The Megaphone record label home page

LECUBE - THE TIMES

2009-07-22T04:05:00.000-07:00

BLIND BLAKE - MOJO

2009-07-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

LECUBE - UNCUT

2009-07-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

BLIND BLAKE - UNCUT

2009-07-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

BLIND BLAKE - Q

2009-07-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

BLIND BLAKE - THE CRACK

2009-06-29T03:57:00.000-07:00

BLIND BLAKE - PLAN B

2009-06-03T04:51:00.000-07:00

SILVAIN VANOT - LES INROCKUPTIBLES

2009-05-26T06:36:00.000-07:00

LES CLOCHES DE L'AMOUR

"Septembre verra le grand retour au disque du Français: d'ici là, ces Cloches étincelantes réveilleront en nous toute l'affection qu'on lui porte"

www.myspace.com/silvainvanot

LECUBE - FIRST ALBUM RELEASE

2009-05-04T06:19:00.000-07:00

FROM HERE TO NOW - ALBUM RELEASED ON JULY 13th

Between 2006 and 2007 LECUBE released two 7” singles ‘’Shoot The Nanny’ and ‘’Lady Pornograph’. Those tracks are now brought together with additonal songs as an album 'From Here To Now', to be released on Megaphone Music on July 13th

Julien 'LECUBE’ Barbagallo was born to Sicilian immigrant parents in the pastoral landscape of Tarn in France’s South-West, where he still lives.

His first EP 'My Bungalow' marked the beginning of his solo project, LECUBE, and lent him mythical status via the only French magazine which got hold of it, Magic.

With a simple 8-track machine and a few intimate songs, he began telling the stories he held close to his chest, a fragile combination of glances and breathes, collected randomly on local buses and unmade beds.

He took his songs on stage with a band for a year, playing the 20 or so venues that used to be the pride of Greater Toulouse, before the chemical plant blast put the city back to sleep.

Julien also became a full-time member of bands who were 'signed' and so playing further afield...Paul Stuart & the Sweet Powerpack (keyboards) and Hyperclean (drums), keeping his own material for an album collaboration with Laure Briard.

In the spring of 2004 he began to record new material, on his friend Benjamin’s staircase, a collection of songs which were to become 'From Here To Now', stories where women he’d love to love meet men he’d love to be, and vice versa.

These recordings remained on the stairs until Julien played a local party where he met Stephane Bismuth, Megaphone Music, who convinced him to release his new songs initially as a series of 7". Those tracks drew comparisons to amongst others, The Monochrome Set, Neutral Milk Hotel, Bob Dylan, Syd Barrett, The Byrds, Elliott Smith, Howe Gelb and a “dodgy Stephen Malkmus”!

Julien has already returned to rummaging around suburban dustbins, trailing through Tarnish countryside woods and adolescent bedrooms, gathering new sensations and stories to sing about.

“These balmy tunes.....should come with free palm tree, with their wistful guitars and quivering harmonica.” The Big Issue

“Surprisingly good and scarily addictive..“ Sounds XP

“a simple yet warm handful of acoustic tracks showcasing Barbagallo's plaintive vocal that is a true delight.” Flux

PRESS CONTACT : stone@stoneimmaculate.co.uk

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En 2006 et 2007, LECUBE avait sorti deux 45 Tours, «N°1» (Shoot the Nanny) et «N°2» (Lady Pornograph). Ces titres sont maintenant réunis avec de nouvelles chansons — dont le 45 Tours à venir, «N°3» (Your Love Is Old-fashioned) — en un Album, «From Here To Now», à paraître sur le label Mégaphone le 7 Septembre.

Julien ‘LECUBE’ Barbagallo a grandi dans les paysages agrestes du Tarn où il vit toujours. Dans l’escalier de son ami Benjamin, armé d’un simple magnétophone 8 pistes et de quelques chansons intimistes, il commence à raconter les histoires qui lui tiennent à coeur. LECUBE chante les hommes qu'il aimerait être et les femmes qu'il aimerait aimer. Il chante aussi l'inverse. Et des histoires qu'il glane ou imagine au hasard des lits défaits, des chambres de jeunes anxieux et des sentiers odorants des sous-bois de sa campagne tarnaise.

