Video Overdose

One thing I neglected to mention about Sunday's jam--I happened to catch a wee bit of another jam that was happening over on the porch, and it was, without exaggeration, one of the most amazing things I have ever heard. The group was quite small; it consisted of a fiddler, a rhythm guitarist/singer, and a third fellow who was strictly rhythm guitar. I had the luck to be passing by at the moment when they decided to play "Wayfaring Stranger." Oh, man. The singer had a very deep, clear baritone, which would have stood out extraordinarily, to begin with, but one note from the fiddler to top it off, and you were absolutley paralyzed. The man turned the tune inside-out, and upside-down, and coaxed sad, low notes off of the C (on top of being a man of wonderful taste in improvisation, he was playing a 5-string) or drew thin, wailing, heartbroken notes off of the E. Just when I thought it couldn't possibly get any better, a second fiddler came wandering out the door, and pretty soon the two of them were winding phrases one over another, warp and weft of musical weaving, while the the baritone, his rich voice as much an instrument as the violins, laid in the solid anchoring threads of song. It was one of those moments, like the perfect sunset, that was all the more beautiful because there was no way to capture it. Also, it made one feel rather humble: "What did I ever do to deserve to be here and be one of only three spectators who is hearing this at all?"

I had no hopes of finding a video that would even begin to convey exactly what I heard on Sunday, and I was right in that. You did have to be there. But for those of you who don't know the tune already, here is a very nice introduction by the Byron Berline Band.

And here's somthing else neat--another take of the same tune with both fiddle and vocals by a very young Allison Krauss, ca. 1987.

Though we really didn't play that much bluegrass at the jam, the other folks talked about it enough to where I had a rekindled interest in the subject. It was mainly that delicious minor-to-major flavour of "Wayfaring Stranger," however, that inspired me to try to find a video of the bluegrass classic "Cheyenne." I think this might have been written by Bobby Hicks, (anyway, I know he made it famous), but who should I find playing it but Aubrey Haynie (of the Time Jumpers)!

Which led me to find this video, which has absolutely nothing to do with any of the preceding (except that it is Aubrey Haynie again), being a good deal more Texas style than bluegrass, but it's another fine rendition of a classic. Eee, I do like those double stops.

That is enough rambling for one day.

The Great Wet North

It was just a gorgeous day! Now I say that, who did not have to be out driving in it; over three inches of rain fell in Sacramento, and the winds were extraordinary. It has been a definite fall here for the last week or so, cooler temperatures, turning leaves and all, but the heavy hand of the storm was in no mood for sorting leaves--probably a good half of what ended up on the ground this afternoon was still green. I went up to the park in search of the ideal puddle.

And returned to discover that the best puddle in the neighborhood was right outside the parking awning at the apartment.

Fine Lines

Here is an interesting and informative website that was set up to supplement a (now past) exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The focus is drawings from medieval manuscripts. I thought this one was particularly intriguing in that the illustrations do not attempt to be anything more than line drawings, and yet they are in colour. The characters are a bit mysterious, but I am quite certain I would not like to get on their bad side. This one is my favorite, though it was probably utilitarian; speculation labels it as a plan for a cathedral facade.

Sunday Fiddler

Today was an official day off; not only did I not have to work, but I got to spend the afternoon actually playing music. Definitely a great case study for "time flies" and all that. There was a healthy mixture of tastes in the group, but basically everybody there knew more bluegrass than I did, and I knew more Scottish music than they did, and we all met in the middle when it came to country. You can all probably guess how this sort of thing would go, if you haven't attended a jam (or a thousand) already, but the musicians are set up in a circle, and each person, in turn, picks a tune, and then the living daylights is played out of said tune, with each musician taking a solo or two. We did a few old-timey pieces, like "Blackberry Blossom," (the dobro player had a neat lick for that, which I fully intend to steal) and "Nine-Pound Hammer," and a lot of old-timey country. One of the singer/guitar players caught my attention with a song called "Colleen Malone." He sang it slowly and sadly as behooved the subject matter. In this setting, the tune let me to believe it was a fairly old song (traditional, I mean), but the singer told me afterwards that it was written by Tim O'Brien. Here is the bluegrass group Hot Rize, of which the composer is a member (in fact, I believe that is him singing lead) with their rendition of the tune:

Hit the Nail Right on the Head

Not long ago, I was over visiting some relatives, and the radio, which was playing in the background, was snarled around a very large snag of opera. The tenor had something discordant to say. The baritone had something even more discordant to add to that, and the soprano seemed to be telling off both of them, just as discordantly, but in a higher register. The tune wandered about, turning in and over unpleasantly upon itself like a Slinky that had met with an unfortunate accident and which was now tangled beyond all hope of regaining its original form or purpose. I wondered who would go and write something like that, and why. The answer to who turned out to be Richard Wagner, and I still have no idea why.

