Recent content by Artsfols

This is our twelfth annual list of best live performance videos of 2023. The objective is to find acoustic music that can be played on a top quality audio system with a big screen TV. Youtube (Premium) seems to be the best vehicle for doing this, i.e. watch and lisds Don't forget to change...

I have seen them live on 3 occasions. On two occasions they've travelled up to Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, where I live, to perform. The other occasion was the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. If they're within a reasonable driving distance I'll see them again.

The acoustic/ electric distinction sure does not work for me. To me, "folk" meaning 'music of the people' is not a genre at all. It can include almost any actual genre: blues, bluegrass, rockabilly, Applachian, Irish or English traditional, Americana, Hungarian Roma ... All 'folk' means is...

The term "Americana" confuses the heck out of Canadians who aren't familiar with the term as a musical genre. Tell them the Band is Americana and they might remind you that 4/5ths of the Band hail from Ontario, Canada. And even Levon Helm from Arkansas played in Toronto with the Hawks...

I liked Tom Petty's description of modern "country" music: a bad rock band with a fiddle. Petty did notably good work on Johnny Cash's "American" series of recordings.

There's a really nice, laidback album that Chet Atkins recorded with Mark Knopfler.

I just attended the Edmonton Folk Festival and saw live performances by some of my favourites including Watchhouse, Molly Tuttle and Gregory Allan Isakov. I also prepared a audio playlist of 20 tracks that I heard there, almost all releases from the last year or two. Here's a link...

Having spun a bit of vinyl now, I have to say I'm very pleased with the sound. Somehow it sounds different, and better, in a way, than my digital set. This I attribute, not to any technical superiority in analogue sound, but rather to the fact that these records were mixed for this kind of...

Off topic, but I love the English music tradition and how it has informed everything from Ralph Vaughan Williams work to Simon and Garfunkel. And let's not even begin on the Irish.

Indeed it is. It was suggested by someone in this thread, and for me, hit the sweet spot in terms of aesthetics, performance and budget. I'm quite pleased with the result. Inaugural album was 'Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme' by Simon & Garfunkel. Not their best album or my favourite, but...

Okay, I did it. Took a while because some other things came up. The turntable came yesterday from Bay-Bloor Radio in Toronto, and I spent far too long today setting it up. I got tripped up by the 'auxiliary weight'. If you put that on and don't need it, the tone arm won't track properly no...

Note: off topic comment. I could catch WCFL from the Toronto area, but tricky because of splash from a Toronto clear channel station just 10 kHZ away. Not sure why I remember this stuff, but AM radio was a major feature of everyone's life back then, and moreso to a lonely pre-teen that had just...

Totally off topic here, but did you tap into the Chicago blues scene at all? Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Mike Bloomfield? And on another note, we lived in southern Alberta until the late 60s, then moved to the Toronto area. One of the radio stations you can catch from both locations is WLS Chicago...

That's really interesting. I remember when Technics splashed onto the electronics scene, and I'd hate to count how many Panasonic items I've owned over the years. The best brand for consistent durability across the product range, preferable to the other giant, Sony, imo. And I'm strongly...

Vladimir, do you ever simultaneously entertain two opposing propositions, not knowing which one is actually correct? Or consider that two opposing propositions might each contain some elements of truth? Also, do you ever try to extract what other people are trying to express, versus correcting...