First Byron announcement. Here's who I'm excited about:

The Flatlanders -- YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dr John & the Lower 911
Lyle Lovett
Béla Fleck and Oumou Sangaré
Buddy Guy
Jeff Beck
Robert Gordon
Peter Green & friends
Justin Townes Earle

I'll keep an eye out for the Sydney show/s of Orquestra Buena Vista Social Club too but they'll probably play somewhere horrible like the Opera House so I'll stay home and listen to Bebo Valdes records.

I've been listening to the audiobook of Michael Conolley's The Scarecrow and the moral is all about how easy it is for freaky serial killers to track your every move via the Internet. Like, you can know exactly what I'm listening to when via my lastfm page which updates what I'm playing live. Have at it, stalkers! Incidentally, this is the first novel I've read where people actually use the Internet the way I do -- not that I stalk people and hide them in the car boot, but I mean, look any and all things up in Google Image Search as second nature. Anyway.

There were the heady days of 26-28 August where I listened to Nina Simone straight for two days. You can never have two much Nina, but this Philips box set is quite indispensable as the definitive collection of the Nina force, force of personality and force of musicianship. The peak of her vision realised (not that she had troughs) and a sublime listen from beginning to end.

More lately, I had a big raid on eMusic which I haven't done since the changes in July. But a few things showed up I particularly wanted and they started giving people 50 "loyalty" credits - more than a whiff of desperation about that move but I'll take 'em. I more or less get every new Afrobeat or Afrorock release that comes up, the latest is a really fabulous collection called The Legends of Benin. The label Analog Africa is always a solid bet. The first track "Dadje Von O Von Non" by Gnonnas Pedro & His Dadjes Band is pretty much the perfect (to me) family reunion between African and "western" funk. Here's Honoré Avolonto - Na Mi Do Gbé Hué Nu on YouTube. More such meetings are on Many Lessons: HipHop, Islam, West Africa from the "world" music specialists Piranha out of Germany (as so many of these labels are), I listen to a bit of hip hop but my tastes are quite narrow (so far) and lean towards the fusiony end of the spectrum and it's good if you like such things.

And then I got Town and Country by Humble Pie. Going through a 60s British blues/rock supergroup phase. Still chucking on Blind Faith a lot. Using this ripper music search engine an eMusic subscriber developed I discovered Humble Pie. You plug in an act and it spits back a heap of similar/related artists. It brings up a lot of artists I know which is good because you can see how well calibrated to the original name it is, but also heaps of new folk. It's optimised for eMusic (clicking on the photos takes you to their eMu page and greyed out photos means no albums on eMu) but it's great just to find people generally. Anyway, Humble Pie, apparently "hard rock" (70s performances on YT bear this out) although this is their acoustic blues-rock album. I don't really know anything about Peter Frampton and Steve Marriott, apart from their names (years of reading Mojo and Uncut cover to cover) but this is pretty good in a generic late 60s British rock blues type way but it's one of the generic sounds I like.

Natural Born Boogie:

El Barrio: The Bad Boogaloo Nu Yorican Sounds 1966-1970 brings the music of Spanish Harlem to you. Features La Lupe, the Queen of Latin Soul.

Also features the track Happy Soul With a Hook by Dave Cortez which I seem to have on about five different compilations by now. For Latin but with a much deeper level of pure funk, try Si Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba. Waxing Deep is/was a great Latin soul/funk podcast, the podcast is in hiatus but they've branched out into being a label. Si, Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba Volume 1 was a great collection of 60s and 70s tracks, and so I immediately bought Volume 2 and even bought a hard copy. Having the liner notes is fine, and it's nicely put together all round.

I've got the new Allen Touissaint record Across The Bright Mississippi on order so I went revisiting his oeuvre, which basically means ... take your pick of any New Orleans music from the 1960s on. Super Bad by Don Covay is according to Herr Doktor Guugle a collection of the soulmeister's 70s cuts and its quite an intriguing mixture of styles from rock (one song sounds like mid 60s Stones), country ballad touches to varying flavours of soul and funk a la New Orleans. Allen Toussaint - Saint Of New Orleans is a compilation with a couple of songs sung by Touissaint and a stack of others written and produced by his. This Lee Dorsey/Toussaint track isn't on there but it's just too good.

And finally, a version of "Sea of Heartbreak" from Rosanne Cash's forthcoming album featuring Bruce Springsteen got released on iTunes this week. Sea of Heartbreak is one of my favourite songs. Cash slows it right down, for a song about how sad, lonely and adrift the singer is, it's usually done in a very bouncy way. Bruce might be trying too hard to croon in the background, let Bruce be Bruce and not Ray Price but I like it more each time I hear it. The chorus is still one of the most singalongable in history.

Country music death beats fear not because I have the new Delbert McClinton, the new Guy Clark, the new Kris Kristofferson and some others coming up in the rotation!

Someone somewhere on twitter the other day pointed my to this Times article about a surprising new Loudon Wainwright III project, an album of Charlie Poole songs. Out tomorrow.

