Drongomala

Excellent - I will most surely check this one out ...

2009-10-02T15:58:35.089+01:00

Excellent - I will most surely check this one out too. I came to love the Veena after working with a number of musicians in Kerala but have not yet heard a version of Malkauns on it.

Thanks again for taking the time to post. Why is your blogger profile not enabled - I'd like to subscribe;)

Hey I heard another dark performance of Malkauns...

2009-10-02T07:09:39.593+01:00

Hey

I heard another dark performance of Malkauns recently by Zia Mohiuddin Dagar on the rudra veena. Unfortunately the recording is pretty bad, tons of tape hiss and such, but it's almost like hearing Pran Nath's recording transferred right onto the rudra veena. I can't remember where I found it so you may have to do a search if you're interested.

However, there's another great performance from him of Malkauns or Panchamkauns - I'm not sure of the distinction really, and it's of very (very very very) good recording quality. It sounds amazing to be honest if you play it on a good stereo. The last part of the performance, the pakhavaj has the fullest, deepest sound I've ever heard in Indian classical music and the last few seconds blow me away every single time I hear it. It has a truly majestic feel, that performance. At a few points the wind can be heard soaring and the music sounds to be riding it like waves. Really incredible, moving stuff. http://rootstrata.com/rootblog/?p=1436

Hi Steven, My order of that CD came through a wee...

2009-07-27T13:53:58.929+01:00

Hi Steven,

My order of that CD came through a week ago (not easy to find!).

It's great that it's a double CD. One CD with a 'low tech' recording and one with a hi-tech. Thanks for the recommendation - they are both cracking renditions that are very powerful.

Drongomala

At around 20 past midnight I got around to listeni...

2009-07-12T13:34:03.099+01:00

At around 20 past midnight I got around to listening to this - it's the old school long raga form and it is full of the voodoo.

His voice is almost monk like in the low tetrachord drones of Malkauns. It's not just mood but perception changing as the spell gets wound up.

Good recommendation Steven.

Drongomala

http://singersaintsrecords.blogspot.com/2009/03/pa...

2009-07-11T19:23:46.373+01:00

http://singersaintsrecords.blogspot.com/2009/03/pandit-pran-nath-midnight-raga-malkauns.html - Disc One

http://singersaintsrecords.blogspot.com/2008/09/pandit-pran-nath-midnight-raga-malkauns.html - Disc Two

... if you want to download.

http://www.henryflynt.org/aesthetics/on_pandit_pran_nath.htm - interesting article on Pran Nath by Henry Flynt.

Hi Steven, Thanks for the comment - I'm going to ...

2009-07-11T13:34:46.951+01:00

Hi Steven,

Thanks for the comment - I'm going to check that recommendation right now !

Drongomala

Interesting article. I have a recommendation for...

2009-07-11T04:35:34.297+01:00

Interesting article.

I have a recommendation for you that you will LOVE:

Pandit Pran Nath - Midnight

This album has two performances of Raga Malkauns. The first from around 1971 and in San Francisco. The second from around 1976 in New York. They are absolutely dark and divine, or perhaps devilishly intense...

FIND IT, if you like Malkauns you can't go wrong. I haven't heard anyone do that Raga like Pran Nath does here.

More boringly, I could repeat the route.I have put...

2009-03-20T22:08:00.000Z

More boringly, I could repeat the route.

I have put more photos up onto http://www.flickr.com/groups/the17__northampton_fishmarket/

Best wishes

Mac Canonymous

Boringly, I can actually remember where quite a fe...

2009-03-19T09:59:00.000Z

Boringly, I can actually remember where quite a few of the 17s were, so that's not an impossibility...

Hey Mac,Good job on that.It would be nice to see t...

2009-03-19T08:38:00.000Z

Hey Mac,

Good job on that.

It would be nice to see the photos with GPS metadata and put them on a google/flcikr map. We could check how much Bill cheated with his circle ;)

Hey Reg,I was that Photographer.I have created a f...

2009-03-18T20:39:00.000Z

Hey Reg,

I was that Photographer.

I have created a flickr group "The17 @ Northampton Fishmarket" and am currently uploading the photo's, you (and your bladder) are there as The17-12.

Best wishes

Mac Canonymous

Hey Reg,There's no denying it! Thanks for the comm...

2009-03-18T11:44:00.000Z

Hey Reg,

There's no denying it! Thanks for the comment.

Drongomala

Wow, you awarded my Mum with the best outfit award...

