Thanks to Ned for turning me on to the following (new to me) Built to Spill video for the song Conventional Wisdom from their 2006 You in Reverse album. Incredibly groovy guitar soundscapes are complimented by an awesome Jousting presentation with American Jousting Alliance’s founder James Zoppe, the Red Knight and the band.

You may not be able to get that guitar in tune because it isn’t possible. Most of us don’t notice anyway, but it’s comforting to know that you’re not necessarily incompetent if you can’t ever seem to get your guitar to play perfectly in tune in every key - since it can’t really be done.

Let me start off by saying that No Guitar Will Play Perfectly In Tune EVER. The tempered system of tuning upon which guitar fret placement relies on is imperfect, but it’s the best we can do. The system was designed by J.S. Bach in 1717 and first demonstrated on his work The Well Tempered Clavier. Before Bach’s tempered tuning, fixed pitch instruments (keyboards, instruments with frets, etc.) were designed to play in one key at a time. If you needed to play in a different key, you’d use a different instrument or completely retune the one you had. Bach’s system redesigned the relationship between all of the notes so that the octaves in all keys would be an octave apart. In order for this to work, all of the notes in between the octaves had to be slightly out of tune. For folks with good ears, nothing played on a guitar or piano really sounds in tune. - Scott Freilich, Top Shelf Music (hyperlinks are mine)

I was lucky enough to hook up with a bunch of friends to see the Pogues play Roseland on St. Patty’s day! I skipped out of work a bit early, caught the train in to Penn, took the C up two stops to 50th St. and hiked up the two blocks to 52nd street. Tim was already in with Sport and Cate who had gone in early for the parade and were just getting the kids and grandparents back on a train out east when I arrived, so I just hung out on line and talked to some cool people from New Brunswick about bands we liked until they could get down to meet me.

Cate produced one of Cathy’s bottles of Atholl brose which was enough to get me out of conversation with my new found friends and a couple blocks away to a park where we could sip it in peace out of some McDonalds cups. Dirtbag tip: paper McDonalds cups make you look a lot less like a dreg than a brown paper bag, but will cost you a quarter each. It was only a small bottle, so we hiked back uptown to a nice bar on 54th for a couple pints. While mulling around I got into conversation with a couple of guys with foreign accents. It was so loud I couldn’t tell if they were speaking German or Dutch, so I offered some help to their questions in German. We had some stunted German conversation back and forth for a little bit until we all realized (to mutual amusement) that they were English! When I asked why not just fly over to Ireland for St. Patty’s, they said it’s a lot more fun in NYC, and a lot cheaper. This underscores the realities of our new economic situation - which is basically, dismal.

The band that opened for the Pogues were from Los Angeles, but I didn’t catch their name. I didn’t know what to expect from these guys, but was impressed when the 12 or so mostly Mexicano bandmembers starting playing Klezmer music! WTF? They were a good party band, and did a bunch of great toe-taping tunes in Spanish. They did one Irish sounding song which they dedicated to the San Patricios celebrating the “several hundred Irish, Germans, Swiss, Scots and other Roman Catholics of European descent, who deserted the U.S. Army and fought as part of the Mexican Army against the United States in the Mexican-American War of 1846 to 1848″. In traditional American schoolbooks, written mostly by protestants, these guys were just traitors but apparently from what I read they are folk heros to the mostly Catholic Mexicans.

I was going to write up a lengthy review of the show (for which I did NOT write down a set list other than they opened with Streams of Whiskey, played just about every Pogues song I know - including Greenland Whale Fisheries which I sang along to - and ended with Fairytale of NY) but I found this review from last year is just about my experience, except that we didn’t have the benefit of VIP tickets and stuck it out on the floor.

