I am Kyle's self-indulgence

One of my favorite things about All Songs Considered is their coverage of the big music festivals each year, especially the Newport Folk Festival. It will be a long time before I can actually attend (if ever), but I can experience the concerts vicariously through NPR’s comprehensive coverage: I believe audio recordings for all the performances are available through the Live Concerts podcast and I’ve spent the last week listening to them straight through.

There’s a great show by Punch Brothers, a band I would love to see live. While I couldn’t find a video of them playing “Rye Whiskey,” a favorite of mine, at Newport, here they are gettin' down on another occasion:

They also closed their set with an odd cover of Radiohead’s “Kid A.”

A band I’ve just learned about through these live recordings is O’Death. Here they are performing “Grey Sun” at Newport:

They fit into that wildly-aggressive-playing-of-traditional-insruments genre that I love. Just watch that guy go to town on the violin at the end. I’m definitely going to be checking them out some more.

My most exciting discovery, though, was John Prine, who apparently is a very famous and renowned folk artist that nobody bothered telling me about until now (I’m disappointed in you, Internet). He sings a song (also apparently famous) titled, “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.” There is a YouTube video of him performing it at Newport here, but the quality isn’t very good, so here's an almost completely unrelated performance from several years ago:

When I heard this, I assumed it was a fairly recent song, probably written during the height of the Iraq War, considering its message about religion and shallow patriotism. It turns out, though, that it dates all the way back to 1971. It’s interesting how such a specific satirical song can be so timeless. Again, something I’m going to have to check out more of.