Four years ago this month, Tangleweed got our start at a little coffee shop way up in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. In between blasts of steam from the espresso machine, we would play two sets each Sunday to largely disinterested onlookers who would occasionally look up from their Powerbooks to ask us if we were through yet.

We did the gigs without mics or amplification of any kind. We would just shout over the din when we had to sing, and beat our instruments a little harder when we had to take a solo. This set us up well for our first CD, which we recorded live to two-track tape using three microphones and vintage gear. For worse or worser, that’s what we sounded like at the time. This was recorded a little over a month before we recorded Just a Spoonful.

For reasons known only to himself, Scott taped a lot of these early shows for posterity. Many of the early shows are agony to listen to, but there were occasional bursts of competence, such as this here. The tune is the Earl Scruggs classic ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’, with a wee bit of an insert borrowed from John Williams. We’re joined by our pal, the Mayor of Bucktown, some dude whose name escapes me on harmonica for this one.

If’n you feel like downloading it, you can fetch the file here: MP3 Download

This 37-minute film from 1965 captures the Dubliners in their native habitat, O’Donoghue’s Pub in Dublin. According to the Irish Film Institute’s website, O’Donoghue’s Opera was the first Irish musical film. The plot loosely follows the trad tune, ‘The Night Before Larry Was Stretched’. Lyrics are below the fold.

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