2009-03-18T09:38:00.000Z

Wow, you awarded my Mum with the best outfit award! She'll be very chuffed.

LOL nice one, we should repost these on the 12000 ...

2009-03-13T23:09:00.000Z

LOL nice one, we should repost these on the 12000 blog when it's breathing : )

Thanks for reading and writing - when I was living...

2006-08-22T23:45:00.000+01:00

Thanks for reading and writing - when I was living in Kerala for a bit the musicians there were bemoaning the lack of young musicians coming through. I recorded with some great Nadaswaram players when I was out there - that sound really hits me too and in some ways it's better for more sonorous ragas in the lower registers. As to Shennai players getting passed over for stock music - I'm sure the great film composers like A.R.Rehman must use real players but you are right about the profileration of people just 'bunging' existing music onto the visuals rather then composing for it.

Acutally I like the Hindi way of doing the music first - it's actually a more superior art form than the moving image of video.

Great tribute to a great musician! I had read a n...

2006-08-22T19:01:00.000+01:00

Great tribute to a great musician! I had read a new article a while back ( I wish I could quote the newpaper source) that there are no more shehnai players left in India, since bollywood directors and weddings have been using recordings instead of real musicians. I just hope and wish that to be not the case.

I like it! Good job. Go on.»

2006-08-10T09:25:00.000+01:00

I like it! Good job. Go on.
»

Lmao I grew up in Cowdenbeath myself (& still live...

2006-06-10T01:14:00.000+01:00

Lmao I grew up in Cowdenbeath myself (& still live there) & Ive never met a single person who has been into hip-hop like I was/am.

Its strange, I always felt that my experience of growing up in Cowden in the 90's was part of what made me gravitate to hip-hop in the way that I did, since its like a ghost-town here.

Its funny, I totally found this by chance (link on wikipedia) and yet your experience seems similar to my own in many ways.

John Tootsie Frazer helped the peace effort by doi...

2006-05-03T17:14:00.000+01:00

John Tootsie Frazer helped the peace effort by doing no work at all in his job with the military - refitting (or not) warships in the Rosyth Dockyard

as to the Munster thing - you wish.

all the best semi-mystery interloper.

The Hulls of Ships?I may be missing something. Per...

2006-05-03T13:00:00.000+01:00

The Hulls of Ships?

I may be missing something. Perhaps it's artistic and poetic license with a beaufully apt but spectacularly vague hidden meaning? Still, deep breath, pinch nose, here I go...

I thought he lived in the front bedroom on his folks 2 bed, 1 bog state home, huge (impressive even) porn collection, a 'top loading' video (VHS!) to play said porn on, a 26" TV to transmit the imagery of girls next door bending over, CD player (first to have one, give him that - you may have convinced yourself that vinyl was 'organic' but you, like everyone else, wanted that CD player - it was the cutting edge of music then and his surrounding associates who fancied themselves as muso afficionado's felt, if they were honest, that he didn't deserve it as he didn't really appreciate it) - though his choice of CD's were questionable in fairness, brown cortina MKII (sports steering wheel - ten quid, halfords) in the cracked concrete driveway, the smell of his old man's tobacco as it singed a subtle woodbine crust on the racing pink mixed with the smell of his lovely (seriously - a lovely woman) mother's scones cooling on the kitchen window ledge. The house was literally a 6 minute walk from the hub (Pub Mclaren) yet old JTF was determined to pass his driving test...

The Hulls of ships? As a schnauzer (miniature you will remember), I was unable to access any nearby shipyards. You must explain that one if you would be so kind.

Also...

I recognise that this is your stage, your platform to indulge your own cultures but perhaps to cement your 'wild west' imagery of 'Cowden, I remember various visitors to the house - Brian Jnr's side, for he had his own 'wing' of the flat above the pub, singing the following jingle towards the end of another successful party where the walls were splashed with teenage spunk and on the odd occasion - luminous body paint...

To the tune of 'The Munsters'

Everybody - put your hands in the air and sing!

They're dirty and they're smelly,
They hav'nae got a telly,
They come fae near Lochgelly,
The 'Cowden family...

It truly was a ghetto, but, like the old cliche's go, 'we were 'appy...'

Next time... I had never given it any thought until yesterday. "The New Goth" Whats in a name? Discuss?

Togo - Confirmed Dead.

you got me thinking about that whole mob. 'Tootsie...

2006-05-02T15:17:00.000+01:00

you got me thinking about that whole mob.