The pain was still fresh in my mind some days later when somebody handed me a book with a generous admission by Mark Twain regarding the same composer:

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

The Continued Adventures Of--

One of my favorite pieces of literature is the Middle English "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." The hero is depicted so realistically that one is never sure that all will end well; he is, like the rest of us, a human being, all too capable of falling or failing. This is all the more reason why the story sustains its interest. The enumeration of Gawain's trials does not come across as a distant, predictable catalog of obligatory events, like an obstacle course far beneath the skill of a runner, but as a set of very real problems. And even while such real problems as the threat of a beheading seem to be glossed over lightly enough in many of the old romances, the unknown talent which gave us this poem took the time to draw a human being, afraid of death, conscious of sin, aware of his own weaknesses. The real chance of failure makes his successes all the more glorious.

I thought to improve my mind some weeks ago (it has yet to actually improve) so I checked out an armload of poetry books from the library (I have yet to give them much serious consideration). The Oxford Book of Scottish Poetry did get a cursory flip-through, however, and there, much to my amazement, was a selection from another poem about Gawain, this time, not in Middle English, but in Middle Scots. It is called The Knightly Tale of Golagros and Gawane. To my unsuspecting self, perhaps the most amazing part is, it was written in exactly the same style as the Green Knight--alliterative stanzas, each ending with a rhyming bob-and-wheel. I haven't read enough Medieval pieces to confirm that this was the latest rage at the time; I suspect that must have been a fairly popular format, as it does leave a writer enough freedom to spin a good yarn, while maintaining a bit of a poem's structure. Still, it is interesting to speculate on the popularity of the Green Knight poem, which is supposed to have been written in northern England. Did the Scot who wrote Golagros and Gawane some years later hear or read it? Aside from the structure, the poem, though not of such a reflective tone as the Green Knight, treats strongly of the virtue of courtesy. I suspect this was an expected attribute in the non-Frenchified, non-Maloryized version of Gawain, but given its central place in Golagros and Gawane, the poem, though not permitting such an intimate view of the knight's mind, does seem to continue the same likable hero of the Green Knight.

Below is the entire poem in Middle Scots with commentary that will likely answer most of my questions when I get around to reading it. I'll see if there is a modern translation floating around too (I haven't tried it all the way through in Scots yet--I borrowed a translation from the library), but I picked a bad time for this post. I need to run to work.

Balclutha

When my old roomie came to visit a few weeks ago, we took a day and rode the train to San Francisco. Technically speaking, we took the train to Emeryville, and caught a bus there for the waterfront. The bus nosed through the financial district and I quickly realized that all my previous ideas of a "big" city had been rather small-scale. There is a lot of San Francisco, vertically, as well as horizontally; the open views of the waterfront would have come as a relief if they were only a fraction as beautiful as they are. The Hyde Street Dock, however, is a sight for sore eyes to beat even the comfort of fog on the Pacific; clustered around it are the vessels belonging to the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, most notably the Balclutha.
She is a fairly old ship, built in Glasgow in 1886, built for work, and certainly did it, as you can read at the site above.

Above, faintly on the lower left--yes, that does say "Ghiradelli". In the picture below you can get a glimpse of a few of the other vessels there, including a steamboat.

It was just after noon when we reached the dock, which tended to wash out the pictures a bit, and, as in the purple spot below, put manifestations in which were not there in real life.

Again, rather washed out, but there is the Balclutha in her entirety. (That spot between the two buoys in the middle is an intrepid swimmer braving the sea lion attacks, which were described in a warning poster on the shore, in case you were wondering). The two masts on the left of the Balclutha belong to a very lovely old schooner, the name of which I don't recall and which was docked in a location which made getting a good picture impossible (unless you wanted to swim out with the sea lions to get it.) Further to the left is the famous Alcatraz Island enshrouded in famous fog.