[Moshe]

http://pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/37680


Wilco, Beck, Sonic Youth on Harry Smith Tribute
The late Harry Smith, renowned musicologist, filmmaker, and painter, will be soon receive the tribute treatment with a four-disc box set titled The Harry Smith Project: Anthology of American Folk Music Revisited, due October 24 on Shout! Factory.
The two-CD/two-DVD collection draws performances from Wilco, Beck, Lou Reed, Nick Cave, Beth Orton, Richard Thompson, David Johansen, Steve Earle, and more. In addition, it holds a new documentary on Smith's continuous influence on contemporary music, as well as three of his short films.
The tracks, drawn from concerts staged by Hal Willner (who also compiled and produced Revisited) at London's Royal Festival Hall (1999), Brooklyn's St. Ann's Center (1999), and Los Angeles' Royce Hall at UCLA (2001), take inspiration from Smith's six-LP Anthology of American Folk Music. Released in 1952, it introduced listeners to artists such as Mississippi John Hurt, the Carter Family, Robert Johnson, and Blind Lemon Jefferson.
The first DVD, A Concert Film - The Harry Smith Project Live, will be available separately as well.
P.S. Allen Ginsburg took the photo at the top of this story. That gives you some idea of how cool this guy was.


Tracklist:

Disc One:
01 David Johansen - "Old Dog Blue"
02 Steve Earle - "Prison Cell Blues"
03 Wilco - "James Alley Blues"
04 Beth Orton - "Frankie"
05 Beck - "Last Fair Deal Gone Down"
06 Kate and Anna McGarrigle - "Sugar Baby"
07 Elvis Costello - "The Butcher's Boy"
08 David Thomas - "Way Down the Old Plank Road"
09 Richard Thompson and Eliza Carthy - "The Coo Coo Bird"
10 Ed Sanders - "My Baby Done Left Me"
11 Nick Cave - "John the Revelator"
12 Eric Mingus and Gary Lucas - "Oh Death Where Is Thy Sting?"
13 Roswell Rudd and Sonic Youth - "Dry Bones"
14 Garth and Maud Hudson - "No Depression in Heaven"
15 Geoff Muldaur - "K.C. Moan"
16 Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer - "When That Great Ship Went Down"

Disc Two:
01 Robin Holcomb - "A Lazy Farmer Boy"
02 Van Dyke Parks and Mondrian String Quartet - "Sail Away Lady"
03 Geoff Muldaur - "Poor Boy Blues"
04 Marianne Faithfull - "Spike Driver Blues"
05 Lou Reed - "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"
06 Kate and Anna McGarrigle With Elvis Costello - "Ommie Wise Part 1 & 2 (What Lewis Did Last...)
07 Gavin Friday - "Fatal Flower Garden"
08 Bob Neuwirth and Eliza Carthy - "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground"
09 David Thomas - "Fishing Blues"
10 Mary Margaret O'Hara - "He Got Better Things for You"
11 Mocean Worker - "Harry Goes a Courtin"
12 Robin Holcomb and Todd Rundgren - "The House Carpenter"
13 Don Byron, Percy Heath and Bill Frisell - "This Song of Love"
14 Nick Cave - "Shine on Me"
15 David Johnansen - "James Alley Blues"
16 Petra Haden - "Single Girl Married Girl"

