https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0va3F2PWBJc
Jackson C. Frank (1965)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0va3F2PWBJc
Jackson C. Frank (1965)
So with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite jerkin tight at it's tether
Blues Run the Game. Great song. Interesting guy. A burn victim and a bit of a psychopath. Not the best singer in the world, but he wrote some interesting songs. He's also supposed to be the guy who talked Sandy Denny into leaving a stable nursing job to become a singer (if anyone remembers her). Anyway, it's nice to see that his torch (no pun intended) has been passed to a new generation.
Only one album though, too bad.
So with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite jerkin tight at it's tether
Infantile exhibitionism but not entirly without merit, as when he appears to shoot the suckers who paid to see him.Originally Posted by Clopin
I think I would prefer Robert Zimmerman's attempt but it would be a close run thing.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Hurricane is a good song though.
So with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite jerkin tight at it's tether
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=roNB1b9pUvc
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada
The best, in my opinion, album from the (French) Canadian sensations themselves!
So with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite jerkin tight at it's tether
There are other recordings around though. Jackson C. Frank ended up a homeless drifter. Late in his life, a well-to-do fan of his brief early recording career found him pretty much on his back in an alley in New York City, and set him up in his own place. Before he died (which didn't take long), his patron had him record some new songs (which may or may not have been released on an album--I'm not sure). Some of the songs are scary. You can hear him breathing like a monster as he sings them. He was also pretty scary at that point: obese and feral looking, with one empty eye socket (the eye had apparently been shot out as he was being rescued). Some people think these songs are crap, but I find some of them powerful, in a kind of sad and scary way. They just seem like part of his whole weird story to me.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A_4N05coN2g
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 02-11-2015 at 10:13 AM.
That's quite a song! I had never heard it. I know his life story though. I like that, when he was recording his music with Paul Simon, he was reportedly too shy to have anyone look at him while he played.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CprS7irIVCE
Joanna Newsom - Peach Plum Pear
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8vcOvPnl7wE
Joanna Newsom - Sawdust and Diamonds
So with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite jerkin tight at it's tether
Wow, fantastic. Thank you so much! Reminds me (though it is very different) of the late Elliott Smith towards the end of his life (which he ended himself with a kitchen knife).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX6etUAIbRU
(irritating crowd noise but magnificent nonetheless)
Oh you're welcome. Another guy who lived his blues was cool-jazz trumpeter and all around bad-*ss Chet Baker. Baker was also found in an alley, but unfortunately he was already dead. This is pre-heroin Baker:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GfoFdVTMEsg
And is post-heroin, doing a piece by Elvis Costello (who had engineered a brief comeback for Baker for a few years before he died). It's a great song to listen to when it's raining (and the best after-sex song in the history of music):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z4PKzz81m5c
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 02-11-2015 at 03:54 PM.
Yeah, I know about Chet Baker. Almost Blue is a wonderful song! My favorite Chet though is his version of 'I Fall in Love Too Easily.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zrSoHgAAWo
While we're on the subject of depressive musicians, should we really neglect Nick Drake? Here's his 'Harvest Breed.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCy25ylGW_E
Definitely not your typical ballad.
Jackson Frank's one of my all time favorites, it's sad to see him disparaged.
It's also sad to see his story relegated to such a callous remark by someone who previously said they thought poorly of them as a musician - never fun to discuss people you've loved your whole life, with people who think poorly of them.
Frank's story is very tragic; he was the only survivor of an explosion that destroyed his entire music class, and left him badly crippled. He learned to play guitar while in the hospital, and a lot of his music was incredibly good - had some depth of feeling that in some ways, I haven't seen anywhere else. .
My favorites by him are "Just Like Anything," "Marlene," "Milk and Honey," - a traditional song; Jackson's rendition of it is quite astounding - "Here Come the Blues," just a nice, short sweet blues number - and then there two lovely yet cryptic songs, "My Name is Carnival," and "Yellow Walls."
Naturally, we all wish people like him could have healed completely, and led normal lives.. healing work is so valuable. But unfortunately, he wasn't able to overcome his demons, and died at an early age, broke and destitute, like so many other famous musicians and artists.
Perhaps lending credit to Einstein's assertion: "The value of a human being is determined primarily by how he has attained liberation from the self."
Drake's one of those interesting musicians that I came to later, after I'd already learned tons about the folk scene that he came from.. I was a little bit spoiled on him at first, because his guitar wasn't as incredibly skilled as some of the others from his time - Jansch and others.
At the same time, "From the Morning" was the first song I heard by him, and has ever since definitely been one of the most beautiful, simply incredible songs I've ever heard. . . It's always great to find those! :-)
I haven't gone much further into Drake's music, a few here and there. He definitely left an indeliable stamp on music.
Yeah, poor Nick Drake. I think he had some kind of anxiety disorder that kept him from touring, so he wasn't seen as having a lot of commercial potential. He was a suicide, too, which is always sad. (Must be tough to have mental problems). Personally, I'm not crazy about a lot of his stuff. His voice is a little too sweet for me. But some of his songs are good. This one is fairly well known:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2JjJPDz3EE
A weird addendum to Jackson Frank's legend is a song written by Sandy Denny not long before she died (of booze and cocaine and a stairway that wouldn't stay put) that is supposed to be about Frank and to contain a cryptogram of his name. It would have been decades before Frank's work was "rediscovered" by this generation, so when she says "Do you still live there in Baltimore?" she probably didn't have had a clue what the answer was. Denny died in the '70s, but Frank had been a mentor (some say lover) in London in the '60s, and had talked her into a career as a singer (Fairport did a lot of his songs in the early years). Anyway, it's a sad, kind of creepy song. She was half out of her mind when she wrote it, and her songs and lyrics had given way to an obscure sort of surrealism by then. I like them a lot myself, but they're not everyone's cup of tea.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wRZrD5bXtdQ
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 02-12-2015 at 08:38 AM.
I love that Sandy Denny song.
More musicians who ended tragically.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=raLXnnlPI_I
Karen Dalton - Katie Cruel
So with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite jerkin tight at it's tether
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