RADIO HANNIBAL

Spotify Mix: Radio Hannibal Rollin' In The Sty

With a nod and a wink to KPIG here's a list of some rootsy, rowdy and sometimes wacky songs guarenteed to get the party started.  It's a fluid list so be sure to check in for updates once in awhile.

Radio Hannibal Rollin' In The Sty

Radio Hannibal New Show

Just in time for the weekend it's a new Radio Hannibal Show.  There's numerous ways to enjoy it.  You can listen to it on the link there.  You can go to the Radio Hannibal home page and play it off the embedded player.  You could open up a separate player.  You can download it.  You can even subscribe to it on iTunes and have it download as a podcast onto your iPhone or iPod.  

 

Spotify Is Great For Comedy

Ok, I'm sounding like a pitchman for Spotify but I can't help it.  It's that good. 

I was in Pittsburgh to catch the last U2 show in the United States on this two year tour.  By the way, they did an unscheduled encore of "Bad" from The Unforgettable Fire (my favorite U2 song).  Apparently it's a song about Andy Warhol who's from Pittsburgh.  In fact the morning after the show we went to the Warhol Museum. 

Anyway, the boutique hotel we stayed in had one of those clock radio's with the iPhone/iPod mounting base.  It was great to be able to take album requests from my friends at our pre-show warm up party. 

Last week, on a whim, I began searching for comedy material on Spotify.  I never understood the sense in buying comedy albums.  After you've heard them once, maybe twice, you're done.  You know all the jokes.  Repeated listenings are pointless.  It's not like music which can be heard over and over throughout the years with the same love and appreciation. 

So Spotify is great for comedy albums.  You're not paying for them.  You can listen to them once, have a laugh, and move on.  My searches proved to have holes just like the music library.  There's no Richard Pryor or George Carlin.  There's some Eddie Murphy.  There's lots of Bill Cosby. Cheech and Chong and Firesign Theater are well represented as is classic Bob Newhart. 

Now I'm finding myself lying in bed and searching for some comedy material for a good laugh before sleep comes. 

Cool Photos Of The Day

Bob Dylan during the Desire photo shoot

Elvis Presley on a plane in 1968

Jaco Pastoria and Stan Getz on the beach in Cuba in 1979

Peter Gabriel with wife and son in 1974

Music Pick Of The Day: Marissa Nadler - Marissa Nadler

I was put under Marissa Nadler's spell a few years back when I heard her third album, Marissa Nadler III, Bird On The Water.  The Boston born singer/songwriter has a voice so fragile, so quiet, so soft, it has the same effect as the sirens' call.

Her fifth album released earlier this summer is self-titled and, thankfully, sounds as enchanting as the first time I heard her.  The minimalist arrangements leave plenty of room for her voice to command, even though it's hardly a commanding voice in traditional terms. 

This is perfect music for a summer day, under a tree with a light breeze and a glass of wine.  It's hauntingly beautiful.

Artist:  Marissa Nadler

Album:  Marissa Nadler

Review:  AV Club

Listen To It On Spotify

Russell Brand's Eulogy For Amy Winehouse

Over the weekend I listened to Amy Winehouse's Back To Black (here it is on Spotify) three times.  I hadn't done a complete run through in a few years. The album is about five years old already. 

The Grammy folks got it right the year she won four out of five nominations.  It's a classic piece of work from a gifted and now tragic figure.  Winehouse, who was found dead in her London apartment on Saturday, wasn't a manufactured diva.  The kind that populate the top 40 like some sort of Stepford Wives. 

Amy Winehouse was blessed with a gorgeous voice and learned the style and phrasing of song through jazz.  She was an anomoly to the star-maker machinery.  And we were fortunate that she gained this fame so that many could hear it. 

The fame wasn't fortunate for Amy Winehouse though.  Already a junkie before her soaring popularity, she retreated further into her escape from reality, unable to handle the, now, surreal life.  To the public, her death seemed inevitable. 