Disc Three (DVD):
01 Elvis Costello - "The Butcher's Boy"
02 David Johansen - "Old Dog Blue"
03 Nick Cave - "John the Revelator"
04 Beck - "Last Faire Deal Gone Down"
05 Ed Sanders - "One Hot Summer Night With Harry Smith"
06 Kate and Anna McGarrigle - "Sugar Baby"
07 Lou Reed - "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"
08 Beth Orton - "Frankie"
09 Rosewell Rudd and Sonic Youth - "Dry Bones"
10 The Folksmen - "Old Joe's Place"
11 Robin Holcomb and Todd Rundgren - "The House Carpenter"
12 Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer - "When That Great Ship Went Down"
13 Philip Glass - "Etude No. 10"
14 David Johansen - "James Alley Blues"
15 Eric Mingus and Gary Lucas - "Oh Death Where Is Thy Sting?"
16 Petra Haden - "Single Girl, Married Girl"
17 Richard Thompson and Eliza Carthy - "The Coo Coo Bird"
18 Bob Neuwirth and Eliza Carthy - "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground"
19 Geoff Muldaur - "Poor Boy Blues"
20 Don Byron, Percy Health and Bill Frisell - "This Song of Love"
21 Kate and Anna McGarrigle with Elvis Costello - "Ommie Wise Part 1 & 2 (What Lewis Did Last...)
22 Steve Earle - "Prison Cell Blues"
23 David Thomas - "Fishing Blues"
Bonus features: Three films by Harry Smith and interactive music selections: "Film #2", "Film #7", "Film #10", Philip Glass - "Etude No. 10", DJ Spooky - "HS Tone Poem", Mocean Worker - "Harry Goes a Courtin' (The Mowo! Live Hootenanny Throw-Down)
Disc Four:
The Old, Weird American: Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music

[mushmanski57@hotmail.com]

Sweet.

[Moshe]

Did anybody get Roswell Rudd's "Broad Strokes"? Is it any good?

http://sonicyouth.com/mustang/lp/index.html

TRACK LIST:

1.Change Of Season2.Sassy & Dolphy3.Almost Blue4.Stokey5.Coming On The Hudson6.God Had A Girlfriend7.All Too Soon/Way Low8.Theme From BABE9.The Light10.Change Of Season
NOTES
Sonic Youth guest on one track on Roswell Rudd's "Broad Strokes" album, entitled "Theme From Babe". Thurston, Lee, and Kim all play guitar, Steve plays drums. SY (sans Kim) joined Rudd for his performance of the song at the Broad Strokes release party @ The Knitting Factory on June 5th, 2000

[Moshe]

"Dry Bones" is probably a recording from 1999:


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B01EFD8103DF934A25752C1A96F9582 60

JAZZ REVIEW; Tribute to Harry Smith, Musicologist and Muse

Published: November 17, 1999



The musicologist, filmmaker and painter Harry Smith, who died in 1991 at age 78, was a super-bohemian, which is to say that his life was determinedly messy, his interests determinedly scattered, his interpretation of culture determinedly oppositional.
He was an idol who tried the patience of his idolaters; stories about Smith often end with his asking for money, glazing over in an alcoholic haze, becoming a nuisance. And in that respect, the five-hour concert honoring him at St. Ann's Church on Friday night -- it was the second of two benefits for the Harry Smith Archives, produced by Hal Willner -- seemed properly imitative of the man being honored: intellectually ambitious, eclectic, unreasonable, long-winded.
The concert focused on Smith's contributions to culture from several different angles. Many of the 20 performers played songs from his ''Anthology,'' first released by Folkways records in 1952 and reissued to great acclaim as a six-CD set two years ago.
The album is a compendium of commercial recordings of the late 20's and early 30's by obscure artists in blues and mountain music and other forms. It is organized thematically, linking murder, dancing, religion and myth across race, territory and musical style. A primary source of material for the folk revival in the 50's and 60's, the album forces the listener to make connections about American music and the St. Ann's show did the same.
The concert immediately made clear that Smith's anthology, and by extension the idea of the prewar American South, pulls out different reactions from different people. Nick Cave opens the anthology and sees desperate, devil-haunted oracles; he enacted one of his ponderous imitations of a Southern preacher as he performed Blind Willie Johnson's ''John the Revelator.''
By contrast, Van Dyke Parks sees golden wheat fields and riverboats; his arrangements of ''The Wagoner's Lad'' and ''The Butcher's Boy'' for keyboard and strings with the help of the Soldier String Quartet and the singer Rufus Wainwright were sweet, bucolic dreams. Lou Reed sees himself: his barking style was suited to a largely one-chord ''Frankie and Johnny,'' but his singing did nothing for the lyrics, and it sounded like any number of second-rate Lou Reed songs.
Kate and Anna McGarrigle brought a lovely, anti-histrionic understanding of rural music to their performances. Bob Neuwirth, in a country vein, and Wilco, in a roots-rock vein, gave similarly confident showings. The Fugs and Mary Margaret O'Hara provided necessary comic relief; Robin Holcomb made ''Froggy Went A-Courtin' '' a song of chanting and mystery; and Adam Dorn and DJ Spooky performed with samplers and turntables in front of Smith's experimental films, some of them hand-colored abstractions, others animated cartoons of spheres, snakes, skeletons and other vaguely religious symbols.
One of Smith's lifelong preoccupations was the idea of alchemy, and the evening's great trick of transubstantiation was pulled off by the trombonist Roswell Rudd, who performed ''Dry Bones'' with Sonic Youth.
Mr. Rudd placed shouting, New Orleans-funeral style trombone improvisations over a rock 'n' roll drone and it worked; then he hollered fragments of the song's lyrics, stretching out words. From a former Dixieland jazz player in his mid-60's with a lumberjack shirt, swept-back white mane and beard -- he looked like something between a country doctor and Moses, and his shouted lines rose above the gathering din behind him -- those words had a curious impact.
The evening had plenty of longueurs, but this wasn't one of them; if the greatest claim to be made for the ''Anthology'' was that it took music aficionados by surprise, the unlikely marriage of Mr. Rudd and Sonic Youth was very much in its tradition.

