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SIMPLE MOTION

You pretty much know what you are going to get with an Eric Brace album – lovely melodies, splendid playing, insightful lyrics, great production, and in the case of his duo/trio records, wonderful harmonies. It is all there on this wonderful album
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Sidetracks And Detours present PASS IT ON 33 weekly walkabout 31st  December 2023

SIDETRACKS AND DETOURS would like to thank all our readers for your support and interest in our not-for-profit blog. It is always good to hear from you, letting us know what you like about the magazine and to receive the congratulations from those of you who commented on our achieving our thousandth edition not long ago.
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ZACH BRYAN BAGS BIG AWARDS

American Heartbreak is my effort at trying to explain what being a 26-year-old man in America is like. There’s love, loss, revelry, resentment, and forgiveness all wrapped into one piece of work.”
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PASS IT ON: Sideetracks And Detours Weekly Walkabout Sunday 16th July 2023

There came to the stage a rock band of the likes I have never seen before.  Guitarists, percussion and keyboards and back line choral ensemble. The Line up was of men and women, young and old, and there were two or three solo vocalists and a musical director on stage, too.
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I GLORIFY SPOTIFY

Kindle Is Kind To Me And Amazon is Amazing but I GLORIFY SPOTIFY by Norman Warwick photo 1 When the River in Hebden Bridge, overflowed its banks and the rest of the town, in the great Boxing Day Flood of 2015, it stole a priceless cd collection and hundreds of books that had formed a compelling personal library. That was my cd collection and they were my books and I had left them with my brother for safe-keeping in his lock up (Hah) only six weeks earlier when my wife and I left the UK to start a new life here in Lanzarote. The first time we turned on the computer in our new home was when we switched on the Boxing Day BBC news bulletin and there they were, my cds and my books, floating past my former ´office´ at Number I Riverside, in Rochdale, ten miles or so from Hebden Bridge. I´ve never been the same since, really,…..but I had the sunshine and the scenery for solace and just this year I have begun to replenish my stocks, and have done so by the kindness of Kindle, because of the amazing Amazon and the sounds of Spotify. All my easy reading fiction is available to me for only 9.50 for ten books a month, and that includes massive box sets by particular authors. Because there so few books shops on Lanzarote in general, and none at all that cater for English Language editions it is fantastic to be able to order on prime delivery from Amazon of all the hardback books I require on the subjects of film, theatre, music and (auto) biographies. When I saw my books heading out sea I waved them off with a sinking heart, never thinking I would one day need to build a bigger bookshelf. There is no such thing as a record store on Lanzarote, and there hasn´t been for twenty years. Thank God that I had downloaded pretty much all my music collection on to my computer before we came over, so I can still listen to all my old favourites through headphones that kind of chain me to my desk. Thank God also for my dear wife, who one night a few months ago whispered sweet nothings to me. ¨Spotify´, she breathed. ´You should try Spotify !¨ It didn´t actually sound that enticing, until her recommendation was echoed by Peter Pearson, our Americana correspondent at Sidetracks And detours. He had some knowledge of Spotify and was prepared to PASS IT ON to me. I now have a new collection of sounds has grown existentially from my original collection that seemed to have reached a natural conclusion at the start of this century as sxo many of my favourite generation of artists went up to join that great jam-session in the sky. Whereas I had given up, partly in despair of ever finding new John Stewarts, Guy Clarks or Townes, Peter had kept looking and wehen he began writing for our Sunday Supplement I was treated to long lists of names new to me in my favourite genre. And so I took up Spotify.. phto 2 tom waits Like my parsimonious wife I ignored the premium rate service and took instead the free service that inserts advertising into any playlists I create. Spotify offers access to millions of songs. It allows me to listen to them for free, and then rewards me for taking that opportunity by allowing me to create playlists of those songs and artists I enjoy. Furthermore folks, it even creates playlists on my behalf based on the searches I have made and my own created lists. So, they offer me a daily mix and then a weekly best of list of my recent searches. They also offer, for example, compilations they have made of music by artists similar to John Stewart or Tom Waits.. Let me tell you, though, what a good friend Spotify has become. They have sent me a Christmas present. There it was, waiting for