Breaking Find - Rise - Caroline Jones

Not only is this a breaking find for me, but I found it before Wesley. Again, it happens so rarely. Also, YouTube has not been suggesting new songs for a while, and it's irritating me. I'm afraid they're breaking the web service trying to force people onto YouTube Music.

The song and the video is both beautiful, and it's an incredibly uplifting song. I've added it to my favorites playlist already, and added her album to the Apple Music collection.

Better In The Video -- Rollin and Tumblin (MTV Unplugged) by Eric Clapton

For the next few Saturdays (until I run out of songs), I'm going to talk about songs that are good (or even just OK), but whom have a video that is something special.

The Song: Rollin' and Tumblin' is a stable of Eric Clapton's blues songlist. It's a classic, and every time he comes to it, he makes it special. The MTV Unplugged version here is a great and fun rocker. Clapton and the band had run through the songs to record the first time, and several takes weren't that good (the audience was too loud, the band was too tight, etc.). The band and crew went on break, but Clapton stayed out. Supposedly the audience talked Clapton into starting another song, and he got the band back out to run through Rollin and Tumblin again, jam style. The recording crew (audio and visual) had to run to get back into position to record, and they actually missed the first little bit of the song (the record catches Clapton's "Did you get that?" at the end of the song).

Why the video is better: Mr. Tamborine Man.

Ray Cooper is a percussionist most famous for playing and touring with Elton John, but he has played with Eric Clapton quite often, and Clapton tapped him for the Unplugged sessions as well. As you watch the Rollin and Tumblin video progress, you can see Mr. Cooper get more and more energetic and flamboyant with his tamborine, until the audience catches him and starts cheering around 3:15. Clapton at first doesn't really notice, but around 3:40 Clapton sees it (you can hear the little "Cought you" when he stops playing the guitar).

It's not quite a tamborine solo, but it's the best tamborine feature I've ever seen.

BTW, I'm using DailyMotion here instead of YouTube because the video quality is a LOT better...

Saturday Special - The HU

Last year, I happened to catch a link to probably the most unique band I've ever heard: The Hu. The HU are Mongolians who use traditional instruments and traditional singing techniques (including throat singing) to play heavy metal. Here is the first song of theirs I heard, Wolf Totem (turn on closed captions for English lyrics):

The second, and even better, was the song Yuve Yuve Yu:

I lost track of the band while Paula was sick. While looking up these links to write this article, I also found that they've been doing collaborations with English/American singers, including the incredible Lzzy Hale:

I am in general not a fan of heavy metal. While I think Lzzy Hale is an incredible singer, I am not fond of Halestorm (for example). However, The Hu take such an unapologetic romp through heavy metal territory while turning the knob past 11 (they sing about how they killed us all last time, and why they aren't able to unite and do it again....), and then they turn around and sing a song like Song of Women... They may not be in my Favorites playlist, but I did just order the MP3 version of their album.
Amazon Associates Links for The Gereg, Deluxe Edition (The Hu's first album): CD MP3

Saturday Special — Suzanne Ciani

Rather than focus on a song or album this Saturday, I'm going to pick a musician, Suzanne Ciani. I have no idea whatsoever how I got the first album by Ms. Ciani. I expect that someone had taken a collection to Half Price Books or the Habitat for Humanity Restore, and they were all for sale together. The more albums I see for a musician I don't know, I will at least Google the musician and see if I want them (the opportunity to find that many albums at once may never happen again). When I heard her mentioned in similar terms to Enigma and Robert Miles, I had to buy them. After the first couple, I have worked to collect more.

She got her start in doing synthesizer sounds and beeps in commercials. Here's a GE appliance commercial that strikes close to home because of Bo:

While continuing her commercial and movie work, she branched out into synthesizer-based "new age" and neoclassical music. Here's a song from an early album:

While I don't have a single song of hers in my favorites playlists, I have begun sleeping with one of her all-accoustic albums playing as background music on the Bluetooth speakers. As it goes, I'm probably listening to more per-minute of her music than any other singer right now.

Here's the Suzanne Ciani store on Amazon.

Saturday Special -- Close Ties by Rodney Crowell

On Saturdays, I'm going to break The Rules, and talk about something musical that I just feel like it. Some weeks, it's going to be a set of songs with a unifying theme. Sometimes it's going to be X versus Y. This week, I'm going to cover an album that has one song in my favorites list now, but I just found a couple of weeks ago.

In 2017, Rodney Crowell wrote a wonderful album Close Ties, much of it in the perspective of his good friend and mentor Guy Clark. Somehow I managed to not hear this album until few weeks ago, and I've been making up for lost time. The jewel in the crown is It Ain't Over Yet.



I don't think Rodney and Rosanne could have sung this song if it was supposed to be about them (instead of about Guy and Suzanne Clark), but it's just as much about Rodney and Rosanne, or any other two older loves. Watching that video makes me sad that Rodney and Rosanne couldn't make their marriage work. John Paul White (formerly of The Civil Wars) adds an incredible dimension to the song.

The second song off the album I'll call out is I Don't Care Anymore. The album version is good, but Rodney sang an incredible acoustic version for Paste Magazine:



The entire album is good, and has reminded that I need to be buying Rodney's other albums.

A streaming link to Close Ties: Noisetrade

Some of the songs free on Noisetrade: Link

Amazon Affiliates links: CD MP3