Any moment now (Wednesday and Thursday) the voting will reopen at My Dream App .com

There is a competition on the go as we speak and the prize is for a newbie developer to have their application idea put into practice. Actually up and running made.

There are 12 no, 9 contestants left out of 2700 and this is semi-final week.

Now to business.

We all love music. Some of us are musicians. Some of us not. All of us get tunes in our heads from time to time, and then (if we're lucky) get them stuck there for a while. Sometimes the best we can do is to hum them or go "La La La La Lah Dúm DúM Tisssh!" happily to ourselves (or even to goofy friends).

Wouldn't it be great if we had a Muso friend who really listened. Like they cared or something. AND THEN ...

they write it down see, or play it on a keyboard and say "that sounds like this - do you want that as a trumpet or an overdriven fender telecaster? What do the drums sound like?"

AND

they would NEVER EVER talk about the theory.

EVER.


It's called "Whistler" and if it's thunker, Richard Whitelock (who thunked it) gets even half of what he would like it to do up and running it will completely revolutionise the way music composition happens. IT WILL BE FUN - Whooo! AND he will put it in the hands OF THE PEOPLE rant rant gibber

ahem.

Seriously go check it out and if the Spirit is Moving You. Cast your vote upon Worthy, or offer up a Prayer to Elvis or whatever it is that yo do best. HELP ME HAVE THIS APP. PLEASE.

How did I find out about this? Sp3ccylad knows everything.

The hour is fast upon us ....

The Reverend Frost at Spread The Good Word is ahead of the Pack, here, and already onto the 2nd thrilling instalment of the BLOODY HALLOWEEN MIX and this is a goody. Where does he find all this weird and wonderful ... no, no, you're quite right. Sorry to get all Cerebral on you.

What else? Well.

undomondo Ghoulish sounds abound with a few well chosen creep anthems, and for the totally addicted to weird there's this:

Spellbound Music for Theremin no less. 2 one hour radio shows. Perfect.

I also like Tango Mortale by After Son and as Slumbering mentions in the comments, that Gumbo has been out walking these nights, and he's got a tale to tell: Cold To The Bone

Also up and in the mood is Dead Flowers (not The Stones' track btw) by Kemi Helwa, and the wonderfully eerie blues of Loonatic by MO. If that don't get you in the Spirit nothing will. Loonatic is nothing to do with the full moon, and everything to do with one of the creepiest natural sounds you could hear. Lovely to be Loony, indeed.


Oh and my webcounter is back to normal, and I didn't have half a million visitors last week. Phew.

Bright Eyes

I was going to post about this band I just heard. Bright Eyes. From Omaha. But I checked Hype Machine first, thankfully. 4 pages of songs posted. I get skeptical about blogging at this point, but that's another story. I guess this is a HOT HAPPENING band at the moment.

ANYWAY I fell in love with a song and I suggest you do too.

Go over to Pure Volume and listen to At The Bottom Of Everything. The intro blew me into 7,568,349 pieces, so tread carefully.

Thanks to Sian for sending me hence.

You can buy all their albums from Amazon via that page too. I'm so not going to make a living at this.

Recent MacIDOL uploads

Song For My Mama-la
slumbering
A beautiful melody for harp and cello - I can really drift with this - freedom for a space.

Friends Reunited - Sp3ccylad
This just chock full of great lines and a wicked backbeat drives it all home. "I'm leary of contacting anyone else for fear of finding out worse" His best? Could be. can't get it out of my head.

The Encounter - Vortex
More beautiful ambience form Vortex. Check out their music page. Then check it again. Great.

Cushion The Blow - Finer
Mellow Reggae track from the soul voice of Adam Finer. Think Gregory Isaacs.

Got A Job MP3
aka Gumbo
The job you had to do. Been there? Fun folkabilly from Gumbo.


I was right, you were wrong - Red Sea Station
There's a lovely Syd Barrett feel to this. Cheerful to the point of absurdity. Great fun and eerily poignant.

I'm Vegan (with The Emo's) - Veggie Philosophy
They must have had such a laugh making this. Stupendous.

Iridium Flare - Peter Greenstone
This is one of those crystal clear meltdown and watch the world tracks - get swept along with it. Perfect.

Junkie - Airforce One
Wicked Track. Absoulutely.

Shazam!

Jimmy and Duane were a couple of kids who met at school in Tucson Arizona. They met up and practiced and recorded a single for a Pheonix DJ called Lee Hazelwood.

