Greetings music lovers; that’s John Platt’s signature phrase and last night was John Platt’s On Your Radar so I’m using it. I’m debating continuing welcoming My Gentle Listeners on Gord’s Gold. I will never abandon My Gentle Readers. Later last night, 11 PM EST, Gord’s Gold was live on Folk Music Notebook. The archive at Gord’s Gold was supposed to go up at noon today. It didn’t because when I schedule it on Tuesday I forgot to hit save. Mixcloud did not inform me of that until it was supposed to go live. Now it’s there and you can watch. You don’t even have to leave this page.
Let’s see if that works. It says it’s formatted for WordPress so it should. Can you tell I’m proud of Gord’s Gold? I’m getting over my imposter’s syndrome. Every time someone emails me music I feel more legit. I know that some of it is because I have puppy dog eyes and my friends can’t resist when I ask. I joke but I love that there are people, many of whom are musicians, who treat me like family. That’s the important validation.
Last night’s guest at John Platt’s On Your Radar were Danielle Miraglia (Murr-AH-lee-a), Kemp Harris, and Annette Wasilik. Here’s a tip for everyone with oft mispronounced names, especially musicians, give a phonetic pronunciation. I pride myself on getting Italian names right. Of course, some Italians throw me a curveball and pronounce their names like Americans, their families gave up on correcting people. Learn now, that you don’t pronounce the g in aglia … except when you do. One friend took the g out of her name. I probably learned that from reading about the mathematician Tartaglia. After patting myself on pronouncing Danielle’s name correctly I’ll admit my problem with Annette’s last name. I could never remember if it is Wasalik or Wasilak. As you might have noticed both are wrong, it’s Wasilik. I made at least one graphic where I misspelled it. Thank you Kemp, both your names are easy to spell and pronounce. This was the rare On Your Radar where I was already Facebook friends with all the artists. That makes it easier for me when promote the shows. I know Kemp and Annette from NERFA and Danielle from the New Bedford Folk Fest. I asked a Bay Stater who I should look out for at my first New Bedford, and she was the one suggested.
Even though they are all solo artists they are different enough from each other to provide contrast. Annette is classic singer/songwriter. Kemp describes himself as an old black man that tells stories. That led me down a rabbit hole, I thought, “oh, a non-racist Uncle Remus.” Looking up Uncle Remus opened up many cans of worms. First off the stories were written by Joel Chandler Harris. It’s a Harris thing. Joel Harris was trying to preserve the African Folklore he heard from former slaves. That’s progressive. The reason we think of the stories as racist is the faux black dialect he used. Somebody needs to recreate them minus the racism inherent to when they were written. I better pull out of this Br’er rabbit hole. Just read the Wikipedia article on Uncle Remus and discover how much you think you know is wrong. I found out that Tar Baby is not a racial insult. It comes from African folklore. I just realized that it would be as if in a black dominated society people taking Frosty the Snowman as derogation of whites. Good luck trying to use it the way it was intended. I feel squeamish writing about it. If people weren’t xenophobic idiots things would be much easier. On the scale of damage, it does, feeling squeamish does not even register.
This would be a perfect vehicle for an art form that I contemplated when I first became part of cyberworld, the HTML book. You don’t read it linearly but keep having choices of what alley to go down. A choose your own adventure tome. Wikipedia gets close to that, but you often get to the end of an article and then have to find a new starting point. Wait, I just fell down another rabbit hole. Focus!
I never got to Danielle. Danielle sings the blues, like Billie Holiday, except that Billie Holiday rarely sang the blues. Her autobiography was titled Lady Sings the Blues because the word “blues” in a title sold when it was published. Just call me Alice, I fall down rabbit holes.
The one problem with last night’s show was that I was busy doing social media monitoring and couldn’t pay as much attention as I’d like. I panicked early on because it looked like only 5 people were watching the show on Facebook. That disastrously bad. It took me a while to realize that I was watching the wrong stream, the one on the On Your Radar Group, not the page. Plenty of people were watching on the Facebook page and YouTube channel. We got to 100 followers on YouTube that means we will get to use a custom URL. I looked earlier today and still couldn’t change it. Then I run from StreamYard, the backstage platform, to YouTube to Facebook. I answer people’s questions and try to promote the show. It’s not like the in person shows where my only job during the show is take pictures and share them.
Let me get to what really matters. The show was great, all the musicians were great, and you can still watch it here on YouTube or Facebook. You’ll find a link there to tip the artists.
This will teach me to not write blogs while watching live streams. Genevieve is hosting a show Sisters In Song: A Celebration of Female Voices on Facebook and Twitch. I know I should watch on Twitch, but FB is just so much easier. It notified me it was starting and all I had to do was click. It features seven musicians that have played The Budgiedome, Carolann Solebello, Gen, Heather Aubrey Lloyd, Karyn Oliver, Meg Braun, Mya Byrne, and Shawna Caspi. An eighth, Shanna in a Dress, has been invited to play next time there’s a Falcon Ridge. All but Shawna have played multiple times. Gen and I travel in the same circles. I’m an idiot and have been writing all this time and now have to make dinner, even though five of my friends are coming up. I better post this then start cooking.
Wise Madness 