This week it was announced that Joan Baez is releasing a new album on 2nd March. Whistle Down the Wind will be her first new recording for a decade and its promotion marks the end of more than 50 years of touring for Baez. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5-e4qqvKck The phrase, "whistle down the wind", evokes a forlorn sense…Read more Whistle Down the Wind
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Raven
The rain clouds have blown over and the rainbows have faded away. Neil Ardley's bright kaleidoscopic colours have dissipated leaving only black, white and 50/50 shades of grey. These are the colours of penguin suits and polar landscapes but for this Track of the Week we are in temperate regions much closer to Crotchety Man's…Read more Raven
Something Different
Crotchety Man lives in two parallel worlds. There's the real world of solid objects like houses, apples and people. Then there's the insubstantial world of the imagination. The other day, at the click of a mouse button, a bubble of the imagined world burst into the mundanity of real life. My computer screen had given a link into a province of La La land…Read more Something Different
Bottle
Paul Weller will be a father again this summer. It will be his eighth child. The announcement came hard on the heels of the news that The Modfather's 13th solo studio album, A Kind Revolution, will be released on 12th May. Shortly after that a film called Jawbone will reach the movie screens. The soundtrack to Jawbone was written…Read more Bottle
Wild Fire
What would you get if Lou Reed was to take a walk on the wild side with Joni Mitchell? Well, I'll tell you. You'd get something that sounds a lot like Wild Fire, a track from Laura Marling's sixth album Semper Femina, which is due to be released on 10th March. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EUdZFcq-QE Laura Marling has…Read more Wild Fire
Anthology – June Tabor
Some time in the early 90s I went to see a band called Perfect Houseplants. They were a four-piece modern jazz band: saxophones, keyboards, bass and drums. As often happens with jazz bands each musician had a solo slot early in the performance and another member of the band would announce the soloist to the audience. After Martin France…Read more Anthology – June Tabor
crotchetyman.blog
We interrupt this broadcast for a special announcement ... The Crotchety Man blog now has its own Internet domain which you can find at crotchetyman.blog. The old address works, too, but it just redirects to the new one. Let me assure you that nothing else has changed. In particular, the Crotchety Man blog will still carry the…Read more crotchetyman.blog
Lord Franklin
At the end of the 15th century the colonial powers of Europe started to search for the Northwest Passage, a hypothetical sea route across North America that they hoped would be a profitable corridor between east and west to rival the mediaeval 'silk road' trade routes that connected the Mediterranean region with India and China. Many expeditions were…Read more Lord Franklin
Bundles
Bundles of Unpredictable Notes Define the Lasting Essence of Soft Machine For my money Soft Machine were at their best around 1975/6. It was a time when founding member Mike Ratledge was fading out¹ and Karl Jenkins was taking over the reins as band leader and main composer. They released two studio albums in this…Read more Bundles
Familiar
The 'classical' tag appears in these posts from time to time. Sometimes it refers to music from the years 1600 - 1900 but more often it indicates modern music in a style that owes a substantial debt to that period. Familiar is one of those more recent compositions. It is a single taken from Agnes Obel's forthcoming album Citizen of Glass…Read more Familiar
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