All That You Have Is Your Soul

I Like Guns

Survive

I remember when this emblematic song hit the airwaves. 1981. I was a much younger man then, and the song reverberated a chord in me. I became a Hank fan, and I appreciated the man as much as his music, even though the image he sold along with his music did little for me.

What I didn't expect was to see myself in the video of the song, released in 2007. 3:42. Wow!

J.S.Bach-Toccata e Fuga BWV 565-Karl Richter

GB&U

Hallelujah

The Overture to The Messiah

Hound Dog Taylor

The Master of the Stratocaster. A buddy on bass, and a buddy on drums. Three geriatric bluesmen. When the critics said he couldn't play shit, Hound Dog said "Yeah, but I shore make it sound good!"

Encore:


From the 1973 Ann Arbor Blues Festival.

Slim Cessna's Auto Club

Old Crow Medicine Show

When I was younger, I used to think you knew you were getting old when your favorite music was the stuff in the dollar an album rack with the skill saw slot cut into the cardboard album covers to prevent jacking up the retail price of discounted vinyl albums. Among those treasures I leaned to appreciate Lightnin' Hopkins, Freddy King and Memphis Slim.



I remember those days, when Country music was like a hidden cocaine habit, something you listened to behind closed doors, lest one of your sophisticated contemporaries hear it tickling eardrums and massaging your soul. It was a guilty pleasure, that you had to have lived a while, experienced a few heart aches, and faced the trials of life stone cold sober to understand. It was what one tweed jacketed intellectual and country music aficionado I knew called "the music of life."



Tonight, on the eve of Thanksgiving, with my son back at home, we stayed late into the night listening to each other's music. He has developed a fondness for a new breed of country music, one which I was oblivious to, as well as the likes of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. I listened with skepticism at first, then I realized........ The stuff is good. The music of life continues to live.

Free Bird

Music........Again

One of the featured instruments, called Motele's Violin, belonged to a 12 year old Jewish boy. He liked to close his eyes and play, day dreaming that he was before a packed concert hall in Europe or even, perhaps, America. He was forced to play it for Nazi officers from Hitler's SS in Belarus in 1944.

"The German officers heard him play in the streets one day and later brought him to perform every night in their compound in town," said Sefi Hanegbi, whose father played alongside Motele in a partisan camp in a forest during World War Two.

After each performance, Motele hid his violin in the building and walked out with an empty case. He would return with the violin case full of explosives, stuffing them into cracks in the walls, and eventually setting them off, Hanegbi said.

Peter has written of a unique concert that has waited too long to be played.



Peter, I would have riden shotgun with you.

Violins of Hope

R.I.P. Jerry

Damn. I just learned Jerry Reed died on September 1 from complications of emphysema. He was 71. Thanks for the music Snowman.

Ike's Landfall

Authorities in three counties estimate approximately 90,000 people refused to evacuate in the face of hurricane Ike, despite a dire warning from forecasters that many of those in one or even two story homes faced "certain death."

"I believe in the man up there, God," said William Steally, a 75-year-old retiree who planned to ride out the storm in Galveston without his wife or sister-in-law. "I believe he will take care of me."



Our prayers are with those on the Texas coast.

Landfall

The Laryngospasms

The Mississippi Squirrel Revival