Your Own Personal Forgotten Singer-Songwriter setlist, audio, and pictures

So here's the audio of the first hour of my 5/30 show. Little bit of St. James there at the beginning.

Here's the setlist for that first hour:

Douglas Adams, "The Painter" from Light Rain
Whole Wheat, "Chicago (For Donna, Sheila, Jesse and the People)" from All the Balloons
Carla Sciaky, "Harmonies" from To Meet You
Wichita Fall, "Going to Ohio" from Life is But A Dream
Dennis Lambert, "Bags and Things" from Bags and Things
Hanford, Bloom and Mazzacane, "Let Me Hold You For Awhile"
Mara!, "Streets of Forbes" from Images
Bennett Hammond, "Fetch the Doctor" from Walking on Air
Fred and Jenny Armstrong-Park, "Mister Fox (Pole & Yarnell)" from Wild Hog in the Woods
John Hartford, "Before They Tow My Car Away" from Iron Mountain Depot
Susan Taylor, "Through the Looking Glass" from Finally Getting Home
Sam Weis, "Deb at Work" from Hologram
Scott Appel, "Leaving" from Glassfinger

And finally, here are some pictures of cool album covers!

Tonight's C60: Your Own. Personal. Forgotten Singer-Songwriter.

"Bah everyone has already found the forgotten singer-songwriters of the 60s and 70s but not me. Wah, wah, it's no fun playing Skip Spence, Judee Sill or Linda Perhacs, everyone already knows about them. I want my own outsider artist. I want my personal acid casualty that I could show to everyone as my DISCOVERY. Some wide-eyed beardy or wispy manic pixie dream-girl that NOBODY ELSE KNOWS ABOUT."  -- My thoughts while sitting in my bubble bath.

So tonight I'm going to go through the Folk (and maybe some of the Rock) vinyl that wcbn has amassed over its years of existence and try to find obscure artists that I've never heard of and that you can't find on Spotify. I know that's not saying much, but maybe together we can find our Own. Personal. Forgotten Singer-Songwriter. . .

This is me. Geeked out about my next radio show. Please ask about my t-shirt.

Dental Pain

Last night's show was a mess (like my dentifrice) so no setlist for YOU.

Tonight's C60: Relaxing Air and Deep Tooth Drilling

Tonight's first hour of gentle musical sound collage neatly interspersed with nerve shattering drilling noises is inspired by my recent trip to the dentist. Please listen. wcbn.org at midnight-3 a.m.

Setlist from last night with an explanation

So here's the setlist from the first "hour" last night:

C60: I Really Don't Know Life At All

Joni Mitchell	Both Sides, Now (1969)
Johnny Rivers	Positively 4th Street
Lisa Hannigan	Courting Blues
Pentangle	Let No Man Steal Your Thyme
Shelagh McDonald	Sweet Sunlight
Spirogyra	Disraeli's Problem
Sallyangie	Children of the Sun
Led Zeppelin	Going to California
Cro-Magnon	Caledonia
Faith No More	Jizzlobber
Death in Vegas	Your Loft My Acid (Single Mix)
Can	TV Spot (Apr. 71)
Gong	Melting Love
Weather Report	Birdland
Charles Mingus	Goodbye Porkpie Hat
Joni Mitchell	Both Sides Now (2000)

I decided not to do an analysis on-air about why I played each song so as not to bore anybody, but I'll do that here. Some have more reason behind them then others, but here goes:

Thinking about Joni Mitchell's current medical condition made me want to listen to more Joni before she is no longer with us. I had been intrigued by her version of "Both Sides Now" which she performed at a tribute concert to her in 2000 (2001?).

Here's an artist creating her own swan song from one of the first songs she wrote. While great at first, her reworking of it brings much more gravity to the song -- while she thought she had looked at clouds/love/life from both sides at a young age, she truly has now.