The music was awesome - that was the catch phrase for the night. It implies that Shane MacGowan wasn’t, necessarily. Yeah, he’s the voice of the Pogues, but that voice was largely absent last night - in his totally pissed state he was near worthless as a performer. He’s been thrown out of the Pogues before for similar behavior so it’s nothing new. Dropping the mic stand (and the mic) several times (once into the crowd, though they were nice enough to pass it back up to him), he mumbled nonsensical ramblings inbetween songs while his poor bandmates could merely carry on and roll their eyes. Spider Stacy, the skinny tin whistle player and singer who carried the ball for a couple Pogues albums himself some years ago seemed visibly annoyed by Shane’s antics. That said, it was amazing how Shane actually did remember most of the words to the songs, though in truth you couldn’t really make them out too well. I couldn’t help but draw parallels to Ozzy. At only 51 years old, Shane looks like he’s well into his 60s to me, though perhaps it was his drunken shambling about that gave me that impression. During his palsied waltz with the guest singer (?) at the end of Fairytale of NY, I kept wondering if he would trip and fall off the stage with her or if he’d attempt something even more shocking. Thankfully these fears were unfounded, and they managed to exit the stage unscathed.

The natives were definitely restless, with plenty of crowd surfing and a pretty feisty mosh pit. I think it’s the heterogeneity of Pogues fans that is so striking. There were biker chicks with tracks on their arms bumping into red-haired Irish chicks dancing the reel, next to the bald leather bedecked punk who slammed into the grey haired man in an Irish fisherman’s sweater who didn’t seem to notice. The long haired, the spikey haired, and the bald were one in their collective irreverence.

We had managed to survive the craziness of the show, Tim’s loud drunken commenting on passers-by, and countless near-misses with beer-cups raised high over our heads without getting into a fight, and were on our way back through the subway to the train. Sport and Cate were a little ahead of me and Tim trailing as we passed some huge black dude. In a flash, the big dude sneezed and I saw Sport whirl around, his long hair and beard making him look extra berzerker-like. Then I saw him wipe his brow with his arm in disgust and utter a protracted “uggh” in the direction of the linebacker-sized cretin. There was a seconds pause when all that passed in my mind was how poetic it would be if I got into a fight on St. Patty’s day because this guy hadn’t covered his nose when he sneezed. I was already picturing the police report, the court papers, the headline. Would I be able to use this as a teaching moment at home? The big dude muttered a quick apology under his breath and we shuffled on.

Tip to Long Island Railroad riders: Watch the Gap.

This is a static version of a dynamic document kept on Google Docs, which is shared with several friends to view and collaborate on over time. The most recent version of the page may be found here. This is basically a list of bands I want to check out, have only begun to investigate, or think are worth sharing - I find new bands by talking to friends, listening to the local college and independent radio stations, or some of several Celtic Folk music podcasts, or internet radio stations.

Podcasts to check out
this is a great way to find new music by independent Celtic, Irish, and folk musicians. If you don’t know how to listen to podcasts, try iTunes. If you don’t want to use iTunes, sometimes these sites will provide a direct link to an mp3 file, or you can search around for another program to download them automatically like iTunes does. I’ve heard about iPodder, but can’t tell you any more than that.
http://celticmusicnews.com
http://www.celticmusicpodcast.com/
http://www.celticfolkpod.com/
Cleveland Celtic Podcast
LiveIreland
http://liveireland.com
Mainly mainstream, big name Celtic bands, but some Independent musicians as well from Dublin (internet radio)
http://91.121.1.11:8080/
http://208.53.131.29:8080/

Bands to check out

Bad Haggis
http://badhaggis.com/
Mark Gunn’s Celtic Music podcast #47 at about the 1 hour mark
Funk / Celtic fusion

Michael McGoldrich
Ried’s Reels
02/08/08: heard on Live Ireland, pipes, elec bass

Tommy Peoples
Trad. fiddling
02/08/08: heard on Live Ireland

Flook
http://www.flook.co.uk/
Trad band, kickin
1/23/08: Heard on Live Ireland

The Jolly Beggarmen
10/10/07: The Jolly Beggarmen were formed in approx 1976 and lasted more than 15 years. The main members were Joe White, Tommy Jenkinson, Jonny Carrol, Paddy Quigley, Eamonn O’Rourke Snr. Also from time to time there was Kevin Molloy, Donal Nagle and a couple more that (the writer on mudcat didn’t) remember. They recorded On the Dole and The Inner City Song which reached the top ten in Ireland. They also travelled extensively around europe and the UK. The Inner City song was written by Don Baker for the Jolly Beggarmen and it reached no 2 in the Irish Charts… Don Baker is also on the single playing the harmonica… you will find info on this on Don Bakers Web site. Tommy Jenkinson and Joe White are still playing music…

