We have a voice, still...

In 2003, Allison Crowe and bandmates performed live in the Victoria, BC television studio of The New VI (later renamed A Channel) – for a nationally broadcast one-hour special called “Tidings”.

Allison’s set that night includes “Whether I’m Wrong” - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTB07RkNzX4 – soon featured by the UNESCO-endorsed “New Songs for Peace” project @ http://www.newsongsforpeace.org/spotlight-200403.html and http://www.newsongsforpeace.org/songs-crowe1.html

This is the first song video of Allison Crowe we posted to a then new website called YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a6hmQbRcIM 

Allison Crowe Fest on YouTube

YouTube is quietly launching "Artist" pages. No one seems to know what this means... or will become, and YouTube is not talking. Today they've created a page for Allison Crowe

So far, it contains a gallery of 487 videos related to Allison. Many are music vids which are found on Allison's own channel Plenty more are vids of people dancing, laughing, crying, celebrating, grieving, soaking up the sun, walking through the snow and rain, loving, living and passing - to the music of Allison Crowe. There's cats, dogs, horses, squirrels, and jellyfish. And, there's vids of musicians who've performed concerts with Allison, and many more, inspired by her to sing and play...

"Soulful. Alive. Joyous. Grievous. Real, true, music is what I want to make," says Allison.

Mission accomplished :)

Janis Ian - really real

Now and again the successfully high-profile efforts of those in the mainstream record industry to package and manufacture the next "real deal" catches my attention. Invariably, often thanks to YouTube, my looking to understand the mechanics of the "game", and to consider how, in contrast, real music has run the gauntlet to reach its audience, this process rewards with some discovery, or rediscovery, of great music.

I'm not even going to bother talking about the latest product tooled by the "machine" (the new country/pop "prodigy" about whom a profile in the New Yorker set me on this trail). More precious is the time given to enjoying some wonderful music, and these performances, from Janis Ian.

First, Society's Child, a hit song Ian penned at age 13. Here she is, all of 16, on The Smothers Brothers tv show:



And, here's more of Janis Ian - performing what's likely her best-known song, "At Seventeen" - on The Old Grey Whistle Test:



Janis Ian remains a vital musician, performer, social commentator and all 'round person of integrity, humour and compassion. She's an inspiration - really, the real deal.

I cannot recommend highly enough checking out her music and writings (lyrics, essays, magazine pieces +) - much of which can be found on her own website today.

“An’ for every hung up person in the whole wide universe”

It's a mighty long time since another side of Bob Dylan had us gaze upon the chimes of freedom flashing. Decades, too, since there was blood on the tracks. The “idiot wind”, though, is still blowing like a circle around our skulls.

Allison Crowe is a new truth-seeker. She’s a writer of social conscience. One who believes in the power of music.

“To sing is to love and affirm, to fly and soar, to coast into the hearts of the people who listen, to tell them that life is to live, that love is there, that nothing is a promise, but that beauty exists, and must be hunted for and found,” wrote Joan Baez, musician and plenty more, when she was near the same age Allison Crowe is now.

’t’is high purpose, evermore today, “as we replace marble with plastic”.

The body of work this young Canadian artist is creating is remarkable and varied. Through a repertoire numbering dozens of original songs, she’s fulfilling her stated raison d’etre, making music that is "Soulful. Alive. Joyous. Grievous. Real. True.”

In a concert review this month, Jan DeGrass of the Coast Reporter notes: “In another piece, Crowe savaged the piano with a fierceness that turned our spines to noodles. The song was dedicated to a woman who gave a classical piano performance seen on YouTube only to find that her web audience offered tasteless and ignorant jokes in return. Don’t sugar coat it, Allison.”

No Mother Hubbard soft soap here. The song, Disease, is always riveting social commentary. (Even serving as inspiration to an online discussion of ‘great art’ and the elements of creation.) While unchanged lyrically, the song has grown more steeled musically through its life and release: “Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind.”

Captured in its raging glory, serendipitously on International Women's Day, March 8, 2008, also a fun date of Turtle Recording Studios 20th Anniversary Party in White Rock, B.C., Canada - by Engineer and Producer, Turtle's Larry Anschell - and Co-engineered by Brad Graham:

Disease