So with the starting point and ending point of the set in mind I constructed the rest, using a list of "songs inspired by Joni," Joni's picks for her favorite songs on a Starbucks CD (which in retrospect I only used a litle) and my own free association. So, the second song I chose seemed appropriate to be Dylan and while Joni had chosen Dylan's "Sweetheart Like You" from Infidels, it said in the liner notes of the CD that the real first Dylan song that had inspired her (that you could write about anything) was "Positively 4th Street." And apparently Dylan preferred the Johnny Rivers version to his own, so that's the one I chose.

I then moved on to the British Isles, as it seems that Joni had a big influence on the folk scene there, Fairport Convention covered a couple of her songs, and Sandy Denny mentions her in her lyrics. Nick Drake too, I believe was inspired by her odd guitar tunings. Drake covered Bert Jansch's "Courting Blues" on a home tape and himself was covered several times by Lisa Hannigan so I liked hearing Lisa cover of Bert's song. I'm a big Lisa Hannigan fan.

We then touch on Pentangle (Bert Jansch's former band), and a great song from Shelagh McDonald who also covered "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme" and even named her compilation album after it. Spirogyra and Sallyangie (featuring Mike Oldfield of Tubular Bells fame) are both examples of that weird folk-rock that was produced in Britain in the 60s/70s that I find so intriguing. Sallyangie sing about "Children of the Sun" and so does Led Zeppelin in "Going to California" a song inspired by the band meeting Joni Mitchell. Apparently Robert Plant would even sing Joni's name sometimes while performing the song.

At this point things do get a bit weird and perhaps off-topic. Cro-Magnon is a real early example of noise rock from 1969 and then I moved to perhaps the oddest choice, Faith No More's "Jizzlobber." I definitely wanted to go off into weird realms and not just play all Joni or all folk and jazz music, and I think in part I was inspired by reading about the disease Joni believes she has, Morgellon's disease. The sufferers believes that they have colorful, painful fibers springing out of their bodies and often scratch their skin raw to get them out. Scientists seem to largely believe it's a neurological disorder but there are several sad YouTube videos of Morgellon's sufferers who don't think it's all in their head. So, thinking about the horror of this disease, be it mental or physical I was thinking of the most powerful scream I could and once I remembered how Mike Patton screams in this song it took me awhile to remember what song had this scream. I guess the connection too is that Cro-Magnon and Mr. Bungle feel like kindred spirits.

Death in Vegas carries us through with repeated sounds (and maybe an appropriate acid reference) as does the funky weird jazz/rock of Can and Gong before getting closer to a Joni association with Weather Report which feature Joni's long-time collaborator Jaco Pastorius (who also influenced Les Claypool -- weird world!) on bass. Then I had to play some Mingus, who Joni worked with shortly before he died. I didn't play his and her version of Goodbye Pork Pie hat, I just played the original.

And then closing with the 2000 version of "Both Sides Now" from the album of the same name.

I'll just leave it there. I set up a Spotify playlist if you're interested. Follow me I will follow you: http://open.spotify.com/user/121055149/playlist/066ihkj7dLkzkkjsn46XcC

Tonight's C60: I Really Don't Know Life At All

Tonight's first "hour" will be a set of music I'm calling "I Really Don't Know Life at All" inspired by Joni Mitchell, Joni Mitchell's favorite music, musicians that were influenced by Joni Mitchell and my own probably entirely irrelevant free association picks in the middle.

Tonight Friday May 15th starting at 11:59 pm EST (I just said that so you wouldn't get confused).

So check out tonight's ultimate mix tape -- and be sure to listen to both sides now. Sorry.

CE

Three-hour format . . .

Thought I'd try a new format for these summer shows to get a chance to do the different things I like to do with radio. Each three-hour show will be split thusly:

Hour 1. C60 -- Ultimate Mix Tape! Roughly an hour of music curated and finely polished by me.

Hour 2. All New Music!

3. !?!?!?!?!!? Here's where things get a little bit confusing.

Guess Who's Back

Boojum Pudding is back on the airwaves, on wcbn.org every Friday night/Saturday morning from midnight-3 throughout the summer! Please listen.