The Ledge

The Ledge Experience

The Ledge brings an exhilarating new experience to the Skydeck. At 1,353 feet up, The Ledge’s glass boxes extend out 4.3 feet from the skyscraper’s Skydeck on the 103rd floor, providing never-before-seen views of the city. An unmatched view is not all the Skydeck offers. From the moment visitors arrive they enjoy interactive and educational attractions that not only highlight the iconic landmark, but also celebrate Chicago’s sports, architecture, pop-culture, history, food, music and people.

For more information visit http://www.theskydeck.com/theledge.asp

From The Ledge to The Edge…………………

Odetta (Sad Update)

Odetta, famed African-American folk singer, songwriter, actress, and activist, passed away in New York City at the age of 77 on 2nd December. Beloved by everyone from Maya Angelou to Bob Dylan to Martin Luther King, Jr. Born in Birmingham and raised in Los Angeles, she began her career in musicals before heading up to San Francisco and falling in with the folk crowd, mixing it up with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. She was signed to Vanguard Records, which was home to darn-near everybody who was anybody in the folk scene at the time. It’s important to keep in mind that “folk music” of that time was more than just people singing sad songs on acoustic guitars. It was more of a movement than a sound, and it tied directly into the social movements of the time, of which Odetta was an active participant. It was also more than a little non-white, led by artists like Harry Belafonte and Odetta. In fact, MLK himself called Odetta the “The Queen of American Folk Music.”

Odetta did some acting, too, and some funkier stuff in the late ’60s and early ’70s (see above). She continued touring until, well, until just a few months ago, when her health finally kept her off the road for good. She was even slated to perform at Barack Obama’s inaugural ceremony! She received the National Medal of Arts, she was a Kennedy Center honoree, and Congress bestowed its Living Legend Award on her.

Odetta Holmes dies at 77; folk singer championed black history, civil rights [LA Times]
This post is from http://idolater.com

Bruce Springsteen – Working On A Dream

Bruce Springsteen releases his twenty-fourth album ‘Working On A Dream’ on January 27 2009, which was recorded with the E Street Band.

The songwriter recorded and mixed the songs at Southern Tracks in Atlanta (as well as additional studio time in LA, NY and NJ) and the LP includes 12 songs, plus two bonus tracks – full tracklisting is further down the page.

Speaking of the album, Bruce Springsteen says: ‘Towards the end of recording [last album] ‘Magic,’ excited by the return to pop production sounds, I continued writing. When my friend producer Brendan O’Brien heard the new songs, he said, ‘Let’s keep going.’”

“Over the course of the next year, that’s just what we did, recording with the E Street Band during the breaks on last year’s tour. All the songs were written quickly, we usually used one of our first few takes, and we all had a blast making this one from beginning to end.”

Working on a Dream Tracklisting:

1. Outlaw Pete
2. My Lucky Day
3. Working on a Dream
4. Queen of the Supermarket
5. What Love Can Do
6. This Life
7. Good Eye
8. Tomorrow Never Knows
9. Life Itself
10. Kingdom of Days
11. Surprise, Surprise
12. The Last Carnival

Bonus tracks:

The Wrestler
A Night with the Jersey Devil

Source www.angryape.com

Neil Young Archives Vol 1

After more than 20 years, the first volume of Young’s career-spanning box set is finally coming out. The 10-disc set (available in Blu-ray for $432 or DVD for $345, and eventually in CD and download formats) is built around an interactive timeline that allows users to access hundreds of hours of audio and video, ranging from Young’s high school band through 1972’s Harvest. “There’s photos, there’s original lyrics, there’s all the materials that make up a career,” says Larry Johnson, the set’s producer. So when is Vol. 2 due? “Now that we’ve done the format,” says Young, “it’ll be quicker.”

Source www.rollingstone.com

Check out the great An Aquarium Drunkard for more info and some great downloads.

