I was reminded tonight by a friend of a FANTASTIC musician, whom I had quite forgotten about for the last year or so. Her name is Mary Prankster. She is a Baltimore based ( actually, she’s from Annapolis) guitar ballid/rock/folk type singer. She ROCKS!!!Hard. She is one of, if not THE, best writer of songs I have ever heard. Here are the lyrics to two of the songs from her first album.
[/quote] Moderator Notes:
As you can see, the quotes are gone. weirddave, and anyone else who likes to quote songtexts and the like: there are copyright problems that can arise when you quote an entire text. Here’s the Straight Dope on it:[ul][li]Post a link to a site with the desired quotes, or;[/li][li]Post a small exerpt, preferably accompanied by a link.[/ul]If anyone wants these quotes, I suggest you mail weirddave. Either that, or he can repost them keeping the above rules in mind.[/li]
Thanks,
Coldfire
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That last one warms the heart of a native Baltimoron like me. All the local references? Beautiful! I entreat all of the members of the SDMB who can to rush down to their local Indy record store and order both her albums. She is so on it’s erie, particularly on the songs “Valentine” and “Swan Dive”. (That last strikes me entirely TOO close to home.) You’ll be glad you did. Promise.
Have you ever heard of Sam Boxleitner? Bruce Boxleitner (of Babylon 5)'s son?
He’s a damn good musician… the best musician since Buddy Holly (in fact, I think he’s Buddy’s reincarnation). Unfortunately, he’s fallen into a bit of a funk, and the last I heard from him, he was living in a less-than-uplifting environment.
Huh! Well, spank me with pitchfork and call me Satan. I thought lyrics were public domain. Here are the links to her website for anyone who wants to see.
Blue Skies Over Dundalk. The link goes to her entire first album. the songs I had quoted before were “Mercyfuck”( my favorite) and “Blue Skies Over Dundalk”, a close second.
Are we missing something here? You got me interested, DO you have any links to sound clips?
My 2 cents:
for lyrics: Roger Waters (yes, he HAS written some dumb shit also… but when he’s on he’s ON!!).
for guitar playing: David Gilmour (personal preference, close second is Clapton, but Gilmour fucking rocks me out every time I listen to him!).
for harmonica: Astroboy14!!! (I humbly admit that I SUCK BIG TIME! But I only play when I’m drunk, and the sqeals and squawks I can get out of that $2 harmonica amuse the shit outta me… until it starts grabbing the hairs of my mustache and painfully ripping them from my upper lip! Then, as Eddie Murphy said: “Play time’s OVER!”)
For great musicians you never heard of, may I recommend Rory Gallagher and Roy Buchanan? Lyrically, they’re not all that hot, but their guitar skills are positively outstanding. IIRC, Buchanan was offered a job with the Rolling Stones.
Both of these guys are dead now, but their music is definitely worth a listen. I’ll get some links from my husband. I don’t know if there’s any MP3’s available, but I know there’s at least some sound bites of Rory on one of his sites.
Well, you can download her song “Piss Off” here. It’s not her best, but it’s a good little song. Those of you who are Napster inclined can usually find all her stuff there. I recommend starting with the two songs I mentioned above. If you like-buy. This is not listening to Billy Joel off Napster. This is a small time artist who would notice the extra album sales
Remember the hit instrumental “Angie” by Simon and Garfunkle? Graham composed it. This man is self taught, writes and performs in all styles and plays both acoustic and electric guitar. He sings well and an album can contain anything from an ancient French Galliard, some Charles Mingus jazz, British folk to his own “Turko-Arabic” raga style Middle Eastern pieces.
The guy’s mastery of guitar is breath taking. What’s more he is able to perform the work of others (Joni Mitchell, Beatles, Bob Dylan) and often, do it even better.
Feel free to contact me and I will transmit you a file of his music. Specify a style if you wish. This is one of the great unknown artists of our time. Some other more or less well known atrists would be:
John Renbourn
Bert Jansch
Pentangle
Eric Johnson
Junior Brown
Rory Block
Anyway, just my 2¢.
Martin Jacques of the Tigerlillies. Berlin cabaret, Paris left bank, Punk. A falsetto leading minimal Turkish circus dirges. Tremendously depressing lyrics. Tremdously funny lyrics. This fellow is not just musically off the wall; he was never in the room in the first place.
Although this sounds truly pathetic, Jacques’ vocal range and modulation, combined with the minimalist background’s rhythm-play, makes for a masterful and even beautiful soundscape.
Keep your ears open for a cameo in Bodrov’s “The Quickie” (starring Jennifer Jason Leigh) due out in a year.
Al Kooper. The man is amazing, and I had never heard of him until I heard his book plugged. It’s called “Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards.” He’s played with a lot of bands, and produced a lot of albums. He’s quite a heavy hitter and I wouldn’t have known him if he’d bit me on the ass.
By the way, it’s a good book, according to the spouse I bought it for.
Going to jump back in here & back up Zenster on Junior Brown.
He has the most incredibly cheesy lyrics known to man–not my cup of tea, really. But he’s a monster player. Hair-parting, skirt-blowing stuff. I could listen to him play all day.
Thanks Persephone, his lyrics are often candidates for dork-of-the-month club, but man can this dude play!
Imagine an intro of note perfect Jimi Hendrix that is seamlessly converted to fast chicken-pickin’ country. I’ve seen his tapes of Austin City Limits performance and others and the guy is solid genius.
Some of his lyrics are pretty funny, like the refrain from one song;
'Cause you’re wanted by the police
and my wife thinks you’re dead…
But the guitar work is simply incredible (check out “Sugarfoot Rag”). On one show, for the bridge in a song, he stitched together almost a dozen 60’s pop tunes into a continuous solo that was insane at least and pure genius at best.
My husband taped him on Austin City Limits quite a while back. The tape is pretty ragged from age and use, and I’d love to catch it on a rerun so he can tape it again!
