The Americana and roots music authority

My Five Best Music Events of 2012

Evidently, from all I see around me this January 1, it's the time of year to write lists. So here goes with my five great music events of 2012, and a couple of references to what the new year should have in store:

- Discovering No Depression: Anyone reading this here will not need an introduction. But joining in has brought me into contact with a large number of people who like the music I do, has introduced me a numerous bands and musicians I would otherwise not know about, and has provided another outlet for my music writing. Long may it last.

- Meeting Taj Mahal: I spent a good hour or so chatting to one of the world's great bluesmen, someone I have liked since first hearing him in the early 1970s on a magnificent sampler album called "The Rock Machine Turns You On". The best thing about it was that he was so very nice and friendly - not a soupçon of self-importance in him (which cannot be said for all the musicians I talked to in 2012). A close second to Taj was Joanne Shaw Taylor, another one who is supremely talented yet very down to earth.

- Finding the TuneIn Radio app: This wonderful little gizmo has allowed me to listen to music all over the world at any time I like. Some of it has been serendipitous, such as tuning in to Mexicana 1210 radio from Puebla on Cinco de Mayo. More frequently, I use it to listen to Wrecking Ball Radio, a splendid Cosmic Americana station that I think is based in North Carolina. Above all, however, it has linked me up with WWOZ New Orleans 90.7 FM. What glory to go to sleep in rural Oxfordshire (west of London) listening to jazz, blues and Cajun right from the cultural centre. (The station, incidentally, is featured on the TV series Treme - another great music discovery of 21012).

- Hooking up my record player: I bought an Ion turntable a year or so ago to convert old LPs to MP3s. It did a bit of it, but this year, I hooked it up permanently to my Bose system in the living room. I believe there was some hope in some quarters of my household that the arrival of this this device meant that LPs, once converted, would be leaving.Dream on. There is a wonderful used record shop where I live and records have been added rather than subtracted. Oh yes.

- Improving my own playing: Don't get me wrong - I am not going on the road with Taj and Joanne any time soon. But with the help of my beloved Agnes (guitar) I can now bash out songs ranging from Ledbelly to Little Feat and Cream to Martin Carthy. Not for public consumption, of course, but I can dream.

So that brings us to 2013 . So far I have a tentative interview lined up with the great Richard Thompson (whose yet-to-be-released CD "Electric" I have listened to with pleasure), I have tickets to see Neil Young and Leonard Cohen later in the year, and I will probably also see 10CC, one of the most subversive pop groups ever.

Not a bad start, but looking back 2012 was pretty good for me, musically.

Comment by Daniel T on January 2, 2013 at 12:01pm: 10cc? Didn't know they were still together putting stuff out. Great band , even if they may be an acquired taste, they are well worth the effort. Had all the LP's. Saw the "Deceptive Bends" tour. In Heidelburg , West Germany no less, where Eric Stewart finally told a bunch of drunken GI's to "SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN! Others would like to hear the music not your mouth!". We applauded. And "Feel the Benefit" , as killer as it is on LP is even better live because the solo at the end just kept on going ....... Quite an under appreciated group.

Comment by Daniel T on January 2, 2013 at 12:06pm: And I still have my turntable from 25 years ago, but I sold all but a hundred or so of my 3,500 LP collection. I do believe LP's still sound better than anything except reel to reel, but I cannot move that much plastic from one side of the country to another anymore. It's just to much. I am glad to see LP's making a comeback though.

Comment by musicJJMG on January 2, 2013 at 1:59pm: 10CC have been playing recently. They are at Cropredy festival this year in August. http://www.fairportconvention.com/cropredy_news.php

Comment by Joshua Sanders on January 4, 2013 at 7:58am: Hey I saw Taj Mahal at the City Winery this summer, and he was GREAT. I highly recommend checking him out live if you haven't.

I am not quite certain one can think of him, necessarily, as a "bluesman". At least, not in the classic sense of the Delta guys...true he did a lot of blues songs but an awful lot of his tunes were derived from other sources & not necessarily 8 or 12 bar progressions. I think he played an old Scottish ballad at one point. Anyway the bottom line (and don't we all miss The Bottom Line in GV?) is go see him!

Comment by Steve Harris on January 4, 2013 at 10:44am: My turntable died long ago as I made the transitions to CD's. I see a lot of LP's for sale now and I wonder if it will make a difference for modern music recorded to be played as MP3. Are the artists really using the bandwidth of analog?

A few years ago I decided to unleash my inner geek and put all my CD's on computer and hook it to the stereo. I got a decent desktop to use that had HD audio onboard and SPDIF outputs. I then attached them to my stereo via a DAC. The stereo is good not great, a huge old Onkyo amp with Mission and Bose speaker. (I know Bose is overrated but I got deals.) I tried different formats and FLAC really shines MP3 is fine for an earbud system but not for decent sound. As an experiment I tried recording some classical and a digital remastering of an old jazz record. I did both MP3 and FLAC. The FLAC was shocking better. It has range. On the MP3 version of the jazz you could hear the drums. On the FLAC version you could hear him hit the drum and slide the stick across the skin. There are players like Songbird that handle FLAC. It takes up about half the size of a WAV file, much bigger than MP3 but hard disks are cheap. Set up a RAID drive so you don't have to do it again. If you're not a geek you probably know a geek who will help you set this up.

Comment by musicJJMG on January 4, 2013 at 11:03am: I could not agree more Joshua. I saw him perform the day after I interviewed him and he was fantastic. I used "bluesman" as a short cut. But you are right. He is so much more. When I saw him he even brought on Senegal's Baaba Maal for some great African music. I too recommend people see him if the can.

Comment by musicJJMG on January 4, 2013 at 11:05am: Steve, I would say that you might as well have been speaking Greek to me, but I understand Greek. Interesting point about the music being made for MP3s but ending up on vinyl. Don't know - I do not have any new vinyl. All of mine is old stuff. I have a friend whose band has juts put out a vinyl LP, I will ask him how analogue it is.

Comment by Steve Harris on January 12, 2013 at 4:55pm: Sorry for being so slow responding. Sorry also for the Greek. I just cringed at the thought of transferring vinyl to MP3. MP3 is what's called a 'lossy' format. It throws away lot's of the sound to save space. If you pour 5 gallons of water into a 1 gallon bucket - good luck getting the 5 gallons back. It's great for a tiny little MP3 player but if you're ripping albums onto a computer there is better. FLAC is a common format. If you go to places like archive.org they offer downloads in a variety of formats and FLAC is one. I always thought CD's got a bad rap when they came out since the many were done from crappy old tapes, not a cleaned up master. They can hold stuff that pushes our hearing range. If you're importing from CD or vinyl, the program might offer better formats.

The whole thing about the computer was to make it more reliable. Having a hard disk die really sucks. If you go to a real computer store, not Best Buy, or befriend a geek it would be fairly easy. I spent weeks loading over 1000 CD's plus 100's of downloads into my music player and organizing it. The last thing I want is to have to do it all over again. I found a way to get excellent quality audio from the computer into my old analog stereo and I now can be a couch potato and listen to every song in my collection. I was using it this afternoon and it is great let the computer shuffle through 1000's of songs.

Comment