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Poppies
'Illuminations, released in 1969, was the sixth album by Buffy Sainte-Marie. Though most of the tracks did away with the backing she had used on her previous two albums, Illuminations had a completely different sound from anything she had previously done. From a basis of vocals and acoustic guitar, Sainte-Marie and producer Maynard Solomon used electronic synthesisers to create a sound that was much more experimental music than folk. Indeed, Illuminations was the first quadrophonic vocal album ever made.'-- ekr
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Little Wheel Spin and Spin
'In contrast to her first two albums which were entirely acoustic with occasional use of her distinctive mouthbow, parts of Little Wheel Spin and Spin added electric guitar by Bruce Langhorne and string arrangements by Felix Pappalardi, or feature fellow Native American performer Patrick Sky on guitar with Sainte-Marie. This served to pave the way for Sainte-Marie's stylistic experiments on her remaining Vanguard albums, where she covered territory ranging from country to rock to experimental music.'-- ArtMusic
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Now You've Been Gone for a Long Time
'Her previous album Illuminations having sold so poorly as to lose Vanguard a considerable sum of money, the label placed considerable pressure on Sainte-Marie to come up with something that would sell in larger numbers. To this effect, She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina was recorded with guitar from Ry Cooder and Neil Young and assistance from the latter's backing band Crazy Horse. There was also a change in focus of the material: covers of contemporary songs, which she had almost never recorded before, accounted for five of the eleven songs. Vanguard boss Maynard Solomon, who had produced her first five albums and most of Illuminations, surrendered production duties completely to Neil Young producer Jack Nitzsche, who was later to marry Sainte-Marie.'-- Chronology
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He's A Keeper Of The Fire
'On her misunderstood and gradually revered album Illuminations, American composer Peter Schickele provided arrangements to "Mary", "Adam" and "The Angel", whilst the four tracks "Suffer the Little Children", "With You, Honey", "Guess Who I Saw in Paris" and "He's A Keeper of the Fire" were her first work to be not produced by Vanguard boss Maynard Solomon. Instead, they had a stripped-down rock sound and were produced by little known folk-jazz songwriter Mark Roth. Bob Bozina played guitar, John Craviotta drums and percussion and Rick Oxendine played bass.'-- New Weird America
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Cod'ine
'Buffy Sainte-Marie's It's My Way is one of the most scathing topical folk albums ever made. Sainte-Marie sings in an emotional, vibrato-laden voice of war ("The Universal Soldier," later a hit for Donovan), drugs ("Cod'ine"), sex ("The Incest Song"), and most telling, the mistreatment of Native Americans, of which Sainte-Marie is one ("Now That the Buffalo's Gone"). Even decades later, the album's power is moving and disturbing.'-- Allmusic
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Suffer the Little Children
'School bell go "Ding! Dong! Ding!" / The children all line up / They do what they are told / Take a little drink from the liar's cup / Mama don't really care / If what they learn is true / Or if it's only lies / Just get them through the factories / Into production / Ah, get them into line / Late in the afternoon / The children all come home / They mind their manners well / Their little lives are all laid out / Mama don't seem to care / If she may break their hearts / She clips their wings off, they never learn to fly / Poor Mama needs a source of pride / A doctor son she'll have/ No what the cost to manhood or to soul / Sun shine down, brightly shine / Down on all the land / Shine down on the newborn lambs / A butcher's knife is in his hand.'-- BS-M
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Moonshot
'After the very modest success of her previous album She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina, Vanguard again teamed Sainte-Marie with renowned pop session musicians in its effort to improve sales and the amount of money she was making for the label. Although the album itself fared little better commercially than its predecessor, only spending seven weeks on the Billboard Top 200, an extensive promotional campaign by Vanguard and extensive AM radio airplay saw the closing track, a cover of Mickey Newbury's "Mister Can't You See", become Sainte-Marie's sole significant commercial success in the States, spending two weeks in the lower reaches of the Top 40 in late April and early May 1972. However, Sainte-Marie was very upset with Vanguard's extensive promotion of the single and this was one reason why she only recorded one more album for the label before moving to MCA in 1973.'-- Wiki
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Now That the Buffalo's Gone
'"Now That the Buffalo's Gone" is the first song from the 1964 album It's My Way! by Canadian First Nations singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. The song's title refers to the near-extinction of the American bison and serves as a metaphor for the cultural genocide inflicted by Europeans. A classic folk protest song, "Now That the Buffalo's Gone" has a simple arrangement with guitar and vocals by Sainte-Marie and bass played by Art Davis. The song is a lament that addresses the continuous confiscation of Indian lands. In the song, Sainte-Marie contrasts the treatment of post-war Germany, whose people were allowed to keep their land and their dignity, to that of North American Indians.'-- Biocritics
