Blues Run the Game

I am once again indebted to the amazing service that is Pandora. A few days ago I was listening to the free internet radio station at work when I heard a particularly striking and new song for the first time. You see, Pandora allows you to customize your own streaming radio station(s), using "seed" songs, artists, and albums as well as thumbs up or down ratings to formulate a 'music genome' of similar music, which plays on your station (any song can be skipped), all for free. I created my station, Mellow Kitty, a long time ago and listen to it throughout the entire day while I'm at my desk, so my tastes have been very refined.

As the name suggests, it mostly comprises mellow, work-friendly music. Among the most commonly played artists are Paul Simon, Nick Drake, James Taylor, Bens Harper and Folds, Cat Stevens, John Mayer, etc. In the time shortly after I created it, while the station was working off just a few of my "seed" selections, it provided a wider variety of music styles for me to rate up or down, but these days, it's pretty rare I hear a song I haven't heard or whose artist is foreign to me (with the exception of Broadway and opera songs, which I almost always thumbs down, but still occasionally get spit out at me for unknown reasons.)

Anyway, the song I heard on that fateful day was "Here come the Blues" by Jackson C. Frank. From a technical-musical standpoint, it was not significantly different from some of the folk-blues works by other artists I hear regularly, but there was a melancholic sweetness to his voice, similar to Drake's, that literally forced me to stop my work until I had looked up more information about the guy singing.

As it turns out, there are plenty of reasons for Mr. Frank's melancholy. According to his Wikipedia entry, he was acquainted with tragedy from an early age. At the age of 11, a furnace explosion at his elementary school killed 15 of his classmates and sent him to the hospital for 7 months. The trauma of the event would prove to be a major source of depression and mental illness throughout his life, though it was during his long convalescence that he first learned to play the guitar.

In his early 20's, he shipped off to England and befriended a young Paul Simon, who was touring the country. Simon produced Frank's self-titled album, which brought him a measure of success in the U.K. before his mental illnesses worsened, leading to his retreating to the U.S. again. At the age of 27, he married a former fashion model and had a son, who soon after died of cystic fibrosis. The latest tragedy sent him to the brink, and he was committed for his illness. He enjoyed a brief revival upon the re-release of his first album in the late 70's, but continued his downward spiral.

In 1984, in his forties, Frank again traveled to the U.S., searching for his old friend Paul Simon, but was unsuccessful and wound up homeless and living on the streets. Just at the time his music was being rediscovered on the folk scene in the early 1990's, he lost sight in one eye due to his being shot with a pellet gun by a few young boys firing indiscriminately in a park where he was sitting. With aid from some folk aficionados who found him, he began work on some new recordings, with little success. He died in 1999 at the age of 56, shortly before the first CD release of his self-titled album in 2001.

His musical legacy, however, has proven far longer than his life. Covers of his most famous song, "Blues Run the Game," were done by Drake, Simon and Garfunkel, and Counting Crows, among others. Another Frank Song, "Milk and Honey" has been popularized by Drake's cover as well. Nirvana recorded a stirring rendition of an unreleased song of his, "In the Pines," for their 'unplugged' album in the early 90's as well.

His style walks the line between folk, blues, and 60's pop, with vocals similar to the high tenor of Roy Orbison underscored with just a hint of the trampy gravel of Tom Waits, and accompaniment by simple acoustic guitar. His life has been immortalized through one particularly fitting stanza from his most famous song:

"Livin' is a gamble baby - Lovin's much the same - Wherever I have played - Whenever I've thrown them dice - Wherever I have played - The blues have run the game"

I would highly recommend Frank to anyone who likes Drake, Simon, Bob Dylan, or really depressing life stories. Thanks, Pandora.

Keeping it Loki

I just finished up defeating Loki, the final evil lord in the tremendously awesome early 90's Shareware PC adventure game "God of Thunder." I know Jeffro is very familiar with the game, but for others, the plot goes something like this:

You are a highly pixelated and compressed animated Thor, the Norse god of thunder (the mostly red blob pictured at right with the hammer in front of it). You have to navigate your way through three levels, defeating three different evil guys. Each level follows a different story line.