Ses enregistrements restèrent dans cet escalier jusqu’à ce que Julien joue à une soirée de bienfaisance toulousaine où il rencontre Stéphane Bismuth du label Mégaphone, qui le convainc de sortir ses premieres chansons en suite de 45 Tours. Ces 2 disques parus outre-Manche lui valurent des comparaisons aux Monochrome Set, Neutral Milk Hotel, à Bob Dylan, Syd Barrett, Elliott Smith, Howe Gelb et à un «Stephen Malkmus roublard» !

Julien enregistre alors son 45 Tours «N°3» (Your Love Is Old-fashioned) au Pays de Galles avec Richard Formby aux manettes (The Jazz Butcher, Spacemen 3, Herman Düne).

Julien a par ailleurs pris part à quelques aventures musicales collectives remarquées.

On le retrouve à la batterie quelques saisons avec Hyperclean avant de rejoindre Axe Riverboy & Tahiti 80 sur de longues tournées. Julien tient également les baguettes du groupe progressif Aquaserge, signé sur le label américain Manimal Vinyl, et qu’on a vu récemment sur scène derrière Bertrand Burgalat.

«Oh la belle chanson ! Qu’elle est gracieuse dans son apparent débraillé. Suivons ce garçon, dont un album est annoncé» - F. Gorin, Télérama

«Une éblouissante chanson, mini-symphonie ô combien prometteuse» - Magic

«Le romantique tarnais qui dit son amour des B majeurs des sixties (Beach Boys, Badfinger, Beatles qu’il reprend)» - JD Beauvallet, Les Inrockuptibles

«Ces doux airs devraient nous parvenir avec un palmier gratuit» - The Big Issue

«Un vrai délice» - Flux

Les trois 45 Tours réunis formeront fin 2009 une édition vinyle en «Album» comme au vieux temps du 78 Tours où plusieurs disques étaient assemblés en Album pour pallier la durée restreinte de chaque support, l’avènement du 33 Tours ayant marqué de fait la fin de l’«Album» !

contact presse

Jean-Bernard Emery

jb.emery@cinepresscontact.com

BLIND BLAKE - A BAHAMIAN POSTCARD

2009-05-03T09:35:00.001-07:00

BLIND BLAKE - BAHAMIAN SONGS - FIRST CD RELEASE

2009-05-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

BAHAMIAN SONGS - CD RELEASE JUNE 29

Blind Blake was from the 30s to the 60s the singer and leader of the house band at the Royal Victoria Hotel in Nassau, Bahamas. His music was a strange mix of old island classics, more recent calypso compositions and american ballads.
Alphonso Blake Higgs, commonly known as ‘Blind Blake’, was born at Matthew Town, Inagua, Bahamas, in 1915. He was adept at string instruments – ukulele, banjo, tenor banjo, six-string guitar – and also played the piano. He lost his eyesight at the age of sixteen and kept pursuing the goal of a career in music and a unique style, a blend of folksong, calypso and early jazz. His recognition grew from 1935 when he recorded for Philco Radio some of his own songs on the political and social life of The Bahamas. His most popular song ‘Love, Love Alone’ (“It was Love, Love alone, Cause King Edward to Leave The Throne”) was based on the love affair of King Edward VIII with Wallis Simpson. He was forbidden to play the song upon the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to the Colony but was invited to play the song by the Duke at Government House where he received a standing ovation by the Duke and his party. Blind Blake wrote about sixty Goombay songs starting in the 30s including ‘Run Come See Jerusalem’, based on the effects of the 1929 Hurricane, ‘Jones (Oh Jones)’ and ‘J. P. Morgan’. The traditional song ‘Peas and Rice’, nearly a Bahaman National Anthem, originated during the First World War when the scarcity of imported cooking fats forced the substitution of local coconut oil. And one of the oldest Bahamian song is the tragi-comic ballad ‘John B. Sail’ (later adapted and performed by many artists, notoriously The Beach Boys as ‘Sloop John B.’ on their ‘Pet Sounds’ album). The ‘John B.’ was an old sponger boat whose crew were in the habit of getting merry whenever they reached port. Blake performed for many Heads of State and royalty, such as President John F. Kennedy and PM Harold Macmillan. He performed for tourists at the Royal Victoria Hotel, Dirty Dicks, Blackbeard’s and many other Bahaman hotels and clubs. He gave performances in major american cities. Over the years, many visiting celebrities, such as Mahalia Jackson, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington praised Blind Blake for his Bahamian style and his originality. In the 70s and early 80s, Blind Blake’s band was employed by the Ministry of Tourism to play at the Nassau International Airport, giving a musical welcome to arriving visitors. He died in 1985.