I've loved Russell Brand before many here in the United States knew who he was.  As an avid listener to BBC radio I'd discovered this wild eccentric through his first DJ (announcer as they're called in the UK) stint at 6 Music in the early 00s.  I followed him when he landed a shift on the most popular station in England, BBC Radio 2. 

I read about his troubled past as a junkie himself, hell, he loved to boast about it,  and was impressed by his recovery and ability to keep his absurdist talent intact. It's not surprising that he and Amy were friends. 

Yesterday Brand wrote a terrific eulogy to Amy Winehouse that should be shared:

For Amy

July 24th, 2011

When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they’ve had enough, that they’re ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it’s too late, she’s gone.

Frustratingly it’s not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene.

I’ve known Amy Winehouse for years. When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool Indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma. Carl Barrat told me that "Winehouse" (which I usually called her and got a kick out of cos it’s kind of funny to call a girl by her surname) was a jazz singer, which struck me as a bizarrely anomalous in that crowd. To me with my limited musical knowledge this information placed Amy beyond an invisible boundary of relevance; "Jazz singer? She must be some kind of eccentric" I thought. I chatted to her anyway though, she was after all, a girl, and she was sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable.

I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they’re not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but un-ignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his "speedboat" there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they’re looking through you to somewhere else they’d rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief.

From time to time I’d bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was "a character" but that world was riddled with half cut, doped up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn’t especially register.

Then she became massively famous and I was pleased to see her acknowledged but mostly baffled because I’d not experienced her work and this not being the 1950’s I wondered how a "jazz singer" had achieved such cultural prominence. I wasn’t curious enough to do anything so extreme as listen to her music or go to one of her gigs, I was becoming famous myself at the time and that was an all consuming experience. It was only by chance that I attended a Paul Weller gig at the Roundhouse that I ever saw her live.

I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal. Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine. My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I’d only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound. So now I knew. She wasn’t just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a fucking genius.

Shallow fool that I am I now regarded her in a different light, the light that blazed down from heaven when she sang. That lit her up now and a new phase in our friendship began. She came on a few of my TV and radio shows, I still saw her about but now attended to her with a little more interest. Publicly though, Amy increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that youtube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death. I was 27 years old when through the friendship and help of Chip Somers of the treatment centre, Focus12 I found recovery, through Focus I was introduced to support fellowships for alcoholics and drug addicts which are very easy to find and open to anybody with a desire to stop drinking and without which I would not be alive.

Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy’s incredible talent. Or Kurt’s or Jimi’s or Janis’s, some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call.

A Spotify Mix: Radio Hannibal All Time Top 100

The second in a series of mixes using Spotify.  The beauty is that as a Spotify user you can subscribe to the mix at which point it will appear in your playlists for easy playback anytime. 

The Beatles would certainly have been included were they on Spotify.

Radio Hannibal All Time Top 100

Conversation With A Cleveland Musician: Chris Allen

At the heart of one of the most collaborative groups of musicians in Cleveland there's Chris Allen.  His projects range from a long time partnership with Austin Walking Cane to a vibrant solo career to covering The Pogues better than anyone on the planet. 

Like his inspiration, Bruce Springsteen, Chris is rather introverted. And just like Springsteen, when he hits the stage that pent up emotion explodes into song.  He lays his heart on that stage for all to witness. 

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Chris and talking about his passion for music and other things. 

Radio Hannibal:  Where were you born and raised?

Chris Allen:  I was born in Lakewood.  The family moved to Chicago for a few years  when I was three. Chicago are my first memories.
But we ended up back here, and in Rocky River when I started school.

RH:  So when did you first get interested in music?

CA:  I got interested in first or second grade, listening to my older sisters records. 
We listened on my parents huge record player, one of those gigantic box things that had the phono player and the 8 track.
We listened to Springsteen, Petty, The Beatles, Dylan.  Then when I was an early teen I saw a live clip of Springsteen playing Rosalita and that's when I knew what I wanted to do for a living.

