A Bluegrass Tale
Mar. 5th, 2002 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2My former roommate Tom and I went to see "O Brother Where Art Thou?" last year while it was still in the theaters. We both liked Cohen brothers films, and I'd bought the soundtrack several weeks earlier after reading a review. We both loved the soundtrack. Of course, it went on to become a best seller, spawned an MTV hit, and won Grammy awards, so a lot more people know about it now and may even be sick of it.
People call it bluegrass. Because of it, bluegrass is currently popular -- kind of a fad. But it's not a bluegrass soundtrack -- it's an "old time music" soundtrack, which encompasses not only old bluegrass but also old-style country, blues, gospel, and folk music. Really, old-time music is what all those other forms of music sprung from.
So Time-Life has been advertising their two CD Best of Bluegrass collection on late night TV. "NOT SOLD IN STORES!" I haven't ordered it, but I've been thinking about it. I have a vast and varied CD collection, but I hardly own any bluegrass. Aside from the "O Brother Where Art Thou" soundtrack, I have 3 CDs by Burach, a Scottish folk group that is heavily influenced by bluegrass, and one CD by Killbilly, a punk hillbilly group. Hillbilly punk was in vogue a few years back, but I don't own any other cds like that. ^_^ I need to track down some more.
Anyway, I'm a sheep. Laura at work has pointed this out (she's a sheep too). I read about Harry Potter eating bacon for breakfast, and I have to buy a bacon cheeseburger that evening, and cook bacon for breakfast all week, and I even had a bacon cheeseburger for dinner tonight. I see a Dairy Queen sign advertising banana splits, and I'm making home-made banana splits for the next week or so. At times I'm very easily influenced.
And I noticed while cleaning this weekend that I had a fistfull of Silver Certificates from Silver Platters. The best day to redeem them is Tuesday when they're worth more. They've been collecting for a while, since I rarely get up early enough to stop at a store on the way to work. I think Tom gave me a bunch that he found last Spring when he was moving out -- it's been nearly a year since I used them, I guess.
So today, I stopped at Silver Platters on the way to work, and I bought some bluegrass CDs. ^_^ I picked up 3, 2 of them for free. One of them is pretty fun -- "Pickin' On U2", an instrumental bluegrass tribute to U2. The group that made it has put out dozens of similar tributes -- covering the music of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, REM, ZZ Top, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, you name it. I'm not sure how some of those would work out, but for U2, their chiming, bell-like guitar sounds transfer really well to mandolin and banjo. It's a good background music CD.
The other two CDs I picked up were also good, but not really what I was looking for. What I'm looking for is a "Best Of" like the Time Life collection. What I got -- vol. 1 and vol. 2 of "50 Years of Bluegrass Hits", contains a lot of the most popular bluegrass songs, performed by many of the top bluegrass groups of the last 30 or 40 years, but all of the performances are new. So they're nice cds, but you don't get any "original hits by the original stars". Of course, since bluegrass music doesn't produce many actual hits, and lots of bluegrass songs get recorded again and again by different groups, I can see why they did it this way. But I still want to pick up something like the Time Life collection, something with older, original recordings on it.
Lucky for me, with bluegrass being the flavor of the year or whatever, the "bluegrass collections" section at Silver Platters was pretty large. There's a lot to choose from at the moment, and most of it is much cheaper than ordering over a toll-free number after seeing a late night commercial. ^_^
I go through phases like this. ^_^ Last fall, it was finding the perfect Funk collection. Before that, it was a ska collection.
People call it bluegrass. Because of it, bluegrass is currently popular -- kind of a fad. But it's not a bluegrass soundtrack -- it's an "old time music" soundtrack, which encompasses not only old bluegrass but also old-style country, blues, gospel, and folk music. Really, old-time music is what all those other forms of music sprung from.
So Time-Life has been advertising their two CD Best of Bluegrass collection on late night TV. "NOT SOLD IN STORES!" I haven't ordered it, but I've been thinking about it. I have a vast and varied CD collection, but I hardly own any bluegrass. Aside from the "O Brother Where Art Thou" soundtrack, I have 3 CDs by Burach, a Scottish folk group that is heavily influenced by bluegrass, and one CD by Killbilly, a punk hillbilly group. Hillbilly punk was in vogue a few years back, but I don't own any other cds like that. ^_^ I need to track down some more.
Anyway, I'm a sheep. Laura at work has pointed this out (she's a sheep too). I read about Harry Potter eating bacon for breakfast, and I have to buy a bacon cheeseburger that evening, and cook bacon for breakfast all week, and I even had a bacon cheeseburger for dinner tonight. I see a Dairy Queen sign advertising banana splits, and I'm making home-made banana splits for the next week or so. At times I'm very easily influenced.
And I noticed while cleaning this weekend that I had a fistfull of Silver Certificates from Silver Platters. The best day to redeem them is Tuesday when they're worth more. They've been collecting for a while, since I rarely get up early enough to stop at a store on the way to work. I think Tom gave me a bunch that he found last Spring when he was moving out -- it's been nearly a year since I used them, I guess.
So today, I stopped at Silver Platters on the way to work, and I bought some bluegrass CDs. ^_^ I picked up 3, 2 of them for free. One of them is pretty fun -- "Pickin' On U2", an instrumental bluegrass tribute to U2. The group that made it has put out dozens of similar tributes -- covering the music of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, REM, ZZ Top, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, you name it. I'm not sure how some of those would work out, but for U2, their chiming, bell-like guitar sounds transfer really well to mandolin and banjo. It's a good background music CD.
The other two CDs I picked up were also good, but not really what I was looking for. What I'm looking for is a "Best Of" like the Time Life collection. What I got -- vol. 1 and vol. 2 of "50 Years of Bluegrass Hits", contains a lot of the most popular bluegrass songs, performed by many of the top bluegrass groups of the last 30 or 40 years, but all of the performances are new. So they're nice cds, but you don't get any "original hits by the original stars". Of course, since bluegrass music doesn't produce many actual hits, and lots of bluegrass songs get recorded again and again by different groups, I can see why they did it this way. But I still want to pick up something like the Time Life collection, something with older, original recordings on it.
Lucky for me, with bluegrass being the flavor of the year or whatever, the "bluegrass collections" section at Silver Platters was pretty large. There's a lot to choose from at the moment, and most of it is much cheaper than ordering over a toll-free number after seeing a late night commercial. ^_^
I go through phases like this. ^_^ Last fall, it was finding the perfect Funk collection. Before that, it was a ska collection.
