Train Music!

[Iving]

18 hours ago, christopher3393 said:

 

 

 

This lead guitarist is a pretty good train rhythm section all by himself ...

[Iving]

7 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

it's hard to understand the interest in finding obscure blues artists, especially since the train theme is present permanently in this genre, and hundreds if not thousands of examples can be found without much difficulty. Why not turn to truly great musicians, such as Grateful Dead. Mentioned Casey Jones already. What else we could find?

 

For me, sharing/celebration of "great musicians" is just under half the fun with these Theme threads.

 

What's just over half is the discovery of something amazing I didn't already know. I'm still reeling with gratitude to Tom aka @DuckToller for Dead Moon's "Walking On My Grave" [cf. Moon Music thread]. I'm not sure Dead Moon are by all accounts "great musicians", but they sure got my mojo working 😉

[Iving]

Orlane Paquin - Le train de 10h03 ...

 

[Iving]

Yann Tiersen - Le Train ...

[NB! If you haven't heard it yet - please check out Yann Tiersen's music for the Film "Amélie" - in particular the track "La Valse D'Amélie (piano version)".]

edit: dammit here's the link:

The ripped CD sounds freakin' awesome on my system - a "test" track for sure ...

[Iving]

1 hour ago, christopher3393 said:

 

 

Here ya go:

 

http://deadessays.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-grateful-dead-and-trains-guest-post.html

 

( note that the Garcia Band recorded a number of railroad covers not listed above)

 

Did you happen to know that I know You Rider is derived from several traditional black folk blues songs and then transformed into a white

folk song in the sixties? Joan Baez covered it. The Dead made it rock.

 

And did you happen to know that the dead covered a couple of songs by Jesse Fuller, one of those obsure blues guys mentioned above?

 

 

 

And the Dead covered 3 songs by an obscure folk blues band called Cannon's Jug Stompers? One of them is a train song:

 

 

 

 So, for me, it's more complicated. I believe that Jerry, Phil, and Bob -- and certainly Pigpen! -- had a different attitude about blues roots music than you do. And I share that. The list that lving posted is, to me, a great list. I know that in my guts and in my bones. It's a felt sense from having listened to (and played for a few years) a lot of blues, live and recorded. I grew up outside of Chicago. So where you may hear an uninspired static redundancy, I hear and feel a lot of life, dynamism, and variety. So many different approaches to railroad blues! Sometimes subtle, but not boring for me, and not second rate. Some of this old stuff is some of the very best recorded. I;m thinking of Robert Johnson, for example.

 

Fine if you don't hear it that way. Just a different experience.

 

 

 

Great research. Good argument. iirc you and I have agreed elsewhere about the provenance of music. The parallel in physics is Newton's: "If I have seen further it is because I have been standing on the shoulders of giants." Everything is an eruption of history.

[Iving]

1 hour ago, sphinxsix said:

I tend to agree with @christopher3393 What would rock in general be without those 'obscure blues musicians' and consequently rhythm'n'blues.? IMO it's simply unimaginable.

 

Let's play some rock train music then..

 

 

I love their hair on this cover photo, I guess they sticked their heads out of the train window..

 

 

An express version from by Jools Holland (from England)..

 

 

 

................................

 

 

1. I've already posted this very video and 5 other versions by SRT:

 

 

2.

 

 

 

Hence:

 

3. Get out of this train!   

 

Agree on every count! 

[Iving]

Anyway ... if I were approaching Blues as a [Trains or Railroads] sub-topic again, I would distil as a specialist area the Gandy Dancers. Seems to me mention-worthy for both musical and historical reasons.

 

Fascinating article here commencing with reference to Jimmie Rogers: 

https://bluesrootsusa.com/2019/03/gandy-dancers

[Iving]

18 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Blues is limited in its expressive means to two or three themes (as trains, for example), manic-depressive transitions between irrepressible longing and suspicious overexcitement, and a scarce musical arsenal. Fortunately, in other places one can find free, healthy and natural expression of the train theme: 

 

I was just playing this on my phone. My wife started singing along to it. (She is a gifted soprano.) I said, oh do you know it. She said we used to do this in our ladies' choir. I said well is it about trains. She said that [i.e. referring to your post] sounded like a train, but when we did it it didn't - it just sounded like a ladies choir!

