Musical Ramblings

Hazmat Modine à Paris le 7 juin !

Since this post is about a concert in Paris, it's only truly relevant for my French readership and will therefore be in French. If you're non-French speaking but live in or around Paris, feel free to email me for details.

Hazmat Modine, un des groupes les plus originaux issus de la scène jazz/world New Yorkaise passe (enfin) à Paris. A part un concert au festival Harmonica sur Cher de Saint-Aignan il y a trois ans, Hazmat Modine n'était jamais passé en France, alors qu'ils remplissent des salles et jouent à des festivals prestigieux partout ailleurs en Europe. Il seront au Divan du Monde le 7 Juin au soir.

Je ne peux que vous encourager à aller à ce concert. Hazmat Modine est éminemment New Yorkais dans la mesure où leur musique est un melting pot de jazz, de blues et de pleins d'influences européennes et plus éloignées. Regardez la video si vous voulez vous faire une idée. C'est une musique qui déménage et qui voyage. 

Evidemment, si vous êtes harmoniciste, la décision est encore plus facile: c'est double-bonus puisque le chanteur, Wade Schuman est un excellent joueur de diatonique dans une veine blues, et que parmi les musiciens on trouve l'excellent Bill Barrett, joueur de chromatique inventif et décalé (qui joue également du Sheng en concert!)

A l'occasion de ce concert, le distributeur Européen du nouveau disque de Hazmat Modine "Cicada" m'a envoyé 4 exemplaires de promotion que je me propose de faire gagner aux lecteurs qui le souhaitent (uniquement en France, expédition à mes frais). Pour le gagner, il y a deux méthodes: 

• soit vous laissez un commentaire sur ce post, et tant qu'à faire vous me dites pourquoi vous aimez bien Musical Ramblings. N'oubliez pas de laisser un contact mail valide. 

• soit vous envoyez un tweet avec le texte exact suivant: Gagnez le dernier disque de Hazmat Modine "Cicada" et venez les voir en concert au Divan du Monde le 7 Juin: http://bit.ly/lyXuB0

Vous pouvez parfaitement faire les deux, et doubler vos chances de gagner !

J'annoncerais les gagnants des quatre disques le 7 Juin dans la journée. 

Voici pour vous donner une idée de la musique de Hazmat Modine une video de The Tide, de leur dernier album, enregistré pour la BBC: 

 

 

Treme is Back !

The first episode of the second season of Treme was broadcast last night in the US. This is one of the many trailers, one that doesn't actually feature all that much music, but it's a powerful trailer (and poem) and sets the scene. In honor of this amazing show and even more amazing City of New Orleans, all the videos this week will be from artists who have been featured on the show's first season. 

Massive Record Sale / Vente de Disques Massive

I have roughly 20 CDs on sale on ebay right now and will be adding about 10 each week. Check 'em out: 

J'ai environ 20 CDs en vente sur ebay en ce moment et je vais en rajouter une dizaine chaque semaine. Jetez un oeil: 

• 2 Man Wrecking Crew - C.Burnside & Lightnin' Malcolm (Blues, Jason Ricci hca)
• Perry Lederman - This World is Not My Home (Folk)
• Leon Thomas - Blues and the Soulful Truth (Blues, Soul)
• Michael Powers - Prodigal Son (Blues Rock)
• Alligator Records 20th Anniversary Collection (Blues)
• John Butler Trio - April Uprising (Rock)
• Mike Auldridge-Bob Brozman-David Grisman - Tone Poems 3 (Folk, Americana)
• Mem Shannon - A Cab Driver's Blues (Blues, Mem Shannon hca)
• Dr John - All by Hisself (Live at the Lonestar) (Blues)
• Talila - Yiddish Blues (Jazz, World)
• Chérif Mbaw - Kham Kham (World)
• Ismaël Lo - Dabah 5world, Ismaël Lo hca)
• Les As du Musette - Mon Amant de Saint Jean (Musette, Jazz)
• David Lindley + Hani Naser - Playing Even Better (Americana, World)
• Taraf de Haïdouks - Musique des Tziganes de Roumanie (World)
• The continuing adventures of Taraf de Haïdouks (CD+DVD) (World)
• Klezmic Zirkus - Vitamine (World, Jazz, Rock)
• Christian Marsh & Guy Dickerson - Planet Bound (World, Christian Marsh hca)

I'm also selling my podcasting studio (Studio de Podcasting Behringer Firewire) . Sadly, I no longer have time for podcasts, although only to people I can hand it over to in person at this stage (it's very very heavy). 

Je me débarasse également de mon studio de podcasting (Studio de Podcasting Behringer Firewire). Malheureusement, je n'ai plus le temps de faire des podcasts. Pour le moment ce dernier ne peut être vendu qu'en mains propres, c'est juste trop lourd à expédier.

Don't hesitate to ask any questions !

N'hésitez pas à me poser des questions !

Massive Music Sale / Enorme Vente de Musique

In many ways I'm old when it comes to music: I like to own a physical object that hosts the music and I have a hard time getting rid of CDs even when I don't listen to them anymore. I've decided that that needs to change (and I need the space) so in the next few weeks I'm going to sell over one hundred CDs on ebay, a mix of everything, rock, blues, jazz, folk and otherwise, with a good dollop of harmonica music thrown into the mix. Right now I'm also selling off my podcasting equipment (no more time to podcast) and a video camera that I've used at many concerts. You can find all of that and more here on my ebay shop. 

