Monday, May 14, 2007

THE BEST MUSIC YOU EVER SAW

I originally posted this in March. It disappeared. I don't know why, but let's try this again:

It has been far too long since I've written about musical saw performers. What a wonderous invention is the saw! You can cut down trees with it, then relax afterwards by bowing it to produce nicely eerie theremin-ish music.

Minneapolis' Randall Throckmorton is a crooner in the tradition of '20s idols like Rudy Vallee. He often augments his melancholy, nostalgic ballads with Andy McCormick's musical saw, on such lovely tunes as:

Randall Throckmorton: Always Chasing Rainbows

Randall Throckmorton: The Lamp Is Low

McCormick has his own group, Dreamland Faces, which features Karen Majewicz on accordion. A musical saw/accordian duo. I just love that.

djBC just came back from New Orleans where he "saw" a very different kind of performer: "He plays his boot, a saw, his bass of PVC pipes...he is THAT 1 GUY - one man band. Recent album- SONGS IN THE KEY OF BEEYOTCH. He also has electronic bassdrum triggers and a snare drum and various looping mechanisms and stuff. I was blown away. He also has a sense of humor. Unfortunately I didnt get the part where he hooks a smoke machine up to his PVC bass and smoke is pouring out the top. Or when he removed his hat and a second hat was underneath the first one. Classic."

Some crazy videos here, and bc himself shot this video, and "heres another video of him playing the PVC bass/cello with a bow, and also playing "Somewhere over the rainbow" on a saw."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My favorite is still the 'Saw Lady' (www.SawLady.com/blog ) I see at Times Square.
And if you haven't seen it on the news:
http://video.sympatico.msn.com/v/en-ca/v.htm?g=25751e7b-8301-4f56-9ba5-142944354289&f=37&fg=rss

Andrew Christopher said...

Wow...there's a lot of beauty and sadness in this music. I really love it...thanks!