A Lark Ascending

I was much taken by this album cover posted by Brownie on another thread: Thought cows deserved their own thread (I know there's an animal one but come on, we're specialists!). The obvious one: Three favourites:

Jarrett at the Village Vanguard must have been fun. You get shouted at by the performer and the waitresses!

King Crimson, Oct/Nov 1972 at the Oxford New Theatre (that's the real Oxford). First jazz concert? Went to several jazz-rocky things by the likes of Nucleus in the mid 70s and even a bizarre Lol Coxhill gig where he played in a a student union refrectory by candlelight; but the first one I recall thinking 'I'm going to a jazz concert' was Stan Tracey's quartet when they toured Under Milk Wood with poet Donald Houston in the autumn of 1976.

Thanks so far...Seasick Steve I've heard but not listened to. Alela Diane is a complete unknown - looking on Amazon she might be what I'm seeking. I listened to a lot of this sort of music in the 90s - grew out of the CSN&Y, Joni Mitchell, The Band, Little Feet etc interests of my youth. It took a back seat in the the Noughties but I've recently found it fresh again. Generally I like the acoustic type sounds - mandolins, banjos etc - though I'm also partial to the rock'n rolly, electric bluesy side. There's a point where it drifts into something too lush for me (for example, I love Alison Krauss with Union Station but don't care for her solo records which seem aimed at a more romantic market); I've also found most of the alt.country stuff I've heard a bit to abrasive and punky. Buddy Miller, Crooked Still, Mindy Smith, Peter Rowan, Eric Bibb, Iris Dement...that's the sort of area I'm attracted to. Having listened to very little that has appeared in the last ten years, I'm just wondering if there are any wonderful discs I've missed along the way.

Haven't been this way for a while but have been really enjoying it of late. Alvin Youngblood Hart, Uncle Earl, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Corey Harris, Tim O'Brien, Otis Taylor etc. Anything from the last few years that you've really enjoyed? [Please resist the temptation to explain how you only listen to this sort of music from West Tennessee before 1952...lots of other threads for that). Good, recent stuff please, if it interests you.

Even I've heard of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - I don't think I've ever heard their music consciously, but recall them being praised in the UK music press in the mid-late 70s at a time I was desperately thrashing around trying to find something to enjoy in the post-Year Zero rock world.

Highly predictable but I think I'd go for 'Blue in Green' off Kind of Blue.

Would that include 10 minutes of audience slow hand-clapping?

Give this a listen for a very tasteful 'folk-rock' version of Lincolnshire Posey by the Home Service (an offsheet of the Albion Band who were an offshoot of Steeleye Span who were and offshoot of Fairport Convention!). http://www.thebeesknees.com/?p=63 The brass/reeds section included ex-military brass band players; the main singer, John Tams, is one of the great UK folk singers - several of Grainger's pieces are moved back to the original songs. Knowing Tams he would know his Grainger well and, probably, have worked from discs of source singers. 'Folk-rock' can be arthritic - this isn't.

As others have said, nigh on impossible to narrow down. But these still fly back to my record player after 30+ years: + Mahler 6 (with 2, 9, 10 and Das Lied in reserve) + Sibelius 4, 5, 6, 7 + Vaughan Williams 5th (with the 3rd, 6th and various tone poems in reserve) + Janacek - Glagolitic Mass + Strauss - probably Ein Heldenleben and Der Rosenkavalier in poll position + Frank Bridge - Enter Spring + Delius - the Barbarolli disc of minatures + Shostakovich - 5, 7, 10, Violin Concerto, 8th St Qt, Piano Quintet. + Malcolm Arnold - Symphonies 2 and 5 (and maybe his Grand, Grand Overture just because it beautifully sends up the more pompous side of the genre) + Stravinsky - Violin Concerto, Dumbarton Oaks, Concerto in D, Danses Concertante + Britten - Peter Grimes, The Turn of the Screw, Death in Venice...and so much more + EJ Moeran - Symphony in G + Holst - The Planets, Egdon Heath + Debussy - Preludes, Images for orchestra + Falla - Harpsichord Concerto, El Amour Brujo, Three Cornered Hat and others I think that's 5 to be getting on with.

Here's a little list: Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451 Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake Kasuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go Cormac McCarthy, The Road The two highlighted immediately sprang to my mind. Both are in a world not that disimilar to ours but where rather unpleasant things have gone several stages too far. I'm enjoying: Suits my taste for books that question orthodox mythologies. Interesting to read how the anti-modernist bias of some of the early collectors helped shape at least one dominant interpretation of the music; and how similar it is to how many of the English collectors reacted in pursuit of 'authentic' folk music.