2009-05-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

Blind Blake fut des années 30 aux années 60 le chanteur du groupe de l’Hôtel Royal Victoria de Nassau, Bahamas. Sa musique était un étrange mélange de vieux classiques de ces îles, de compositions calypso plus récentes et de ballades américaines. Ses musiciens mêlaient thèmes de guitare jazz et harmonies de groupes vocaux à des rythmes antillais, avec pour résultat des enregistrements d’un humour et d’un swing que peu de musiciens, d’aucun continent, n’ont égalés. Alphonso Blake Higgs, connu sous le nom de « Blind Blake », est né à Matthew Town, Inagua, Bahamas, en 1915. Il pratiquait les instruments à cordes – ukulele, banjo, banjo ténor, guitare – et jouait aussi du piano. Il perdit la vue à l’âge de 16 ans et poursuivit le rêve d’une carrière dans la musique avec un style unique, mélange de folk, calypso et jazz. Sa reconnaissance commença en 1935 quand il enregistra pour la radio Philco quelques-unes de ses chansons sur la vie politique et sociale des Bahamas. Sa chanson la plus populaire « Love, Love alone » était basée sur l’histoire d’amour entre le roi Edward VIII et Wallis Simpson. Il lui fut interdit de jouer la chanson à l’arrivée à la Colonie du Duc et de la Duchesse de Windsor mais le Duc l’invita à la chanter à une soirée privée où il fut ovationné. Blind Blake écrivit environ soixante chansons Goombay à partir des années 30, dont « Run Come See Jerusalem », sur les effets de l’ouragan de 1929, « Jones (Oh Jones) » et « J.P. Morgan ». La chanson traditionnelle « Peas and Rice », pratiquement un hymne bahaméen, a son origine durant la Première Guerre Mondiale lorsque la rareté des matières grasses importées pour la cuisine obligea à la substitution par de l’huile de coco. Et l’une des plus anciennes chansons des Bahamas est la ballade tragi-comique « John B. Sail » (adaptée plus tard et interprétée par de nombreux artistes, notamment les Beach Boys avec « Sloop John B. » sur leur album « Pet Sounds »). Le « John B. » était un vieux bateau utilisé pour la pêche aux éponges dont l’équipage avait l’habitude de devenir joyeux dès qu’ils arrivaient au port. Blake joua pour de nombreux chefs d’Etat comme le Président Kennedy et le Premier Ministre MacMillan. Il joua pour les touristes au Royal Victoria Hotel et dans de nombreux hôtels et clubs locaux. Il joua dans les grandes villes américaines. Au fil des ans, de nombreuses célébrités de passage, telles que Mahalia Jackson, Louis Armstrong et Duke Ellington louèrent Blind Blake pour son style bahaméen et son originalité. Dans les année 70 et 80, le groupe de Blind Blake fut employé par le Ministère du Tourisme pour jouer à l’aéroport international de Nassau, accueillant les touristes sur le tarmac de l’aéroport avec un message de bienvenue musical. Ce CD est tiré d’une série d’enregistrements réalisés au début des années 50. Son groupe « The Royal Victoria Hotel Calypsos » comprenait Dudley Butter (guitare, maracas), Chatfield Ward (guitare), Freddie Lewis (guitare lead), George Wilson (contrebasse) et parfois Lou Adams à la trompette. Sa popularité avec les touristes leur permit de trouver un public aux Etats-Unis et ils devinrent une inspiration pour de nombreux musiciens du revival folk. Josh White et Johnny Cash reprirent « Delia », Pete Seeger « Foolish Frog », Dave Van Ronk « Yas, Yas, Yas » et « Run, Come See Jerusalem » fut joué par des dizaines de groupes, sans parler de l’influence de Blake sur Harry Belafonte.

BLIND BLAKE - PREVIEW - EVERETT TRUE

2009-05-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

http://www.everetttrue.blogspot.com/

Le sixième album de Silvain Vanot

2009-05-02T06:14:00.000-07:00

"Bethesda" est terminé.