me on screen when I switched on my compouter, I ma listening to that present now, even as I type this. They say the present is a reward for being a good ´customer´ and they have called it 2023 Wrapped. I have ´earned´ this because, they say, I have this year listened to 28 different genres of music including folk, rock, jazz and country but it seems that even Spotify does not yet have a category of Americana. photo 3 chip Spotify has reminded me that I have played 1, 228 songs..and listened to 808 artists, the most frequently played of those being John Stewart, who they say headed my top ten artists. with Emmylou Harris and Chip Taylor making up the top three. Then came Tom Waits and Mark Knopfler, blasts from the past all of them but the Knopfler selections were very much guided by Peter Pearson´s observations in his weekly PASS IT ON column. My listening minutes to these and other artists adds up to almost four consecutive full days. All those statistics were compiled and shown on my screen by Spotify in a manner that enabled me to share it with friends if I wished. (Good marketing ploy that, of the kind we employ in our Sunday Supplement title of PASS IT ON). All this was great, but the icing on this particular Yuletide log (or chart?) was the list of a hundred tracks compiled from my searches and played selections. There they were, A hundred tracks of the best music in the world. photo 4 I guess I have to thank our Jazz On Air correspondent, radio broadcaster Steve Bewick. His Hot Biscuits weekly programme often sends me in search of what I hear, and so Athat has somnhow led to A Love Supreme by John Coltrane beng the most played song on my plalists.. photo 5 In second place was Carmelita, a track I had almost forgotten by Warren Zevon, and I´m delighted to say that Blue Moon by Karla Harris, and Joe Alterman is in the top three of this great chart. It would be about this time last year that I first heard of Karla and this recording, on Mr. Bewick´s mix-cloud show. If I had to recommend only one of this top hundred it would be this exquisitely played and sung track delivered in a new interpretation by two still new, but already highly respected musicians. Also in my top ten is another name I first heard on that radio programme. Jenny Bray is a UK artist, who has just this month has a fantastic single called Ringing Bells and a new album, partly recorded in America, called One Hare One Owl. So it is fitting also gracing my top ten is a track called Hot Biscuits by The Last Of The Blue Devils. photo 6 brace and cooper There were several new artists, or at least new to me, in my top hundred, and tracks of this nature included Waltz For My Father by Derek Nash and Simple Twist Of Fate, written decades ago by Dylan of course, but here revived by Sarah Jarosz, introduced to me by Peter Pearson, and sure to become a major player in the Americana category. There is also Trinity River by Charley Crockett in the same genre. It is great to see new names in a genre I was beginning to think was fading away. Instead, Americana is now being illuminated by the likes of Billie Strings and Molly Tuttle who delivered a big version of Listen To The Radio, a tribute to Loretta Lyn written by Nanci Griffith that they had recorded for a tribute album to the late writer of the song. It´s in my list. It was Peter Pearson, again, who introduced me to the music of Eric Brace and Peter Cooper, and there they are, too, at number 43 in the Normboard charts, with the gorgeous Wait A Minute. Guy Clark, John Hiatt and Steve Earle are in the charts amidst others, too, who represent the country becoming Americana on which Peter and I gorged in the seventies, eighties and nineties. photo 7 julie felix Folkie chart entries include, Stephen Foster, Hoagy Carmichale, Ralph McTell, Joan Baez, Julie Felix and Kate Wolf. All this and all of your own preferred choices are on Spotify, and we urge you to have look, says the man who might be the last person in the world to have discovered Spotify !

INDIANA JONES ON HIS LAST CRUSADE

There is a street along to the church in Haria town centre that is, in December, a little piece of heaven in a world that feels at the moment like it is taking us to hell in a hand-cart. The trees are tastefully draped in single colour lighting (left) and the church is floodlit. Either side of dusk there are two or three welcoming restaurants, street markets stalls serving mulled wine and such, and couple and families, tourists and locals taking a gentle evening stroll.

MINDFULNESS AND PHOTOGRAPHY

this aesthetic exploration is initially without the intention of showing the results to anyone. And so I try to remain open and not censor myself at all. So it's all the easier for me to keep discovering the world with a camera.
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XMAS PRESENTS FROM CHRISTMAS PAST

The months between the New Year of 1871 and that of 1872 were lived against the backdrop of the Franco- Prussian War (July 1870 – to the Armistice of the following January of 1871) and the building of Royton’s first limited liability cotton spinning mill also of July 1871.