Je suis très vieux jeu quand il s'agit de musique: j'aime posséder un objet physique sur lequel la musique est gravée et j'ai du mal à me débarasser de mes CDs même quand je ne les écoute plus. J'ai décidé qu'il fallait que ça change (et j'ai besoin de place) donc dans les semaines qui viennent je vais vendre plus de 100 CDs sur ebay, un mix de tout, rock, blues, jazz, folk et autres avec une bonne lampée d'harmonica dans le lot. Je me débarasse également de mon équipement de podcasting (plus le temps) et d'une camera video que j'ai utilisée pour faire plein de vidéos de concerts. Vous pouvez trouver tout cela sur ma boutique ebay. 

La Marseillaise des Roms

I don't normally do politics on my blogs, especially French politics, but since this is - in fact - related to music in a strange kind of way, I will.

As you may be aware, the French government has recently launched a media offensive on various French people of non-gallic origins, essentially as a way to deflect media attention from various political and financial scandals at the highest levels of the state and as a way to reassure its core electorate that it's "tough on crime" despite appaling and degrading statistics proving the contrary.

One of the visible manifestations of these bubbling racist policies is the targeting of communities of Roms. Roms are originally from Roumania, and as such have full rights to be in France just like any other European Union citizens. Furthermore, there have been various waves of Rom immigration, going back decades if not centuries.

I'm appalled that my government resorts to fanning racial distrust and hatred for electoral reasons, and I'm even further appalled of the caricature of the Roms and other traveling communities in France that is expressed by the government and (too often) relayed by attention grabbing media.

It strikes me that a community whose eminent members not only produce some of the greatest music France has ever produced but are willing to reinvent the national anthem should not be seen as opposed to our country, and it's cruel irony that Django's Echoes of France has been forgotten by the powers that be. The Americans call it French Jazz, but it might need to be renamed soon if this goes on for too long...

 

 

Sébastien Charlier à l'Européen

For those of you whoare Paris based, I just wanted to inform you that jazz diatonic harmonica player Sébastien Charlier is playing a concert at l'Européen on June 12th. This will be an exceptional event, organised to coincide (by a few months) with the launch of Sébastien's first jazz-rock record Precious Time. I just got my ticket, this is going to be a pretty stunning concert, I suspect!

I hope to be able to take photos and maybe even steal a few videos if Sébastien will let me.

Gutpuppet 5 is out !

Scot Ray and Bill Barrett have released Gutpuppet 5. This is the little blurb they sent me:

Our 8th year and 5th opus as a duo! Broad puppet-esque brush strokes exploring the sonic multiverse: Delta blues, Indian Raga, Malian Griot, Gospel, Hurdy-Gurdy, Tuareg, Jazz , Organ Grinder, Klezmer, and Americana. We had a great time making this recording and hope you enjoy the results!

You can listen to extracts from the album on their myspace. It sounds overall more sober and more "world" than Gutpuppet 4, but I guess I'll have to get the real thing and give it a thorough listen before I can form a definitive opinion. You can download it from CD Baby if you're interested. I'm meeting with Bill in LA in two weeks so I hope to get a physical copy there. Especially since I love that cover!

Win JJ Milteau's Harmonicas - Week One !

As I mentioned last month, JJ Milteau recently released a 2-CD set called Harmonicas which presents 40 tracks, mostly instrumentals that have been out of print for a decade or more. You can't exactly call this a "best of" since what you get is 11 out of 17 tracks from Bastille Blues, all 11 tracks from Explorer, 11 out of 15 tracks from Routes, 2 instrumentals from Merci d'Être Venus, 2 live tracks from Blues Live and 3 live tracks from the never distributed Pacific Blues.

This slew of great music includes all of the amazing tracks that made Milteau famous in and outside of France, not just amongst harmonica players but amongst lovers of African-American and world  music. Marcelle & Marcel, Rue du Rendez-Vous, Down at Utopia, Boogie Mix, Rue Doisneau, Bordighera, Lonely Crowd, Big Walter, Tin Biscuit Boy, and many many more are all in there.

And here's the great thing: you can win a copy of this CD thanks to JJ Milteau, the Dixiefrog and Harmonia Mundi labels and Musical Ramblings. I have 9 copies to give away (they sent 10 but I had to open one for this review!), and I will give one away each week. I will pay for P&P, wherever you are in the world. What do you have to do to win it? Very easy, here it is in 4 steps:

1. If you do not have a twitter account, open one on www.twitter.com, it's free.

2. Once you have a twitter account, you need to start following me, ie. @fiberguy.

3. Once you've subscribed to @fiberguy, you need to tweet the following:

Win JJ Milteau's 2-CD 40-track career spanning compilation. Please RT. Info: http://bit.ly/4zk20v #harmonica #blues #soul #milteau

And that's it. Simple isn't it ? At the end of the week I will collate all the tweet handles of the participants, paste all of that in Excel and randomly select a winner.

Just two important note:

• tweeting this message more than once will not get you several chances to win.
• you need to tweet the text exactly with no variations whatsoever.

And there you are! Of course, feel free to spread the word far and wide (blogs, fora, etc.) but remember that the contest is twitter based.

Harmonica: an instrument of the people

There's a great feature on Flickr called Expos. Using expos you can put together a collection of other peoples' photos. I started looking around for harmonica photos, and amongst the many photos of concerts and pro harp players, I found many photos of buskers, children, old and young, all playing the harmonica. This reminded me of one of the reasons I fell in love with this instrument, it's simplicity.

So I decided to gather an expo that I called Harmonica: an instrument of the people. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Free Dirty Dozen Brass Band Track!

On the occasion of the re-release of their first ever album My Feet Can't Fail Me Now, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band is offering the title track as an mp3 for free on their website. Check it out, it's a great introduction to the legendary New Orleans brass band!