Enregistré au Pays de Galles par Steve Powell (The Stairs, Michael Head, Ella Guru) et mixé par Jacques Ehrhart (Gérard Manset, Henri Salvador, BB Brunes) on y retrouve John Greaves (basse, claviers) ainsi que Renaud Gabriel Pion (clarinette, arrangements) et Iain Templeton, le batteur de Shack.

L'album sortira le 7 SEPTEMBRE en France chez Megaphone/Cooperative Music.

----------------------------------------------------------

'Bethesda' is ready.

Recorded in Wales by Steve Powell (The Stairs, Michael Head, Ella Guru) and mixed by Jacques Ehrhart, it features John Greaves (bass, keyboards) as well as Renaud Gabriel Pion (clarinet, orchestration) and Iain Templeton, Shack's drummer.

The album will be out next Summer through SRD (UK).

MICHAEL HEAD - LIVERPOOL, MARCH 2009

2009-03-18T03:33:00.000-07:00

MICHAEL HEAD - TELERAMA

2009-03-10T07:23:00.001-07:00

Des nouvelles de Silvain Vanot ...

2009-01-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

Après six années de silence discographique, pendant lesquelles il a essentiellement composé pour le cinéma, Silvain Vanot va sortir un nouvel album de chansons sur le label Megaphone.

Révélé en 1993 grâce à un premier disque éponyme, il s'est construit au fil de ses cinq albums chez Virgin un monde un peu à part dans la chanson hexagonale, où l'amour courtois côtoyait les guitares saturées et où le folk américain prenait des saveurs de madeleine. Aux côtés de Dominique A. et de Miossec, il a fait partie d'une nouvelle scène française bercée par le rock et indifférente au monde de la variété. Son cinquième album, "Il fait soleil", paru en 2002 chez Labels/Virgin, lui avait permis de toucher un public plus large grâce à la production ample et chaleureuse de Jacques Ehrhart. Il s'est ensuite consacré à la composition pour l'image (films de long-métrage, documentaires). Il a également écrit une biographie de Bob Dylan.

KAREN DALTON HUFFINGTON POST

2009-01-01T07:22:00.000-08:00

Read a great new review by Michael Simmons at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-simmons/karen-dalton-lives_b_153960.html

TEPPAZ & NAZ - L'ALBUM "VOLK"

2008-11-22T10:11:00.000-08:00

Le duo TEPPAZ & NAZ auteur des musiques des westerns languedociens d'Alain Guiraudie sortira au printemps 2009 sur Megaphone son 1er album studio, VOLK, composé de reprises à deux guitares très sèches de standards

des années 50 à nos jours

KAREN DALTON - PITCHFORK 8/10

2008-07-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

One of the endlessly repeated and therefore defining stories of Karen Dalton's career is that she hated recording so much that she had to be tricked into laying down the songs on her 1969 debut, It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best. That may be true, but by now it's legend, portraying the contrary Okie as a true folk artist who rejected the commercial enterprise of making and selling music. It's not that cut and dry, of course: It seems she felt uncomfortable only with studios and practiced performances. In his liner notes for Koch Records' 1997 reissue of her debut, Peter Stampfel recalls that when Dalton was scheduled to sing harmonies on a Holy Modal Rounders album, she spent hours psyching herself up for the task, at one point even ripping out a bathroom sink.

Recording-- or, perhaps more specifically, being recorded-- apparently didn't trouble Dalton very much. Since her rediscovery in 2006 via Light in the Attic's reissue of her second and final album, In My Own Time, two recordings from the early 1960s have surfaced: The first, the two-disc Cotton Eyed Joe, is a recording of a live performance at the Attic in Boulder, Colorado, captured by Joe Loop. Released less than a year later, Green Rocky Road is a more intimate set that Dalton recorded herself at home on the same reel-to-reel tapes. Acting as vocalist, accompanist, engineer, and producer, she overdubs guitar over her banjo tracks and even invites guitarist Richard Tucker and Loop to play on it. You can even hear the phone ringing and Dalton talking to her mother.

