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Well...ok, there is a problem. There's a problem with any list that attempts to rank players as if one is 'better' than another. Does it really matter how 'skillful' a player is if they don't do anything interesting with that talent? For example, take Keith Richards and Joe Satriani. Sure Joe can play monstrous scales, the notes splattering all over the floor like rock dandruff...but I'd rather listen to Keith do that 'Keith-riff', those ragged rhythms, those knotty and off-kilter guitar solos. There's some 'meat' in his playing. Nobody sounds like Richards. His is a singular voice...and it sticks with me.
So that's what the players to follow have in common. A unique sound. Most of them are from the rock world, with a few moderately 'out-there' jazz players. A list of favorite jazz players is a topic for another day. The order is just how they popped into my head. Oh ya, and there's only ten of them. Here goes...
Marc Ribot
Hear just a few notes from Ribot's Rootless Cosmopolitans and you might think, "hey, maybe somebody should tell that guy to tune his guitar". While Ribot is often associated with the downtown New York scene, the man in fact really gets around. He's played: jazz in his own ensembles, deconstructed guitar etudes for John Zorn, Cuban music (and how can you not like a group called "Los Cubanos Postizos"...the prosthetic Cubans?), rock with Tom Waits and Elvis Costello (to name a couple).
What's unique about Marc Ribot's sound is his combination of angular melodic lines and humor. Sometimes I hear him playing and a picture forms in my head: a tall, lanky guy wearing baggy pants playing a mutant Telecaster: it's ten feet long and has strings hanging down to the ground.
Leo Kottke
As a guitar player I'll often watch guys at shows and envy at their technique. The clean lines, the speed, the acceleration.
With Leo Kottke I just sit there and wonder just what the heck he's doing. There seems to be no connection between what his fingers are doing and the sound that's coming out.
That's OK though, because the tunes he spins out of that collection of walking basslines, contrary motions and other fingerpicking gems are truly memorable. (Honorable mention must be given here to the late, great John Fahey, who gave Leo his first big chance).
Guy Van Duser
On his solo records as well as one part of the duo of Van Duser & Novick, Guy Van Duser has been making spectacular fingerstyle guitar music for years. I became aware of him back in college when a friend played his solo version of "Stars and Stripes Forever" (from American Fingerstyle Guitar). If you see him live he will sometimes play a just plain wrong version of "Caravan"...during which he will explain how he learned to play the guitar by learning licks from Chet Atkins records...and how Chet used an echo chamber to double up the bass parts, a fact that Van Duser learned long after he figured out how to double up the bass parts using his thumb. He then goes on to play "Caravan" with simultaneous walking bassline and melody. It's just not right.
You may have heard Van Duser play before. Van Duser & Novick's "Louisiana Fairy Tale" used to be the theme song for the original "This Old House" TV show.
David Lindley
It has been said that David Lindley can play anything with strings on it. I believe it. Anybody who was around in the 70's will recognize Lindley's sound. He just about defined that Southern California sound - especially on a bunch of Warren Zevon and Jackson Browne records. He was also the guy who squeezed out the falsetto part during Running On Empty's "Stay" (I've seen him do that live...and I don't know what was more disturbing: the voice coming out of that man, or the violently fluorescent Hawaiian clothing). Lindley also put out a few great solo records full of slack-key finger picking and pedal-steel guitar craziness. Put on an El Rayo-X record at your next party and you'll be dancin' on your coffee table in no time.
Bill Frisell
When I went through my ECM Records phase (ok, I'm still not out of it) I came across Mr. Frisell. Here's a player who's tough to classify. His sound can go from tender and heartfelt balladry to full-on skronk...sometimes within the same tune! Frisell's been through his phases: early on there was a lot of abstraction and rubato, then there was some near-rock and pop material (check out the cover/destruction of Madonna's "Live To Tell" on Have A Little Faith). From that point there was an extended period of what I would call Frisell-Americana. His latest record sees him turning to a sort of world music. He has also played country and straight-ahead jazz....and the amazing thing is that that voice remains distinct throughout all of the style's he's dealt with.
