From: owner-jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org (jangle-poets-digest) To: jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org Subject: jangle-poets-digest V9 #243 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 Wednesday, December 10 2008 Volume 09 : Number 243 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [JP] Kennedys Weekend w/ Bern - Highlights [MercyHouse1@aol.com] [JP] Maura's "Dreamless Sleep" [MercyHouse1@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2008 23:49:38 EST From: MercyHouse1@aol.com Subject: [JP] Kennedys Weekend w/ Bern - Highlights Highlights of my Kennedys Weekend with Bern. 3 Kennedys shows in 2 days in 2 different states (VA & PA) w/ 2 other states in between (MD & DE) -- ! It was a whirlwind tour of Kennedys fun like no other. ========== Kennedys @ Jammin Java, Vienna VA 12/5/08 7:30 PM ========== "And Your Bird Can Sing" w/ Pete's amazing fretwork! Two older songs in a row -- "Fortune Teller Road" followed by "Day In & Day Out." "Season of the Witch" -- !!! Strangelings do it -- Maura did it 10/9/08 as part of her amazing, amazing solo debut at Kenny's Castaways -- and now I've seen TK do it as the duo! :-) *** Debut of Maura Kennedy's "Dreamless Sleep" -- !!! Requires separate post. "Shadows With the Lonely" with Maura playing jazzier new chords! "Matty Groves" for Bernadette! "8 Miles High" segueing to Pete playing Beatles riffs for "I Feel Fine," "Day Tripper," and "Norwegian Wood." "I Feel Fine" was fantastically apropos of Maura, because she'd just licked a 3-day flu. And both "Day Tripper" and "Norwegian Wood" were phenomenally apropos of Bruce and Bern's 3-day Kennedys road trip! :-) ======= Snacks @ Jammin Java, Vienna VA 12/6/08 11 AM ======= Jazzy arrangements of Christmas standards -- "Jingle Bells," "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," "Deck the Halls," "Jingle Bell Rock." Delightful! Maura jumping up & down like a jumping jack on "Half of Us." One of the most fun Kennedys songs ever, and a specialty of the Snacks. "What are we for if not for this?" Made me want to jump for joy as well. :-) *** "Namaste" w/ Bruce & Bern -- !!! Requires separate post. *** "Ring of Fire" w/ birthday girl Melinda -- !!! Requires separate post. "Love Train." I loved it when P&M led the "Love Train" conga line during their guerrilla folk set at FRFF in the midway, in front of their vintage clothing booth, all those years ago. P&M revel in that same glory, only with a love-trainload of kids, at every Snacks show. No wonder I love the Snacks! That Kennedys guerrilla set in the midway was the highlight of the entire Falcon Ridge festival for me, that year. "Twist & Shout" medley w/ "Rock Around the Clock" & "Blue Suede Shoes." Are the Snacks the most fun Kennedys shows that they do? They might be. An entire gaggle of kids rocking and bopping about to the Snacks brings out the kid in me too! ======== Kennedys @ Tin Angel, Philly 12/6/08 7:30 PM ======= P&M asking for requests from the audience before they'd even started. Never seen that before! Since Bern & I were right there in the front row, almost in the lap of TK, they did Bern's request "Half a Million Miles" and mine, "Common Bond." P&M doing "Bernadette" in honor of Bernadette, to open the show! Pete retelling his 125th Street Election Night story between "Get It Right" and "What's Going On" while Maura kept strumming. Wow. "Just the Rain" for Bruce! *** "Goldfinger" -- !!! Requires separate post. Unique encore of Handel's "How Beautiful Are the Feet" going to "Stand." The Kennedys' great classic, preceded by a lesser heard song from Handel's great classic, "The Messiah." From one classic to another. ========== Overall highlight of my Kennedys Weekend w/ Bern ========== *** Being with Bernadette Gallagher for 3 straight days. It was sweet. It dispelled everything I was afraid of WRT things that had gone down between the two of us in the past. It was "A Bend in the River," it chased the clouds away. "Most days are not like this, you understand." How about 3 straight days of "most days are not like this" ? Nothing like that has ever happened to me before. It was Philadelphia Freedom and it was "The Sweetness," with "nothing wrong, nothing wrong, nothing wrong." Sweet! :-) 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: Tue, 9 Dec 2008 23:19:04 EST From: MercyHouse1@aol.com Subject: [JP] Maura's "Dreamless Sleep" In a message dated 12/9/2008 8:13:56 AM Eastern Standard Time, MercyHouse1@aol.com writes: << *** Debut of Maura Kennedy's "Dreamless Sleep" -- !!! Requires separate post. >> It's always such a thrill for me to hear a song being played for the first time. In the online era of posting songs online, maybe it's not quite like being present at the birth, but it's close. The online song has a certain fixed finality about it, preserved for posterity in just that form. But a live performance of a song has a freshness, an aliveness about it. Like life itself, it is capable of change, of variation, and it suffers mutability, it cannot ever be repeated in just that same form. It is absolutely unique and one of a kind. It lives and breathes in a way a recorded finished product does not. And as great as Maura's finished product of "Chains," "Sun Burns Gold," and her other new songs are, there is an especial aliveness and freshness about her singing and playing them. Being there is just too transcendent of a recording for words, and this applies with !!! marks to every Maura Kennedy solo performance I've seen. I live for live music -- I dig the recorded songs -- and "Dreamless Sleep" was an incredible wow that I would've missed if I hadn't done the whole Bernadette - 3 Kennedys show road trip to Philly and VA! 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 #243 **********************************