Thursday, May 12, 2011

If It's Thursday, It Must Be an Early Clue to the New Direction. Seriously -- It's a Law, or Something.

A performance note for the upcoming weekend: If you're in the vicinity of the Tri-State area, my old Greenwich Village-in-the-'80s pal Peter Spencer -- a swell singer/songwriter/guitarist and all around fine fellow -- will be doing a couple of rare East Coast gigs. He'll be at Kline's Gallery in Lambertville, NJ Friday night, and at Downright Music in Collinsville, CT on Saturday night. You can get more details at the links.

Equally important, Pete has a remarkable new live album out, titled 1896, after both the vintage Washburn Parlor guitar all 12 songs are performed on, and the 1896 Bainbridge Island WA school building where the album was recorded.



Here's one of my favorite tracks from the album, and one of my favorites amongst Pete's oeuvre generally, the quite wonderfully poignant and melodic "Everybody Danced." It is one of my regrets in life that Pete wrote it AFTER I had stopped performing in a band; I would have loved to have covered the thing with really loud guitars.



In any case, a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded to the first reader who gleans the clip's relevance to the theme of tomorrow's Weekend Listomania.

Oh, and you can order the album over at CD Baby here.

9 comments:

fmcg said...

Acoustic?
Inflection of "to dance" in the title?
PNW artists?

Shriner said...

Songs that have a guitar-riff shout-out to Cat Stevens songs?

(Not being snarky -- I just immediately heard "Moonshadow" as soon as it started...)

steve simels said...

No, and no. But both good guesses.

edward said...

Songs about summer?
Songs that mention amusement parks?
Songs with dates in the title?
(pretty much covered the early Springsteen years with those 3)

Songs Steve wants to cover;>

steve simels said...

Songs Steve wants to cover;

That would be the greatest listomania ever, except I'm the only person who would really appreciate it.
:-)

Anonymous said...

Songs about summer? Songs about heartbreak? Songs about heartbreak in the summer? Etc.

Anonymous said...

Back in the day ("the day" being the first Reagan administration), there were other virtuosic finger-style guitarist/composers hanging around Folk City, though they tended toward the intricate and delicate side. Peter was really distinctive. He used a resonator guitar which blasted; his songs reached deep into the roots; and his right hand grabbed at those strings. I think the song "Restless Youth in Chinatown" on the new CD is of that vintage.

"Everybody Danced" is a really gorgeous song. I'm under the impression Peter is a major Gene Clark fan, hence (maybe) the Byrds' quote in the song intro.

No clue what the theme is.

AP

Gummo said...

Sweet, sweet song, thanks, steve.

Songs/artists that should have been big? (Yes, I know you did this one before.)

steve simels said...

Hint: the song per se is not the clue.