I Want Some Lovin Baby MP3
available on the Proper Box 103 which you need.


Jimmy Dell went on to record sides for RCA and Duane Eddy continued to work with Lee, recording some seminal guitar rockers for Jamie in Philadelphia. This is a clip of Shazam! from the movie "Because they're Young" and as somebody pointed out on the You Tube comments page, that's Al Casey in the glasses playing bass, on Duane's left.

Dick Gaughan

I'm just back from Dick Gaughans gig tonight. No MP3s. But someone has put a photo montage over Dick's "Fathers' Song"

If you have no soul you'd best skip it.




It was a thoroughly enjoyable gig. Dick mentioned his cold at the start but it didn't seem to affect his voice. I saw Dick at the previous Ennis gig in the foyer at Glór (the venue) so some songs I've heard before and others were totally new. The stand outs tonight were the Jack Glass story, the John Muir Redwood Cathedral song, Ewan somebody from St Kilta (pardon my ignorant spellchecker - I'm a Northumbrian), No Gods (precious few heroes), The Burns tune (which my friend has a treasured cassette copy of and was relieved to hear).

The Big Muddy was a stand out. And The Yew Tree. Remember Thomas Muir of Hunters Hill is a new fave. And the end was a surprise, and in retrospect I felt kind of jarred from my reverie. Transported as I was into my imagination by the tunes I could have listened all night but I suspect Dick knew his throat best.

It is an experience that's hard to fathom. During the Burns song - I found myself meandering back to being a kid watching the boats sailing down the Tyne. The Tall Ships race or Navy frigates. It would be announced in The Journal and my dad would get us all out to Tynemouth to watch them passing on the weekend. One day he said to me "We build ships on this river" and I thought "Do we?" It was a bit like driving past the cooling towers in Gateshead and being told "Your Great Uncle Jimmy built them". I was gobsmacked. It must have taken him ages. But being young I missed the point that it has taken too many years to understand. The sense of pride and identity in being part of the work being done, and the sense of community.
My dad came from a mining family though neither he nor his brothers were miners. His dad ran a shop and was the out of the mine his father had worked in. He was a salesman, but he still felt that "We" did it.

I wonder at the audience and all those different journeys that folk were travelling during the performance. Dick has a passion for his roots that is contagious. Magic. And a good spell well woven is a gift on both the giver and receiver.

Thanks Dick, and keep on with the vitamin C.

Todd Snider

Todd Snider is presently on John Prine's Oh Boy Label.

Found this in my local independent CD store (do you still have those?) in the Pop section. Does It Look Like a Pop Record?

Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues MP3

You Think You Know Somebody MP3

What's Up?

Tuwa has pushed me over the edge. In a good way.

Posting one of my all time favourite songs without so much as a fanfare. Do yourself a favour.

Go Check: Affection - Jonathan Richman

And:

Langhorne Slim at Largehearted Boy and (my fave track) at Raven Sings The Blues

Crooked Still over at Can You See The Sunset From The Southside Ain't No Grave is a great version of that song.

And a track that has been blowing my mind the last couple of days
thepunkguy posted Free Until They Cut Me Down. by Iron and Wine.

Poppa. Don't tell me what I should've done
she's the one, she's the one who begged me
take me, take me home



And if that's too much for you then you probably need Happy Birthday Mr Birdseed by the Ramones


AND:

tons of Midnight Oil acoustic in '93

posted by The Big Yin. Seriously.

Singin Country Songs For A Livin

I love this. Never heard of the guy before, but Google sure has. Maybe you have too. Hell. You have now, find Joey Allcorn at Myspace or at Joey Allcorn.com

MacIDOL Radio

I have just spent the last couple of hours compiling the MacIDOL Artists featured (so far) at The Kingdom. Or at least here by The Door.

Nothing fancy just yet. You can Browse a 50 song Playlist here and try out individual tracks, EDIT - actually you can't which is a surprise, but the Player link below works for me. Leave a comment if you have Bad News messages from that one, and i'll see what I can do with the Playlist link.

or you can just launch a random 50 song player in your browser window (unless you're setup to do that in a Music app on your chosen interweb surfing machine).

B&Massa is offering to codify a simple interface just as soon as I tip him the word. Watch this space.

Speaking of watching this space, is there really that many of you out there? I've watched the webcounter go through about 3000 hits in the last hour. Can't be right. Well. If it is I'd better put some more tunes up, eh?