“The Player’s Spot” has posted two new videos online:

Dawn Haggard here.

Jon Ashley here.

The videos are also available through the www.louisvillemusicnews.net website. Search the Artists page.

For those of you who were looking for “The Player’s Spot” featuring Teneia Sanders and Misha Feigin on WYCS 24 (Insight 138) last Tuesday and didn’t find it, it will be rerun on next Tuesday at 9 p.m. It will also be run several times over this weekend, but we do not have the times(!).

The problem is related to the recent takeover of WYCS management by the CW Louisville, which did not go smoothly. The CW staff has spent this last week overhauling the programming of WYCS and hopes to have all programming up and running by next week.

Keep your fingers crossed. In the meantime, check my earlier post about clips on Youtube.com.

Thursday Music Links:

Music of the Spheres - really. Blazar Variations as Music

Lots of percussion videos - http://videos.percussionmedia.com/

Free Harmonica lessons - www.harmonicalessons.com/

Hate ‘Elevator Music”? Join the campaign against it here - www.pipedown.info/
If you’re running Java on your machine, take a look at the music apps Java as available - href=”http://java.com/en/desktop/music.jsp”>http://java.com/en/desktop/music.jsp

The Player’s Spot videographer has been one busy fellow; he’s posted several more clips from the show. Here’s the list:

Bryan Fox -1

Bryan Fox - 2

Teneia Sanders - 1

Teneia Sanders -2

Jenny Madison

Mark Stampley

danny flanigan

Leigh Ann Yost

Brigid Kaelin -1

Brigid Kaelin -2

Joel Timothy -1

Joel Timothy - 2

You can also find them under the artist’s listing.

Sometimes days just get away from you. So here it is Friday and I haven’t posted Thursday’s links. Before I get to them, however, a couple of notes:

We hear that fiddler Alan Brock, formerly with the Juggernaut Jug Band is the hospital for heart bypass surgery. Best wishes for a speedy recovery to Alan.

Also, drummer and graphics artist Steve Eilers is back in the hospital. Steve recently had a kidney transplant after some time on dialysis; we hope his current stay turns out well.

I had a brief chat with Mike Williams of the Janis Pruitt Trio (and other groups) on Thursday; although it seems like only yesterday that his and wife Mary’s house burned some three weeks into opening the Black Cat at Pope and Frankfort, it’s been four years. He said they are finally getting a ‘few things going,’ but noted that the fire, which totally destroyed their house, many instruments and pets, was a serious setback, from which recovery was neither quick nor easy. Glad things are looking up.

Now to a few links:

This one is a curiosity: a really, really cool-looking digital recorder with all kinds of mouth-watering features, but I couldn’t find anywhere to order or buy it. Maybe you can. Look here

An old friend from my days in New Albany, mandolinist and composer John Goodin recently sent me email that he had written a tune called “Ekin Avenue” and mentioned yours truly plus our mutual friend Ray Major at his SoManyTunes site. Ekin Avenue was the street Ray and I lived on back in the day.

Goodin also composes and performs contra dance music. Check his website for that here. (Some time back, Goodin wrote a symphony for mandolin orchestra, “The Louisville Suite,” which was premiered by the Louisville Mandolin Orchestra.. Maybe there’ll be a recording someday.)

The videographer for The Player’s Spot has posted some videos from the January 16 show on Youtube. Here are the links:

16 Bones

Brian P. White

Glenn Metzger

Time flies and I nearly overlooked the fact that it’s Thursday and time for my choice of musical links.

Learn to play the basic blues with video http://www.bammerwiki.com/Acoustic_Blues_Guitar_video_lessons

Wood makes music sound so warm, so why not speakers with wooden cones? Really. JBL is offering them http://www.jvc.com/presentations/WoodConeSpeakers/index.html

Looking for an indie record label? Here’s a list: http://www.newpages.com/npguides/music.htm

Into Celtic, Irish, Scottish, English folk music? Get a weekly podcast from festivals all over at http://www.renaissancefestivalmusic.com/

Need to find songs in the public domain? Check this site: http://www.pdinfo.com/

Just got a phone call saying that Big Hopp’s has closed. More info to follow.

Update: Not a lot more - the Darnell Levine shows on January 12 & 13 are canceled at Big Hopp’s. They may be rescheduled.

I made a trip to the Phoenix Hill Tavern on Friday, January 5 to help a videographer with the recording of the bands playing as part of Eddy Metal’s “LMN Gathering 2″ showcase. Hanging out until 2 a.m., listening to various metal bands screaming along at full volume isn’t something I’ve done a lot of lately. The cause is age-related, mostly; I’m too old to do that and then get up at 6:30 a.m. to walk the dogs, then go to work. However, I’m working on putting together a Louisville Original Rock television show, which requires a sample program as proof of concept to sell to advertisers, so I needed to get a sample what the scene is like.

It’s the old saying, redux: the more things change, the more they stay the same. The Phoenix is and has been a ‘meet’ market: boy meets girl, girl meets boy, girl meets girl, only with lots and lots of tattoos and retro Goth outfits, overlaid with the remnants of disco clothing (Really). The music, as always, is too loud to talk, so guys don’t have to worry about sounding like sex-crazed idiots, at least not until they get to the parking lot. Oh, the joys of young Americans at play.

Anyway, we got three or so hours of video, which will be posted into something like a TV show and then we go see if we can sell it to advertisers. Watch this space for more news about it.

Do you like freeform radio? Check out this Jersey City station:www.wfmu.org/

More home-made guitars than you have imagined or could image: www.ho-madeguitars.com/

Okay, you dropped your iPod into the toilet again. Avoid that little problem with this example of why America is in dire need of some new imagination: http://www.dutchguard.com/p-icarta-ipod-roll.html

Amazon strikes back against DRM: www.computers.net/2006/12/amazon_soon_ope.html

Get your free piano sheet music here: www.pianopublicdomain.com/Albeniz

So once more, I have survived the holidays, a no small feat these days. Just before Christmas and just before New Year’s, the Louisville Courier-Journal obituary pages really grew in number; it was nearly astonishing to see it. So the holidays can be lethal.

During that same period, I also had a very peculiar, mind-stretching experience: in a single night, I attended a post-funeral event, Sitting Shiva, for the mother of a Jewish friend, the first time I experienced that rite. my spouse and I left there and drove out Preston Highway to W. Indian Trail, where we caught the second half of the “Louisville Opry,” an old-style, old country music show, presided over by the pastor of the church in which it was held. Some friends of mine had been invited to perform and we went to support them.

When we got there, it was as though we had caught the Wayback Machine to 1954, East Texas, for a combo camp meeting and community sing, except with wireless mikes and far better sound than was around then. The preacher and his wife, who played four or five instruments, were the show-off act, but other folks got up and performed, including a ‘country comedian’ who seems to have borrowed his shtick from Uncle Dave Macon. Altogether, it made ‘Hee Haw’ seem urbane.

Thursdays Links will be posted a little later.