I started with a different MP3 player (I was really put off by the iPods 'must-have' cache). Got an iPod, however, a couple of years back and find it far more flexible. I'm sure there are equally good (or better) machines but the iPod does all I need of a portable.

This is a worthwhile investment if you don't need one of those docks with speakers: It's easy enough to connect the iPod to your stereo via the headphone socket but the sound is very tinny. With this you end up connecting via the output at the bottom into one of your amp's inputs. It also has a little handset that allows you to control volume. A much better sound. Not up to your hi-fis standard when playing CDs/CD-Rs but I only use it for spinning Playlists in the house. More than acceptable for that. Actually makes me think that a lot of the flack about the sound quality of downloads is actually an issuer with the iPod rather than the download itself - even to my tolerant ears they sound better played off a burnt disc or direct from the PC. The only irritation is that the dock ends in one of those single 'male' plugs; you need an adapter with a female leading to the double connection that you can put into your amplifier's input (I've used the old tape connection). Inexpensive to solve but one extra thing to get. £30 from Amazon + about £7 for the adapter from somewhere else.

This afternoon:

Spring is definitely here in the UK. -7 two weeks ago, +15 at times last week. Crocuses out, bunnies and pheasants everywhere. I even saw a clump of daffodils on the way home on Friday. The best thing is despite the great ice massacre that killed off five frogs, it's been all action in the pond this week. Yesterday it poured with rain after several weeks of dry skies. Here are two frogs taking a rest from their endeavours (unless there are other under the water!!!!!) and enjoying the rain.

I buy mainly downloads now - I'm paying half what I did 5 years ago, sometimes considerably less.

Ditto. Too many to mention, unfair to single people out. I tend to be influenced by those who focus on what excites them.

Or the betting shop for the Cheltenham Gold Gup (I was in the general area yesterday and 'race fever' was regrettably hyped up as per usual). Given his size, he'd have found himself on a horse tearing around the track before he knew it.

Being Cheltenham AND it being the jazz festival, queues at the pensions counter in the main post office, probably.

I often used to wake in the middle of the night to hear something amazing coming out of the radio and thinking 'What is that?' It was usually Gillett's World Service programme - fills the space on Radio 4 from 1-6 a.m. A sad loss. (We'll forgive him for discovering Dire Straits)

and Marc Boland/T Rex, Neil Ardley and Cosmic Eye Dream Sequence ! I think one of my earliest singles - 'Neanderthal Man' by 'Hotlegs' (they went on to become 10CC) - was on Regal Zonophone. Also 'Brontosaurus' by 'The Move'. Must have been my prehistoric musical phase!

The trouble with these sorts of disagreements is that they muddle musicological/historical significance with personal enjoyment. The fact that a musician might be considered musically or historically significant might be good reason to give them a listen; but it doesn't compel you to like them. Similarly, the fact that a musician is not considered to be of great musical or historical significance is no reason not to like them. We all hear music as a result of very different experiences and contexts and will consequently take to individual players in very different ways. I suspect most of us are comfortable with that. Now if you want to enter the ring about who really 'matters', then you'd better make sure your historical/musicological evidence is substantive. I'll enjoy reading what you say; you might even be persuasive enough to make me want to listen (or listen again). But get too preachy (or spend too much time telling me what's wrong with someone) and I just tune out.

Spot on! In fact an awful lot of critical orthodoxy (and an awful lot of dissent) is just that...projection masquerading as revelation. So, is this some kind of revelation? I defy you to show me any adult, hell, child, even, of even semi-functional capacity who doesn't do that, one way or the other. There's a way of expressing an opinion or a preference that acknowledges that it is just that. And another where the poster comes across as being in possession of a universal truth, one that they are duty bound to preach from the mountain top. I, like many others, enjoy the Alexanders of this world (as I enjoy the 'second' or 'third' division composers of this world), as one of the options available. I can fully appreciate that others choose to focus on what appears to be newly minted. The problem comes when the latter assume that the former are in 'error' (or the former assume the latter are...). Not that it matters. Despite all the patrician disdain expressed towards Alexander, his recordings keep on cropping up in the various listening threads.

Spot on! In fact an awful lot of critical orthodoxy (and an awful lot of dissent) is just that...projection masquerading as revelation.