- Видео 119
- Просмотров 6 262
April Grant
Добавлен 12 мар 2013
Traditional songs sung; strange tales told; good books read aloud.
The Long and Short Of It: The Devil's Shingle
I investigate a risky commute, and the way it was covered in the media.
Research and performance: April Grant
Filming, editing, and additional research: Dan Thurston.
Mount Washington’s summit is 6288 feet above sea level; you can climb it on foot, take a cog railway train (either coal- or biodiesel-fueled), or drive up the auto road. (A shuttle van is available on an as-needed basis for hikers who want a ride down, but it doesn’t take reservations.) www.nhstateparks.org/find-parks-trails/mt-washington-state-park
The mountain is a great and strenuous hiking experience, but I must emphasize: if you want to climb it on foot, be sure you have appropriate clothes and supplies, postpone the hike ...
Research and performance: April Grant
Filming, editing, and additional research: Dan Thurston.
Mount Washington’s summit is 6288 feet above sea level; you can climb it on foot, take a cog railway train (either coal- or biodiesel-fueled), or drive up the auto road. (A shuttle van is available on an as-needed basis for hikers who want a ride down, but it doesn’t take reservations.) www.nhstateparks.org/find-parks-trails/mt-washington-state-park
The mountain is a great and strenuous hiking experience, but I must emphasize: if you want to climb it on foot, be sure you have appropriate clothes and supplies, postpone the hike ...
Просмотров: 128
Видео
Young Charlotte
Просмотров 40Месяц назад
Notes: A gruesome winter song for you in the middle of a hot summer at the time when it feels merely theoretical. As sung by Asa Davis (Milton, Vermont). Recorded by Helen Hartness Flanders in 1947, and accessed on the Flanders Archive: sites.middlebury.edu/flanders/recordings/ A known symptom of hypothermia is that the victim may feel warm or hot as they are freezing to death, even entering a ...
Castle By The Sea
Просмотров 212 месяца назад
Lena Bourne Fish of East Jaffrey, New Hampshire, sang this ballad. I've tried to stick as closely as possible to her way of doing it. It's an American relative of a family of ballads grouped under "Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight," #4 in English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Francis James Child). Look here for other, similar narratives: sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch004.htm To hear the field ...
The Long and Short of It: The Antigravity Stone of Tufts University
Просмотров 1913 месяца назад
The tale of Roger Babson (1875-1967) and the war he waged on gravity. Primary sources and interesting links: The Gravity Research Foundation: www.gravityresearchfoundation.org/ Their page includes background on the Foundation's start: www.gravityresearchfoundation.org/historic Babson's essay, "Gravity Our Enemy Number One": www.physicsforums.com/insights/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/BabsonGravity...
Butter and Cheese and All
Просмотров 194 месяца назад
I'm all for butter and cheese both. I learned this song from the album "The Brighton Line," by the always-excellent Matt Quinn: mattquinn.bandcamp.com/album/the-brighton-line Looking back a step, he learned it from Leslie Johnson's recording for Bob Copper (1954). There are several versions of the words here; I do 90% the first version, with two lines that I thought were cool from the second ve...
The Brown Hare of Whitebrook
Просмотров 134 месяца назад
I have a love/hate relationship with hunting songs; ethically I object to hunting, but my God, the songs are catchy. "The Brown Hare of Whitebrook" is special to me. I learned it from "It's Gritstone For Me," a recording by singer/scholar/stone-waller Will Noble, who sings the definitive version: ruclips.net/video/sziOZUy7JY0/видео.htmlsi=4bXnbmPF28cFs4eu (Will does a final verse that I omitted...
Dog Trot In Ishpeming
Просмотров 345 месяцев назад
Words: Neil Woodward ("Michigan's Troubadour"), from his album “Michigan-i-a” (2005) Tune: Traditional In September 2023, I attended a friend's wedding in Ishpeming, Michigan, a small town in the Upper Peninsula known for having been an iron-mining community in the nineteenth century. In October 2023, I hosted a sing-around where local singer Angela Kessler shared this song with me. You could h...
