I'm not just making them jiggle around

And indeed he is not. Alternately fascinating, funny, and creepy, "christhrash's" hobby is reprogramming audioanimatronic robots - which originally were used as entertainment in pizza parlor venues - to do rap performances. The level of work he's put in to get the robot's movements coordinated to the music is amazing. You can find several more of christhrash's videos at his YouTube Space.

Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash - One Too Many Mornings

From the Nashville Skyline recording sessions, February 17, 1969 in Nashville, Tennessee. The video is probably from either the documentary Johnny Cash: The Man And His Music, released in 1979 or The Other Side Of Nashville, released in July 1984.

The Cash/Dylan sessions over February 17-18 generated only one commercial release on Nashville Skyline, a duet of Dylan's Girl From The North Country, which had originally appeared on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, but most - if not all - the material from the sessions have appeared on various bootlegs over the years. This excerpt from a comment on the Between Thought and Expression blog details an interesting history of the origin of the bootleg material:

"... A little history about the source: These were bootlegged in the late 70s or early 80s in poor quality. In 1985 or 86, my friend, Chris D., worked in a video store in Nashville (I lived near there). I had helped him get some space shot videos from NBC, so to return the favor, he called one day and asked if I wanted a cassette of the Cash session. He got it from a guy who found it in his attic, in a box marked "BDJC". That guy's father worked for CBS Nashville in 1969 and made a 1 inch mono reel-to-reel copy of the original session tape. He made Chris a cassette from the 1 inch tape. Chris copied the cassette, and gave me the original. In the fall of 1986, I went to a Dylan collectors meet in Chicago, and we daisy-chained 15 cassette decks together. I was second in the chain, and everyone past me copied my tape. By then, I had added the second "One Too Many Mornings" and the three songs from a betamax tape of the JC TV show, so this CD is one generation down from my original cassette. The original bootleg CD came out about two months later. "Mornings" has a tone shift in the middle, from the video when they change from the studio footage to the control room footage..."

The Sins Play the Church

The all star, all female group of Boston musicians known as the Deadly Sins get together for a lively instrumental during the Boston Celtic Music festival in January, 2007. The concert was held at First Church on Harvard Square. About the name? At first there were seven, but the group grew...

The Deadly Sins are: Shannon Heaton (flute, vocals), Laura Cortese (upright bass, fiddle, vocals), Hanneke Cassel (fiddle, piano), Lissa Schneckenburger (fiddle, vocals), Tina Lech (fiddle), Kieran Jordan (dance, percussion), Natalie Haas (cello), and Emma Beaton (cello).

Freight Train - Elizabeth Cotten

Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten, a self-taught blues and folk guitarist. As a child, she played the guitar upside down, since she was left-handed, requiring her to play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. By her early teens she was writing her own songs, including what would become her signature song, Freight Train.

As he mentions during her interview with Pete Seeger in another YouTube video from the same 1965 Rainbow Quest show, Cotten had stop playing her "ragtime" music due to her church's influence, and limited herself to the occasional church performance. However, she began public performances again after being "discovered" by the Seeger family while working for them as a housekeeper. As she notes in the interview, Cotten found the lost Peggy Seeger wandering through the aisles of a department store and crying for her mother. It was an opportune encounter. Cotten would eventually go to work for the Seegers, and picked up her guitar again.

Cotten's songs have been covered by the Grateful Dead, Taj Mahal, and Bob Dylan among others. Cotten was declared a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1984, and was recognized by the Smithsonian Institution as a "living treasure." She received a Grammy Award in 1985 when she was 90. Cotten passed away at age 92 in 1987.

The Seeds - Pushin' Too Hard

As a commenter notes on YouTube, "Before Green Day, before Casualties, before Black Flag, before The Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones. Before even the New York Dolls and the Stooges, there was the Seeds."

Muddy Waters once called them "America's own Rolling Stones." The Seeds were lead singer and bass guitarist Sky Saxon, keyboardist Daryl Hooper, guitarist Jan Savage and drummer Rick Andridge. Pushin' Too Hard was The Seeds only national Top 40 hit, charting in 1966.

Sky Saxon later joined the Yahowha religious sect, and released several albums as Yahowha 13 in the mid 1970s. Leader of the sect, Father Yod, later known as Ya Ho Wha, died in a hang gliding accident in 1974. Saxon continues to collaborate with various members of the Yahowa to this day. He may have one of the most minimalist sites on the web. Here's a link to Sky Saxon's site.

Everly Brothers - All I Have To Do Is Dream

written by the husband and wife songwriting team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who were something of a songwriting machine for the Everly Brothers, writing Wake Up Little Susie and Bye Bye, Love as well as All I Have to Do is Dream. Both Bye Bye, Love and All I Have to Do is Dream would chart at #1 on Billboard's Pop, R&B and Country Western charts in 19 and 57.

the foggy dew

The Foggy Dew is a classic sing around the campfire folk song, variously seen as lover’s lament or the tale of a rake, traveling from England and Ireland to America as the tale of a weaver who does nothing wrong but keep a maid from the foggy dew, and gets a son in the bargain. Tim O’Brien has even made it into a bit of a swing tune when he performs it.

There’s another side to the story though. There’s some argument as to who exactly wrote the words, but a song about the Easter Rising in 1916 in Ireland was set to the familiar folk tune. That’s the one Frances Black has included on her latest release. This Love Will Carry. Black says, by the way, that this is one of her husband's very favorite songs that she does, and when they travel on long car trips together it's always one he asks her to sing. It is one of three new songs on This Love Will Carry, which is otherwise a two disc retrospective collection.


video of Frances Black’s version of The Foggy Dew