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Guess Who I Saw In Paris
'Buffy Sainte-Marie's album Illuminations is as prophetic a record as the first album by Can or the psychedelic work of John Martin on Solid Air. The songs here, while clearly written, are open form structures that, despite their brevity (the longest cut here is under four minutes), break down the barriers between folk music, rock, pop, European avant-garde music and Native American styles (this is some of the same territory Tim Buckley explores on Lorca and Starsailor). It's not a synthesis in any way, but a completely different mode of travel. This is poetry as musical tapestry and music as mythopoetic sonic landscape; the weirdness on this disc is over-exaggerated in comparison to its poetic beauty. It's gothic in temperament, for that time anyway, but it speaks to issues and affairs of the heart that are only now beginning to be addressed with any sort of constancy.'-- Allmusic
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My Country Tis of Thy People You're Dying
'"My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying" is Buffy Sainte-Marie's statement-in-song about Indian affairs. "My point in the song is that the American people haven't been given a fair share at learning the true history of the American Indian. They know neither the state of poverty that the Indians are in now nor how it got to be that way. I try to tell the side of the story that's left out of the history books, that can only be found in the documents, the archives and in the memories of the Indians themselves."'-- BS-M
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Starwalker
'Coincidence and Likely Stories was the thirteenth studio album by Buffy Sainte-Marie but her first for sixteen years, during which time she had been raising her son and working on the children's television show Sesame Street. The album itself was largely recorded at Sainte-Marie's home before being sent to producer Chris Birkett for the final production and mixing in London. The album showed her continuing with the electronic music she had first developed on Illuminations and the tribal themes seen on Sweet America, her last pre-retirement album. Although the album received some very favourable reviews and was often seen as her best work since Illuminations, it failed to make any impression in the United States.'-- collaged
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The Incest Song
'Word is up to the king's dear daughter / And word is spreading all over the land / That's she's been betrayed by her own dear brother / That he has chosen another fair hand / Many young man had a song of her beauty / And many a grand deed for her had been done / But within her sights she carried the child / Of her father's youngest, fairest son / Tell to me no lies / Tell to me no stories / But saddle my good horse and I'll go and see my own true love / If your words be true ones, then that will mean the end of me.'-- BS-M
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The Dream Tree (performed by Owen Pallett)
'On its initial release, Sainte-Marie's Illuminations was an utter disaster commercially, failing to get anywhere near the Billboard Top 200 and being deleted and largely disowned by Sainte-Marie within a few years. However, in more recent times Illuminations has acquired a fan base quite distinct from that associated with any of Sainte-Marie's other albums. In addition to being cited as a favourite album by a number of famous musicians, a number of critics have seen its twisted, eerie soundscapes as laying the grounds for the evolution of gothic music as well as having an influence on New Weird America. In 2000, just before Vanguard re-issued it on CD, The Wire magazine listed Illuminations amongst its 100 Albums that Set the World on Fire While No-One was Listening.'-- collaged
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Universal Soldier
'Buffy Sainte-Marie wrote "Universal Soldier" in 1962, a time when people fretted over missile gaps, Khrushchev and the H-bomb. Vietnam was still a couple of years off the American radar. She had been writing songs in college while studying Oriental philosophy. She hadn’t considered music a career. She wanted to be a teacher, a vocation still close to her heart. At the time, she wrote songs without thinking anyone would hear them. Then she got the record deal. Universal Soldier was released in 1964. It wasn’t long before the song became the anthem of the anti-war movement, despite the fact it was pretty much banned on U.S. radio. “It’s about the personal responsibility of all of us, ” she says of the song which is now in the Canadian Songwriting Hall of Fame. “Because we can’t blame just the soldier for the war, or just the career military officer, or just the politician. We have to blame ourselves too since we are living in an era where we actually elect our politicians.”'-- BS-M.com
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God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot
'The greatest Canadian song, well I mean, I think the greatest song period of all time, is "God is Alive, Magic is Afoot" by Buffy Sainte-Marie and Leonard Cohen as it appears on Buffy’s album, Illuminations, and anyone who says otherwise is mistaken. It’s the best song that’s ever written. It’s kind of like a mission statement from Cohen himself, just underlining his sort of three sides: his Jewish upbringing and his, you know, Buddhist inclinations as an adult, and his sort-of Christian monoculture that kind of binds him all together with Buffy’s own sort of Cree history in this kind of ecstasy in which she performs it, the mantra-like qualities it takes on and added to that is just the innovation of the tape-loop effects — actually I’m not sure if it’s the tape loop or if it’s a Buchla but maybe it’s a combination of both. It’s technically innovative, it fits into both of their oeuvres, so it’s the summit of the mountain. Yeah, there’s really no song that touches that song that I’ve ever come across.'-- Owen Pallett
