Prisoner soul: the Huntsville penitentiary band. The huge prison that dominates downtown Huntsville, Texas, is so intimately embedded into the life of the town that the rituals associated with it barely register. Every couple of hours a whistle blows marking the moment at which the prisoners are counted to make sure none have escaped. Roughly twice a month, when there are executions, vigils are held at the gates. But there was one regular event townspeople always noticed and still recall fondly – the prison rodeo, which took place from 1931 to 1987.
It was the biggest event in the town's calendar with spectators coming from miles to watch prisoners ride broncos and bulls, play bareback basketball and sing. But there was one aspect of the rodeo in later years that stood out: the music. The music programme that made it possible marked a shift from an era of naked brutality, dramatised by the film Shawshank Redemption, to rehabilitation. Rex recalls holding a contest every year when he would pick the best 20 records. 101 strangest records on Spotify. Anaïs Mitchell on Child Ballads: 'They're so beautiful, so strange and weird. That's the poetry of it' Anaïs Mitchell is wondering whether her new record, Child Ballads, should come with a disclaimer. "Because of the name a lot of people think they're kids songs," says the Vermont singer-songwriter. "Until they hear them, that is. " Indeed. It's hard to think offhand of any children's songbook that includes the tale of a vastly pregnant woman who can't give birth after being cursed by her lover's mother, or of the young man fed poisoned eels by his sweetheart, or the girl who stabs herself after inadvertently sleeping with her brother, who then tearfully buries her.
Rather than the kindergarten, Mitchell's album draws from the most influential and emotionally powerful canon in traditional music. While there are other significant traditional song collections, the influence of Child's is impossible to overstate. They remain a vibrant source today. What makes the ballads so enduring? Even the versions that did make the cut can't be called definitive. Desert sounds – Kalahari metalheads pursue a dream | World news. In the remorseless Kalahari heat, leather is not the most obvious choice of attire. But to a dedicated band of Batswana metalheads, it's the only way to dress. The country's heavy metal scene, imported from neighbouring South Africa, may be niche but its fans are passionate about their style.
Dressed from head to toe in black leather, sporting cowboy boots, hats and exaggerated props, they draw some curious looks on the dusty streets. "People think that we are rough, evil creatures, but [metal] teaches us to be free with expression, to do things on our own," said Vulture, the vocalist of the band Overthrust. He says there is a long way to go before the genre is considered mainstream, but that audiences have grown steadily in the past decade. TKB, bassist for the band Skinflint, which is based in the capital of Botswana, Gaborone, says they are becoming a more familiar sight.
Botswana got its first heavy metal band, Metal Orizon, in the early 1990s. Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt: the shoe. Magnetic Fields, who make anti-pop or folk filled with gin'n'gloop, have inspired a range of shoes. Whilst feet-related ranges are usually the reserve of the hip hop elite, a French shoe firm called Bluedy have decided to make a range of shoes as a homage to the music of Magnetic Fields' main-man Stephin Merritt and in doing so have won the most tenuous news story of the week award. They cite triple-cd opus 69 Love Songs as a major influence for their four designs, which were created as an homage to Mr Merritt.
The shoes are seemingly too expensive to put a price on (at least on a website) but should you wish to add to your collection of relevant-to-my-interests shoes, they are available at bluedyshop.com/stephin. DiScuss: will these sit nicely beside your Joy Division and Nirvana Converse? Whatever next: Chino Moreno chinos?
Moon Safari Nike Air Max? Jeremy Warmsley braces? 80 Other Bands With Official Sneakers. VANS Pixies Last week the Animal Collective bros released an official mixtape for their new … sneakers. That is a thing now. Gotta keep fans on their toes (ouch, sorry). The shoes which you can see here benefit the Socorro island Conservation Fund, and they are cruelty free, except to your eyes. I did some research, and it turns out that dozens of indie and punk bands have licensed sneakers. A few fun facts to keep in mind while you browse our Complete Guide to rock footwear: In addition to Animal Collective’s KEEPs, both No Age and Tegan & Sara’s kicks are vegan/you can eat them.Three record labels have their own sneakers — Sub Pop, Stones Throw, and Def Jam.Stephin Merritt was not involved in the creation of the Magnetic Fields-inspired Bluedys (thank god) so we didn’t include it.The only major sneaker brand not represented is New Balance.
Check out the pics, then tell us in the comments which band’s pair is ugliest. Next week: 100 Greatest Scarves. Music Reviews: Album releases from the UK and Beyond | Folk Radio UK. Bronwynne Brent – Stardust 8 April 2014 Album Review Bronwynne Brent’s latest self -release ‘Stardust’ is marked out from the crowd by her very distinctive sound and assured writing ability, suggesting we’ll be hearing a lot more from her in the future. Vikesh Kapoor – The Ballad of Willy Robbins. Hidden treasures: Chad and Jeremy – The Ark. Chad and Jeremy were not, perhaps, artists destined for a lasting place in the pantheon of classic rock. Their biggest contribution to rock history might be as the first artists to get busted by the kind of people who maintain that toffs can't rock. In fact, members of the Vaccines or Mumford and Sons might consider they got off relatively lightly compared with Jeremy Clyde, who found his career as one half of a duo purveying winsome folk-pop in the Peter and Gordon vein stymied not by grumbling about public schooling or wealthy parents, but the appearance in 1963 of a photo that showed him, dressed in velvet at the Queen's Coronation, acting as a page to his grandfather, the Duke of Wellington.
