 |
Newt
|
|
|
Newtchaser
Male
60 years old
United Kingdom
Last Login: 10/10/2009
|
|
|
|
View My:
Pics
|
|
|
Newt's Details
|
| Status: | Single | | Zodiac Sign: | Capricorn |
|
|
![]() |
|
Newt's Blurbs |
About me:
Music-wise I like real people (as opposed to posers) expressing themselves musically. This all too often narrows my listening down to old recordings, particularly from the dawning years of recording technology. You don't have to agree with me but those guys really were from another planet, as if they were super-human, and could knock it out like no one can today. Fortunately for us those early years of recording were well archived and no better place than America with it’s wealth of ethnic influences to spawn it. By accident a music recording industry grew up on the doorstep of where our descendants from Europe and Afro American and Native American cultures collided in the southern Appalachians and we now have the goods to treasure forever. Yet what those initial years of recording prove is that they had something that we have since lost; the skill of surrendering our own persona to the music.
What a far cry it is from today with everyone into making their own mixes with headphones on, as if others should be excluded. Not so with Uncle Dave Mason or any old-time string band or jug band, they were emphatically reverential about listening to each other in ensemble, about inclusiveness and teamwork. Then came the dreaded VOLUME CONTROL and it all changed after that. I would irradiate all volume controls if I could. But because America was the first place to take off globally with a record industry we can now trace the emergence and subtle rise and eventual dominance of the volume control because it was all recorded we have all the evidence to track it.
Therefore I like a Michael Coleman playing Irish fiddle superbly, Ed Haley playing Old Time fiddle, Professor Longhair and Jimmy Yancey playing blues piano, not to mention everything in-between that was nearly always unique and accomplished. No individual or band today can counter that those guys possessed exceptional talents, that they created their own genre out of what they honed, and that they didn’t suffer from lack of media gimmickry, they benefited from it. I am no purist, for many modern and not so modern artists do it for me too, but they are careerists and that changes the dynamics, those guys back then did it anyway to fill in long dark evenings without gadgets like TV or computers to distract them. Part time community local dance bands hardly exist anymore, and where they are supposed to survive, in the folk music circuit, they have submitted to volume control domination and Myspace hits. You might call me a hypocrite but I don’t contest it, but at least I own up to it.
|
Who I'd like to meet:
|
|
| Newt's Friend Space (Top 4) |
|
![]()
|
|