• ChandelierShop - great pub song done acapella with clap line
• Lannigan’s Ball

The Rogues
6/28/07: Celtic pipes and drums deftly wielded to mind numbing effect.
Weak fiddle, they’re kinda like a renn-faire band
http://therogues.com/

Asteria
6/27/07: medieval lute
http://asteriamusica.com

Liadan
all girl trad. band doing jigs and reels as well as song. Toured with the Chieftans this year
http://www.liadan.ie/

Mozaik / Taylor Eigsti Trio
(another group with Donal Lunny and Andy Irvine)
The Rocky Road to Dublin/Indian Ate the Woodchuck

Gavin Whelan
http://www.gavinwhelan.ie/
Awesome whistle player!
The trip to Cullenstown / Jack Coughlan’s / Out on the road - reels

Donal Lunny
(of Planxty, then Bothy Band fame)
bio on Wikipedia

BarleyJuice
http://www.barleyjuice.com/
Check out this band from Philly!
Their song ‘A Bands a band for all that’ is great with it’s references to classic rock artists aplenty.

Ken O’Malley and the Twilight Lords
http://kenomalley.com/
Heard on Marc Gunn’s Irish and Celtic music podcast #31, time: ~19:00
Great Live version of Mo Ghile Mear

Kennedy’s Kitchen
Victims of Irish Music
Heard on Marc Gunn’s Irish and Celtic music podcast #31, first song
http://home.earthlink.net/~iltf/Kitchen/index.html

Rocky Road to Dublin
Tullamore Celtic Band
http://cdbaby.com/cd/tullamore/from/celtic/

Four Leaf Peat
http://www.fourleafpeat.com/
Follow me up to Carlow on Celtic Folk Podcast 13, time: 8:50
great version of this tune - I wanna do more traditional music!
Amazon only has this as an MP3 album (or the tracks as individual downloads)

Minstrels of Mayhem
http://www.minstrelsofmayhem.com/
a medieval band

Irish Balladeers - older band, no website
The Molly Maguires
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Maguires
(alot like Clancys / Wolfetones type stuff)

Circled By Hounds
http://circledbyhounds.com/
off ‘Chasing our Tales’
Irish and Celtic Music Podcast #29 minute 5:00

An ‘Sannat

“The Wind That Shakes the Barley” (is that a Cello?) yes.

http://www.annsannat.com/

from Welcome Into the Morning

Irish and Celtic Music Podcast #29 minute ~31:00

Check out this youtube clip

Tears for Beers
http://www.tearsforbeers.de/
Ye Jacobites by name lend an ear
On a CD called ‘Cracky Bones’ which I found on Amazon for $75!
Irish and Celtic Music Podcast #29 minute 34:00

A story on TechCrunch notes that Yahoo has released some code for their new browser based flash media player. While I don’t see a personal need to use their player when there are already so many perfectly good flash media players available, I can’t help but try it out. If it’s easier than installing the typical player or fiddling with a nifty module in blog software, maybe people will post more music! In fact, maybe I’ll start a real podcast one of these days…

I’ve linked a couple instrumental ditties below that I recorded on my Guitar Lute [image page] that were thrown up here on my private podcast recently. They aren’t perfect, but they were done
Spagnoletta
Minuet in Em

You should see a little grey player icon next to each mp3 link if you want to try the player. Otherwise, you can just click the direct link. [update: It doesn't seem to work in Opera, though is OK in Firefox, Safari, and IE]

This is a promo video of one of my favorite bands, Steel Eye Span from 1975. These guys were really popular in England, playing mainly traditional tunes, electrified. Along with Fairport Convention (with Dave Pegg from Jethro Tull) they were part of the British Folk revival of the 70s. This was one of their bigger hits, though not my favorite, still pretty good though. Maddy Prior is basically a folk icon.

Back when you could be in a band and not be a model.

