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Another old-timer is gone: '50s honky tonker Carl Smith. You can get one of his best albums at emusic.com: "Smith's the Name" from 1957.

One sentence in Last.FM's bio points out some of his major accomplishments ;-) : >> Known as “Mister Country”, Smith is the former husband of June Carter Cash and drinking buddy of Johnny Cash. Carl and June are the parents of singer Carlene Carter. <<

With June Carter, he recorded "Times A Wastin'" (full-length version at BLIP.fm).

With daughter Carlene, he later collaborated on the duet "Loose Talk" (full-length version at BLIP.fm).

Catching up with his songs, I found some great lines.

From 1967's "Life Turned Her That Way" (on the album "The Country Gentleman Sings His Favorites"):

"She's been walked on
And stepped on so many times
And I hate to admit it
But that last footprint's mine"
(by Harlan Howard)
---
"We live in two different worlds"

"We live in two different worlds dear
That's why we're so far apart
You made your world out of vows that are broken
I built a world in my heart"
(by Hank Williams)
---
"Time's A Wastin'""

"Male: Now I've got arms
Female: And I've got arms
Together: Let's get together and use those arms
Female: Let's go
Together: Time's a wastin'

M: I've got lips
F: And I've got lips
T: Lets get together and use those lips
F: Let's go
T: Time's a wastin'"

F: A cakes no good if you don't mix the batter and bake it
M: And loves just a bubble if you don't take the trouble to make it"
(by Boudleaux Bryant?)

Here are Carl & Carter as comedians:

by fiffdimension

1) Bob Dylan - Love And Theft - not just a decent-if-overrated comeback album like Time Out of Mind, but a fullblown Dylan masterpiece, marking the start of a decade where he’s gone from forgotten oldie that the others at high school teased me for liking, back to his accustomed role at the head of the table. I’ll let this album stand for all the interesting-new-albums-by-oldies this decade, such as Lou Reed’s The Raven, John Cale’s Hobosapiens, Johnny Cash’s Unearthed, Nick Cave’s Abattoir Blues etc.

2) Byungki Hwang – Gayageum Masterpieces vols 1-5 – korean music must be an obscure subgenre of world music to most kiwis, but as I lived in Korea for over a year it’s become something quite familiar to me. The gayageum is a zither instrument, equivalent to the Chinese zheng or Japanese koto, and Byungki Hwang uses it to conjure an endlessly listenable array of moods, sounds and styles.

3) Vang Trang Tjeng Dang – The Moon and the Sound of Folk Instruments – I bought this album in Hanoi, vietnam - after 15 months of Korean kimchi & smog it was great to escape. The traditional music there is also chinese influenced but with a brighter, metallic, more cheerful tone. From here on I discovered mongolian, russian, Japanese, thai, balkan, spanish, portuguese, brazilian and indonesian musics.

4) Combat Wombat – Unsound System – my first escape from wellington was when I moved to melbourne in 2005. This album is a classic of aussie hip-hop, both articulate and phat, political as anything, and sounds nothing like the nz variety. Very much of its time – ‘get rid of the Howard government’ et al. The closest thing at the end of the decade would be Braintax from the uk.

5) mr sterile Assembly – Hulagu – I’ll let this one stand for the Wellington underground scene (Jeff Henderson, Birchville Cat Motel, fiffdimension, all that kinda stuff). Seven-piece band, professionally recorded & manufactured, title referencing the Iraq war, and followed up by a tour of Eastern Europe… a growing up time for Wgtn cabaret-folk-post-punk.

6) Harry Smith – Anthology of American Folk Music vol 4 – oldies, as in 1920s-1930s, but the album was newly released, as only the first three volumes came out during Harry Smith’s life. I spent 2006 living in the South Island and picked up a taste for oldies such as Duke Ellington, Charley Patton, Louis Armstrong, George Gershwin, Shostakovich, Debussy...

7) Various artists – Baxter – this one seemed like a growing up for mainstream nz music, the point where National Radio became more interesting than any commercial station. Dave Dobbyn in Latin, Jordan Reyne spell-binding in the Mckenzie basin...

9) Derek Bailey - Ballads - late-in-the-game masterpiece from groundbreaking English free-improv guitarist, where he links the avant-garde with jazz standards as if to provide the evidence that the whole time his career of atonal plinking wonderfulness was based in 'Body & Soul' all along.

