Friday Random 10: I have seen the future and it's retro.

Elmore James

Random choices from our music files:

1. "Chelsea Girls," Nico - Why did her thick accent and flat singing voice work so well on a ballad like this?  Because it made her more human?
2. "All That We've Got Left," Vern Gosdin & George Jones - Two country singing masters who were human and had great voices.
3. "Death Cell Blues," Blind Willie McTell - The great blues master seems like ancient history, but he died in 1959! And he was only sixty years old or so.  Music seems to evolve so fast. To some of us he's an ancient and legendary figure like that other blind balladeer, Homer.
   
4. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," U2 - Wasn't that Odysseus' line?  I mean, since we're speaking of Homer ...
5. "The Sky Is Crying," Elmore James - And then God gave us slide guitar.   Without it a whole range of human emotion would be unexpressable, at least through the medium of tube-blown amplifiers.
6. "Kemayoran," Grup Bamba Pang - To quote Smithsonian Global Sound, where I bought this online:  "      Recorded indoors at night, Majene, Propinsi Sulawesi Selatan, Indonesia.  This genre of singing with guitar accompaniment by the Mandar of South Sulawesi ...  is called sayang-sayang, and performed at weddings and domestic celebrations."  If you haven't found Smithsonian Global Sound yet, here it is.
7. "Ball and Biscuit," White Stripes (live) - Who says rock and roll is dead?  I have seen the future and it's retro.
8. "Mona," Bo Diddley - The pure products of America play homemade electric instruments.
9. "Deportee," Nanci Griffith - I've seen grown men swear they want to bear Nanci Griffith's children.  (Well, OK, they had been drinking.)  She sings Woody Guthrie's words about disposable and dehumanized Mexican workers.  Plus ca change and all that.
10. "You Tell Me," Johnny Cash - Back in the day.  Before he was hip was when Johnny Cash was really hip.

That's all ...