In Level 1, you, with only your powerful throwing hammer and some guidance from your orb-contained god-father, Odin, you must save a local village from the evil reign of lizard?/monster thing Jormagund, who similar to King Koopa Bowser from the Mario series, wears a crown (which covers his only weak spot.)

Along the way, you must solve some terribly interesting (and some just terrible) puzzles, most of which involve pushing rocks, blocks and other objects through virtual mazes to block cycloptic worms from shooting you with some (bullet? spit?) things that kills you, as well as battling various simple dangerous creatures, picking up jewels, magic items and interacting with, pillaging and using the villagers to get stuff you need for your final showdown with Jormagund.

The second and third levels are similar, though I think the puzzles in the first are superior to the others. In the second level, you must free the villagers from enslavement at the hand of Nognir, who forces them to work mining Teflor, a non-stick substance of some kind (Level Two is titled 'Non-stick Nognir'). In the third, you must defeat your own god-brother, Loki, who simply imprisons people for various minor offenses such as cussing, spitting, kissing your mother or father goodnight, and dropping ice cream cones on his foot.

None of the bad guys are terribly difficult to defeat. I just downloaded the game a few days ago and beat all three levels in a matter of hours spread over the days since. But it is still worth the free download (available here) because of its nice blend of spatial/logic puzzles and humorous tidbits with just enough highly unrealistic violence. I suppose you could purchase and register the game as well, if the makers are still a viable company (I don't know). Also notable is the electronic soundtrack, some of which sounds eerily similar to some tunes by rotating California hippie music ensemble Golden Shoulders, who I thrice saw perform live at IWU.

So if you're bored and/or feeling nostalgic for a time when the U.S. was making peace, not war, in the Middle East, Pepsi was crystal clear and video games were simpler, check it out. You won't be disappointed.

Stan in the Place Where You Live

So here's a gem I found on the web. It is a fairly low-quality documentary about the late, great Canadian folk legend Stan Rogers, called "One Warm Line: The Legacy of Stan Rogers." I have been able to find very little information about it, other than that it was made by a production company called Kensington and directed by two men, Alan Collins and Robert Lang, in 1989, some six years after Rogers' death in a plane crash.


via videosift.com

It contains several interviews with presumed Canad(ians/-iennes,) most of whom are not identified, over an often stunning backdrop of the Canadian wilderness and several of Stan's most-known songs. I must say, having to this point only heard his booming voice on CD, it is a nice treat to see some of his live performances, which are vibrant and moving.

Apparently, some PBS (or CBC) stations have aired the documentary a few times throughout the years, but several commenters on various sites have complained about its virtual non-availability outside of a few public libraries who have it on VHS. However, it does appear to be available on DVD through Kensington's Web site, for $27.95., or through the company that distributes Rogers' works, Fogarty's Cove Music. However, it appears that to make a purchase through FC, one must print and fill out a form and send it snail (or, more likely, moose) mail. That seems a little ridiculous these days, but I guess it is Canada.

Anyway, I hope the video res is high enough that you can view it easily. A more intense Web search may turn up a better version.

re: video

Sorry for anyone who watched this video thinking it was supposed to be here. It wasn't. We had some issues embedding the video (that you saw ?part? of, without sound), so I tried putting it here as a test. (Don't worry, it's only a boring explanatory video on JMU switching to direct lending of financial aid. View a full version here, if you really want to. I did edit it, but it is not good, and it's way long.)

You see, we typically upload any video we make onto YouTube, which very conveniently auto-generates an embed video code that can be used to put the video, at any size we wish, on any site we control. Unfortunately, YouTube only allows videos up to 10 minutes, unless you are a paid subscriber (JMU is not, and this video is ~17 minutes long). So instead, we tried for the first time to host the video through JMU's in-house video sharing resource, JMUtube. It has a standalone, unique player that can be embedded on any site and which does not need any plugin for anyone to view it (such as Quicktime). Unfortunately, JMUtube still has some bugs, and for some reason was stripping the video of audio.

After a full day of going back and forth on what to do, including hosting the video on our own server and embedding it simply as a Quicktime movie (which couldn't be sized down on our server), we decided to make a short 2 minute teaser from the beginning of it, and then provide a link to the full movie in Quicktime format. I know this was a very boring post, but just wanted to explain to anyone who saw it in its earlier form!