Tuesday, October 17, 2006 ... 10:30 AM
Neko Case DVD review bonus rant
On her new Live From Austin TX DVD, Neko plugs in her four-string tenor acoustic guitar, rather than mic'ing it. It's a tiny, tinny sound, and centered in the mix, it saps depth from the arrangements. I imagine that, mic'd, this Gibson guitar has a scrappy Delta edge to it. Come on in my kitchen, that sort of thing. Plugged in, it sounds like a comb flicked with an acrylic nail. Electricity shrinky-dinks it.
I cannot be convinced that electro-acoustic guitars sound anything like musical. If your act doesn't require splits backflips handstands, you have no good excuse not to mic your acoustic. I can rant on this for days, how a piezo pickup makes a Guild sound like an aquarium filter, but here I'll just beg all you troubadours touring with your vintage Hummingbirds -- ditch the plugs. An SM57 microphone costs eighty-nine bucks at Guitar Center. It fits in a tube sock, and you can kick it three blocks down the sidewalk without giving it a headache. Point it at the 12th fret. It sounds good.
Check out my new Neko review at HickoryWind.org!
Brendan
Monday, October 02, 2006 ... 11:42 AM
Right On Time
The kid's back in school, the dogwoods are ablush and a chill edges the air. You know what that means: Time for Oxford American's Summer Issue.
OK, technically it's not labelled the "summer issue," only THE MUSIC ISSUE 2006. Although the previous issue was the Spring issue, and the issue before that Winter -- doesn't matter. I'm thankful that it came at all. What would become of Oxford American, anyway, were it not perpetually perched at the edge of oblivion?
Mine arrived last week. I haven't had much chance to dive into reading, but once again the magazine has enlisted a slew of fantastic non-music writers to write about the music; they don't phone in a consumer report and they don't burrow down into semiotic theory. Not that those tacks don't often produce good and chewable reading -- but you can get that stuff anywhere. OA writers pry into the music from unexpected angles, and excavate treasure legendary or lost.
Right near the top, the bundled CD sandwiches Uncle Dave Macon between Jeannie C Riley's fantastically trashy disco-twang and the big drums and big melancholy of Big Star. Also included: Katharine Whalen, Andy Griffith, and good old Townes. Even if you know these tunes, you'll know them differently after this comp. Get the issue. Trust me.
Brendan
Part one of my long steel guitar ramblings at Hickory Wind. It started as a Sol Hoopii review and got way out of hand.
Brendan
Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas
(Novello Festival Press, April 2008)
includes my essay, "Link Wray"
MUSIC
Flop Eared Mule
The Celestial Monochord
HickoryWind.org
Dig and Be Dug in Return
Modern Acoustic Magazine / Blog
The Old, Weird America
Honey, Where You Been So Long?
LITERATURE
The Greensboro Review
Mixed Animal
Night Train
Fried Chicken and Coffee
Mungo (This was the blog of my friend, the late Cami Park. Miss you, Cami.)
Staccato Fiction
Wigleaf
PANK Magazine
OTHER
Cat and Girl
Film Freak Central
- July 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- November 2009
- December 2008
- September 2008
- July 2008
- May 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- June 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- June 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- August 2005
- November 2004
- September 2004
- August 2004
- April 2003
