Holly Near - Show Up

Styles: Vocal
Year: 2006
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 49:26
Size: 113,6 MB
Art: Front

(3:08)  1. Family Band
(5:01)  2. Somebody's Jail
(3:50)  3. Gandhi/Buddha
(4:00)  4. I Am Willing
(4:15)  5. I Want You Gone Too
(4:52)  6. Lives in the Balance
(3:58)  7. Bound by the Beauty
(4:22)  8. Hattie and Mattie
(2:28)  9. Show Up
(4:17) 10. It's About Time
(3:12) 11. Drunken Sailor
(3:34) 12. This is Peace
(2:22) 13. Oh River

The song, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, flourished on the airwaves during the height of the Vietnam War. It’s hard to forget Pete Seeger’s haunting refrain When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn? These words demonstrate the power that an artist and a song can wield to help end a war. But can today’s popular music bring about a similar cultural and political change one that will help end the war in Iraq? If so, what are the songs and who will sing them?  Holly Near an outspoken activist, singer, teacher, and recording artist has spent the past 35 years working for progressive political and social change. Over the years, Holly’s powerful anthems have captured the mood of many movements and now her voice and messages are no less urgent than those of 35 years ago. As one Holly Near fan put it, “She is a delightful combination of Pete Seeger and Judy Garland!”  Her latest recording, Show Up, is a pointed and provocative look at where society sits today in a new millennium and going into the fourth year of a U.S. led foreign war. From her poignant treatment of Jackson Browne’s scathing indictment of the big business war machine in Lives in the Balance to an ironic rewrite of Laura Love’s I Want You Gone, no topic is sacred to Holly Near. War, peace, love, family, corporation, government, addiction they all come under her scrutiny on Show Up. But Holly is not merely an observer. She invites audiences to take a stand to take the higher road of vision, peace, perspective, and leadership and to Show Up.  A superb mix of original songs and covers, Show Up showcases Holly’s extraordinary talent. Her songs Family Band and Somebody's Jail have the multi-layered poetry that do for a song what a high-powered lens does for a camera. I Am Willing is a healing balm in this time of great discouragement and despair; and she celebrates the environment in Jane Siberry’s Bound by the Beauty. Addiction gets a long hard look in Holly’s reworking of the old sea shanty Drunken Sailor, accompanied solely by Jackeline Rago’s driving percussive rhythms. This new recording is a launch pad for a tour by this powerful singer and delightful storyteller. Holly brings history alive as she relates her 35 years of work as a singer/songwriter and social change activist. And history meets the present as she takes on the opportunities and challenges facing the peace and justice movements of today. Whether out on her own or uniting with other contemporary activists, such as Gloria Steinem, Cindy Sheehan, and Medea Benjamin, Holly Near is keeping the political song tradition alive. https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/hollynear7

Show Up

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Holly Near - With A Song In My Heart

Styles: Folk
Label: Calico Tracks Music
Year: 1997
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 43:14
Size: 101,7 MB
Art: Front

(3:18)  1. Love Is Here to Stay
(3:08)  2. The Best Is Yet to Come
(2:34)  3. Just in Time
(4:21)  4. Isn't This A Lovely Day
(4:24)  5. The Nearness Of You / My Romance
(2:30)  6. I'm Beginning To See The Light
(2:19)  7. Where Or When
(2:23)  8. When Somebody Thinks You're Wonderful
(4:04)  9. What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?
(2:30) 10. The Very Thought Of You
(1:52) 11. You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To/ Easy To Love
(3:38) 12. I've Got The World On A String
(2:41) 13. Old Devil Moon
(2:39) 14. With A Song In My Heart
(0:44) 15. Reprise: When Somebody Thinks You're Wonderful

Despite her excellent voice and interpretive ability, Holly Near would not seem like the best candidate to record an album of classic pop standards, if only because the underlying social attitudes of such songs are at such variance from her own, a point driven home in 1983 when she put together a medley of standards on the Lifeline album and questioned the "unhappy together" line in "Come Rain or Come Shine." 

Her sleeve note on this album indicates that she remains ambivalent and still doesn't really approve of the material, apologetically stating that one reason to sing these songs is "to keep some sweet innocence in our revolution." Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, and their contemporaries were rarely sweet and never innocent. Still, Near has chosen some of their more straightforwardly romantic songs, and her very skepticism lends her an interpretive distance that accentuates the sophistication of the lyrics; many cabaret singers work hard to achieve the same effect. Whether she knows it or not, it's okay that Near doesn't believe that "Love Is Here to Stay" or that "The Best Is Yet to Come": Ira Gershwin and Carolyn Leigh didn't, either.~William Ruhlmann

http://www.allmusic.com/album/with-a-song-in-my-heart-mw0000036716.

With A Song In My Heart

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