TGIF! presents...Bartholomew's "The Silent Comedy"!

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BARTON HOLLOW goes GOLD!

The Civil Wars' debut album is celebrating in Nashville on September 26th! If you haven't heard of Joy and John Paul...well, you should. Grammy Awards, Americana Music awards....I'm beginning to lose track. I first caught wind of them in April 2011 - saw them here in Milwaukee in November 2011.

Here's the official music video for the song "Barton Hollow". I should fly off to Nashville...

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TGIF! presents...The Civil Wars' "Kingdom Come"!

Brand new! From The Hunger Games soundtrack!

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TGIF! presents...The Civil Wars' "20 Years"!

Check out this previous blog post on the band and some of their tuneage.

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The Civil Wars.

I like them.

Discovered their music the day AFTER they played in Milwaukee last week. Here are a few favorite tunes - "Poison and Wine", "Falling" and "Barton Hollow".

Did I say I like them? And to think, they had separate careers before they came together. ;)

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Sahara Smith & Pieta Brown.

Sahara Smith's (top) "The Real Thing". Pieta Brown's "Are You Free?".

Both have been featured on NPR. I heard one of their songs (not even sure if it's either of these songs). Looked up the playlists and I can't find the song I heard. Both have similar styles, I think. Driving me nuts. Which one do you like?

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Great Northern's "Houses".

Heard this song on NPR's Morning Becomes Eclectic yesterday and can't get it out of my head. Give'r a listen (but pause the jukebox at the top of the page first).

Houses - Great Northern

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From Jeff's list of "songs that make me want to mutilate small animals"..."The Golden Age".

by Asteroids Galaxy Tour. They're a Danish alternative band.

The only good Danes are Viggo Mortensen (half Danish), Connie Nielsen, Hamlet, director - Lars von Trier, Wisconsin RB and Heisman Trophy winner Ron Dayne and any Danish models, like Helena Christensen (at her height), for example.

The lead singer in Asteroids Galaxy Tour - Mette Lindberg...her voice. I want to strangle her. And yes I listened to a few of their other songs.

I still wanted to strangle her.

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Jennifer Terran, The Barn & "Wonderment".

The Barn - off the beaten path somewhere in Santa Barbara. I saw this unique singer/songwriter Saturday night. Here's what the critics have said about her:

"Endowed with a voice or heartbreaking purity and melodic talent, Jennifer Terran will most likely rise rapidly to the level of the greats." TELARAMA (Paris, France)

"Breathtaking... timeless... pure... monumental.... Categorizing Jennifer Terran is impossible. Terran is a style of her own." OOR MAGAZINE (Netherlands)

"Jennifer Terran is an unusual, very unusual kind of artist and quite a woman! A truly magnificent Film Noire Diva and a world-class songwriter-singer. This woman is unique, captivating vocalist, pianist, tenderly rebellious songwriter, producer by raison d'etre and necessity, hip-hop dynamic instructor and dancer, story-teller, an existentialist philosopher, an emotionally and intellectually charged teaser and provocative presence and most certainly a daring-devil entrepreneur." HERALD TIMES PARADE (London, UK)

"...sounds a lot like, well, Jennifer Terran. Grade A." LA Times - Bill Locey

"Captivating...powerful voice and songwriting" Chris Douridas - KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic"

(WAIT! There's more...)

I took the Pacific Surfliner (Amtrak) from the 1929 art deco Union Station in downtown Los Angeles up to Santa Barbara, where I was met by my friend Val and her friend Cynthia. We had dinner at some outdoor Mexican cafe, then drove to a remote spot in Santa Barbara just north of the 101. The Barn is Jennifer's private music hall and recording, with the back opening up so that the crickets, the moon, and the air can all listen in to Jennifer's unique voice and music. The intimacy there was quite striking and added much to Jennifer's presence at the baby grand - her voice and her musicianship on the piano. Oh - and if you missed my photographic post on the piano just outside The Barn, you can see it here.

Torches lit up the path to the unisex privy (which was very nice for an outdoor bathroom) and off to the right of that is where Laura and her husband and two children live. Laura Mihalka accompanied Jennifer on cello and I gained a greater appreciation for the nuances the cello offers any bit of music. Candlelight, pillows, chocolates, wine - amazing ambiance. I would say 40-50 were there and we had a chance to chat with Jennifer afterwards.