Adrian Belew
What can't Adrian Belew do? He's played Beatles-influenced pop with the Bears (and on his solo records), funk (Talking Heads), art-pop (anybody remember the fork, knife and spatula scene during Laurie Anderson's Home Of The Brave?) and, of course, art rock...or whatever you want to call what King Crimson has done since Discipline. The man seems to draw from an endless pool of creativity...and he's fun too!
Robert Fripp
Belew's alter ego? Not exactly. On the other hand, when Belew looks like he's having fun, Fripp looks like he's eaten too much for dinner.
The proof, though, is in the playing. Fripp defined the King Crimson sound - then drove it through a bunch of variations. I love it all: the scary doom-laden metallic clang, the nervous rhythms, the interlocking guitar figures, the Frippertronics. His sound can go from a whisper to a howl. Kinda frightening. Always entertaining.
Jerry Garcia
Ah, Captain Trips, how I miss him. Some folks are dismissive of the Dead...and that's OK. But to ignore the talents of Jerry Garcia is to miss out on a player who truly loved all kinds of music - and who displayed that love as a quite unique style of guitar playing. Jerry loved old-timey music, bluegrass, country and jazz. He took all of those styles and distilled them into something else. If you want to hear him living in those influences, give a listen to some of the Old & In The Way material or maybe the Miles Davis stuff his did with David Grisman.
The Dead may have been sloppy at times, but nobody sounded like Jerry Garcia.
Bruce Springsteen
When I was learning how to play the guitar, a lot of time was spent listening to Darkness On The Edge Of Town. There's some truly nasty guitar work on that record. I loved the way he 'leaned into' the solos. Lots of passion, lots of tension. Springsteen did learn how to make that thing talk (and check out his duet with Warren Zevon on The Wind...he nearly rips the strings off the guitar).
Pete Townshend
Maybe my favorite rock guitarist. The body of work he's helped to create with The Who (plus his solo stuff) is pretty stunning. The list of great songs (with those great riffs) seems endless. I don't think rock music would have been the same without him.
"Substitute" was one of the first rhythm parts I ever learned how to play. It still rocks. It always will.
I've listened to Warren Zevon's The Wind about ten times since picking it up Tuesday evening. It's a great album. But if I listen to it one more time (especially this morning) I'm going to have to crawl underneath my desk, assume the fetal position and really let go.
So for a change I picked something bright and cheery.
That's it.
I make this point only because I'm so impressed with the song selections and liner notes of Morcheeba's best-of collection Parts Of The Process.
After just one listen and read-through I have discovered several things:
This is what a well-constructed best-of can do: get a person interested in the back catalog. I don't know what the folks at the labels think about greatest hits packages: a marketing opportunity? free money...as in cheap to produce (kinda like reality TV)? Who knows. My cynical side leans toward the latter.
Now, back to the liner notes. First, a very consice (but still interesting) bio of the group. It's funny and irreverent but does get down to who Morcheeba is. Then on to the track listing: the details of each song are augmented by a paragraph to the right explainging how the tune came about, bandmembers' thoughts, etc. Great stuff. These are things that fans care about.
So here's my message to the major labels: your customers are fans of music. Treat them with respect and you will be rewarded for your efforts.
On my way home today I'm going to stop and pick up Big Calm.
ps. My copy of "Parts" had a sticker affixed to the front with the title "The Very Best Of Morcheeba". I'm sorry but "The Very Best Of...", aside from being slightly oxymoronic, is just plain icky. It reminds me of TV adverts for 'serious' episodes of anything. "Join us for a very special E.R." Blech.
I've got several such records and every time I listen to them I'm launched back to 'the day'.
Spyboy - Emmylou Harris
The high point of the Lilith Fair show I went to was supposed to be Natalie Merchant. At least that's what I told myself. I liked the headliner Sarah McLachlan, had heard Lucious Jackson ("Naked Eye" maybe?) on the radio, and knew of Emmylou Harris. But the only tune I managed to attach to her was "Evangeline", and that was from the movie The Last Waltz.