Green Rocky Road is a much different listening experience than Cotton Eyed Joe, which she performed specifically for the small crowd around her, who listen raptly and applaud heartily. If that release is public, then Green Rocky Road is pointedly private. Here Dalton entertains no one but herself. In addition to singing traditional ballads like "Nottingham Town" and "Skillet Good and Greasy", she runs through pensive versions of "Ribbon Bow" and "Katie Cruel", which would appear later on her first and second albums respectively. They have all the informality of someone thinking aloud, which suits her signature vocals perfectly. "Ribbon Bow" sounds careful and simmering, with Dalton reaching down into her lower register to sound uncharacteristically foreboding-- an approach that adds a bit of malice to the lyrics. Her takes on "Katie Cruel" and "In the Evening" (which also appears on Cotton Eyed Joe) show just how malleable she considered these songs, open for any possible inflection or interpretation.

Dalton's primary accompaniment, as always, is her trusty banjo, which she plays in a clawfinger style to give these songs a distinctive style that fits her free-floating vocals nicely. It rings out brightly on the cowboy song "Whoopee Ti Yi Yo" and the lover's lament "Red Rockin' Chair", and she adds dissonant notes to make "Nottingham Town" sound like a raga. In overdubbing, she seems to consider tempos and time signatures almost as restricting as a real studio. Opener "Green Rocky Road" overlays an acoustic guitar over her banjo, but the two instruments don't always mesh, lending the song an unrehearsed emotional push and pull.

There's no telling what purpose she intended for these recordings, or if the mere act of setting these songs to tape was the extent of her endeavor. Possibly she might have planned to record over them, or give them away, or store them in some dusty attic box for another generation. Whatever the case, Green Rocky Road stands as a particularly personal statement, a career marker that shows where she was and what songs obsessed her at a particular moment. That we can listen to these songs nearly half a century later is certainly a benefit, but it never feels like her primary concern.

— Stephen M. Deusner

KAREN DALTON & JOE LOOP FEATURE 1

2008-06-27T00:50:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON & JOE LOOP FEATURE 2

2008-06-27T00:45:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON on National Public Radio today

2008-06-18T02:16:00.000-07:00

Follow the link:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyld=91632808

KAREN DALTON - HMV CHOICE

2008-06-10T01:37:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON HOME ALBUM UNCUT 4* REVIEW

2008-05-22T08:46:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON - GREEN ROCKY ROAD

2008-05-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

NEW KAREN DALTON ALBUM FROM 'THE LOOP TAPES'

RELEASED IN THE US ON JUNE 10

The June 10 release of Green Rocky Road fills in the lacunae in the rightly romanticized mythos of the late folk music legend Karen Dalton and goes a long way in clarifying her crucial role in the evolution of modern acoustic music from “folk” source materials. The only formal studio recordings she made during her lifetime — released in 1969 and 1971 respectively — were thoroughly dissected upon their recent re-release. As wonderful as these albums were, they captured Karen in relatively awkward circumstances. Green Rocky Road, along with last year’s Cotton Eyed Joe, provide a rare glimpse of Karen Dalton circa 1962 and 1963 at her most pure, most powerful, and at ease and document far better her unique artistry that profoundly influenced the likes of Fred Neil, Tim Hardin and Bob Dylan.

Green Rocky Road is as close as we’ll ever get to hearing the record Karen Dalton would have made in 1963. Discovered on the same reel-to-reel tapes that yielded the live performances comprising the Cotton Eyed Joe release, were nine home recordings of Dalton left alone, with no one watching, no audience to please. Accompanied solely by her own sturdy banjo picking and 12 string strumming, her deep blue, smoky-throated singing evokes the voices and faces of past lives lived – the broken-backed pioneer, the coalminer black with shadow, the stained fingers of the slave, the prostitute…the dead and forgotten. Karen was perhaps the last true folk singer and that’s the bases of the potent appeal of her enigmatic art and of her commercial failure during her too-brief lifetime.