In the meantime here is a version of “Powderfinger” from the postponed 1977 album Chrome Dreams which may appear and a current favourite of mime “A Man Needs A Maid”

Powderfinger

A Man Needs A Maid

Aye but how many people will be able to afford it and how many people will be satisfied with the chosen format……not me for one on either score

Top of the Pops back For Christmas

The BBC has had a change of heart about axeing the Christmas Top Of The Pops by announcing a double bill over the festive period.

As well as the traditional hour-long Christmas Day edition, BBC1 will also show – for the first time – a New Year’s Eve edition of the programme. The programme will give an overview of the year. Just last month the BBC said the programme would not be screened this year and would instead be replaced by episodes of the archive series TOTP2.

Jay Hunt, controller of BBC1, said: “With shows on Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, Top Of The Pops has never been bigger.

“The shows will form the centrepiece of a massive musical offering during the festive season that we hope viewers are really going to enjoy.”

It’s not all good news though – Fearne Cotton will be hosting the shows. Top Of The Pops was pulled from the schedules in 2006 but the Christmas edition was allowed to live on, on their own merits, until the recent announcement that they were to be taken off air.

Source www.mojo4music.com

Now this takes me back to short trousers and the school disco (before they were made palatible via a dose of vodka in the toilets!)

New Mojo Out Now

Great edition with superb cover mounted CD

 

 

In this issue

FREE CD: HEAVY MOD! 15 blitzing tracks from The Move, The Yardbirds, Deep Purple, The Creation, The Pretty Things, Small Faces, Aphrodite’s Child and more! This month MOJO celebrates the artists who took the ‘60s mod batton and carried it into a fierce, overdriven future. 

OASIS: “Bring it on, you little dicks! On the road and behind the scenes with the biggest band in the land, MOJO’s Pat Gilbert enters the inner sanctum of Oasis’s sold-out UK tour to discover the secret story at the heart of Dig Out Your Soul. “We’ve been to the dark side,” reveals a typically candid Noel Gallagher.

RYAN ADAMS: Trading a life propelled by drugs and booze for a reclusive existence writing poetry with a girl from Cambridge, the countrified purveyor of modern Americana tells MOJO’s Sylvie Simmons exactly how it all happened.

DEEP PURPLE: The big-haired men of mod venture back to their chaotic early years and the birth of their now-classic anthem Hush – Joe South’s country-r&b hit would never sound the same again. Even heavier territory awaited them.

ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN: They recorded one of the defining albums of the ‘80s then imploded under the strain. Now, back together, on form and playing live, MOJO joins Merseyside’s favourite post-punks as they revisit the fantastic voyage of Ocean Rain.

THE BEST OF 2008: Fleet Foxes, Duffy, Paul Weller, Foo Fighters, Dennis Wilson, Neil Diamond, Sigur Ros and Bill Drummond all feature in our rundown of the last 12 months in music. PLUS! MOJO’s top 50 albums of 2008! And everyone from Billy Connolly to The Edge choose the best thing they’ve heard all year.

www.mojo4music.com

Fire Brigade – The Move MP3

Making Time – The Creation MP3

Finaly video of The High Numbers in 1964 who would later be known (again) as The Who

]

 

Kind of Blue – So What

Miles Davis released his definitive album Kind of Bue in August 1959 yet this month we are blessed with a “50th Anniversary” box set edition which includes everything but a Miles kitchen sink.

This was the album that was my gateway into the world of jazz. I found it to be a world which contained great music but also contained a great deal of music which was to my ears unlistenable, even the albums I do like often sound to Mrs D like five people playing five separate songs!

Jazz fanatics tend to be dedicated to the genre and listen to nothing but jazz, my musical tastes are too liberal to be restricted by such a culture.

Jazz to me features in many of my playlists and if you embrace the jazz vocalist into the genre such as Billie, Ella, Nina et all then it will account for many an hour of enjoyable listening.

