Little Birdy

This traditional song makes you re-evaluate your relationship to birds after hearing the legendary interpretation done by the sinister, bespectacled mountain wizard Roscoe Holcomb. With a most idiosyncratic way of picking the banjo, and with a voice no moon can overdo in high lonesomeness, all the recorded pieces I have heard by this man, hits me with the immediacy and intensity of a lightning crash.
Just take a look at the film clip below, where Roscoe plays Little Birdy. By his side sits a baffled Pete Seeger trying to understand how he does it!





For a further look into the life of Holcomb and the high mountains of Kentucky in days of yore, please do make yourself aquainted with the highly recommendable film "That High Lonesome Sound" by John Cohen. If you happen to live in Oslo, you have the chance to pick it up at the public library, where also several records by Roscoe Holcomb can be found. Good luck! Little Birdiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Evensong

Can musical magic happen in a church in Viljandi, Estonia?
Yes, if the date is the 25th of August and the man with the guitar is Robert Fripp.
There are 8 heavenly tracks on this live release. The seventh track, "Evensong" is breathtaking. To purchase this live recording (digital download only), just press this link. The recording is simply titled "August 25, 2006".

For an amusing, interesting and often inspiring diary, you can go the DGM website, where you can find Robert Fripp´s day to day musings. The topics range from musicking, travelling, exposing the dark sides of the music industry and eating lotsa cake!

At The Honeymoon Motel

Ah, what lovely sounds! The best rock band from Norway forever and ever is the fantabulous Electropussy. Blending Prince-like sensuality, jangly guitar, a deep dreamy female voice, hardhitting batterie and evasive yet mesmerizing Rhodes-grooves this intergalactic band managed to create some of the best tracks in rock history during a time of slight musical despair. Despair, at least in their home town Molde. The phonogram At The Honeymoon Motel, embellished with lovely art by Trygve (glued right on the vinyl cardboard!), was released in 2000. I bought it at their release at Café Zarathustra, the only place in Molde that ever had a spark of London.


If you've never heard about this (now non-existent) band, there are some tracks out there for your pleasure, just click this link for a streaming site. You can hear the desert rocker "69 Bullets", an ingenious version of the Underworld track "Dirty Epic", or "Disconnect the telephonelines". The latter song is absolutely one of my favourite songs ever!
These days I am listening to it all the time, and it just keeps playing in my head after it´s finished. "Disconnect the Telephonelines" is one of those songs that you want to last longer. So you find yourself lifting the needle back in it´s groove again and again. You cannot disconnect Electropussy that easily.

If you are so lucky as to possess a vinyl copy of At The Honeymoon Motel, lay down side A, and just let The Electropussy Theme take you there!

Bump it

Little did I know when I first bought this record (which actually is just a very long EP), that it would be the soundtrack to the first meeting with my then yet to be wife!
The record I´m writing about, is the fantastic, superchilled, high strung on groove classic "World Wide Underground" by the soul macicien Erykah Badu. I once recieved the honour of having the O Mighty Creative Destinys Will to bestowed upon be in my younger years, for it lead me to a concert held by the aforementioned modern queen of magic groove. I remember the almighty Badu entering the stage with a giant turbanish clothing on her very head, and in her fingers a a thin cylinder of finely cut tobacco with it´s shape prolonged by a mouthpiece. Not very many young men in small Norwegian towns are given this oppurtunity. I thank you, Field of Mystery.
And then when moving to a slightly bigger (but still too small as to be reckoned as a large) town, I after a while purchased this heavenly EP. The second track is the fantasticorgasmic "Bump It", a seven-eightish minutes long trip into psychedelic grooveheaven. That´s the beat I was listening to back in the day, lying in the trunk of my good friend´s car. I found myself situated there since there was no other space available, after having filled up the car seats with a friend that we met in the street, together with her friend (now my wife), and other acquaintances. For we had invitied them home for bread in our modest lodgings, and had to offer a way of transport.
And what is there then left to do, but to spin the Bump It in the rain?
Push up the fader, bust the meter, shake the tweeters!