 

I looked it up. Transport to diamond mines. "2nd National Anthem" of South Africa. Thanks

[Iving]

25 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

More good music about trains to compensate some obscure crap:

 

 

slow burner!

[Iving]

25 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

dup

[Iving]

20 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Walking Into Clarksdale is a great Album ... Please Read The Letter ... Most High ...

[Iving]

5 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Trains?

[Iving]

4 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

Listen: "Sometimes I think sitting on trains..."
 

 

doh! Missed it!

[Iving]

Richard Thompson - Dead Man's Handle ...

[The Audio doesn't sound quite right in this YT. btw The Album Daring Adventures is worth a listen ... dance to "Baby Talk" ...]

[Iving]

14 hours ago, christopher3393 said:

Blues is capacious. Lots of room inside. Topically it covers travel by multiple means, painful aspects of relationships (unfaithfulness, unrequited love, loss, loneliness), sexual longings , prowess, and flirtation, natural disasters (flooding), meager rewards for work, poverty, social dislocation, hypocrisy (including preachers), escape into euphoria with drugs and drink and the resultant troubles that follow, social inequity, racial prejudice, defeating or even killing adversaries, reversals of fortune and frustrated expectations, the inescapable immanence of violence and death, ignominy, on and on and on...

 

Totally agree. Someone once said to my wife - and she must have bought into it to some degree to have repeated it - the rather dry and mathematical assertion that there are only so many ways one can string music notes together. But what you depict here is the vast and fathomless gamut of human experience - some of it unspeakably painful.

 

14 hours ago, christopher3393 said:

I'm gonna lay my head on some lonesome railroad line

and let that 2:19 special ease my troubled mind.

 

There ya go. If you don't understand it - you haven't lived it.

[Iving]

12 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

 

 

Yoko don't do it like Iggy

[Iving]

12 hours ago, sphinxsix said:

First, kind of a very humble tribute to the authors of the above fantastic posts @christopher3393 and @Iving - one more version of this great song.

 

 

And now let's move to some yodeling, since the 2020 Easter has just been announced the first Yodeling Easter 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brilliant! ... love that Jimmie R explains how he can get more women than a passenger train can haul.

 

I'm glad I know now that this is the first Yodeling Easter. Can't wait to tell my wife. Might do it Jimmie-style.

[Iving]

13 hours ago, sphinxsix said:

 

 

Seems that Jimmie Rodgers Martin 000-45 is one of the most valuable/significant guitars ever ...

 

https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/the-most-valuable-guitars-in-america-1

 

So on to the bigger question: is one of Jimmie Rodgers’ guitars the most important guitar in American history? According to a C.F. Martin & Co. Inc. press release announcing its Limited Edition 000-45 JR “Blue Yodel” model in 1997, “The original Jimmie Rodgers 000-45 Martin is possibly the most valuable (if not priceless) guitar ever made. Its worth is certainly affected by the fact that it was Jimmie Rodgers'' favorite personal guitar.”

 

 

[Iving]

18 minutes ago, christopher3393 said:

Recorded Circa 1958...Let's hear from yodeling Texas Kitty Prins... from Groningen NL!

 

Texas Kitty - The Mule Train Yodel Blues [ed. mule train has not yet a certified "train" by OP: proceed with caution.]

 

 

Texas Kitty - De spooktrein [certfied kosher]

 

 

 

lol yep mule "train" is an easy pass ...

[Iving]

Eddie Bond - The Clinch Finch Train ...

[Here Comes The Train is a better 10/10]

[Iving]

The Brian Setzer Orchestra - Trouble Train ...

 

[Iving]

The Byrds - Yesterday's Train ...

 

Alt. Take ...

 

[Iving]

18 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

One can try to determine which guitars were the most important in history. Or, the most iconic. Or, the most expensive: https://www.stringjoy.com/most-expensive-guitars-ever-sold-top-10/.

 

Jimmie Rodgers' guitar is of particular interest since Jimmie is not only "The Father Of Country Music" but was a total trains dude - way back in the 1920s before most popular music was even a twinkle in anybody's eye. Any commentary on guitars as they relate to our trains posts is welcome! If anybody posts a video of themselves playing Train Music on a guitar I will send them money. Generic discussion of guitars would make an excellent alternative thread topic.

