Titanic Folk-Rock

Bob Dylan’s next record is going to have a long song about the sinking of the Titanic, 100 years ago. Dylan says,

“People are going to say: Well, it’s not very truthful. But a songwriter doesn’t care about what’s truthful. What he cares about is what should’ve happened, what could’ve happened. That’s its own kind of truth.”

That being the case, Dylan’s own take on the Titanic is fair game, and comic Tim Heidecker has recorded a speculative prediction of Bob’s as-yet-unheard song.

The thing is, Dylan is more than 40 years late, because the first and best extended fictional telling of the tale of the Titanic belongs to Jamie Brockett, who used an old Leadbelly song as a springboard. Brockett called the ship the USS for United States Ship, and not RMS for Royal Mail Ship, but hey man, it was 1969.

Boston RadioBDC

Once again, the landscape of Boston radio is changing and, like the return of Barnes Newberry, it’s found on the Internet. The Boston Globe is going back to what some major city newspapers did way back in the 1920’s, by starting its own station. It’s called RadioBDC, which I’m taking to mean “Radio Boston Dot Com.” The station is online only, and it’s essentially picking up where alternative Rock station WFNX left off, when it was sold to Clear Channel earlier this year.

I’m not the target audience for RadioBDC, but I’m hoping it succeeds. It doesn’t have a TuneIn listing yet, and I don’t have a direct URL for it, so for now I can’t play it on my Logitech Media Server network and the only way I can hear RadioBDC is with the station’s Flash player on a computer, which means I won’t be listening to it a lot. But I’ve already heard something I like a lot — Champagne Supernova, by Oasis. I was never one looking to get high, which apparently was a priority for these guys, but drug references in song lyrics have never phased me. For somebody who had bell bottom pants and a paisley shirt in the seventh grade, this is good stuff.

http://youtu.be/g3C7DECI0jU

Oh, Brother!

It’s been over four years since I first posted something about Lon & Derrek Van Eaton. Their debut album, the brilliantly varied Brother, has been a favorite of mine since I bought it high school, and it’s one of the reasons why I keep a couple of turntables working. Lots of memories linked to this vinyl disc! And now I’m very pleased that Brother is finally out on CD, with plenty of bonus tracks.

A minute ago I started listening, and their original demo track, “Warm Woman”, the recording that caught the ear of George Harrison, sounds strikingly better than it does on the LP. Sun Song sure has a lot more oomph to it. I can’t read the liner notes, however, because I don’t have the eyes I did when I was seventeen! I’ll have to dig out my stronger reading glasses.