In recent years, the critical community has begun to recognize the difference between “folk singers” and the folk revivalists. The latter were mainly middle class fans of the former and were inspired by their styles and traditional repertoires and consciously attempted to preserve and promulgate all that. During the transitional period of the early 1960’s when folk singers and revivalists shared stages and came into regular contact with each other the myth of “cultural purity” began to develop. There was a romantic notion that the rural folk singers had largely created their styles, their material and audience base working in total isolation from mainstream culture. Thereby they had maintained an integrity and puissance unsullied by commercialism, cultural relativism and so on. The conceit is that they were “noble savages.” The truth of the matter is now being acknowledged. Performers like Leadbelly, Jimmie Rodgers, Mississippi John Hurt, the Carter Family and so on were in fact sophisticated music aficionados with catholic tastes who did not disdain the mainstream and cosmopolitan at all and were influenced by it. To meet the expectations of their new found audiences however, many of these performers consciously narrowed their set lists down to the most antique and down-home numbers they knew.

Enter Karen Dalton who was an exemplar of this tradition but whose youth and fashion-model beauty led her to be viewed by New York’s revivalists as a peer. Whereas most of the folk singers the revivalists experienced in the 60’s were either wizened oldsters or seemed like exotic anachronisms, Karen appeared to be one of their own. She managed to exist outside their preconceptions of the museum-piece folk they were familiar with.

Karen took the opportunity to play music just as she pleased, very much part of the authentic “folk” process of transmission and translation that had operated in this country for centuries. Like her predecessors in this tradition she drew on whatever material caught her fancy whether it was a farm laborer’s song she’d learned as a child or a Ray Charles’ tune she’d heard on the radio the day before and every style. While the foundation was rural home-brewed music that base was informed by jazz, pop, big band blues - the music that Leadbelly and his generation of folk singers did not perform for the revivalist audience. The synthesis she produced was perplexing, mysterious and excitingly innovative to the folks involved in New York’s revivalist scene who were primarily playing traditional songs as faithful to the version they’d first heard on Harry Smith’s Anthology Of American Folk Music collection or in some hushed coffee house as possible. Or were just in the early stages of recasting some of the lyrics to those sorts of songs. Within a few years the likes of Tim Hardin, Fred Neil and Bob Dylan would have evolved radically new styles starting from the folk base and gone on to varying degrees of fortune and fame.

Meanwhile Karen continued to exercise her artistry via her interpretation and revision of pre-existing material rather than writing “original material” – that’s not what folk singers did. As folk revivalism moved towards more mainstream incarnations and folk rock and found greater and greater commercial acceptance folk singers per se were largely left behind or marginalized, playing coffee houses and college campuses and re-recording songs from their youth. And Dalton was left behind with them, her case seeming just a bit stranger in that she had seemed like an integral part of the revivalists’ circles that evolving artistically and commercially at an ever-hastening pace.

By the time Karen recorded her first two studio albums in the late 60’s and early 70’s the musical world had changed radically and her own oeuvre was an anomalous anachronism. She and her more successful friends in the music business made valiant attempts to build bridges to the new rock audience that’d arisen trying to put her amazing voice and playing in a contemporary context on It’s So Hard To Tell Who’s Going To Love You The Best and In My Own Time. Both records are entirely enchanting and dazzlingly original. But they couldn’t present Karen on her own terms like Green Rocky Road does.

KAREN DALTON - 4* SPIN

2008-03-27T02:58:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON - THE GUARDIAN

2008-03-14T02:17:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON - THE WASHINGTON POST

2007-11-25T07:25:00.000-08:00

A case can be made for Karen Dalton, the late Greenwich Village folkie sometimes referred to as the best singer nobody's heard, as the archetype for current pop-cabaret stylists Norah Jones and Madeleine Peyroux, even Leslie Feist.
Neo-psych sprites like Jolie Holland and Joanna Newsom certainly have embraced Dalton, who died in 1993 after struggling with alcohol, drugs and depression for much of her life.

In the two-disc set "Cotton Eyed Joe," only the third album of her music ever released, Dalton accompanies herself on banjo and 12-string guitar at an intimate club in Boulder, Colo., in 1962. A year or so later she would move to New York, where she fell in with the heady likes of Bob Dylan, Fred Neil and the Holy Modal Rounders.

Dalton sings two of Neil's compositions here: "Red Are the Flowers," a wrenching lament for the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and "Blues on the Ceiling," a devastating personification of despair. On the latter, amid a haunting exchange between voice and guitar, she cries, "Even cocaine couldn't ease the pain/I'd be better off dead," her ghostly whine as otherworldly as those of Delta blues singer Skip James and bluegrass patriarch Ralph Stanley.