RH:  The Phoenix show where all the girls run up and hug him no doubt. So you started playing guitar?

CA:  Yes! Love that clip.  There was so much abandon in their playing. I had an old acoustic around the house that was my mom's. My uncle showed me a few chords and I clunked along. And then when I was 15 my friend Austin Charanghat (Walkin' Cane) brought over an electric Gibson SG that he bought. And the game changed from there completely.  Rock music became a reality in my bedroom.

RH:  No formal lessons then?

CA:  A couple. Me and Auggie used to go to this jazz guy at Bain Park in Fairview. We played "Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald" while he soloed. So obviously that didn't last long.
Most of what I learned, I learned from friends, and from our favorite records. Lots of Zeppelin riffs back then!

RH:  Yes, having someone to learn with like Auggie must have been great. Both motivating each other. It's paid off for you both. When did you first play in front of a crowd?

CA:  High School battle of the bands my senior year.  My band was Kojak and Club Soul. Against Auggie's band. We were horrible, but we had style. Apparently we had 10 votes for first and 10 for last!

But the first real experience I had was my freshman year of college. My band Two Doors Down opened for Flock of Seagulls at the huge school auditorium. It was my first experience with a real stage, sound system, and first time doing an all original set. I was nervous as hell, but when I hit the stage it all went away. It was such a riot.

RH:  Good first gig. That was at Miami of Ohio right?

CA:  Yes, Miami of Ohio. There was an amazing music scene there when I went. I have never seen another one like it.
All sorts of bands recording albums, supporting each others shows. Doing all sorts of multi-band bills. 
My band Rosavelt grew out of that scene.

RH:  I'm sure WOXY had alot to do with it. I was going to ask about the formation of Rosavelt. So that's where you hooked up with Kevin Grasha?

CA:  Yes WOXY had a bit to do with it for sure. And yes, Kevin was in a band called the Newspaper Taxis in that scene that we did a lot of bills with. We both shared a love of a lot of edgier rock stuff...The Replacements, The Meat Puppets, Huskur Du, The Clash...etc. 
So in our down time we started doing an acoustic duo...and then when we got done we'd stay up all night demoing new songs. I knew eventually we'd end up working together.

RH:  Rosavelt had quite a run here in Cleveland. I know it had various members throughout the three albums. Was the demise just the fact that Kevin left town?

CA:  No, actually when he left we started the second wave of the band. We hooked up with Don Dixon and he got us our first label deal, and first national release. With that we ended up doing a ton of touring with Tim Easton, coast to coast, Alaska, Europe. 
That took a toll on the group, especially without any tour support. Great times, but at the end of the last tour I was going to lose the drummer. 
I thought, this is really seeming like a solo project now, and not a band. I was ready to be on my own.  Also Dixon and Rosavelt's manager at the time were really supportive of me going out on my own.  So that eased the transition.

RH:  How did you meet Don Dixon?

CA:  I had talked to Dixon on the phone a couple of times when Rosavelt was working on the second album "Transistor Blues". He had been following what was going on and I had expressed interest in working with him. We finally met when we opened up for him at show in Akron for 91.3 FM, the Summit. 
We were a power trio then. I purposely played all new songs that night, and he came to the stage immediately after the set and said, "Are those new? Let's magnetize them."

RH:  Magnetize...ha...as in recording on tape.  Never heard that one before.  Rumor has it you're about to resurrect Rosavelt. Can you tell us about it?

CA:  Yes, Kevin and me stayed good friends over the years.  Even when he wasn't in the band, he remained one of its biggest supporters. That always meant a lot to me since it was our collective that was the heart of the band. 
I was working on a track for him earlier this year, and as we rehearsed together that spark really hit again. We started dreaming about how great it would be to do another record....and when it comes to albums, I would rather do it, than dream it. So we set the ball in motion.  We will start this September recording it. The final details are still in the works but it will be released early next year.  Don Dixon will be on board to produce again though. That much is for certain.

