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Monday, August 15, 2011

Mid August 2011

Our son and his wife just celebrated their first wedding anniversary. The blackberry crop has been great; we will see what this steady rain does to it. The maple tree which fell in the storm has now been picked up and sawed up. Quite a brush pile building up again. In the store, we added Paypal to our payment options. The search engines are still sending us orders for record styli. LIFE magazines and records continue to hop along. We keep adding to stuff in the barn for a big book and record sale out there.


Moneyblows Books Music at amazon.com since 1999
Biblio member since 2005
member of Global Electronic Music Marketplace since 1998
Capitalizing the Wind: allocating capital for wind energy in a political framework

If you spot the moneyblowsmobile, post a pic at Mike Moneyblows on Facebook

Thursday, June 9, 2011



Moneyblows Books Music at amazon.com since 1999


Biblio member since 2005


member of Global Electronic Music Marketplace since 1998


Capitalizing the Wind: allocating capital for wind energy in a political framework


If you spot the moneyblowsmobile, post a pic at Mike Moneyblows on Facebook
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Monday, April 25, 2011

getting this graphic out of the old eMac like pulling teeth

I keep the old eMac plugged in, even though the internal modem fried in an electric incident. It has nice internal stereo speakers, I got good music on it and can play some DVDs on there too.
Discovering I had nothing on the windows laptop to overlay type on a picture, I tried pulling up an ancient Adobe Photoshop. Just placing this type took almost two hours, plenty of restarts, and endlessly watching the little round palette twirl.
For quite a few years, the eMac has been a bit confused. Perhaps it never liked being adrift from the internet.
Its only connection to the outside world may be the USB connection and the still functioning DVD drive. Insert metaphor here.

Monday, January 31, 2011

The Broadside Ballad by Leslie Shepard



The following quote comes from page 105 of The Broadside Ballad by Leslie Shepard, a book we sold today. He is referring to the descent of a ballad from its "noble" beginnings to the custody of hoarders and collectors. I found words which ring true to the task we have appointed ourselves at moneyblows books and music

“This, then, is the last descent of balladry. An ancient and noble inspiration flowered with the seasons in the countryside, passed to beggar, rogue and mountebank, was sold for pennies in the streets, finally stolen and hoarded as dry leaves in the libraries of fanatical collectors. Yet it is the same impulse that runs through the whole of our great ballad story. The range of human emotions is the same, whether a man writes a song or a thesis. One man earns an honest living, another cheats for pennies; one dies for a song, another sings for his supper. Life is a gigantic affair of many intricate and contradictory aspects, and if our elemental origins seem more heroic than the everyday passions and topics of civilization, they are none the less only part of the same picture.
The secret of the Universe may not be bought for a penny, but it is on these sheets and in the commerce that goes with them. The profound and the trivial in human affairs have always coexisted, and the real meaning of life lies in the truth that transcends both. All our affairs, large or small, are swept away in the great tide of history, and the passing pageant of life itself is as insubstantial as a dream. Everything that belongs to the everyday world of the senses is a moment only in our human consciousness, essentially ephemeral—like old scraps of paper or the words of a ballad half remembered.
There are as many ballads as pebbles on a beach, and they are of all sorts and shapes. Just as we collect new experiences and compare them with old ones, so we collect old and new songs to learn a little more about life. And collect we must, before these fragments pass away.
In 1892, The Rev. S. Baring-Gould, a great collector of folk songs and broadside ballads, wrote:
‘It is but a matter of a few years and the broadside will be as extinct as the Mammoth and the Dodo, only to be found in the libraries of collectors. Already sheets that fetched a ha’penny thirty years ago are cut down the middle, and each half fetches a shilling. The garlands are worth more than their weight in gold. Let him that is wise collect whilst he may.’”

Here's one of the ballads illustrated in Shepard's book. It adds a new range of meaning to a familiar song such as Lefty Frizzell's If you've got the money honey, I've got the time. This ballad is from the 18th century:




One morning of late, as I walk’d in great state
I heard a maiden making sad moan
I ask’d her the matter, she said, sir, I won’t flatter
I am weary of tumbling alone

O that is pity, that a maiden so pretty
And the young men so idle are grown
But a curse light upon it, and worse may come on it
If I leave you a tumbling alone

O then, says the sailor, can you fancy me
I have got gold, and got silver in store
I have brought from the sea, such a fine remedy
That will ease you of tumbling alone

Oh then, says the fair maid, if you can fancy me,
I have got plenty of money in store,
No more cross the main, to fight France nor Spain,
Nor go where the cannons loud roar

O then, says the sailor, I can fancy you,
As long as your money doth last,
She grows thick in the waist, and thin in the face,
But the sailor he steers off at last

As down in the garden there grows a red rose,
I’ll pluck it, and call it my own,
In an hour it will fade, and so will a maid,
That’s weary of tumbling alone

Friday, January 28, 2011

Frankie McWhorter: Cowboy Fiddler in Bob Wills' Band

This excellent narrative, as told to John R. Erickson and published in 1997, offers some great commentary on Bob Wills' playing out of meter.
To quote from p. 34: "one time the band was recording a song and one of the musicians quit playing. Bob asked him what was wrong. 'Bob, you're playing that song out of meter.' Bob asked him what he meant by that. 'Well, you're holding that note thirteen beats and you ought to be holding it just four.' And he played it and showed Bob what he meant.
"Bob said, 'That's the way I feel it. That's the way I do it, whether it's right or wrong, and that's the way we're going to do it. If the Lord had written the first music, I wouldn't question you at all, but a man wrote the first music and for all you know, I may be smarter than he was. If you don't want to play it like this, put your fiddle up and be gone.' And the old boy left.
From page 38:
"A lot of those tunes were out of meter. When he found a note he liked, he'd hang on to it."
From page 61:
"He'd play out of tune on occasion and he'd break meter quite often. The people who were studied and professional knew that they were right and he was wrong. But what they didn't take into consideration was that he was Bob Wills, and he was signing the checks."
Frankie McWhorter was a Texas Playboy in the 1950s and 60s. Regarding his "out of tune" comment, he refers elsewhere in the book to twin-fiddling with Bob, where he played the same notes out of tune each time, because he liked it that way,and Frankie had to learn those notes and positions, as well as emulate Bob Wills' long bow technique.
I enjoyed so many of these details in the book, as they help articulate Bob Wills' blues and jazz interests, which stood him apart from all other fiddlers, and in his fame, stood him apart from all other country bands. The term "western swing," which to some seems archaic and descriptive of a certain pragmatic approach to dance music, seems to me more than ever a term of high esteem and honor, standing on its own and not just a hybrid of other things.