Too Hot To Go Out - Time to Listen to Music! ALBERT HALL, WARETOWN

Okay, I will talk about one historic place you can go for music, but first - it has been so hot this summer, that aside from my morning dog walk and my gym workout, the odd shopping errand, I have spent my afternoons indoors, msstly reading. However, in the evening, I have been watching music documentaries on amazon prime. Frankly, to me tv commercials are like mosquitoes or flies - I can't stand them, so I watch amazon prime on my laptop - also it helps with vision and with hearing as both of these essential abilities have declined with my age.

So far I have watched more concerts and documentaries than I can list, but just to mention a few: I watched 3 documentaries on Joni Mitchell. The only title I remember is Woman of Heart and Mind. It was excellent! Then I watched two more. I have watched Echoes of the Canyon, about the offspring of the original Laurel Canyon musicians such as Crosby Stills Nash and Young and others. Also I watched a new documentary about PINK, who I had never listened to before, and one on the History of POP featuring BoyZ 2 Men, whom I had never heard before either. To get to the point - after one such documentary on the Bee Gees, I decided to watch Saturday Night Fever which I hadn't seen for decades and which features the music of the Bee Gees. What an absoutely PERFECT blending of film and music! The most recent documentary I watched was It Begins with a Song - about the song writers of Nashville, and I am going to couple that documentary with the film Nashville, by Altman, also many decades old.

Now there are Many Many Many concerts at the many many wineries of South Jersey and I get notifcations in my e-mail via something called Visit South Jersey, so if you are an intrepid driver, or don't mind the heat, check it out. But there is one place I LOVED but I can't drive there anymore because of my aged car and my aged vision - ALBERT HALL in Waretown. I don't know what the opening status is since the pandemic so you will have to check it out online, but I can tell you Albert Hall was a heck of a lot of fun. You could buy a slice of homemade cake and a cup of coffee to enjoy while there and to refresh yourself after the long drive in the dark woods! If you have never been there, look it up and head on over one Saturday evening soon!

Also, a coupe of years ago, I attended a lecture at PPA - Pinelands Preservation Alliance, Bishop's Farm, by an author of a book on *Folk Music History in New Jersey. I will try to find the author's name. We have a history and you can see a lot of it on the walls at Albert Hall. Meanwhile I should mention there is a wonderflu littl music store in Collingswood, one shop down from a bakery on the corner of Haddon Ave. and you can buy instruments, vinyl records, or take lessons there. I took ukulele lessons there for a few months before the pandemic. I still pluc and strum from time to time, mostly working on DEOPRTEES, originally sung by Woody Guthrie, although I heard of it through Pete Seeger. Woody Guthrie lived in New Jersey through the last years of his life and that's where Bob Dylan visited him. There is alwaays something fun to do and to go to in New Jersey!

Happy Trails! Jo Ann If you want to contack me, use my e-mail wrightj45@yahoo.com

*Folk Music Revival in New Jersey, Michael Gabriele