'Tootsie' - the ginger one - my favourite moment was when he used a bottle of fizzy lemonande to get vindaloo out of his eye. that was the second vindaloo in one sitting mind you....other than that he slept in the dockyard in the hulls of ships.

Kitten and his woes. He once asked me to break his leg in proper Escape to Victory style....he was a YTS apprentice and they had him lugging huge concrete blocks for 7 hours a day for less than peanuts....ahhh - the 80's..I was seconds off doing it and it aswell

wild west

At least the McLarens were into computing, trakking on the Amiga and hiphop early in the life of public computing and the media blitz. Possibly helped and fuelled by my own obsessions - there's the upside if you're looking for it;)

The Goth was the manor no question

p.s.....please god don't remind me of Findus anything mate...I have a nausea of years stored up with that...

Ghost of Togo - you were indeed the most sensible ...

2006-05-02T09:27:00.000+01:00

Ghost of Togo - you were indeed the most sensible of the whole crew and your geography is impeccable. I must have some secret wish to have Cowdenbeath as a breakaway state.

That vinyl is lost in the mists of time - almost like those white bikes that the Beatles made....idealism vs. need can get ugly.

excellent comment....

Togo the Schnauzer here.I have been instructed fro...

2006-05-02T06:53:00.000+01:00

Togo the Schnauzer here.

I have been instructed from the afterlife (probably, else I'm the oldest, gnarliest, most stinking animal this side of life) by my master Mr. Brian Mclaren, pub landlord, Cowdenbeath, just outside Fife (eh?), Scotland.

I hereby serve notice that our lawyers - a well known firm based in the Dunfermline area, just inside Fife that specialise in all things, you know, 'crimey'. They also do a nice line in Estate Agency and Property Management but I digress.

Thing is, I always knew you were blaggin mah vinyl. You may have hidden it well from the humans, but I was always there. A small grey shadow with an alarmingly yellow chin / beard arrangement.

I had always suspected you, though I had various suspects in the plot - the talkative one from Dunfermline who stayed at the house / pub for what seemed like a lifetime and I'm not talking dog years either. I thought the lanky streak of piss had moved in. 'Feeding the whole street indeed'. If old Margaret hadn't spent all her housekeeping on Findus Crispy Pancakes, the fruits of her loins might have turned out, well.... lets just say, with more taste. I liked the guy from Dunfermline though, despite the fact that he used to 'boot fuck out of me' when no one was looking. But then, you all did...

I also reckoned the fat, baldy, once was a ginger geezer with the penchant for 'two special fried rice' and 'wan canny diet coke' had a hand in the vinyl theft but I soon discovered that he was too busy trying out for a high score on Bubble-Bobble at that shop near the church with his chiselled mate 'kitten' (who I understand now models the catwalks in Milan...)

Now, after years and years of blog trawling, I discover it WAS you.

After much deliberation and a few more chicken and bacon crispy pancakes, Brian & Margaret have decided that an amnesty will suffice. We understand that we did not record all of the missing vinyl but will accept and expect the following 7"s to be returned immediately.

Electric Boogaloo
Together (in electric dreams)
The Honeythief
Breakin - theres no stoppin us
Tour de France
Take me with u
and all 347 Chaka Khan singles

Failure to do so will result in Brian's next 'pairty' bein cancelled.

If you do choose to return the records as requested, then the next time I find myself in Manchester (my old stomping ground and favourite city ever lived in - oh! happy days...) then I'll take you down the Horse and Jockey on Chorlton Green for a proper pint.

You have been warned.

Togo.

Hip-hop just above our resting heartbeat? Yes, the...

2006-04-23T12:09:00.000+01:00

Hip-hop just above our resting heartbeat? Yes, the "incitement to get up and motivated" thing makes a lot of sense.

Asian Dub Foundation and co fit into this, and the politics of ADF, Public Enemy, and so on, are an integral part of the listening experience. Is that why listening to 50 cents et. al. makes me slightly uneasy - because in fact the lyrics contain little that is subversive or political, and yet we're expecting it to be saying something?

In this instance I leave the hot iron lying about ...

2006-02-27T00:46:00.000Z

In this instance I leave the hot iron lying about for you to put it on your self;)

Seriously though - I hope my approach doesn't come across as a single shape to be burnt into your skull. It's my take....and my take is that Branding Irons are the perfect metaphor for how the public are seen as dumbed down beasts...like cows in this instance.

I'm annoyed at the terms that the raspberry frappachino drinkers are using with regards to my friends and relatives....you know?