I use Windows XP Pro at work, and I like to play music whenever I’m actually at my desk. There are a lot of different programs to choose from that can play my collection of MP3s, and I’ve used a lot of them over time. I used to use Winamp exclusively (see old story on this site), but their advertising gimmicks through via internet since they were purchased by AOL is annoying to say the least, and I never liked the playlist management in Winamp. Recent versions of Winamp added a ‘media library’ window sort of like what iTunes has, but yet another window floating around (Winamp already had three if you count the player, the equalizer, and the playlist thing) was just the last straw. I’ve used iTunes for several years now, mainly because that’s what I used on the Mac, more than out of any real thought that it was superior in some way. As software goes, it certainly *is* superior - and in many ways, but that’s not really the point of this post! For all iTunes really good points, it has some major detractions for me. It’s a big, bloated program for one, gobbling up many megabytes of my precious Ram. It’s also a bit of a CPU hog (though it’s really not all that bad considering the power it gives you to manipulate your music in real time (the party shuffle is one of my favorite pieces of iTunes). iTunes makes it very easy to work with MP3 tags as well, but more on that later.

Recently I discovered what might be my new favorite Music player - musikCube (mC). An open source project released under the BSD license, mC immediately gains my respect because I prefer using open source software to proprietary software whenever possible, though that is a philosophical argument for another day. mC is not flashy, it doesn’t have a ’skinnable’ appearance like Winamp, though you *can* adjust the colors of the interface to suit your personal taste (I like light text on a dark background for instance), and it doesn’t look as slick and polished as the iTunes juggernaut, but it does *almost* everything I want my music player to do, and it does it very fast. Opening mC is nearly immediate on my P4 dual core, while iTunes takes a few moments to load up, load it’s database, and finally become useable. Instead of an XML backend like iTunes, mC uses SQLite, a real SQL engine! This makes mC much faster when serving up the same (huge) amount of audio files and information about them. You can create ’smart playlists’ in mC (as iTunes refers to them), which are lists of songs generated on the fly, based on criteria the user defines through a properly formatted SQL string! This might be intimidating to folks who aren’t used to writing SQL queries (my experience with Oracle has inured me to this), but SQL is so straightforward (and powerful) that it’s worth learning about. I like the fact that I can keep my music filed wherever I want and mC doesn’t try to shuffle it around (though you can choose this behavior with iTunes also), and I can set mC to watch directories for changes so that if I move or remove files mC will automatically update it’s database to point to their new locations (*unlike* iTunes on Windows, though this works fine on the Mac version). I can still play my Internet radio stations (like Live Ireland and WUSB) as long as the URL is not a .pls file (it works if the URL is put in as an IP:port). The database seems to be abstracted from the music files somehow as well - I haven’t confirmed this yet, but I have read-only access to some music files on a shared server, and I can modify tag information about these files (or at least in the database referring to them) such that my library of music has the information about the files that *I* want. I updated a lot of genre fields today in mC while I haven’t ever been able to ‘correct’ this info in iTunes since I don’t have write access to the files themselves.

There are some things missing in mC. It’s only available for Windows? What kind of open source program is only available for Windows?! Hold on - RTFM I guess, there *is* a Linux version called MusikBox. There is no podcast support, and since I tune into a bunch of podcasts regularly I wouldn’t be able to use mC as my sole player. No album artwork support. It doesn’t play DRM protected music, but thats not really a problem for me that much. If I have any, I usually burn them to a rewritable disc and then rip them into open formats.

At home I’ve been using mp3blaster (a console application written with ncurses that I compiled on the Mac) lately instead of iTunes, and discovered that MP3 tags are not as simple as I thought they were. As is the case with most standards, the format of the MP3 tag has evolved over time. It took a little investigation to find out why mp3blaster wasn’t showing correct / any id3 tag info, I thought it was just broken at first! It turns out that an MP3 file can have one or both types of id3 tags. (NOTE: this is NOT true of OGG, WMA, AAC, or WAV files which either have their own format, proprietary formats, or no support for tags). The original ID3 standard (version 1 from 1996) was popular for car stereos and the like, and only shows a few pieces of track info, and limits the number of characters per field to max 30. The other, (version 2.3) is the current and probably most popular standard which allows for a lot of different fields, and at a longer field length (so you can type long album names and such). Playing your music in a player that doesn’t support one of the tagging standards will display limited or no information about a file and cause much grief. There are softwares that can be employed to write the appropriate information to the other format (and append it to the MP3 file) either by looking the information up on the internet, or by copying the information from the other format. As most of my music is in MP3 and tagged in this newer format, much of it is missing id3v1 tags as a result. Processing all my files to have the older id3v1 standard info (and keeping them in sync) is daunting.