Overread at Table 1: Ballad "Hiram Hibbard"

Interested I was in the version by Among the Oak and Ash, I wanted to know more about the ballad "Hiram Hibbard."  Can't really find much of anything online, except that it was also done by Bob Dylan in 1963, with some different verses.

The more detailed is a blog post (link http://mbmonday.blogspot.com/2012/05/hiram-hubbard-hiram-hubbert.html#!/2012/05/hiram-hubbard-hiram-hubbert.html)

That has some good historical narrative of the song.  Apparently it dates back to the Civil War, but I really still prefer the treatment by Among the Oak and Ash, who make the song sound like a lynching.  The way I interpret it, this is not so much a murder ballad as a treastise on post Civil WAr race relations in America, as well as the ability to administer immediate so-called "justice" which often amounted to community-endorsed murder based on fabricated evidence, if they even bothered with evidence at all.

I'll need to research further, to find out more.

I think the Americana duo S and M are planning to cover this one for a future album.

Overread at Booth 4: Those Who Close Doors

243.

 

Those who close doors

never know the joy of
the wind in their hair,
never appreciate the
pleasure of the soft hand,
the fingers
weaving into the fingers
of another, the cool
warmth of the touch.
Those
who close doors
are nothing more
than coat hooks
mounted awkwardly
on chipped-paint walls,
their only company a
dull
memory of
muddy coats.

 

 

from 366.

 

 

 

 

Overheard at Table Three: No Redemption for Yesterday

H: looking around the news yesterday, came across this story about a 53 year old woman who just had her hands chopped off with a machete by her boyfriend in Las Vegas, now has cancer.

J: That's terrible.

H: Yeah, he also hacked her in the head.  Tried to slit his own throat with the same machete, but they've got him on charges now.

J: That's not half as sick as what I heard: some kid in upstate New York killed this little 5 year old girl with his bare hands and dumped her body in a trash can.

H: What the hell is going on with this place?

J: Weirdest part of the story is that the great-grandmother, who the girl lived with, said that she last saw her around 11:30 at night when she went to bed, and the little girl was still playing with this 16 year old boy.

H: What?!

J: Yeah, she said they did it all the time.

H: Playing with this teenage boy?

J: Yeah.

H: Well, there's a reason why you don't let your toddlers play with teenage boys until late at night.   They might wind up dead in a trash can.

J: What the hell is wrong with people these days?

H: If it weren't for God, there'd be no salvation for any of us.  

J: At least not these sickos.

At the Counter: Salinghetti Chronicles Vol. 679

Verble slides a CD toward the Barista, saying, "Here, you need to listen to some good music."

The Barista looks at the names written on the CD.   "What?" she says, "No Nicki Minaj?"

"Don't make me hurt you," Verble says.

The Salinghetti Chronicles Vol. 679

A Pack of Ballads

 

Among the Oak and Ash – Hiram Hubbard

Among the Oak and Ash – Peggy-O

Bob Dylan – Jim Jones

John Wesley Harding – Little Musgrave

Dave Alvin – Blackjack Davy

The Tannahill Weavers – Harris and the Mare

Mumford and Sons – Awake my Soul

The Weepies – World Spins Madly On

Barenaked Ladies – Bank Job

Jason Fickel – Bells of Avingnon

Death Cab for Cutie – I Will Possess Your Heart

John Mayer – Who Says

Barenaked Ladies – Easy

Barenaked Ladies – Peterborough and the Kawarthas

Sigur Ros – Hoppipolla

Death Cab for Cutie – Grapevine Fires

The Pogues – Love You Till the End

Israle Kamakawiwo’ole – Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World

 

Here's what we've got going down at the cafe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDdi6bn06bo

Overheard at Booth One: Abstinence Programs

C: I heard on the radio earlier this year some guy talking about the old abstinence programs during the initial AIDS epidemic.  He said something that's stuck with me.   He said, "That was a good idea but not applicable to the real world."

M: "Real world"?

C: Yeah: "A good idea but not applicable to the real world."   So I started thinking about the so-called "real world"

M: Like abstinence is not "real."

C: It's only real if you practice it! 

M: Trouble is, nobody does, it seems.

C: Unfortunately not.   But when taken seriously, it IS the absolute best way to keep yourself from all the consequences of sex - the "unintended" consequences, shall we say.

M: But in a way, this is what we've been learning.   This is what people don't understand.   This is not the "real world" This, what we've got here.   This is the dream.

C: Sometimes it feels like a freakin' nightmare.

M: But still a dream.  Heaven.   That's the Real World.   The Real World is the beauty of Heaven, and the peace that comes with the Kingdom of God - that peace, in our lives, right now, puts us IN THAT PLACE.   There is our "Real World."  

C: Where we don't have to worry about STDs.

M: And we won't have to force ourselves to be abstinent!

The Strawbs: From the Witchwood

Verble says, "Ah yes, here is one of my prized possessions!   After all these years, I finally found it on vinyl again.   The Strawbs' From the Witchwood LP.   A brilliant piece of acoustic guitar work, flourished by Rick Wakeman's ebullient, if sometimes completely overDONE, keyboards - this was Wakemen just before he went off to hit it big with Yes.   But seriously, the acoustic guitars make this: they sound just like they would have sounded in the Middle Ages, IF the current acoustic guitar design had been available in the Middle Ages.

"I could go on forever about the difference in design between the instruments; frankly, I have always found it sad that while we can replicate the instruments of the time, they always seem to be merely replicas.  We will never be able to hear what an original guitar truly sounded like in the environs of the day.  The sounds of the guitar, at least in my opinion, is not just the instrument itself, and not just the player, and not even just the room or studio that it's being played in, but it's the AGE in which it's being played.

"Seriously, listen to the albums as they go across the decades: there are similar guitars with similar designs, but the sound it different, each decade.   You may think that it's the recording techniques, and that may be part of it, but it's also the time.

"But back to the Strawbs:  I hear this album, and it feels like what it would have sounded like then, in a think-planked pub, or dining hall, or out on some minor lord's lawn.
"And if you think that's all a bunch of crap, well then, just give it a listen because it's just 10 good late 60's psychadelic folksongs!"