Wy wrote:nimh, will you come to my house and play music for me? The only one I know in your list is blind willie johnson, but if you teach me about some of the rest of that stuff, I'll let you listen to a bunch more old blues!
That'd be cool, I like that old pre-war blues a lot ... never became quite an expert in it, though, just lots of odds and ends. I also really like the rhythm'n'blues era (that'd be late 40s, early 50s?) - makes me happy.
As for my playlist, well, eclectic it was, lemme see if I can give a short rundown - but remember there were tracks in between those, too, it wasnt really that it just went from one of these to the other!
laurent garnier - minimalistic techno, very danceable though often not very soulful (i find) - xcept for this track ("the man with the red face"), which is kinda jazzy
gotan project - yeh ... they're eclectic in themselves, i think. somewhere in the world/electronic/improvised nexus. tango mixed up.
java - french band, accordeon and all, very cute. one of my favourite songs of last year: "sexe, accordéon et alcool", which they managed to have be a rap track that sounds like folklore
the proclaimers - two butt-ugly but very authentic scottish songwriters, mostly known for their melancholic sing-a-long hit, "letter from america"
zebda - pretty rocky in a french way, very political apparently (i ended up downloading a track or two, three of theirs after looking for "el paso del ebro" and getting their version)
anna vissi - greek singer, with all the pathos and sentimentality that goes with that, but she's pretty good for the genre and has been picked up by the chill-out/club scene (try "den me agapas")
"Podmoskovnye vechera" - beautiful russian song from the fifties
belle and sebastian - <scratches head> this is one of those more hard to classify things again ... gentle, moody pop songs on the verge of pleasantly kitsch or droll ... quite hip in the post-club scene but would be just as much at home among serious lo-fi music lovers
"A gleyzele vayn" - old jewish tune
wilco - american singer/songwriter, he's quite well-known i think but i know him only from his absolutely brilliant album with billy bragg, on which they did woody guthrie songs - the ones he wrote nearer the end of his life and never got to perform/record (much), i think. beautiful album. "california stars" is so nice.
"I Lenin takoi molodoi" - heh. "And Lenin is so young", is the translation I believe. Soviet choir. Very uplifting.
atahualpa yupanqui - latin american (chilean?) singer, a classic from the 70s and a favourite from my father (and thus for me childhood-sentimentality). back then, i'm sure, highly popular in europe as backdrop to pipe-smoke filled evenings discussing marxism <grins> - but such pretty songs, though. "duerme negrito" sounds like the sweetest lullaby.
elli paspala - another greek singer. dont know anything about her, but the song i downloaded from her, lefko mou giasemi (yes, but of pathos and emotion) is beautiful and fitted the list
blind willie johnson - you know him ;-)
marko haavisto - finnish guy, he's got the best tracks on the "man without a past" soundtrack, they stay in your head - i've played "stay" practically non-stop for eons now. rock'n'roll'ish, in a finnish roadside-diner kinda way.
dntel - one of the tips i took from the brilliant DUBLAB online radiostation (thats
www.dublab.com ). dublab plays all kindsa sets, from quirky hip-hop to vulnerable lo-fi, try a few out and see. dntel must have been from one of their vulnerable lo-fi sets - lo-fi to the point of being hard to make out.
rancid - punk. neo-punk in fact - but from all the 1990s generation bands, rancid i think has succeeded best in recreating that 1977 feeling to a dot - which is fine with me ;-)
