Not like they used to

[Michael H Geimer]

Like this?

[mandopete]

Nah, like this...

[Michael H Geimer]

Plus 40 more BIG Bluegrass bands!

How do they all fit in there?

[Jonathan Peck]

How about the queen of soul singing the famous opera aria "Nessun dorma!"

"The Queen of Soul jumps in for her ailing colleague Pavarotti to sing this aria from Puccini's "Turandot."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9v9Zpd4ulQ

[travers chandler]

[J.Albert]

If anyone would like to hear a modern band "playing it the old way", go over to alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.bluegrass and listen to the live show by David Peterson & 1946 with Mickey Bowles playing mandolin. He's as "Monruvian" as one can get!

This is a 36-song concert recorded in August 2005 at the Station Inn down in Nashville. Along with Dave (guitar) and Mickey, there is Charlie Cushman playing great banjo in a combination of Scruggs and Reno styles, with Mike Bub on bass and Matt Combs who appeared to be sitting in on fiddle but whose playing sounds as a smooth as if he'd been a regular member of the band.

What's remarkable about this show is the quality of the recording. Whoever recorded it took his inputs directly from the soundboard into an audio interface/computer setup, and either recorded multiple tracks (and mixed down later), or did a wonderful job "mixing on the fly". The show almost sounds good enough to be a "live commercial" album. Perhaps it is a "dry run" for exactly that.

Also of late in the BG mp3 group, someone has been posting recordings from the _original_ 1976 Berkshire Mountains Bluegrass Festival. There are shows by Bill Monroe with has band from that time, and a nice set by Phil Rosenthal when he was still playing with his "Old Dog" band from the New Haven area (he even mentions a request I made for his instrumental, "Hot Stuff"). Again, these seem to have been made directly from the soundboard - clean and mixed down into stereo.

- John