[sonicl]

I went to one of these all-star tribute concerts, the finale of Nick Cave's Meltdown season at the Royal Festival Hall in 1999, and it was a brilliant event. Among the highlights that I remember were Nick Cave's performance of John The Revelator, and performances by Gavin Friday, Jarvis Cocker, Eric Mingus, and Mary Margaret O'Hara, the last of which was notable for its wierdness. My big disappointment of the evening was having to leave about 30 seconds after Bryan Ferry came onstage in order to run to get the last train home.

Full list of participants HERE.

NME review HERE.

[greenlight]

thanks for info

[Moshe]

http://twangville.com/390/the-new-we...ect-revisited/

The New, Weird America: The Harry Smith Project Revisited

 

“My dream came true. I saw America changed through music.” As a Grammy Awards audience acknowledged his genius, a frail Harry Smith, months before his death, basked in the recognition that had eluded him for a half century. The importance of his landmark Anthology of American Folk Music cannot be overstated: it is often credited with spawning the 60’s folk revival, revitalizing fading legends (Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Lemon Jefferson), inspiring budding legends (Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin), and perserving slices of American culture before they could be doomed to legend.
BACKGROUND
Painter, musicologist, filmmaker, anthropologist and eccentric, Harry Smith is best known today as a maverick record collector. In the early 1900’s, before record collecting for cultural edification was widely practiced, he amassed an archive of tens of thousands of, mostly 78 rpm, records — treasures that would have been discarded, literally, if not for his passion. At a time when the war effort demanded records be melted for their shellac, Harry Smith raided record shops and rescued folk, blues, cajun, old country, hillbilly, gospel, jazz and other precious artifacts of Americana.
His collection wasn’t the biggest, but it was well curated — not just a pile of discs, but a museum of songs which were thoroughly researched, annotated and numbered. Unprecedented for its time, it caught the eye of the newly formed Folkways Records. In need of cash, Harry Smith sold half his collection to Folkways (the other half was eventually sold to the New York Public Library) with the understanding that the songs would be issued to the public with his annotations.
From thousands of tracks, 84 were chosen, carefully sequenced over 6 LP’s, and the Anthology was born. Released in 1952 to modest fanfare and worse sales, the quirky box slowly invaded America’s consciousness. Fifty years and 500,000 copies later, the collection is a national treasure; it was the first album added to the White House record collection, and it was added to the prestigious National Recording Registry in 2005.
50TH ANNIVERSARY
The enduring legacy of the Anthology is best demonstrated by the legions of musicians who claim indebtedness to Harry Smith; performers and songwriters across the roots music spectrum have cited his scholarship as a guiding light for their careers. As the 50th anniversary of the 1952 event unfolded, contemporaries of Folk, Alt-Country, and Modern Rock performed selections from the 84 tracks in a series of recorded concerts in London, New York and Los Angeles. A souvenir box from the three concerts was released by the Shout Factory in October.
The 2-CD, 2-DVD set is a sprawling assortment of concert clips and film, with enough treats to delight old fans and a hipper, modern styling to attract some new ones. Disciples of Harry Smith will be well rewarded by the DVD content, especially “The Old, Weird America,” a brand new documentary which explores the origins and impact of the Anthology. It provides an insightful history and features rare footage and reflections from Greil Marcus and Alan Ginsberg. Essential viewing for the indoctrinated.
The concert clips, on the other hand, are as likely to please a younger audience as they are to confound the committed fan. By charter, the Anthology reveres the past, and the performances that stick to “the formula” are the most satisfying: Richard Thompson’s take on Clarence Ashley’s Coo Coo Bird is a studied performance (and a treat to watch him perform on the DVD); Beth Orton’s Frankie (Mississippi John Hurt) is stark and terrifying, like a murder ballad should be; Steve Earle’s Prison Cell Blues (Blind Lemon Jefferson) is just plain great; and Van Dyke Parks loving orchestration of the Social Music instrumental, Sail Away Lady, is worthy of the 1952 box.
That describes about 65% of the collection; the remainder is contemporized and electrified. Traditionalists may wince at some of the tinkering: Nick Cave’s John the Revelator bears little resemblance to the humble finger snaps and a capella of Son House; Lou Reed’s charged See That My Grave Is Kept Clean is a grungy revision; and Sonic Youth’s smoldering Dry Bones is practically a reinvention. These songs were birthed in fields, in churches and on front porches, so the high voltage arrangements are intriguing, though unsettling to the stubborn ear.