 

18 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

Still, let me remind, this thread is about trains.

 

Unsolicited moderation not required, and will not be remunerated!

 

18 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

the unique 1970 Festival Tour with one of the most important rock musicians of the era, including Grateful Dead, The Band, Janis Joplin and others - on train!

 

 

 

Festival Express 1970 = Splendid and Right On Topic!!!

[Iving]

57 minutes ago, Iving said:

If anybody posts a video of themselves playing Train Music on a guitar I will send them money.

 

23 minutes ago, sphinxsix said:

Ok.. lets get to business now.. how much.? 

 

Well I knew somebody would ask this question. I need to blend in a couple of caveats. First - I am an impoverished individual roiling in the twilight zone between pasture and pensionable retirement. Second - what if the world and his wife signed up? ... so I must be careful of setting a reckless precedent.

 

So my proposal is this:

- $0.01 for sticking to theme or topic - it must be you and you must be a member of AS - it must be a video - it must be Train Music - you must be playing a guitar - and you must be the performer - you yourself and not an impersonator or impostor - so that's 1c already;

- between $0.99 and $9.99 for quality of performance - entirely at my own discretion. The criterion is mojo. If you give me appreciable goosebumps, I shall tender the full amount;

- a bonus of $1 if you do good train rhythm section without additional accompaniment.

 

In the final analysis, I figure that you would do something like this purely out of love - or for music's sake if nothing else. So I would be pretty surprised if anybody really expected me to pay. I mean come on. We are all here for love and music right? Only the purest of motives can satisfy. We all know that in our innermost selves. Let's be the best that we can be.

 

🙂

[Iving]

12 minutes ago, christopher3393 said:

speaking of dead things:

 

Garcia on the Festival Express:
"That was the best time I've had in rock and roll. It was our train, it was the musicians' train. There were no straight people. There wasn't any show biz bullshit. There weren't any fans, there were nothing but musicians on the train. So immediately we started pulling furniture out of the two club cars and putting amplifiers and drums in. Jam sessions all the way across Canada, man. Played music all the way across Canada, and we juiced. Everybody juiced because nobody brought dope into Canada, everybody was chickenshit. [It lasted] about five days, six days maybe, but it was really fucking fun. Everybody got to be such good friends in that little world. It was like a musicians' convention with no public allowed... You name it, we did it. We had every conceivable kind of configuration that you could imagine, man. We had singers, lots of singers on the train, all kinds of trips. The most incredible combination of voices, like Delaney and Bonnie and Janis with Buddy Guy singing together, or Bonnie and Buddy Guy, or... Oh hey, man, there was one jam session with Ian and Sylvia and the Great Speckled Bird, me and Weir from our band, Rick Danko, Delaney and Bonnie and Eric Andersen... They got it all down on film. It'll really be far out." (from the Jazz&Pop interview, Feb '71)

 

...and...

 

Lesh wrote in his book:
"We received an offer to play three days of a 'Trips Festival' in Vancouver, British Columbia. It seemed like a good opportunity to bring our music to a new audience... Since we couldn't afford to fly, the band took the train, leaving Oakland one morning and arriving the next day, while the gear drove up in a truck. While on the train, we took smoke breaks in the only place where we could have a little privacy: the open vestibule between the cars. At one point, we were standing out there entranced by the rhythm of the wheels clickety-clacking over the welds in the rails; Billy and I looked at each other and just knew - we simultaneously burst out, 'We can play this!' This later turned into Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)... Based on the train rhythm, it had only one chord and was played at blistering tempo...
At the next moment, the train lurched, and Jerry, who was standing near the exit, lost his footing and started to fall! Outward! Quick as a mongoose, Bobby reached out and grabbed his shirt, pulling him back into the car just as another train roared past in the opposite direction at a closing speed of what seemed like 200 miles per hour. Whew!"

 

Let's throw CAUTION to the wind!

 

Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks) (1968 Mix) (2017 Remaster) · Grateful Dead   Anthem of the Sun [warning: may induce flashbacks]

 

 

 

 

Far out

 

But no really - I can hear those voices on that train - those gifted singers high on the occasion - musta been something ...