The mood is narcotic throughout, with Dalton also using her uncluttered fingerpicking and keening phrasing to reimagine a pair of lesser known Ray Charles numbers to devastating effect. She invests Woody Guthrie's "Pastures of Plenty" with an equally mournful voice, her intonation, like Billie Holiday's, as hornlike as it is human.

-- Bill Friskics-Warren

KAREN DALTON - SAN FRANCISCO WEEKLY

2007-11-14T07:27:00.000-08:00

Since her death in 1993, Karen Dalton's fan base has grown faster than a Colorado mountain town. And fans can thank a retired builder from Indiana named Joe Loop for a new batch of previously unheard recordings, Cotton Eyed Joe -- a collection of songs Dalton made in the early '60s.

Back in 1961, Loop was just another Midwest bohemian who read Jack Kerouac's On the Road, dropped out of school, and headed west. He eventually settled in Boulder, Colorado, where he stumbled into owning the Attic, a tiny club serving as a key stop on America's rapidly expanding folk-music circuit.

In an intimate setting that sat no more than 50, Loop booked many of the scene's top folkies -- including a pre-Byrds David Crosby, the Holy Modal Rounders, and John Phillips (several years before he formed the Mamas & the Papas). But it was Dalton, a young beauty with long black hair and Irish-Cherokee blood coursing through her veins, who really caught Loop's ear and eye. He brought a portable reel-to-reel to the Attic soon after Dalton's 1962 audition and started recording his new friend's performances. Those songs make up Cotton Eyed Joe.

"The early folk-music crowd was a pretty straight bunch and clean-cut," recalls Loop. "That wasn't Karen at all. She didn't get noticed by that in-crowd scene, although there were a lot of musicians who liked her."

Indeed. Bob Dylan adored her, as did folk-rock architect Fred Neil, whose deep, phantom croon was informed by Dalton's. And as rock and roll legend has it, the Band's "Katie's Been Gone," a classic Basement Tapes track, was written in her honor. Yet Dalton -- who split time between Boulder, Woodstock, and New York City, like many other wandering folkies back in the day -- never achieved mainstream recognition in her lifetime. But like many great blues singers, Dalton exuded dark romance, spiritual mystery, and brooding emotion. "It's cliché to say, but she had real soul," says Loop.

There are several reasons why Dalton never became one of folk's poster children. For one, unlike many of her contemporaries, Dalton lacked business savvy. Also, she made just two studio albums: 1969's It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best and 1971's In My Own Time, a knotted chunk of rural soul that stands alongside such singer-songwriter landmarks as Nick Drake's Pink Moon and Neil Young's Harvest.

"Performing was a weak spot for her," says Loop. "The Attic was different, because it was a small place and she was comfortable there. But there was something about a gig. She just had trouble facing that."

Loop and Dalton kept in touch -- even when the fragile singer suffered through commercial failures and devastating addictions to hard drugs and alcohol. Loop remained one of her biggest fans and most loyal friends. He constantly tried to turn others on to Dalton's music. But few shared his obsession.

Through the decades, Loop brooded over those old reels he made at the Attic (which closed in 1963), frequently playing them in private, because no one else ever cared to listen. "I knew it was good stuff, but what do you do with it?" he says. "There wasn't anything to do with those tapes for the longest time."

Until now. Popular taste has apparently caught up with the enigmatic Dalton. Deluxe CD reissues of her two LPs have precipitated a deluge of critical gush. Indie hipsters Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom and all their freak-folk followers treat Dalton like a patron saint.

When the French imprint Megaphone was preparing its rerelease of Dalton's debut last year, the label tracked down Loop for archival photographs. Not only did he hook Megaphone up with a wealth of never-before-seen photos; he unleashed those old Attic recordings, which few Dalton experts even knew existed.

And Cotton Eyed Joe sounds great -- especially coming from an amateur recorder who was working with early '60s gear. More important, however, the two-disc set captures a side of Dalton that her original releases never could. "On her first record, she's making room for the other players," says Loop. "But on Cotton Eyed Joe, she doesn't have to wait for anybody. She's free to bring in all the subtleties in her timing and playing. This disc shows what she can do by herself."

