The second of my recent Oxfam purchases is Square Roots - an unlikely selection from the pages of Folk Roots magazine - a compilation from 1987.
The sleevenotes are by Andy Kershaw and the album is not dissimilar to one of his sadly missed radio shows with some hardcore folk and a smattering of world music.
I'll maybe pluck up the courage to post some of that at a later date.
In the meantime I have gone for the two most accessable tracks on the album featuring a couple of CCM favourites.
The Bard of Barking gives us Hold The Fort a 19th Century Agricultural Union song which he sings with Robert Handley.
Then the late Ted Hawkins gives us his rendition of Dock of the Bay from the legendary Venice Beach Tapes.
Folk Roots was the baby of musician Ian Anderson. Not to be confused with the cod piece wearing, one legged flutist and fish farmer who fronted Jethro Tull nor Iain Anderson the broadcaster who presents the excellent Mr Anderson's Fine Tunes on Radio Scotland.
Billy Bragg - Hold The Fort
Ted Hawkins - Dock of the Bay
Dear old Ted Hawkins. I saw him live a couple of times, a really humble bloke. Andy played him on the radio so often at one point that, to this day, whenever I say Ted's name out loud it's in a poor impersonation of Kershaw's distinct accent.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking at the album cover trying to see if the stuff on the blackboard makes sense. The left hand equation involves the natural logarithm of "e" squared, which , is 2, because the natural logarithm of e is 1 (as is any logarithm of its base number, which you knew), and you then multiply by 2 because you are rasing "e" to the power of 2. If it was "e" cubed, then the natural log of "e" cubed would be 3. etc. It's applying one of the rules of logarithms.
ReplyDeleteThanks Prof. It's not the album cover just a random image retrieved from the bowels of t'Internet
DeleteThank you. It's a rare Billy Bragg tune I don't already have in my collection.
ReplyDelete