So here is perhaps one of the best known openings to an album and song the classic that is “So What”

Odetta

From Indiefolkforever

Dear Friends of Odetta,

On behalf of Odetta’s adopted daughter Michelle Esrick and her niece Jan Ford (in California), I would like to share with you – Odetta’s large extended family of brothers and sisters – the current health crisis in her life. On Saturday, she went into Lenox Hill Hospital for a check-up and IV nourishment. However, on Sunday evening she went into kidney failure, and we were told that the next 24 hours would determine if she would survive.

Miraculously, she made it through that emergency, but is still listed in critical condition. I was on the road when she went in the hospital and rushed back on Sunday. Jan and I are thankful that Michelle was here and has been by Odetta’s side every moment of this ordeal.

Odetta believes she is going to sing at Obama’s Inauguration, and I believe that is the reason she is still alive. She has a big poster of Barack Obama taped on the wall across from her bed. Her old heart has already outperformed and lasted far beyond the expectations of the heart specialists who treated her in January-March 2007 when she had her last health crisis while touring out West. Now compounded with the kidney failure, the doctors at the hospital are trying to do everything possible to stabilize her system and prevent the weakening of her other organs. They have her on dialysis now to rid the body of the toxic poisons that have built up, and it seems to be slowly working. She is sleeping a lot, but after a dialysis treatment and some food, she is coherent and talking. She is not in pain. We are told that she will be in the ICU Unit for at least another week, and that we’ll just have to wait and see after that.
All of you are well aware of Odetta’s indomitable spirit. Accordingly, I wouldn’t bet against her singing for Barack in January!

Here she is with Water Boy

Tom Waits Goes Hip Hop

From www.uncut.co.uk

Tom Waits goes hip hop on a collaborative track “Spacious Thoughts” with Kool Keith, which is due to be released on next year’s forthcoming N.A.S.A. (North America South America)album, but you can hear it now.

NASA is an international collective of musicians spanning a wide spectrum of musical genres, centered around Squeak E. Clean (Sam Spiegel) and DJ Zegon (Ze Gonzales), but also features a huge number of other musicians.

Some of the artists who have been working together include Kanye West, Chuck D, David Byrne, M.I.A., Karen O, Wu-Tang and George Clinton.

Click here to listen to ‘Spacious Thoughts’ feat Kool Keith and Tom Waits.

Click here to watch the making of NASA video.

Mitch Mitchell

The last surviving member of the the Jimi Hendrix Experience, drummer Mitch Mitchell, died aged 61 on 12 November, 2008 after a lifetime in music.

The British musician was touring in a tribute band on the Experience Hendrix Tour, which performed the week before he died in Portland, Oregon.

He played in the Hendrix band from 1966 until the guitarist’s death in 1970, and was thought to have died of natural causes.

According to fan forum drummerworld.com, he had “magnificent rhythmic drive” and ranks alongside legendary Cream drummer Ginger Baker and The Who’s Keith Moon.

His explosive drumming style can be heard in hard-charging songs such as Fire and Manic Depression.

Classic albums include Are You Experienced? and Electric Ladyland, featuring tracks like Purple Haze, Little Wing and Hey Joe.

Mitch Mitchell has been described as one of the three great British rock drummers of the 1960s.

He was born in Ealing, London in 1947 and became a child actor. He developed into a session drummer by his late teens, having taught himself the art.

Early bands in the 1960s included The Pretty Things, The Tornados and Riot Squad, his big break coming in 1965 after joining Georgie Fame and The Blue Flames.

When the band split up, Mitch was recruited to join guitarist Jimi Hendrix and bassist Noel Redding in The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

The group’s spellbinding performances included the Monterey Pop Festival, where Hendrix famously set light to his guitar, and Woodstock.

After Hendrix died in 1970, Mitch continued to play and record with some of rock and jazz world’s biggest names.

When Noel Redding died at 57 in 2003, Mitchell was left as the only surviving member of the legendary trio.

The latest tour was designed to bring together veteran musicians who had known Hendrix and younger artists.

Taken from www.lastingtributes.co.uk