Like blues maverick John Lee Hooker, Dalton's pained cry follows such a deeply individualized sense of rhythm and melody that it blossoms during solo performances. The songs heave and lunge like ocean waves breaking upon a rock-strewn beach. The same can be said of her guitar and banjo picking -- both of which are downright virtuosic. "On 'Fannin' Street' her guitar sounds like an orchestra," says Loop. "It's hard to believe one person is doing all that."

But because Cotton Eyed Joe is such a personal statement, it's a far more challenging listen than It's So Hard to Tell and In My Own Time. "It's not a very good introductory CD," admits Loop. "But on the other hand, people who have already heard Karen will really like it. If people take the time to listen, I don't know how they could not like her." JUSTIN FARRAR

KAREN DALTON LIVE ALBUM - LES INROCKUPTIBLES

2007-09-30T08:54:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON LIVE ALBUM UNCUT 4* REVIEW

2007-09-01T07:49:00.000-07:00

LECUBE - LES INROCKUPTIBLES

2007-06-04T06:33:00.000-07:00

LECUBE - TELERAMA

2007-03-01T06:16:00.000-08:00

“C’est déjà ça : Lecube
Oh la belle chanson ! Qu’elle est grâcieuse dans son apparent débraillé. Une guitare sèche, une voix légèrement somnolente (Mercury Rev). Nommez-moi le responsable : Julien Barbagallo, vingt ans et quelque. Son pseudo : Lecube. Et le titre ? Shoot the nanny. Après (ou au dos, car existe aussi une version vinyle), il y a Creatures, un exercice doux-heurté (Neil Young). Suivons ce garçon, dont un album est annoncé, toujours sur le label Mégaphone de Stéphane Bismuth, exhumeur du premier Karen Dalton, éditeur du précieux Michael Head…”

FRANCOIS GORIN (L'Espresso)

LECUBE - 45 TOURS n°1 - MAGIC

2007-02-22T09:45:00.000-08:00

KAREN DALTON - LE MONDE

2006-12-13T02:59:00.000-08:00

KAREN DALTON - VSD

2006-12-06T02:56:00.000-08:00

KAREN DALTON - LES INROCKUPTIBLES

2006-11-14T03:01:00.000-08:00

KAREN DALTON - LIBERATION

2006-10-31T14:49:00.000-08:00

KAREN DALTON TELERAMA ffff

2006-10-22T12:59:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON - ROCK & FOLK

2006-09-24T03:08:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON - JALOUSE

2006-09-24T02:54:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON PLAN B

2006-09-23T14:42:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON 5* THE TIMES

2006-08-23T14:35:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON 5* THE SUN

2006-08-23T14:33:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON 5* UNCUT

2006-08-22T23:46:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON 4* THE GUARDIAN

2006-08-20T14:39:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON DISQUE DU MOIS VIBRATIONS

2000-01-01T07:32:00.000-08:00

OMAR BASHIR - LIBERATION

1999-11-14T03:11:00.000-08:00

KAREN DALTON - EPOK

1999-11-01T01:05:00.000-08:00

MICHAEL HEAD NME COVER !

1999-10-23T00:09:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON MOJO BEST OF 1999

1999-08-26T03:40:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON 4* UNCUT

1999-07-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON FIRST REISSUE - MOJO REVIEW !

1999-06-22T09:58:00.000-07:00

KAREN DALTON - THE GUARDIAN

1999-05-22T01:19:00.000-07:00

NME BEST OF 1998

1998-12-23T14:58:00.000-08:00

MICHAEL HEAD NME SINGLE OF THE WEEK

1998-11-23T15:02:00.000-08:00

MICHAEL HEAD MELODY MAKER SINGLE OF THE WEEK

1998-11-19T15:10:00.000-08:00

MICHAEL HEAD - HEARSAY

1998-09-27T01:56:00.000-07:00

MICHAEL HEAD - NME (9/10)

1997-12-01T07:34:00.000-08:00

MICHAEL HEAD - LES INROCKUPTIBLES

1997-11-27T07:11:00.000-08:00

MICHAEL HEAD - CHOC DU MONDE DE LA MUSIQUE

1997-10-27T07:37:00.000-08:00

MICHAEL HEAD - LES INROCKUPTIBLES - LANCEMENT

1997-09-27T01:25:00.000-07:00