Ignorance is bliss

So, I guess right-wing WTIC talk show host Jim Vicevich is very happy.

Today he promised to link his website to Eliza Gilkyson's (which he consistently pronounces incorrectly gil-ick-son). Obviously Jim either doesn't listen carefully to her lyrics, or he doesn't understand them. Either is certainly possible. But it's the beauty of a great protest song, it gets into the heads of people who need to hear them, and who don't intially realize what they are listening to. Before long they're singing along to "Runaway Train," and "doh" they figure out what they're singing. Jim, take a listen to Eliza's song, "Man of God," on her last album.



Also, on the same topic, I heard Jim promise to attend a folk concert at Cheney Hall featuring Hugh Blumenfeld. Hope he makes good on his promise, and that Hugh plays "George III" and "America Redux."

Hey that's me on cut 13

One of the side benefits of hanging around with musicians is that occasionally I get featured on their albums. I'm part of the chorus on Erin McKeown's "La Petit Mort" (her French, not mine) from the Distillation album, and I'm also on the chorus of Hugh Blumenfeld's "longhairedradicalsocialistjew" from his Rocket Science.
Susan Forbes Hansen reported to me that she heard my voice coming out of the speakers when she played a cut from the new Savoy Family Band album Turn Loose But Don't Let go, on Arhoolie. Sure enough, there I am after the band plays a live version of "Two-step de Prairie Soileau," recorded at the Rhythm and Roots Festival in Charlestown RI, as I take the band off the stage after their set.

I've never been paid a royalty for my recordings, but that's okay. I feel like royalty being immortalized with these great musicians.

Dr. Hugh to you

I bumped into Dr. Hugh Blumenfeld at St. Francis Hospital today, and got to see him in his physician get-up. (BTW, I also bumped into my radio colleague, Dr. Steve Dieterich).

As you can see, the genius musician, is now a genius physician.

I asked Hugh about Richard Meyer, whom I blogged about last week. The sad news is that Meyer is now living in a nursing home somewhere in New York City, the victim of advanced Parkinson's disease. And like most folk musicians, he had no medical insurance. Hugh indicated that what little residuals are now accrued by Fast Folk Musical Magazine, are all sent to Meyer.

On the topic of Meyer's song, The January Cold, which I invoked on this blog last week, Hugh clued me into a historical gaffe in the song. We can write it off as poetic license, but apparently, when Warren Harding was inaugurated, the actual inauguration ceremony and speech was not in January, but in March, and that just doesn't scan.

It would be absurd, to think that there would ever be another George III

The notably conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has ruled that George Bush does not have autocratic power.

One more blow to his majesty's sense of god-given right to rule.

Listen to Hugh Blumenfeld's George the Third and judge for yourself.