10) Da Weasel - Re-Definições - hip-hop tuga, or hiphop from portugal. For me a lot of the most interesting hiphop is in other languages - like food from a particular country, it evokes so much even if the lyrics are unintelligble to a basically monolingual kiwi. I dig Fintelligens (Finnish), Drunken Tiger (Korean), Southside Phuket (Thai), Sido (German) among others.

11) Hank Williams III - Straight to Hell- If Will Oldham captured the 90s best in alt-country, and the first part of the millennium belonged to Johnny Cash, then Hank III, grandson of the original Hank Williams, has been my favourite in recent years. He shows there's no boundary between metal and country, and he ranges across the wide continuum between.

12) Radiohead - In Rainbows - I second simon sweetman's choice, not because it's my favourite Radiohead album - in fact I haven't even heard the whole thing. It stands for the changes brought by new technology and the imminent obsolesence of CDs, and a vote of confidence in the creative utopian side of the internet, and for the vast multitude of freely available music out there now. Radiohead were the high-profile tip of the iceberg.

www.fiffdimension.co.nz

Yep. That's my ultimate Festival I created for the Fantasy Festival Challenge.

The name alone makes you long for an entrance ticket, right? Especially when knowing me.

When you look at my festival's line-up, I'm pretty sure your eyebrows will go up and up and further up.

My ultimate festival looks (or rather: looked) like this:
Johnny Cash - Rosanne Cash
Townes Van Zandt
Steve Earle - Justin Townes Earle
Hank Williams - Hank Williams III
Willie Nelson (no, I didn't put his daughter there, just because of her disappointing performance in Craponne last year)
The Flatlanders
Kris Kristofferson
Merle Haggard
Waylon Jennings - Shooter Jennings
Bob Wills (Yeah. He just had to be there too!)

Hm. I forgot who I put up there as 15th act. Bad Sacha.

After gazing at my festival poster for about half an hour, drifting off to the ticket-line I would be willing to sleep in for about 7 months, I kinda just waited for my dream-festival to enter the top 10 of ultimate festivals.

Up until I read the FAQs (I'm not much of a manual person). And it came to me. It wasn't about creating a festival that would attract millions and millions of (virtual) people because of it's uniqueness. It's about creating a festival that has the most 'buzz'.

Since the 1st price is way too good to not give it a serious try, I threw all my principles overboard. Yes. Only the 1st of January of a new year, and I killed them all.

I made a festival line-up just to have a winning potential. I'm pretty sure I even made Johnny Cash turn around in his grave.

I would NOT attend this festival. O well. Of course I would go and see Johnny Cash, but if he would be performing on 'my' festival, it's likely he is to be found on other festivals. And I would most definately go there and not to my own festival.

My line-up? You really don't want to know. Heck. I don't know most of them, let alone ever listened to any of their music.

Just have a look at my festival page to see it, I don't even dare to mention them here...

And remember: it isn't about the game.

Sacha.

First, make a list of your top-20 artists overall. Then, for each of these artists, add the 8 most similar artists to your list. Delete any duplicates, count up the number of entries on your list and this will give you some idea of how eclectic your listening habits are. A score of 9 represents an extremely unvaried musical taste while a 160 represents an extremely varied one.

#1. The Beatles
1) John Lennon
2) Paul McCartney & Wings
3) Wings
4) The Who
5) Paul & Linda McCartney

#2Bob Dylan
6) Neil Young
7) Woody Guthrie
8) Van Morrison & Bob Dylan
9) Tom Waits
10) Leonard Cohen

#3 Beck
11) The Flaming Lips
12) CAKE
13) Radiohead
14) The White Stripes
15) Blur
16) Thom Yorke
17) Gorillaz
18) Eels

#4 The Rolling Stones
19) Keith Richards
20) Mick Jagger
21) Led Zeppelin
22) The Yardbirds
23) Jimi Hendrix
24) Creedence Clearwater Revival

#5 The Band
25) Levon Helm
26) Neil Young
27) Grateful Dead
28) The Byrds
29) Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
30) Buffalo Springfield

#6 Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
31) Tom Petty
32) Mudcrutch
33) Traveling Wilburys
34) John Mellencamp
35) Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band
36) Bruce Springsteen
37) Bob Seger
38) Don Henley

