From the Neolithic to the Postmodern:RIME OF THE ANCIENT MATRIARCH
"A blowtorch aimed at every sacred cow in the spiritual strip mall"
- Mitch Ritter, Dirty Linen
RIME OF THE ANCIENT MATRIARCH features Mark Graham's "High and Lonesome", the story of a DJ who finds that life after death is not what he expected. "Online Romance" and "Lily of the Net" address the loneliness of the long-distance computer nerd, while "Victim of Them" expresses a frequently-whimpered whine. "Humboldt Wassail" celebrates one of Northern California's best-loved agricultural products; the "Wailing Wall Wail" is a prayer sent to God at his fax machine in Jerusalem. And three of the Entities whom Holly channels (Archdruid Seamus O'Blivious, Nahuatl sorcerer Don Nojué José, and Herr Professor Angst Weltschmerz) wail on the" Song of the Suburban Shaman."
"Theologically profound"
- Rabbi Margaret Holub
"Holly Tannen sings in purest Judy Collins style, often to centuries-old melodies, and then all of a sudden you notice she's singing about the Internet, or Beavis and Butthead, or Northern California marijuana growers...Tannen sings these songs as if the ancient ballads were always about things like that and, in a sense, they were."
- Dr. Demento
From the depths of the primeval Mendonesian pygmy forest, Holly Tannen channels Entities from the Half-Astral Plane. Her previous albums include "Invocation" and "Between the Worlds." Holly has taught folklore and anthropology at College of the Redwoods in Fort Bragg, and has guest-lectured on contemporary magic at U.C. Berkeley and at Yale University. Her article "The Real Old-Time Religion: Towards an Aesthetics of Neo-Pagan Song" (with Sabina Magliocco), appears in Volume 20 #1-2 (1999) of the bi-lingual Canadian journal Ethnologies.
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