Rather than face the criticism, Chad and Jeremy took themselves off to America, a country so crazed with Angolophilia in the wake of the Beatles that the whole velvet-knickerbockers-at-the-Coronation business actually played in their favour. Reading on a mobile? • Want to review this album? The church's sold-out CD proves silence is golden. On the one hand, the news that a CD containing half an hour of silence recorded in a Sussex church has sold out of its first pressing, and that the church is now taking orders from as far away as Ghana, seems a little baffling.
"In this day and age, everybody seems to live busier, noisier lives – people sometimes like to sit down and just have a bit of peace and quiet for a little while," suggested Ronald Byng, the member of the congregation at St Peter's, East Blatchington who came up with the idea of recording in the church, although precisely how a CD of silence is supposed to blot out the relentless noise of everyday life remains unexplained.
On the other, The Sound of Silence could be claimed as part of a surprisingly large musical subgenre: it's not the first silent album to be released – Stiff Records apparently sold 30,000 copies of the waggishly-titled Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan in 1980 – and it's certainly not the first silent track. Serafina Steer: 'The harp is a lonely instrument' | Music | The Observer. Every orchestra has its harp jokes. How can you tell when a harpist is at your door? He can't find the key and doesn't know when to come in. How long does it take to tune a harp? Answer: nobody knows yet. Seven stone, 6ft tall and notoriously difficult to play, the "nude piano" – as someone once called it – is an awkward bedfellow. Serafina Steer, who's been playing since primary school, talks about her beloved instrument the way a teenager might talk about a parent, going through phases when she's sick of it, can't look at it for a while.
Her last album Change Is Good, Change Is Good was an enigmatic collection of modern chamber pop, given much airplay on Jarvis Cocker's 6 Music show and finally confirmed by him as "my favourite record of 2010". Steer's voice is deep, unstudied and very English. He added a Jew's harp and nose flute, and some dance samples on the song Disco Compilation; he made her play a full-size church organ on Removal Man, "not the crappy old one I had at home". Amira Medunjanin, the Balkan Billie Holiday | Music | The Observer. Towards the end of an electrifying performance last year among the Corinthian columns of St George's Hall in Liverpool, Amira Medunjanin – one of the great voices of her generation, and almost certainly the finest from eastern Europe – asks the band to unplug their instruments and the mixing desk to switch off her microphone.
She proceeds to sing (and the musicians to play) unamplified, with searing emotional depth but not a hint of sentimentality. In the audience, Medisa Carvill's eyes fill, partly from the beauty of the song and partly, perhaps, for its evocation of home – Bosnia – where in the 90s the singer had endured the siege of Sarajevo "sleeping on coal in a cellar", and where the war – the concentration camps, specifically – had taken the lives of Medisa's husband, uncle, neighbours and closest friends from the village of Kozarac. Other faces are similarly transfixed. Amira brings to mind Edith Piaf; she is the Balkan Billie Holiday.
There are moments that echo even Callas. Lonnie Holley :: Just Before Music. “Where did it begin?” Asks Lonnie Holley in his liner note. “We had songs with us all the time. Humans had songs even if they weren’t doing anything but moaning, they had MUSIC.” Just Before Music is aptly titled since Holley restrains himself from too much conventional musicality—melody and that sort of thing.
The album comes to us via Dust-to-Digital, the boutique label based in Atlanta that’s renowned for meticulously curating extremely vintage folk music. Holley was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1950. When trying to hone in on what his music, specifically, is all about, one preoccupation sticks out: the abstraction of all the technology that is so speedily developing.
Throughout these tracks, words like “breaking,” “burning,” and “crying” suggest the blues Holley sings about are of Biblical proportions. Lonnie Holley :: Looking For All (All Rendered Truth) Maston | Trouble In Mind Records. Maston Los Angeles, CA Frank Maston Tabor Allen Ryan Beal Miles Wintner Miles Marsico Shadows LP/CD The sun-soaked hills of Southern California have inspired many a studio autéur - from Brian WIlson to Phil Spector to Harry Nilsson, each having paid tribute to California in song & craft. Frank Maston knows a little bit about craft (and Southern Cali to boot), having spent his youth in suburban Los Angeles, absorbing the meticulously crafted discography of Msrs. Spector, Wilson, Bacharach, & Morricone, all the while mentally re-scoring the music to old Prisoner episodes & other filmography from the sixties & seventies.
Imagine if David Lynch had set Twin Peaks in Malibu instead of the Northwest, & you'll start to peek inside the world of Maston. RIYL: Brian Wilson, Harry Nilsson, Animal Collective, Van Dyke Parks, Broadcast. Maston’s stream.