A NEW YORK CELEBRATION OF KATE MCGARRIGLE AT TOWN HALL MAY 12 AND 13.
A U.S. TOUR WITH JOE AND ROBYN HITCHCOCK MARCH 9-19 “LIVE AND DIRECT FROM 1967”
“A GOOD READ” ON RADIO 4, MARCH 8
JOE TALKS TANGO AT THE TABERNACLE AT “5 X 15” ON FEBRUARY 28
“LUCKY 13” ENTERS ITS FINAL MONTH – ALL EPISODES STILL PODCAST AT RESONANCE FM
A NEW YORK CELEBRATION OF KATE MCGARRIGLE AT TOWN HALL MAY 12 AND 13.
You know about the Celebration of Kate’s music I produced at the Festival Hall in London. This is a reprise of the same event with many of the same participants plus some new ones. Anna, Rufus, Martha, Chaim, Emmy Lou etc will all be on hand plus some surprise guests we are not yet at liberty to reveal!
IMPORTANT! – I felt badly that tickets sold so fast in London many of you weren’t able to secure any. There is no way to provide a head start for my list here, either. I can only hope that anyone who wants to go takes the bull immediately by the horns and clicks on Ticketmaster . Tickets are on sale from 12 noon Monday, February 7 (Eastern Standard Time = GMT -5)
A U.S. TOUR WITH JOE AND ROBYN HITCHCOCK MARCH 9-19 “LIVE AND DIRECT FROM 1967”
Robyn H and I are doing 6 more US dates in March. If we come to your neck of the woods, please come to the show and say hello. I’ll be signing books and cds after the show. For those who haven’t heard about this, it’s basically me reading or telling anecdotes and Robyn singing the relevant songs. He has been known to sing “My White Bicycle”, “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue”, “Chinese White”, “Bike”, “I Can Hear The Grass Grow” and “The Deserter”. Only Robyn could sing all these songs so convincingly – as if it were the mid-‘60s once again….
Tickets available from the venues:
March 9: Alexandria, VA: The Birchmere
March 11: NYC, NY: Le Poisson Rouge
March 12: North Adams, MA: MASSMoCA
March 14: Philadelphia, PA: World Cafe Live
March 18: Detroit, MI: Detroit Institute of The Arts
March 19: Chicago, IL: Old Town School of Music
“A GOOD READ” – ON BBC RADIO 4 MARCH 8 AT 430 PM GMT, REPEATED FRIDAY MARCH 11 AT 11PM – AND ALSO AVAILABLE FOR 7 DAYS ON THE BBC iPLAYER.
Many Brits among you will be aware what a good programme this is – presenter and two guests each bring a favourite book the other two must read, then we discuss them. There have probably been many such instances, but I must say I can’t imagine three more disparate sensibilities than those represented by Muriel Sparks’ Memento Mori, (presenter Harriet Gilbert), Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love (Mat Fraser) and George Dangerfield’s The Strange Death of Liberal England (yours truly). A popular British novel from the 1950s, a cult ‘80s book about a family of carnival freaks and a waspish history of the momentous 1910-14 period in British history that has been obscured by the terrible World War that followed. Should be interesting!
From March 8 for 7 days, you can go to BBC iPlayer , click on “radio” and search for A Good Read.
JOE TALKS TANGO AT THE TABERNACLE AT “5 X 15” ON FEBRUARY 28 AT 6:45PM
5 x 15 is a series inspired by the “TED” lectures, where speakers are limited to 15 minutes. I will devote my quarter hour to “Mano a Mano”, a famous tango sung by Carlos Gardel (Each chapter of my upcoming book on World Music will finish with a detailed history and translation of a song and this is the song for the Argentina chapter.)
My fellow speakers include: James Brabazon who will discuss the notorious attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea that involved Mark Thatcher; Andrew Simms talking about the fall of BP and the explosion in the Gulf of Mexico; Justine Picardie on Coco Chanel, and Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues discussing her work. (I have met Eve Ensler and she is an extraordinary woman now doing a wonderful project in the Eastern Congo where rape has become a weapon of war.)
5 x 15 usually sells out, so go on line for tickets at Ticketweb
The Tabernacle is on Talbot Rd in Notting Hill Gate.
“LUCKY 13” ENTERS ITS FINAL MONTH – ALL EPISODES STILL PODCAST AT RESONANCE FM
I’ve had fun doing the first 13 episodes of “Joe Boyd’s Lucky 13” on Resonance FM radio. It is inspired by the fact that 4 years ago I moved flats and decided to re-organize my vinyl collection, all 5,000 of them! I deliberately jumbled them up, then started counting 13 with a divider, listening to whatever came up and filing it in the new system (or giving it to Oxfam if it was crap). It was such a pleasure being surprised every day with some unexpected music that I decided to turn the idea into a radio show. Fortunately, I have also marked the good stuff and figured out a way to combine my vinyl and cd collections (plus the cassettes I am transferring to cd…) so that I can start at arbitrary points and count 13 good ones and pull out a plum. Then I use my favourite track on the album the system gives me as part of a short set of tunes related by genre, location, artist, subject matter or whimsy. I’ve rather reluctantly provided Resonance with a track-listing – in an ideal world you wouldn’t be able to view it until you’d listened to the show! I like people being surprised by what comes next…
I plan to revisit this once I have my new book under control. I found myself sitting on buses and tubes thinking about what tracks to combine instead of thinking about how to begin the next paragraph. And that will never do!!
If you want to check out one of the episodes, go to Resonance FM , then click on “Podcasts” and my name is under “J” in the left hand column. There are 10 up now, with three more coming before the end of February.
I hope to see you at one of the events
All the best
Joe