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08-27-2009, 06:19 PM | #152 (permalink) | |
****ER OF HOLES
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Butt****, Nebraska
Posts: 1,211
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Quote:
Consider me a believer. A link would be greatly appreciated.
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“YOU ARE SCUM SLUT.” -John Martyn |
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08-27-2009, 07:26 PM | #153 (permalink) |
Ba and Be.
Join Date: May 2007
Location: This Is England
Posts: 17,331
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During one forty-hour period in 1973, folk musician Gary Higgins and his band of five -- guitarist Jake Bell, cellist Maureen Wells, keyboardist Terry Fenton, mandolin/flutist Paul Tierney and bass player Dave Beaujon -- laid down one of the saddest, loveliest acoustic recordings you'll ever hear, the now semi-legendary Red Hash. Time was tight because Higgins had recently been arrested on drug charges and was facing years, maybe decades in jail. Money, too, was in short supply. The entire album was recorded on four-track, giving it the warmth and immediacy of live performance, but making it hard to hear instruments like bass and drums. Even so, its haunting harmonies and wistful mood are amazing; in addition to being an absolute distillation of 1960s and 1970s folk, it hints at the skewed purity of contemporary psyche folk. Higgins disappeared after Red Hash was released, first serving out his sentence and later marrying, having a child and spending his time as many of us do, making a living rather than pursuing his dreams. Although Higgins and his friends recorded a few more songs together -- two of them appear on the Red Hash reissue as bonus tracks -- there was never another record. The whole unlikely experience seemed likely to drop into the black hole of lost albums. Then, during the 1990s, word began to spread about Red Hash. Pirated copies appeared for sale on the Internet. Tracks were played on influential freeform radio stations like WFMU. Musicians, most notably Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance and Comets on Fire, cited the forgotten disc as an influence; Chasny even covered "Thicker than a Smokey" on his 2005 album School of the Flower. Zach Cowie, then negotiating to bring Comets on Fire to Sub Pop, received a burned copy from Chasny and immediately became fascinated with the album. He embarked on a quixotic quest to find its author, mailing off hundreds of letters and calling every Gary Higgins he could find in Connecticut phone books. Finally, he located that Gary Higgins -- still in northwest Connecticut, still writing and playing songs in his spare time, still holding the master tapes to his one and only full-length album. The album was remastered and reissued on Drag City in 2005.
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“A cynic by experience, a romantic by inclination and now a hero by necessity.”
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09-05-2009, 05:34 PM | #159 (permalink) |
Ba and Be.
Join Date: May 2007
Location: This Is England
Posts: 17,331
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Link on way and please to all who I have sent the album to-let's have some opinions whether good or bad!
__________________
“A cynic by experience, a romantic by inclination and now a hero by necessity.”
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09-06-2009, 11:23 AM | #160 (permalink) |
air quote
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: pollen & mold
Posts: 3,108
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Red Hash is definitely a good album. Classic melancholy folk that goes somewhere. Almost every song is really interesting despite how soft and low key they are. My one complaint is that one or two of the songs sound horribly dated. "Unable to Fly" for example is just way too authentically hippie-ish for me. Really cloying flute and high-pitched vibrato vocals remind me of why I don't like much late 60s/early 70s folk. But still - I do really like most of the album a lot. Makes me think of Nick Drake if he was an American hippie.
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