This was a nice surprise. A classic song that Nelson had recorded before, this time with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, in the early 2000s. I don’t like Nelson’s voice too much, but here, at around age 70, he sounds gritty and cracked, weathered, relaxed. What makes this recording special to me is how perfectly easy and off-beat Nelson and the band make the song sound. The instruments are stressing the twos and fours, and as a result, Nelson seems to be off the beat as well, off balance, dazed out, floating over the accompaniment. He’s not going to work for the railroad, but the mail train is always present, rolling through his dream of rolling in said baby’s arms, who, sweet as she (he?) may be, doesn’t want to pay Willie’s bail.
Category: Music
We apologize for the inconvenience
For the last couple of years, one of my favorite radio shows has been one that’s called Crap From the Past. It’s a one of those things that make me love America: amateur radio shows on public radio that are not very scripted and can be either very terrible or very glorious. CFTP is often very glorious in a cheerful mayhem kind of way that I can identify with. But it can also be very terrible. My spouse finds the show infuriatingly annoying… The show has been on the air on various stations since the early 1990s, hosted first by a physics grad student and then by a physics PhD (same guy), and all shows are available on the internets at Archive dot org.
This episode should be the soundtrack for this semester.
German texts for Oratorio
Here are some German texts that we’ll sing with the Oratorio society in March. Maybe this’ll help my fellow choristers practice German pronunciation. We’ll sing:
Bach, Cantata no. 4, Christ lag in Todes Banden: Spoken text
Clara Schumann:
Abendfeier in Venedig: Spoken text
Vorwärts: Spoken text
Gondoliera: Spoken text
