See also: A Welsh Onion Flute for Trying Times

I always liked bonsai trees, and I was curious to try the approach I used for “Music from a Tree” on a smaller scale, so I bought a bonsai and recorded this little experimental piece.

To determine the key I used the lowest note I could play and recorded the rest around it.
Besides playing the leaves, I used bows of different sizes, a piano hammer and a paint brush.
As far as microphones I used my Røde NT6, a customized stethoscope and tiny MEAS piezo transducers.

I played all the sounds and rhythms only with the bonsai, I didn’t use any synthesizer or samplers to create or modify the sounds. I hope you’ll like it.

More of Stocco’s sessions here.

After a lifetime of continental drifting, our everyman busker anchors himself on the California coast, channeling the ghosts of Otis Redding and Sam Cooke as he pleads for some peace, love and understanding. And what’s so funny about that?

Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, “Misirlou”

Once you get beyond know-nothingism and nativist paranoia, nothing could be more American than having the Boston-bred son of Lebanese and Polish immigrants electrify a Greek rebetiko classic, turn his guitar into an oud with a lit firecracker, and forge a new music that makes everyone think of … summer in California!

Gaslight Anthem, “American Slang”

Meet the new slang, same as the old slang. Despite packing more Jersey cliches than your average episode of the Sopranos and more Springsteen references than your average Hold Steady song, blue-collar standard-bearer Brian Fallon shapes a ’10 sound that at times seems more than the sum of its social distortions.

George Gershwin, “An American in Paris” (in North Korea)

The former Jacob Gershowitz and Tin Pan Alley teen sensation reached adulthood spinning melodies that are tough as body armor, remaining bulletproof in the most surreal of locations from Paris to Pyongyang.

Highlights included two of my favorite bands from Mali. Amadou and Mariam performed a fabulously funky version of “Welcome to Mali,” dressed in jumpsuits apparently on loan from Devo, and Toureag desert rebels Tinariwen showed several times why they are one of the best guitar bands on the planet.

Tinariwen, “Matadjem Yinmixan”

Amadou and Mariam, “Welcome to Mali”

Flashed the badge, shambled upstairs, helped myself to a free whiskey (the very best kind), and got hit by this wall of pawn shop blues that knocked my socks off. I’d never heard of Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, and thus assumed that my flux capacitor had misfired, landing me sometime before 1967 when Otis Redding still walked the earth. Took about 30 seconds before my body started bouncing involuntarily to this deep soul groove, which soon segued into a more James Brown-style funk.

Wait… he can play guitar too? Like, deep guitar? Holy crap, there’s Leadbelly in here! And Jimi too. “What is this band?,” I yelled to the person standing next to me. “The Relatives!” Went to check out the merch. Ah, I had misheard – it was The Honeybears. Later found out the merch was all wrong – it was The Relatives after all. Turns out Black Joe Lewis plays with both bands. Who cares? Lewis is a force to be reckoned with.

I’m Broke

Don’t let the self-consciously 60s camp visual style of the video throw you – this stuff is as sincere as it gets. Stuart Derdeyn for National Post on Lewis:

He’s like the best moments of a classic Texas six-string slinger and a razor-sharp New Orleans funk n’ roll review in one. As ever here, his band is crazy tight and puts amperage into even the most tired and true blues riffs. Plus, he’s a really fine singer. This is blues for people that really want gritty R&B rather than Chicago I-V-IV boogie.

The night ended way too soon – I had arrived late and only caught half the show. Left the joint buzzing, thirsty for more “garage soul” … more of that throw-down funky blues, more of that back-yard Texas summer under Chinese paper lanterns, surrounded by shimmying glitter lame’ dresses and the pervasive aroma of ubiquitous, very slow barbecues. Yeah, there’s some retro camp there, but it’s also the real deal, and I could soak up this flavor any night of the week.

Sugarfoot

Lewis on Twitter

This isn’t quite as crazy as it sounds. The Irish arrived in Jamaica more than 350 years ago, and the first Prime Minister of Jamaica, Sir Alexander Bustamante, was part Irish. Lloyd Bradley’s excellent book on the history of reggae, Bass Culture, describes music events in late-1950s West London in which only the Irish would join the Jamaicans. My own reason for linking Ireland and Jamaica is more personal: my first real exposure to the genius of Bob Marley came from hearing Belfast band Stiff Little Fingers kick the living daylights out of Marley’s “Johnny Was.”

Stiff Little Fingers, “Johnny Was”

Bob Marley, “Johnny Was”

The full title is “Я очень рад, ведь я, наконец, возвращаюсь домой,” which I believe translates into something like “A Gleeful Prayer From The Soaring Alter-Ego of Lurch the Butler.”

Update: Apparently there is a domain dedicated to serving this single song: trololololololololololo.com

I got more stories than J.D’s got Salinger
I hold the title and you are the challenger.

Beastie Boys, “Shadrach”

Franny took in her breath slightly but continued to hold the phone to her ear. A dial tone, of course, followed the formal break in the connection. She appeared to find it extraordinarily beautiful to listen to, rather as if it were the best possible substitute for the primordial silence itself. But she seemed to know, too, when to stop listening to it, as if all of what little or much wisdom there is in the world were suddenly hers.

J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

Beastie Boys, “Shadrach”

By sheer/mere coincidence, just stumbled across rocketboom‘s excellent hagiography on the history and mystery of auto-tune, which amounts to the use and abuse of an audio-editing software plugin in genres of tunage to which I have no exposure. The sound is pretty cool, but beware – the meme is apparently now so old that it’s already dead, so this confessional post is definitely uncool.

Begrudging thanks to Weird Al Yankovic for helping to illuminate.

Know Your Meme: Auto Tune (featuring “Weird Al” Yankovic) from Rocketboom on Vimeo.