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p.s. Hey. ** Bernard Welt, B-ster. I can't guarantee this is the real me, and, besides, 'real' ... wha?! Well, that is all very interesting. I don't know that Robin Williams film. Should I correct that? I think the only movie I've liked him in was 'Secret Agent'. Maybe. Don't hold me to that. I think we will be hunting for perfect pastries in a mere couple of hours, so I suppose I will save everything else I can of to say until then apart from saying, yes, you did blow my mind. Because that's easier for me to admit in print than vocally. ** David Ehrenstein, If you were speaking in part to me, I do know that Straub film, yes. Excellent film. ** H., Hi. Lovely reaction to Ben's post, thank you! I'm glad that you're glad you invested your time in the new Ashbery book. He released a new poem, I think onto the internet/social media, a couple of days ago on his 88th birthday, and it's a beauty. ** Steevee, Hi. Look forward to improving myself a little via your new interview. Everyone, Here's Steevee's interview with Stevan Riley, the director of a new documentary on Marlon Brando, and it's on the site of the excellent magazine Filmmaker to boot. Man, you should really invest in an external hard drive and back up your stuff regularly. It would save you a lot of stressing out about that. ** Kier, Hi, Kier! Hi, buddy boy! Yay (said at the top of my lungs in a volcanic voice)! About the new apartment! Wow, so do you move in on the first of the month, meaning in two days? Oh, wait, you said beginning of next week, so, yeah, soon enough. That's exciting! Give us a new house tour when you're in the house! Please? I'm glad your work is good with and without electrical fences. Yeah, you did say you're going to see Iceage! If you talk to them, say hi to Elias for me. Things are good here, the usual very busy. I think we finished the new film script, and we're going to show it to some trusted people now for reactions. Doing early grunt work promo blah stuff re: our film's premiere, which I've been ordered not to talk about until it's official. Starting on the script for Gisele's puppet TV show that Zac and I are writing. Other stuff. Things are good. Well, we should definitely eat Indian food together, of course! Mater paneer is amazing. The two main ingredients are mater (peas) and (paneer) Indian cheese. It's all thick soupy and spicy and orange colored. Here's a picture. You eat it with rice on the side and, in my case, cheese naan, which is, as you can imagine, seriously yum. When you visit Paris, Zac and I will take you to our favorite vegetarian Indian restaurant, and we will feast ourselves sick, or at least faux-sick. Hugs galore! ** _Black_Acrylic, Thank you so, so much again, Ben! It was supreme. And thank you even more than ever so much for the Belgian New Beat Day (!) which I will set up very soon and then let you know the launch date of. You're the best, Ben! ** Thomas Moronic, Morning, T. Have you gotten that new charger yet? Wait, it's 9 am. Soon? Almost? Yep, agreed about sci-fi fantasy, although I don't mind it and even am kind of drawn to that stuff sometimes in movies for some reason. Hm. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris. Loved the book reviews. I noted and will soon be all over the books there that I didn't know and/or haven't read yet. Zachary G. is rather private about stuff, yeah, so who knows? I was reading stuff about that new Drake thing yesterday. I don't think I've ever even heard Drake, which is pretty weird, I guess. Maybe it's his name. The name seems so wholesome or something. My day yesterday wasn't bad. Work, a bit of a coffee and walk, more work, not bad. How was yours, man? ** Misanthrope, 'Americans don't like soccer': generalizing much, ha ha? Maybe you're right, in the grand scheme of things, but everybody I know in the States other than you who's into sports at all is mostly only into soccer. And a bit of basketball. And a little baseball. Well, or I at least manage to fake knowing when you're joking. But, no, I think I do know. In person, it's easy 'cos you put on your 'joke' face when you joke. You do. It's subtle, but it's there like the light in a lighthouse. ** James, Awesome about your excellent cover! I'm excited to see it! I am excited for the film's premiere, but there's a bunch of shit-work we have to do now to get ready for that vis-à-vis promo materials and blah, but so it goes. ** Cal Graves, Hi, Cal. Yeah, sure, that makes sense totally. I don't know why my imagination isn't very tweaked by sci-fi lit. It's weird. I was quite into Cyberpunk, or the best of those books, back when it was happening, though. The literary canon makers are boring and anal in the bad way and as conservative as the bad justices on the Supreme Court. Their imaginations suck. They will die lonely and forgotten, ha ha. Way yum Indian food there. I want some. But today will be all about hunting down scrumptious French pasties with and for visiting pal/d.l. Bernard Welt. I have an itinerary. I-bought-this-really-cool-and-ugly-cigarette-lighter-yesterday-that-looks-like-it's-covered-in-snake-skin-but-isn't-ly, Dennis. ** Okay. Today I am devoting a gig post to the very, very, very great Buffy Sainte-Marie whose work seems to be really weirdly undervalued these days for reasons that I simply can not understand. Anyway, I hope you enjoy. See you tomorrow.