The themes of his music also happen to be some of my favourites when it comes to writing my own songs -- mother, booze, general nonsensicality and death. Lastly, the chaos and fun of rambling around playing music and the inevitable fallout with wives, kids, to say nothing of the damaging effect to one's physical health -- these are subjects I've tackled in song and, of course, in real life. The "Road" is a toll road and you pay the price. But let's not get too morbid here. There's real joy, feeling, and warmth in Charlie Poole's music. He knocks me out.

High Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project. Enjoying the videos at that site.

Here is Dylan introducing a Charlie Poole song on his radio show, with the hilarious (to me) matter of fact noting about artists who obscure their lyrics live. epic lulz @bob

21 Old And Only In The Way.mp3

Visiting the Chess Records studio at 2120 S. Michigan Ave in Chicago.

One of the most storied addresses in popular music, 2120 South Michigan Ave is down on Chicago's south side, and is now run by the Willie Dixon Blues Heaven Foundation. Which is fitting because although Dixon is less well known than other Chess figures, he was a crucial part of the label as a songwriter and producer as well as musician. Here's Muddy Waters doing one of Willie Dixon's most famous songs "Hoochie Coochie Man" at Newport and Willie doing one of my fave songs "Built for Comfort." There are various gold records on the walls from the likes of Eric Clapton for albums which have W.Dixon compositions on them. Oh and this one is great (complete with audience of Don Draper impersonators.) And this! In the gift shop I bought his autobiography, I Am the Blues.

Next to the studio building is the Willie Dixon Blues Garden (locked when we were there) where they have free concerts now.

Willie, Muddy, Buddy! A picture taken right here in this room!

View from the old control room into the studio.

Willie Dixon Grammy.

An original inlay from the Chess period. I think it was in pretty bad condition when the Blues Foundation took over the building and its been extensively remodeled and reconstructed.

In the old sorting and shipping room there are various displays of memorabilia and also these casts of the faces of many great blues folk. Here is Phineas inspecting them, and I should also thank him for putting me up (and putting up with me) in Chicago and letting me drag him way across town to places like this.

Little Milton

On this X, Elvis stood to record "That's All Right" at Sun Studios.

Sun Studios tour guide demonstrates how Johnny Cash got the scratchy guitar sound on "I Walk the Line" by putting a dollar bill through the strings.

And, Graceland.

Major gratitude to Tim for mentioning the Wolfgang's Vault iPhone (and iPod Touch) app.

I was dubious that the streaming would be more trouble that its worth -- watching YouTube on there is fine, but the buffering would get tedious over a concert length experience. Extremely surprised and delighted that on wifi flcking between songs and concerts was no slower than doing so in the iPod where the files are right there. Over 3G its noticebly slower changing songs but still quite alright. So I lay in bed and sampled some Delaney and Bonnie -- with Dominoes trio Eric Clapton, Bobby Whitlock and Carl Radle, as well as Leon Russell and Rita Coolidge, in the band -- some Bruce from 1977, some George Jones, some Booker T and the MGS. Of course presumably it is a bandwidth hog and so more suited to those unlimited plans Oz telcos decline to give us. But still, four hoofs up.

And of course if you don't have one of them gadgets, you can listen to them all online.

I heart Andy Baylor. Be there for sure.

I was moved to confess the other day that I'd never seen The Blues Brothers (a sin of omission now remedied) because I was doing some reading on Naomi Shelton and Gospel Queens and someone on the Internet mentioned her music was in the movie. Further research suggests this is not true, but whatever.

She has an album (her first full length!) from Daptone called What Have You Done, My Brother? There's a mention of a son going to Iraq but apart from that everything about this glorious wonderment of a record, from the album cover to the harmonies to the sacred steel of embarrassing richness, could be straight from 1965.

I included "A Change is Gonna Come" on my last 8tracks. Check out the YouTube trailer ye sinners and melt:

I have never seen Blues Brothers.

Segue:

Here is my latest 8tracks, a semi-late Friday night and RIP Koko eight songs which clocks in at just over 30 minutes. There are a few mournful eMusic references tucked away in the lyrics too. ;-(

Queen of the Chicago Blues. Sorry to learn she has passed away. R.I.P Koko.

Hat tip to Phineas for tweeting this, and then going the extra mile to hassle me in real time about actually clicking on the link he tweeted.

Total Eclipse of the Heart, the Literal Video Version:

Also, Lonnie Johnson is really amazing and I never knew!! Boo @ me. You'll be wanting the Complete Folkways Recordings.

I just recently discovered Smithsonian Folkways has a whole series of podcasts on various aspects of its catalogue, the blues, labour songs, world music, Phil Ochs, several on the Harry Smith Anthology and so on. You can search for them under "The Folkways Collection" and "Smithsonian Folkways" (two seperate things for whatever reason) on iTunes or download them as normal MP3s from their website. They describe the 24-part series as "exploring 20th century human experience through sound" which is rather grand but I can't argue.

I have been really digging them so I thought I would burrow into my Folkways collection and do up a 8 tracks mix in tribute. Along with the early hillbilly and blues and folk you associate with Folkways, the collection includes some of their less well known nooks: some African and Central Asian tracks, a Lithuanian lullaby, some mariachi field recordings and some dude called Blind Boy Grunt.

Listen below or at the 8tracks site.