From: owner-jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org (jangle-poets-digest) To: jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org Subject: jangle-poets-digest V9 #158 Reply-To: jangle-poets@smoe.org Sender: owner-jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk jangle-poets-digest Tuesday, April 29 2008 Volume 09 : Number 158 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [JP] idea for bruce ["rhiannon giles" ] [JP] TK 4/25/08 - new Pete songs [Nieldsforever@aol.com] Re: [JP] idea for bruce [Nieldsforever@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:56:24 -0400 From: "rhiannon giles" Subject: [JP] idea for bruce Bruce- Why don't you start a blog? Then you could make posts as long as you want, and people could read them in their spare time... instead of getting your posts in their email, when they're in a hurry to clean out their inbox. There are bunches of free blog sites, some are probably better than others. I don't know which ones, but I know of people that use Live Journal, Blogger, Xanga, and several others. I think it would be a good outlet for you! Check out the Kennedys' Official Home Page: http://www.KennedysMusic.com/ Fab photos, the Official tour diary, dashboard Buddha haiku, groovy merchandise...what more could you ask for? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:17:58 EDT From: Nieldsforever@aol.com Subject: [JP] TK 4/25/08 - new Pete songs > > Pete and Maura each did a 1-song set during the show, as I'd seen > > them do at the 3/29/08 120-Minute Folk Festival in Titusville NJ, > > only I'd never before heard the one Pete did. It was great, a Pete > > original. > > > > After the show, Pete told me about 2 other new songs he's just > > written. > The song Pete played was inspired by a story told to him by a ghost -- "maybe!" as he said. Called "The Devil's Boat," it concerns a harrowing mishap on the open seas, with shipwrecks and sharks. At some point somewhere, Pete was present when a fellow was telling a "Big Fish" story, sort of their own personal "Moby Dick" or Edgar Allan Poe "Descent Into the Maelstrom" misadventure yarn. Pete told him something like, "Lucky you're even still alive!" -- to which the yarnster replied eerily, "I haven't always been," or something like that. Hence Pete's tagging this as based on a tale told to him by a ghost -- maybe! The clincher at the end of each verse has to do with the addition of another death certificate to seal the man's fate, in the assumption that he had perished on this "boat from hell." Pete said that the part about the death certificate derives from the original story, as told to him. I asked Pete if he had sung "The Devil's Boat" on the cruise, and we agreed that that might not have been the most appropriate venue for that song. :-) Maura indicated that she'd never heard him do it, since Pete had done it previously only when he was touring the South without her, while she was responding to her family emergency. See, I said those solo Pete appearnces were shows not to miss! :-) The 2 other new songs which Pete mentioned but didn't play, are "Whistle in the Dark" and "Something Real." "Whistle in the Dark" was commissioned for a project of all songs based on _To Kill a Mockingbird_, an idea cooked up by Dick Pleasants of WUMB. "The Devil's Boat," "Whistle in the Dark," and "Something Real" are all available on Pete's Myspace site, and from the TK's website. Bruce Check out the Kennedys' Official Home Page: http://www.KennedysMusic.com/ Fab photos, the Official tour diary, dashboard Buddha haiku, groovy merchandise...what more could you ask for? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:30:52 EDT From: Nieldsforever@aol.com Subject: Re: [JP] idea for bruce I appreciate the helpful suggestions by Rhi and others. It's an interesting juncture where fellow Jangle-Poets list members get to actually interact on the list, in conversation with one another, versus only being passive recipients of passed-on information, as in an e-mailing like the monthly Kennedys Newsletter, where ordinarily "No Reply At All" is the norm. It's also interesting to me that this discussion has been about list protocol, not about TK per se. FWIW, I started a blog once -- felt it to be a dreary failure in that no actual communication was going on -- and never did it again. It just didn't feel like a "Tribe," the way a list like this or the Nook does. It's probably my fault that my off-topic postings reaped much the same harvest -- passing on information where not much in the way of reply was even possible -- like trying to pass on conditions on earth to recipients on the moon (or vice versa). Nonetheless! There was a point to my "Life Is Small" parody. "Life Is Large" has the line, "Life is large, bigger than the both of us." ISTM that the Kennedys are welcoming (see the first post in the J-P archives). They are also life-affirming ("Life Is Large"), supportive of other musicians (Cadence, C&M, Hungrytown, Bedsit Poets, etc. etc.), and true to their roots in Americana (too many examples to name), American political and philosophical heritage (ditto), world culture generally, musical influences generally. If I may use the word, there is a catholicity about TK, a universality. In being themselves, they connect with the much larger world around -- being simultaneously individual and all-embracing -- not at all a contradiction in terms. They're living proof that that's not only not a contradiction, but it's possible. "Life is large, bigger than the both of us." -- I wonder if this really applies to the way this list has been drifting. Could it be said that the "Life Is Large" ethos has become something of a stranger and an outsider to the Kennedys' own list? Or is the Jangle-Poets list already in the process of straying from the "Life Is Large" credo to a more exclusionary protocol? Not like P&M at all? Maybe it's a sign of the times, because America has made its bed and now has to lie in it, with so many bedsores -- America "in bed" with bad leaders, horrible policies, and an irrational war that is literally sucking the lifeblood out of America. Don't let the bed bugs bite? Too late. In such times, faced with the alternatives, what is the practical thing to do, what choice do we really have? Idealism has fallen on hard times, and it may take a Jangle-Poet or two, or a tribe of idealists, to keep the dream of a better world alive. When Obama tries to stay above the level of mudslinging, he's dismissed as an elitist. Due to practical considerations, fighting dirty is seen as a necessity, hence a positively good thing. If Obama descends to the level of fighting dirty, he is dismissed as a hypocrite for espousing a One America ideal and then acting just like everyone else does in politics. It's a no-win situation. Pretty much the same One America ethos that TK espoused openly at West Hartford! When they were out on tour, they said, they didn't see state borders showing color shifts amongst red and blue! Is idealism elitist and out of touch? It's sure not the easiest stance to maintain in this world. Idealism takes hard work, like a marriage does. As Morrissey of the Smiths sang -- "It's so easy to laugh, it's so easy to hate - -- It takes strength to be gentle and kind." That's how I see TK, anyway. Bruce Check out the Kennedys' Official Home Page: http://www.KennedysMusic.com/ Fab photos, the Official tour diary, dashboard Buddha haiku, groovy merchandise...what more could you ask for? ------------------------------ End of jangle-poets-digest V9 #158 **********************************