#7 The Kinks
39) The Small Faces
40) Ray Davies
41) The Zombies
42) The Hollies
43) The Byrds
44) The Pretty Things

#8 Donovan
45) The Incredible String Band
46) Kaleidoscope
47) Arlo Guthrie
48) Strawberry Alarm Clock
49) Joan Baez

#9 George Harrison

#10 BigBang
50) Heroes & Zeros
51) Jim Stärk
52) Superfamily
53) deLillos
54) The National Bank
55) Minor Majority
56) Postgirobygget
57) Kaizers Orchestra

#11 Oasis
58) Noel Gallagher
59) The Stone Roses
60) The Verve
61) Kasabian
62) Stereophonics
63) Richard Ashcroft
64) The La's
65) Ian Brown

#12 Cream
66) Blind Faith
67) Derek and the Dominos
68) Eric Clapton
69) Ten Years After
70) The Jimi Hendrix Experience


#13 Paul McCartney
71) The Fireman

#14 Mika
72) Scissor Sisters
73) Lily Allen
74) Lady GaGa
75) Robbie Williams
76) Pixie Lott
77) Alphabeat
78) Frankmusik
79) Sophie Ellis-Bextor

#15 Ringo Starr
80) Julian Lennon

#16 Elvis Presley
81) Jerry Lee Lewis
82) Chuck Berry
83) Ricky Nelson
84) Roy Orbison
85) Eddie Cochran
86) Gene Vincent
87) Buddy Holly
88) The Everly Brothers

#17 Bob Dylan and The Band
89) Neil Young & Crazy Horse
90) Bob Dylan & The Grateful Dead

#18 Johnny Cash
91) The Highwaymen
92) Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash
93) Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash
94) Johnny Cash & Willie Nelson
95) Willie Nelson
96) Kris Kristoffersen
97) Hank Williams
98) Waylon Jennings

#19 The Doors
99) Jim Morrison
100) Jefferson Airplane
101) Pink Floyd
102) Led Zeppelin

#20 The Rutles
103) Neil Innes
104) The Bonzo Dog Band
105) Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
106) Monty Python



Final Score:
106/160

Thu 19 Nov – Seasick Steve
Gisteren Seasick Steve gezien in de Vooruit in gent, een authentieke zaal die Steve als gegoten past!

Seasick Steve heeft ondertussen een drummer gevonden die hem begeleid in dezelfde eerlijke, rauwe stijl. En dat vormt toch wel een meerwaarde bij een bijna 2 uur durend concert. Dit zorgde eveneens voor een stuk meer afwisseling van de nummers, van een zeemzoete ballad gericht aan een jonge vrouw uit het publiek over een countryduet met Amy LeVere (de Hank Williams cover "I'm So Lonely I Could Cry") tot de rechttoe rechtaan stampende boogierockers als "Dog House Boogie"!

Al bij al een zeer geslaagde avond, waar enkel het zicht op het podium wat tegenviel.

Twee filmpjes van gisterenavond:

Miss Li. Göteborgs Kulturkalas, Gothenburg, August 12 2008

Well. Miss Li along with Bruce Springsteen has pretty much been the soundtrack of my summer. I love her music, her voice, her simple piano playing and of course her dresses... The music is very simple and maybe even naive at times but what makes it interesting is all the influences from pretty much every genre over the last century, everything from jazz, blues, cabaret, gypsy music, motown, country... She even "borrowed" the title and some lyrics from Hank Williams' Why Don't You Love Me for her own song with the same name... that's cool in my book.


While the rain was pouring down Miss Li hammered through her hits with lots of energy, Let her go, I'm Sorry He's Mine, Why Don't You Love Me, Oh Boy the great Leave My Man Alone and two of my favorites, the jazzy Backstabber lady and the bluesy Hard loved man and a couple of more... and of course ending with a furious version of Miss Li. I like the studio albums but she's even better live, it's wonderful to see her hammering away on the piano and almost falling off the chair at times. She use her voice a lot more too, screaming like Janis Joplin at times. Which is a very good thing.


I would have liked to hear more jazz/blues songs like Give it to me, Don't try to fool me and Not the one I need... But she just got to play for 40 minutes so I guess there was no time to slow things down. But it was a great, fun (but too short) show that made us forget about the pouring rain for a while.