The Long And Short Of It: Boston's Great Molasses Flood
Просмотров 1006 месяцев назад
Here's a sordid story about a failure in industrial regulation and the people who were killed by that failure. The central incident is bizarre, but the causes and the outcome are sadly still relevant today. This video was written, researched, and presented by April Grant, and filmed, researched, and edited by Dan Thurston. There are no gory images, but please be aware that I give detailed descr...
Love is Little: Shaker Chants, Hymns, and Ballads
Просмотров 446 месяцев назад
An upload of our online concert on 18 April 2023, initially provided to friends and family who weren't able to be at the live show, now made available to the public!
Rivers of Texas
Просмотров 376 месяцев назад
Learned in January 2024! I was only going to record one newly learned song a month, but I got a rush of enthusiasm and learned this one too, so you all get a bonus song. I first heard this song performed by the mighty Revels Chorus on "Seasons for Singing: A Celebration of Country Life," and it's haunted me ever since: revels.org/product/seasons-for-singing/ This is my recollection of the femal...
The Young Girl's Resolution
Просмотров 376 месяцев назад
Learned in January 2024! These words were around at least as early as the 1760s. The tune is "Jamaica," one of the all-time great tunes (1670 or thereabouts), vehicle for a lot of different sets of slightly-to-very dirty words. I first noticed "The Young Girl's Resolution" because it was published by Boston printer Nathaniel Coverly on the same broadside song sheet as "Friendship," around 1810....
Carol for the New Year
Просмотров 187 месяцев назад
Like so many other wonderful songs, I know this one thanks to John Roberts and Tony Barrand, who sang it for many years with Fred Breunig and Andy Davis as part of Nowell Sing We Clear, the annual Christmas/mid-winter/Solstice/New Year/pan-Pagan spectacular. According to their album notes for "Hail Smiling Morn," kindly archived by John Roberts on his website, the words appear in William Chappe...
I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day (Longfellow)
Просмотров 347 месяцев назад
Initially known as "Christmas Bells," this is a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, on Christmas Day 1863. For context, the previous few years had been wretched for Longfellow. In 1861, his beloved wife, Fanny (nee Appleton), died when her clothing caught fire, and he was badly burned trying in vain to save her life. When the Civil War broke out, their son Charles longed to enlist in th...
Turning Toward The Morning (Gordon Bok)
Просмотров 288 месяцев назад
I think of this as a powerful spell against Seasonal Affective Disorder. The first time I really paid attention to this song was in a Zoom singaround during 2020, when Judy Cook gave a masterful unaccompanied performance. The first time I heard it was on Gordon Bok, Ed Trickett, and Ann Mayo Muir's "Turning Toward The Morning" (1975). From the notes, Gordon Bok says: "One of the things that pro...
Rolling Home (by John Tams)
Просмотров 488 месяцев назад
Here's a good song for winter. There are multiple songs out there called "Rolling Home," and they're all bangers. This one is by John Tams, legendary folk performer, songwriter, actor, and National Theatre creative team member. Tams wrote this song for a stage adaptation of "Cider with Rosie" in 1983. I've made many small changes in the lyrics without noticing till now. For comparison, this loo...
The Long And Short Of It: The Harvard Medical School Murder
Просмотров 929 месяцев назад
The Long And Short Of It: The Harvard Medical School Murder
New Audiences for Old Songs Project: Beneath The Old Oak Tree, performed by April Grant
Просмотров 1610 месяцев назад
New Audiences for Old Songs Project: Beneath The Old Oak Tree, performed by April Grant
Suscriber #53.
That's a great one, April. Thanks!
❤
Beautiful and haunting. It is always a pleasure to see your videos. Thank you.
You're a delight, did you know??
truly brilliant, April; I loved it! Amazing that you suffer the demise of two loved ones to drowning and decide that your enemy is .... gravity. But wow! What a lot of threads you pull together (because BABSON pulled them all together)! The Dogtown Stones! Babson College! That essay contest! So much fun--thank you.
Fascinating! I love these "Long and Short" videos. Well done and thank you!