CONCLUSION
Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music changed America through music, and the Harry Smith Project Revisited ushers those ambitions into the 21st century and appeals to a new generation to broaden its milieu. Like Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home, some like side one, some like side two, but no one questions its impact. So whether it’s the old or new, weird America you prefer, one of these compilations should be in the collection of any serious Folk music devotee.

Favorite tracks (excerpts):
“Prison Cell Blues” - Steve Earle


“Coo Coo Bird” - Richard Thompson


“Frankie” - Beth Orton

[silverfreepress (sdasher)]

Me and some friends went to this show at St Ann's Church.

all pew seating, lee and thurston were switched from stage left to right and there were two nights of this. Lou Reed performed in leather pants and i think i recorded this on cassette, yep i'm certain of it... the tape case reads HARRY SMITH LIVES!!!!!.

Oh New York, you uhmaze me.

Originally Posted by Moshe

"Dry Bones" is probably a recording from 1999:


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B01EFD8103DF934A25752C1A96F9582 60

JAZZ REVIEW; Tribute to Harry Smith, Musicologist and Muse

Published: November 17, 1999



The musicologist, filmmaker and painter Harry Smith, who died in 1991 at age 78, was a super-bohemian, which is to say that his life was determinedly messy, his interests determinedly scattered, his interpretation of culture determinedly oppositional.
He was an idol who tried the patience of his idolaters; stories about Smith often end with his asking for money, glazing over in an alcoholic haze, becoming a nuisance. And in that respect, the five-hour concert honoring him at St. Ann's Church on Friday night -- it was the second of two benefits for the Harry Smith Archives, produced by Hal Willner -- seemed properly imitative of the man being honored: intellectually ambitious, eclectic, unreasonable, long-winded.
The concert focused on Smith's contributions to culture from several different angles. Many of the 20 performers played songs from his ''Anthology,'' first released by Folkways records in 1952 and reissued to great acclaim as a six-CD set two years ago.
The album is a compendium of commercial recordings of the late 20's and early 30's by obscure artists in blues and mountain music and other forms. It is organized thematically, linking murder, dancing, religion and myth across race, territory and musical style. A primary source of material for the folk revival in the 50's and 60's, the album forces the listener to make connections about American music and the St. Ann's show did the same.
The concert immediately made clear that Smith's anthology, and by extension the idea of the prewar American South, pulls out different reactions from different people. Nick Cave opens the anthology and sees desperate, devil-haunted oracles; he enacted one of his ponderous imitations of a Southern preacher as he performed Blind Willie Johnson's ''John the Revelator.''
By contrast, Van Dyke Parks sees golden wheat fields and riverboats; his arrangements of ''The Wagoner's Lad'' and ''The Butcher's Boy'' for keyboard and strings with the help of the Soldier String Quartet and the singer Rufus Wainwright were sweet, bucolic dreams. Lou Reed sees himself: his barking style was suited to a largely one-chord ''Frankie and Johnny,'' but his singing did nothing for the lyrics, and it sounded like any number of second-rate Lou Reed songs.
Kate and Anna McGarrigle brought a lovely, anti-histrionic understanding of rural music to their performances. Bob Neuwirth, in a country vein, and Wilco, in a roots-rock vein, gave similarly confident showings. The Fugs and Mary Margaret O'Hara provided necessary comic relief; Robin Holcomb made ''Froggy Went A-Courtin' '' a song of chanting and mystery; and Adam Dorn and DJ Spooky performed with samplers and turntables in front of Smith's experimental films, some of them hand-colored abstractions, others animated cartoons of spheres, snakes, skeletons and other vaguely religious symbols.
One of Smith's lifelong preoccupations was the idea of alchemy, and the evening's great trick of transubstantiation was pulled off by the trombonist Roswell Rudd, who performed ''Dry Bones'' with Sonic Youth.
Mr. Rudd placed shouting, New Orleans-funeral style trombone improvisations over a rock 'n' roll drone and it worked; then he hollered fragments of the song's lyrics, stretching out words. From a former Dixieland jazz player in his mid-60's with a lumberjack shirt, swept-back white mane and beard -- he looked like something between a country doctor and Moses, and his shouted lines rose above the gathering din behind him -- those words had a curious impact.
The evening had plenty of longueurs, but this wasn't one of them; if the greatest claim to be made for the ''Anthology'' was that it took music aficionados by surprise, the unlikely marriage of Mr. Rudd and Sonic Youth was very much in its tradition.