RH:  Very exciting. I hope there's a vinyl version like your last solo album "Acetate". You also play in two fabulous collective projects, The Boys From County Hell and The Ohio City Singers. Brent Kirby told us about the new Ohio City Singers album being recorded as well. Sounds like lots of studio time ahead for you.

CA:  Yes indeed! I just finished writing up the last of the OCS songs this weekend with a song called "Make Believe." Really looking forward to that. That starts and ends in September for a Christmas 2011 release. 
I do hope to do vinyl, but finances will dictate that. Doing vinyl for ACETATE was a personal career highlight!  But a very expensive one.

RH:  You are at the core of a very collaborative scene here in Cleveland. What's your take of the music scene here in general?

CA:  The scene here is as crazy as it ever was...and actually a little more coherent. There is some great music coming out of it. I've always enjoyed being a part of it, and have made some amazing friends, both musician and non-musician. The music listeners of this town, and the media, are very supportive of what we do. They are also very protective of it, which I really love.

RH:  What's your favorite thing in Cleveland?

CA:  My favorite thing in Cleveland, is Cleveland. I love the spirit of it. My least favorite thing about Cleveland is that more Clevelanders don't embrace it and realize what an amazing town we have here.

RH:  Where do you like to go for a night on the town when you aren't part of the entertainment.

CA:  My garage. I get the grill fired up, and turn on Tom Hamilton and the boys on the radio. I am a Tribe fanatic, and love listening to games on the radio. So my night off marries my two favorite hobbies, cooking and listening to baseball.

RH:  I prefer baseball on the radio over TV too. Go Tribe. So, what's your goal?

CA:  To record as many records as possible before I die. And record them with my friends.

_____________________________________________________________________

Chris Allen website

 

Chris Allen - I Don't Live here Anymore

Chris Allen - Acetate on Spotify

 

Cleveland Singer/Songwriter Matt Harmon Needs A Kickstart

It seems that every week I'm hearing of a new project looking for funding on the Kickstarter website.  I discussed the site in the past and how it allows fans and those with a philanthropic bent to help raise money for a venture. 

Many times those ventures are from musicians who are trying to record an album.  Their needs are quite modest.  There's studio time and production costs, maybe a little promotion.  So it is with friend and local Cleveland musician Matt Harmon and his Kickstarter project, Cosmic Yonder. 

In reading about the project, Matt has some ambitious studio work in front of him.  He's composed string arrangements and assembled a group of talented Cleveland musicians to help create the music. 

I know from listening to past demos and seeing him perform that Matt's songwriting and lyrics center around the joy of life.  One of his major influences is Randy Newman. I'm quite anxious to hear the finished work and thrilled to be a part of it by donating. 

Matt performing with other singer/songwriters at Beachland Tavern, 2010

Music Pick Of The Day: R.E.M. - Life's Rich Pageant

It's been a good year for us R.E.M. fans.  In the first part of 2011 they released Collapse Into Now, a very satisfying if not ground breaking album.  The songs conjure up various periods of the bands career making for their best work in a decade. 

Now comes the third in a series of re-issues from the R.E.M. back catalog.  Logically, this is a remastering of their third album, Life's Rich Pageant.  Like the previous two re-issues of the debut and sophomore efforts it's a two disc set.  Unlike the previous two which contained live shows on those second discs, the new one is chock full of demos and outtakes from the recording session. 

It's always enjoyable to hear songs you know by heart in a new light.  Some are throwaways but others will take their place as great songs from a great band.

As for the remastered proper album it sounds as vibrant as ever.  Not only does it begin with a one two punch that's hard to top, "Begin The Begin" into "These Days", but it also contains my favorite song by R.E.M. "Fall On Me".

Artist:  R.E.M.

Album:  Life's Rich Pageant 25th Anniversary Edition

Review:  The Guardian

Listen to it on Spotify