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THE 2025 MAMMY AWARDS

This year’s winners: (and a reminder #fuckyeahphysicalmedia)

 

 

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• Quite Early Morning – Betty and the Baby Boomers – starting out with some beautiful local folk music

 

    LevantaMusic

• A River That Flows Both Ways – Levanta – beautiful local instrumental music (and some overtone singing from Tim Hill too)

 

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• Broken Homes and Gardens – Michael Hurley – a nice valedictory

  • also gotta mention the reissue of Michael’s sometime collaborators Ida’s Will You Find Me with 3 additional CDs of outtakes and demos

 

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• Homegrown – Cole Quest & the City Pickers – folk selection from Woody Guthrie’s grandson

 

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• Little Annie with – Little Annie with partners Marc Almond, Swans, Baby Dee, Paul Wallfisch and Kid Congo Powers – this year’s best ‘single artist’ compilation

 

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• The Fateful Symmetry – Mark Stewart – Mark makes a Little Annie album

 

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• Jazz Gone Dub – GAUDI – GAUDI makes a pretty good On-U-adjacent album with jazz touches

 

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• For the People – Dropkick Murphys – a return to slash ‘n burn guitars and bagpipes

  • And gotta mention the MOJO covermounted CD Songs from the County Hell a fantastic compilation of high spirited Irish groups – Pogues, The Men They Couldn’t Hang et cetera

 

• 1967: Vacations In The Past – Robyn Hitchcock – the beginning of our Incredible String Band entry – oh yes he also covers Pink Floyd, the Kinks and the Beatles

  • also gotta note Margaret Vetare’s Strange as the Trees – Songs of The Incredible String Band (she’s from Beacon, keeping things local) and Vashti Bunyan’s reissued Lookaftering with a bonus CD of outtakes and demos

 

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• Instant Hologram on Metal Film – Stereolab – a nice return to form after 15 years

  • and more electronics: Baptismal – Ambient Symphony #1 by Laraaji & Kramer, Cosmic Cliffs by Whispering Worlds (paging Jon Hassell), my continuing fave compilations Pop Ambient 2025 and Pop Ambient 2026, and another covermounted CD, The Wire Tapper 67 from the April issue of The Wire, about half of which is great electronics, and half shambolic bash-about-ing reminiscent of Etron fou LeLoublan (anybody remember them?)

 

And to our runners-up, we award the FIFA Poop Prize:

• The Collapse of Everything – Adrian Sherwood – a little too laid-back for me. Create your own Japanese bonus track edition by adding the tracks from the Grand Designer Disco Plate

  • Other On-U related stuff: Under the Sun by Mad45 & Little Axe adds a little pep to the Little Axe sound

  • Benergy by Ben Basile (of the Poughkeepsie Jazz Project) is a good instrumental ska set (actually, non-U)

  • This House is Empty Without You by Jeb Loy Nichols is a blue-eyed soul set with Jeb’s voice getting a little raspy

  • Another blue-eyed soul set I liked is A Lover Was Born by Kelly Finnigan (again, non-U)

• Album of the Year #1 Funkateer   by Bootsy Collins illustrates that Bootsy’s still got it!

  • Also liked The Emperor Has No Clones by 420 Funk Mob featuring (sometime local) Michael Clip Payne

• The Rounders / Fugs report:

  • The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis is standard Jeffrey freak-folk, this time with strings and a “very freewheelin'” cover shot

  • Song Shards [Soul Jingles, Stoic Jingles, Vintage Jingles, Prayers and Rounds] by Peter Stampfel, Friends and Daughters – the jingles are fun, the aphorisms a little too ho-hum
    

  • The Secret Index to the Past – Anniversary Album 1965-2025  by Ed Sanders – some funny new songs, but I thought he was in better voice at his Byrdcliffe live gigs

  • Things Done Changed – Jerron Paxton – part of the Jalopy crowd

• Wire report:

  • Nanocluster Vol.3 and WTF? – both by Immersion, Colin Newman & Malka Spigel’s current incarnation

  • Alreet – Edvard Graham Lewis’s recent manifestation

• Jazzbo’s:

  • PROG vs. FUSION – A War of the Ages by Ed Palermo’s Big Band

  • Book of Stories by Jason Kao Hwang, and K n Current by patrick brennan’s sOnic openings (also with electric violinist Jason Kao Hwang)

  • Cloud Forest by Redshift Trio (Nico Soffiato & Josh Deutsch) locals frequently appearing at Quinn’s and Avalon Lounge

  • New Dawn – Marshall Allen with Neneh Cherry – Marshall still going strong at 101!

  • Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown – Vince Guaraldi – a little funkier than other Charlie Brown soundtracks

• Waves and Pulses Vol.1 – Live at Quinn’s (Craig Chinn & David Mason)

• Silentium – Arvo Pärt

Fave Music BOOKS:

• Yvonne Innes’s Dip My Brain In Joy – A Life with Neil Innes rather a more lighthearted Bonzo biography than Chris Welch’s 2001 Vivian Stanshall bio

• I’ve been collecting those 33-1/3 books for a while, but I finally got the notion to read a bunch of them – I liked the books on Massive Attack, Kraftwerk, Little Richard, Richard & Linda Thompson, John Cale and Captain Beefheart. Ian Bourland’s book on Massive Attack’s Blue Lines is a good followup to last year’s fave Neneh Cherry memoir

Fave Music FILMS 2025:

• Robert Schwartzman’s Hung Up on a Dream – the Story of the Zombies – at Upstate Saugerties and Q&A with the director, MC Martha Frankel, and a (very charming) Colin Blunstone

• Bert Blotto’s HELLO! My Name Is Blotto and Q&A with Seth Rogovoy and my Irving Hall freshman dorm-mate F. Lee Blotto

• Alison Duke’s BAM BAM – The Sister Nancy Story – at Woodstock Film Festival at Rosendale

Still going to too many concerts #fuckyeahlivemusic:

• Gig of the year was Gamelan Dharma Swara‘s appearance at The Local in Saugerties in November

• Close second was their opening slot for Sunny Jain’s Wild Wild East at Bryant Park in August

• Gamelan Kingston – at the Rail Trail Café in September, SUNY New Paltz and Beacon Bonfire in November

• Music for Enophiles gig at Bowery Electric in September

• Eric Person playing the music of Ronald Shannon Jackson at Untouchable Bar in Newburgh (and too bad that that venue didn’t catch on)

• Whispering Worlds at Quinn’s in March – paging Jon Hassell!

• Little Annie & Paul Wallfisch at Pangea in October with opening act Heather Litteer (spoken word cabaret) and Kiki & Herb in the audience!

• Jeffrey Lewis at Levon Helm’s in August

• The Down Hill Strugglers at Tompkins Corners in October, Cole Quest & The City Slickers in November

• Quinn’s Monday Night Jazz sessions in Beacon are still great: Eric Person, Geoff Vidal, Robert Kopec, Nico Soffiato’s Redshift Trio, Bob Meyer Circular Jazz Quartet, Tim Regusis, Neil ‘Nail’ Alexander, Jason Kao Hwang, Nate Allen, Darius Beckford, Tony DePaolo’s Electric Django, Steve Frieder, Judith Tulloch, Elliot Steele, Chris Talio, Jeremy Baum, Kyle and Teo Fairbanks and drummer and soundman extraordinaire Bryan Kopchak

• Great gigs at Lee Falco’s The Falcon in Marlboro: Ed Palermo’s Big Band, Geoff Vidal’s Analog Jazz Orchestra, the NYC Ska Orchestra, Meraki Trio (Scott Petito, Steve Gorn, Mino Cinelu)

• And not forgetting Tara Johannessen’s & Brian Farmer’s Rail Trail Café in Rosendale: Rosendale Improvement Society Brass Band, Bill Ylitalo’s Djam Gong, Spirit Brothers, Steve Gorn, Clear Light Ensemble, Catskill Mountain Gamelan, the B2s, and Levanta

• Memorial Tribute to Peter Schickele at the Ethical Culture Society with Elizabeth Mitchell, Magnetic Fields, the legendary New York Pick-Up Ensemble, fellow New Hamburgers Matt Schickele and Hai-Ting Chinn and my “discovery of the year”, Delicious Bass (9 bass clarinets!)

• CMS Improviser’s Orchestra sessions at the Shirt Factory Kingston, now lead by Peter Apfelbaum with Ingrid Sertso

• Some great Elesium Furnace Works (EFW) gigs at Cunneen-Hackett in Poughkeepsie: Brandon Lopez / Ikue Mori / Zeena Parkins, and Bobby Previte’s Second Arrow with Wendy Eisenberg

• EFW’s presentation of Jamie Saft solo piano at St. Andrew’s in Beacon

• EFW’s presentation of Gary Lucas’s Gods and Monsters at Industrial Arts Brewing in Beacon

• Gamelan Candra Kancana (Bard Gamelan) at Bard Hall (especially the gong player!)

Finally, props to Mark Rosen and to Mark Zip for keeping POOP alive!

 

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