I likened the entire experience of being in The Barn and watching her perform to that of seeing the Giant Sequoias with my brother in June. "Wonderment".

I could go on and on but why don't you read what others have said...

"She speaks of the unspeakable, with great touch and skill in production, the arrangements and the songs. Jennifer Terran did show her nakedness on the beautiful pictures of The Musician, on Full Moon In 3 she is naked in the head of the listener. In my mind I give her a kiss. 5 STARS for FULL MOON IN 3." HEAVEN MAGAZINE (NL)

"All of you wondering whether Kate Bush is going to release another album, or if Tori Amos will ever make another record as good as her debut, can stop bothering with such side issues. Here's the album you'v e been waiting for.... I don't think there's a duff track. Her voice is staggering. And you've got to love someone who can yell out a full-on, Springsteenesque '1-2-3-4!' to announce the arrival of a violin."Terran's." The Musician - #2 BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR THE TIMES (London)

" * * * * " (Four Stars for "The Musician") ROLLING STONE

"I'd gladly trade in all my Tori Amos CDs for Jennifer Terran's 'The Musician'...a magnificant album." ***** (five stars and #1 BEST POP ALBUM of 2001 HEAVEN MAGAZINE (Holland) - Eric Scipio

"The Musician is Terran's third album, but strangely enough it has the innocence of a debut. The compositions are fluent and playful, both rough and soft. Terran produced and mixed everything herself, but has succeeded in preventing that the spontaneity of her music was killed by perfectionism... At some point Tori Amos had that same gift, but in the meantime she has become a phenomena? Let's hope that Jennifer Terran will never become world famous." PLATOMANIA (HOLLAND)

"Listening to Cruel was an orgasmic auditory experience. Sometimes Terran sounds like a spiritual pop-folk goddess, and at other moment she comes off like a wide-eyed town freak ....it always sounds beautiful. You've gotta listen to understand." The Fish Rap Live - Jenni Balsam

Poster from Jennifer's European tour in Belgium, France and The Netherlands.

"FULL MOON IN 3 is a remarkable, beautiful and haunting album, an original, sincere and moving musical masterpiece. It also marks Jennifer Terran out as one of the most creative and distinctive singer/songwriters around at the moment. I will be surprised if anything released in 2006 will match this for its emotional intensity and sheer beauty." THE MUSICIAN (#1 Best Album of the Year), SHAKINSTIR (UK)

"Not everybody can be both scary and vulnerable; Jennifer Terran (pronounced tearin') can. The scary part is her voice, which spirals into regions so high you fear sh e'll disappear or crash, and lately it has acquired a diamond-dust edge that can saw through a stack of hearts, first of all her own." LA WEEKLY (USA)

For more on Jennifer Terran's music, check out the following:

Dell Computer television commercial, The America Song on Youtube, Grand Canyon on Youtube, and her website.

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Piano In the Key of Mute.

Taken outside at Jennifer Terran's studio in Santa Barbara. Check a couple posts above for a review of Jennifer's concert at The Barn.

Which do you prefer - the color shot (1) or the sepia shot (2)?

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Separated at birth? Jesca Hoop, that song of hers I hate, and Tanna Frederick.

She’s an indie singer/songwriter that I hear on NPR all the time.

Finally figured out today that she belongs to this particular song and when I hear it I go ballistic. It’s called Summertime and it’s on her latest album, Kismet.

I hate this song. Hate as in I want the song to die. Now - I have listened to some of Hoop’s other stuff (sampled, more like it) and I enjoy her. But this song – Summertime – it reminds me of a quote from the movie, The Dirty Dozen. Telly Savalas’ character, Archer Maggot yells down to the other soldiers who are listening to a woman singing on a phonograph, I think, and he yells out (and I’m paraphrasing), “You shut that wailing bitch up!”.

I’m not calling Jesca Hoop a wailing bitch. Just the two are three lyric sections where she sounds like “a wailing bitch”. Might also be a result of overdubbing. But the sound makes me wanna wring her neck. Grating. Give it a listen and see what you think.

(I think Jesca Hoop bears some resemblance to an actor-friend of mine, Tanna Frederick - right. Or Tanna bears a resemblance to Jesca. No?)

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