So maybe, after seeing (and hearing) both Emmylou and Buddy Miller play backup band for Syd Straw on that tiny 'first stage', I should have known something special was up for that day.
Emmylou Harris and her band Spyboy hit the main stage later that day and proceeded to blow the roof off the place. The combination of the muscular rhythm section, Miller's chiming guitar and Emmylou's angelic voice was just perfect. The high point of the set was the elegaic "Maker".
Human Fly - The Horseflies
At a 10,000 Maniacs show one year (the Blind Man's Zoo tour, I think) I got a couple of big surprises. One was the unannounced warmup appearance of Adrian Belew. The second was getting to see an unknown band from Ithaca, New York called The Horseflies. I was just mesmerized by their sound: dirgy pop, percussion, and sorta-bluegrassy banjo and violin. They had the look too. Especially the violin player whose eyes tended to roll back in her head during intense passages.
Creatures of Habit - Knots and Crosses
Yet another warmup band experience. This time at the Club Casino in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. This is the kind of place where if the warmup band is less than stellar, they are ignored in a blizzard of loud chatter, beer drinking and trips to the bathroom.
This did not happen to Knots & Crosses.
What instead came to pass was a crowd (there for headliners Cheap Trick!) that was stunned into silence by the powerful voice of Carol Noonan. Think of maybe Janis Joplin without the rasp. Spicing this up were the backing vocals which twisted around Noonan's not unlike John Doe to his Exene....but all slowed down in an almost country kind of way. The set closed with an acapella cover of "Gimme Shelter". The place went nuts.
(Unfortunately, Creatures of Habit is out of print...so you've got to settle for either the compilation There Was A Time or one of Noonan's excellent solo records)
8:30 - Weather Report
Freshman year of college...long before I ever thought of listening to any kind of jazz. Nearly every afternoon, a guy a few doors down from my room would crank the same tune. A very melodic thing with lots of interesting starts and stops. I never actually went and asked him what it was (it was the 'scary' room in my section...lots of noise, yelling, and slamming of doors - at any time of the day or night)...but I did walk by once during the 'daily play' and see the album cover lying on the floor. It was a very colorful thing depicting some people lined up to get into a show.
Well, just about ten years later I saw this album (now of course on CD) at a store and decided to bring home a copy. The song turned out to be "Birdland". I can never hear that song without thinking about those afternoons in Aroostook Hall.
T.N.T. - Tanya Tucker
In high school I had a job at a small general merchandise/drugstore called LaVerdiere's. It was a Maine/New Hampshire chain that was bought out at some point by (I think) Rite Aid. One of my favorite jobs at the store (waaaay better than swabbing down the entryway) was dealing with the record inventory in the tiny music section. Let me tell ya, I had to restrain myself. It was so easy to 'charge' records at the end of the night....but very depressing to get a two-week paycheck for $11.32.
So for several weeks this Tanya Tucker record was in the country bin. Now there's no way I would have been caught buying a country album. I mean, I had a reputation to keep up! Molly Hatchet and Lynyrd Skynyrd were the closest I was getting to country. But, gees...that Tanya Tucker was hot! Well, I never did buy that record back then - but I did pick it up a couple of years ago. Too bad I passed it up back then because it's a load of fun. Kinda reminds me of Shania Twain before she went totally pop.
Tarkus - Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Ok, back to that high school girlfriend who tortured me with extended listening sessions of Shaun Cassidy, Lief Garrett, and the Grease soundtrack. There was this big credenza down in the basement that served as stereo rack and album storage unit. Behind some sliding doors were all of Laurie and her older brother Rob's records. The great thing about her brother (aside from keeping his mouth shut about what went on in the basement) was that he had better taste in music. One day I took a tour of the entire collection and pulled out the most bizarre-looking record. The cover illustration had this...thing on it that looked like a cross between a tank and an armadillo. Hmmm....now I'm interested. So I put the thing on the record player, totally bumming out my girlfriend...but what the heck, I liked it. Still do. Sure, it's overblown. So what? A few years later punk came along to blow away the puffery of art-rock...but at that moment I was more than content to revel in it.
warren zevon will definitely be missed.