[skipvacuum]

i bought the dvd of this over the weekend...pretty cheap by itself $13.00....it's awesome to see rudd with sy...i recomend the dvd cuz it's probably cheaper than the 3 disc set....not even sure why i'm posting this...but it's worth 15 bucks just for the rudd/sy bit

[Chris Lawrence]

http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/cc/111199.html
http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/cc/111299.html

[Kanna]

Originally Posted by Kegmama

Nice. I have added the dvd to my xmas list. Thanks for the info guys.

Here is another too! I don't know if you already know it?

STRP1
Reactions to the music of Dick Raaijmakers


STRP is based in the technological area of Eindhoven. Strijp-S, the characteristic industrial inheritance from Philips, forms the cradle of this region. On this spot revolutionary inventions which have had an enormous impact on several art forms, were realized. Electronic music composer Dick Raaijmakers completed the first electronic music album almost 50 years ago at Strijp-S. His work has been remixed or reinterpretated by renown contemporary musicians from different scenes. The result of it has brought out on this cd.

Tracklisting



Total duration 70 minutes

1. Vier Fanfares - Keith Fullerton Whithman
2. The Three Unwanted Alterations of the NatLab Archive - Mouse on Mars
3. Song of the Second Moon - Jason Forrest
4. Night Owls (after "Ballade "Erlkonig") - Phantom Orchard (Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori)
5. Weinen!! (After 'Ach!Ach!') - David Grubbs
6. Vijf Canons - Yutaka Makino
7. Pianoforte - Thurston Moore
8. Colonel Bogey - Atom TM
9. Song of the Second Moon - Isolée
10. D-R Pelicula (Dedicated to Esther Venrooy) - Beautyon
11. Tunes - Kettel and Secede
12. FFT (Tumbling Impulses) - Edwin van der Heide
13. Plumes - Taeji Sawai
14. Night Train Blues - Vert

http://www.bastamusic.com/productDetails.aspx?IDProduct=174&ArtistName=STRP1

[Moshe]

Just watched the SY/Rudd track on the DVD and it is really good. Sonic Youth should add horns to the band. It just sounds amazing.

[tesla69]

Originally Posted by silverfreepress (sdasher)

Me and some friends went to this show at St Ann's Church. and i think i recorded this on cassette, yep i'm certain of it... the tape case reads HARRY SMITH LIVES!!!!!.
.

Did you trade this out at all? I bet my copy of this was from your tape. Its about 20 mins long.

So this DVD/CD doesn't include that piece...

This is the first I've heard about the Roswell Rudd guest appearance!