Take a listen:

Oscar Brand sings Bunch of Roses

Download Folk Songs for Little Sailors (89.2MB zip file)

Folk Songs for Little Sailors
Riverside Wonderland RLP 1424
1966

Tracks:

Sail Away, Sail Away – Bob Gibson
The Walloping Windowblind – Oscar Brand
The Bold Fisherman – Oscar Brand
High Barbary – Billy Faier
The Sailor’s Hornpipe – Billy Faier
The Fishes Song – Peggy Seeger & Ewan MacColl
The Golden Vanitee – Peggy Seeger & Ewan MacColl
Two Little Boats I Spy – Louise DeCormier
The Mermaid – John Runge
The Flying Dutchman – Dean Gitter
Belfast Hornpipe – Margaret Barry
Sir Patrick Spens – Ed McCurdy
Bunch Of Roses – Oscar Brand
Midnight On The Ocean – Oscar Brand
Sailing Along And Singing – The Renaissance Chorus

The songs on this record go a way toward explaining me and my siblings’ sense of humor. Interspersing magical things—such as sliding down rainbows, talking critters, and elves—with everyday experiences, like finding a penny or playing on a swing, the story is partly sung in a wacky falsetto, partly narrated, partly evoked with quirky piano accompaniments that used more modernistic dissonant touches than I’ve ever heard in kids’ music, then or since. The whole thing had an edge…so sincerely, enthusiastically silly it verged on weird and nutty.

Listen to “My Shoes Went Walking”

We’ve spent years searching for a reissue, or someone else’s rip, or a less damaged copy—anything—for years, to no avail. Recently, I discovered that my brother-in-law owns a vinyl-to-digital converter. So on my last family visit, I borrowed the LP from my mom and converted it.

I’ve cleaned it up as best I could with Audacity; that is to say, it’s pretty gnarly. Track #21 had pretty hopeless skips, which I could not really repair properly. Well, take it or leave it!

Download it here: Peppermint Tree (95 MB zip file)

Come and See the Peppermint Tree

Artists: Donny McKayle, Evelyn D. Lohoefer, Stan Raiff, Charlie Byrd
Composer: Evelyn D. Lohoefer
Riverside Wonderland RLP 1453
1960

SIDE A

Follow Me
Kitchen Stuff
My Shoes Went Walking
The Yellow Bee
Jabberty-Jib
The Elf
A Shiny Penny
Putt-Putt
My Pretty Red Swing
Riddle
Dance Awhile

SIDE B

Jump and Spin
Riding on a Star
Me, Too
Wheels
All Mixed Up
Miriam
The Dress
The Ribbon
Carrots and Things
The Crow, The Worm and The Fish
The Moon in the Yard
Thingamabob
The Peppermint Tree
Mr. Sandman

I’m using Audacity, the free audio editor. It has a horrendously ugly and unintuitive user interface but it can do a few useful things, like attempt to remove clicks and noise with just a couple of button presses. And slice, dice and splice audio tracks.

I’ll be posting download links soon.

If you’re on the jessibird.net home page, you’ll need to click the title of this post to see the whole thing.

Favorite albums

Please note that I do not claim that these are the best albums of 2009, simply the ones I like a lot and play over and over.

Update: Dang, my Amazon widgets evaporated. Sorry about that. No, I’m not going to recreate them, bleh.

Next page: runners-up

I’ve been trying to tell anyone who will listen about the Free Music Archive, where the music is legitimately free and good. Don’t take my word for it. Try listening to this sampling of some favorites of mine. If you like a particular track, click the little i for more info, or the arrow to download:

If I had to pick my favorite of these favorites, it would be a tough call but it’d have to be Selva de Mar. Their album Olas Invisibles is a winner. Go ahead! Click on the album cover to download it now! And happy new year to you!

Ingredients for this recipe: iTunes, iCal and AppleScript. No scripting knowledge required, I promise.

Make your wake-up playlist

Make a playlist in iTunes that you’d like to wake up to. I like to wake up to some mellow classical or jazz radio. If you like that idea, just click each link below to download the station’s stream; double-click the downloaded file to open it in iTunes; then copy each station you like to your playlist.

• All-Classical WGBH 89.7-HD2
• KCSM Jazz 91 * The Bay Area’s Jazz Station *
• KJAZ SPIRIT- JAZZ RADIO
• KKJZ 88.1 FM
• WCPE
• WNYC
• 1.FM – Otto’s Baroque Musick

Get the wake-up AppleScript

Go to Doug’s Mac-as-iTunes-alarm-clock tutorial, but do not follow the steps in order.

Go straight to the complete script right under Step 3: Volume Up and Down. Click the little [upm] link; this will open the script in the AppleScript Editor.

Customize the script by changing the “tick” and “thismany” numbers, to adjust how quickly the volume ramps up in iTunes. And don’t forget to change “Recently Played” to the name of your own playlist!

Click the Run button to test out your script. Clever, aren’t you? :D

Now save your script, as a script, to any location on your computer you like, with any name you like.

Schedule your wake-up script in iCal

Create an iCal event at a suitable time of day. In your event, set an alarm, choose “Run Script,” and then choose your wake-up script. Set your event to repeat daily, or as desired.

Alright sleepyheads, now you just need to get to bed earlier, and waking up should be a little more pleasant! And if you’re feeling grateful, please consider making a donation to Doug.

I may look middle-aged, but do you know, I feel about ten years old (in the best way) when I’m riding in the dark with colored flashing lights. Kind of like a trip in a time machine.

Just today, the Night Riders club membership has doubled. My friends A and L wrapped their BikeGlow lights today, and A’s partner M will wrap his soon, I’m sure.

Speaking of another kind of time machine, L has a project going: fixing up an old 78 phonograph that runs on tubes. I am looking forward to traveling in the musical time machine to hear whatever 78s he’s got.

McK also has a musical time machine going on over at his blog. He’s been posting pics of old punk shows, his buddies in X, and Lee Scratch Perry. Well worth a look!

And now, a free treat for your ears. Have you ever heard and appreciated Fela Kuti’s afrobeat? Then you’re gonna like Pax Nicholas, who was in Fela’s band. Courtesy of Voodoofunk Frank and Daptone Records, you can stream the entire album. You can also read why Fela Kuti said, “Don’t you ever, EVER play it again!” Sorry, Fela, I AM going to play it again. Click the pic below to get yourself funked up, 70s afrobeat style.

Radiohead is giving away a new song for absolutely free! Watch them perform it:

Download it: These Are My Twisted Words

(Hat tip to cyclelicious)

I guess I’m a little punchy cause I stayed out late; for me, 9:30 pm is late. I had fun hanging with my friend L and singing Mexican folk songs. Well, he sang, I croaked through my rusty pipes. We would both like to learn the song Cucurucu La Paloma, which is a beauty.

My favorite lines:

Las piedras jamás, paloma,
¿qué van a saber de amores?

(What will these stones ever know of love?)

Thanks L for a fun evening!

I am so lucky to have a friend who’s a folk musician, and another friend M who’s a punk rocker. They help keep my ears from getting too used to one kind of music.

It’s M’s birthday. Many happy returns of the day, M! My wish for you: may this be the year you get to reconnect with making your own music!