So...thinking about how anti-gravity would rescue potential drowning victims: Would it raise up the person, or lift up all the water out of the body of water and expose the person?
Let me know if you want tontalk with folks involved with the Institute of Cosmology sometime!
You're strange, but very cute.
At first, the title does seem funny, but then thinking about the extent of the damage, & trauma & suffering this accident (completely preventable, too!) caused, gods. I did wonder why it would move so fast, but learning about the fermintation plus temp changes between refills, it makes sense why it burst out so fast. Gods, the people in their houses, having ptsd from that, & then like, can you imagine that happening & *all* your stuff, your living space, is covered in molasses, it's all ruined-I just. The sensory nightmare I can feel coming on just imagining my whole room coated in molasses. Those poor fuckin' people, those kids, everyone. Such a preventable trauma.
It makes you wonder how many unsung Gonzales' there've been, who took unlicensed action to relieve a larger problem, and mostly by accident it happened to be enough to prevent a disaster so we never knew about what they'd prevented (until the next time we built the same problem bigger, anyway).
My response to seeing the damage: HOLY MRS. BUTTERWORTH’S!!!
Ah that last verse hits hard
😊 "promosm"
Such cozy vibes. Why don't you have more views? This is so soothing. Thanks for sharing 🌻
Delightful, as are your notes (and yes, that lovely broadside!)
LOVE this one. 😂 Especially the concrete-frog-shaped dent.
Lovely, April! And I absolutely know you've been singing it before it had its moment of internet fame ;-) (BTW this is Francesca)
Fabulous! I really *loved* the way you told it--the way you explained about cadavers and janitors, etc., leading into the story. The supplemental pictures were *great*, and I loved your special effects ^_^ (And I loved the term "opinion haver" for Fanny Longfellow)
Congratulations on one year of songs! I''ve looked forward to these each week and thoroughly enjoyed them. Thank you and well done!
Thank you for presenting this in its entirety. Merry Christmas!
Klasse! "Die Gedanken sind frei" und denken dabei: Die Gedanken sind frei! Greetings from Bavaria
That was beautiful. Thank you.
This is wonderful! Thank you for sharing. I love your trout!
You'd really think a man could do better in a building full of body disposal facilities!
I planned to take this in stages but I listened to it straight through. Thank you for this riveting story! Really has everything: murder, mystery, ballads... what more could we ask for this Halloween?
Th great detective: "Something's afoot, I daresay." (What's afoot? THE GAME. Zelazney is subtle. I've been rereading this book for decades and just picked up on this detail.)
Curious: How many sittings did it take you to finish this book?
❤️❤️
I just stumbled across this reading. Its a great book, and I love this reading! THanks!
hi i found this while hearing a song cool
Awesome Job!!!
Pretty
I’m really enjoying these songs. Thank you for posting.
Thank you for this poignant memorial to those innocents who have been lost to us in these difficult times ;_;
Poor thyme!
Good time, though.
"Knowest thou that thy redeemer liveth" is such a wonderfully passive aggressive reproach, especially when I'm sure other words must have crossed Palmer's mind at that moment.
I lived in Leominster for 10 years and walked by Palmer’s grave nearly every day. Thanks for another great history lesson.
That strange gravestone was my first introduction to Palmer.
That's so cool! I'm all the happier I chose this topic
Thank you , April. This song was recommended to me as a possible to sing at my folk club. I love your rendition. Thank you
Lovely!
Thank you!
One of my favourite shanty! Well sung.
You're reading the whole book! Loved the faithful pets and the humor. Going to get through the monthly days with your readings, thanks!
That was lovely. Thank you.
That’s a great song!
I’ve heard that “my name would be mud” refers to Dr Mudd. Do you know anything about this?
The expression that someone's "name is mud" was apparently recorded at least as early as 1723, long before Dr. Mudd became infamous, so I think it's just an oddly poetic coincidence. This message board discussion includes most of the main references I've seen around the internet: wordsmith.org/board/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=57713
I would love to see another video like this.
Well done! Informative, personable, and fascinating.
Great job! I love your storytelling :)