No, I did not buy this because of the picture on the cover. I learned my lesson a long time ago on that one. It was an album by The Pinups. Good thing the price was only $1...cause boy did it suck.
So anyway, I popped this baby into my cd player while driving to work. Hmmm, at first it sounds like your garden-variety California pop/punk kinda thing. A little Blink 182, Green Day, etc...but with a little metal-ish twist....in a Chili Peppers kinda of way. There are even guitar solos on this thing. Imagine that, something else to spice things up instead of the slow/fast or quiet/loud thing.
Then something really weird happens.
Track #7, "Intermission", is a full-on jazz tune. Walking bass line, boppish guitar, brushwork on the cymbals & snare. What the hey? It gets better though....the next tune "I Waited In Glue", is a country ballad...then back to punk/pop for the rockin' and very funny "Drinking Song". Then there's "Going To L.A.", which starts off as a rock song about playing some shows in L.A....but morphs into this country-swing thing. Cripes, this is just too much fun.
I don't know much more about these guys, mostly because I just 'found' this cd this morning, but after the fun of Songs About Cowgirls, I've gotta check 'em out.
It was touching, powerful, and very sad.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow's release of The Wind, but it's going to be 'difficult' listening.
What with all of Dylan's snide commentary in his lyrics, I'd always figured he had a sense of humour....a very dry one of course.
So last night the post-Waifs (who were fabulous) intermission ends with a recording of Copeland's "Fanfare For The Common Man"....which fades out to the following introduction:
The poet laureate of rock 'n' roll. The voice of the promise of the '60s counterculture. The guy who forced folk into bed with rock, who donned makeup in the '70s and disappeared into a haze of substance abuse, who emerged to "find Jesus," who was written off as a has-been by the end of the '80s, and who suddenly shifted gears and released some of the strongest music of his career beginning in the late '90s.
Nice.
Life is too short to have to take care of Bill Gates' shortcomings
I saw our crusty Mr. Dylan last night at the MeadowBrook Musical Arts Center....and I'm still a little speechless. The guy's been around forever, with musical ups and downs too numerous to mention. He had a well-deserved reputation back in the 80's for, well, awful shows (anybody remember the bizarre "Masters Of War" performed on the Grammys?)
I've been reading reviews of his more recent shows and they've been pretty well glowing. They were right. The guy rocks. For as many times as I've heard "Like A Rolling Stone", I still got chills when they launched into it last night.
The original list is here. What's left is here.
Gee, he didn't ask for any porn (or Martha Stewart books for that matter). He did get Atlas Shrugged. That should make a certain blogcritic happy.
for some reason, this made me chuckle hard enough to drop my tollbooth tokens on the floor.
Rock operas? Concept albums? I thought that idea was dead. This is the new millenium. We want instant gratification. We've got shrinking attention spans. Heck, we can't even make it all the way through an MTV video...just the 'good parts' on TRL.
Well, Neil's not really a part of that generation. But it wouldn't be unfair to say that he's had his own issues with attention span. Which Neil Young do we get this time around? That's always the question. The blistering rocker? The introspective folkie? Rockabilly Neil? Blues Neil? Techno synthy Neil? (ok, that might be going a little too far...nobody is expecting Trans II anytime soon). It's not that any of this is a bad thing. For a guy who's been at it as long as Neil Young, the occasional fresh perspective can only be healthy.
Greendale is Neil Young's mythical small (20-25,000 residents) coastal California town. All of the stories revolve around the Green family. There's mom & dad (Edith & Earl) who live at the Double E Rancho (just outside of Greendale), the young daughter (Sun), cousin Jed, and grandma & grandpa Green. More or less 'normal' so far, right? But then we find out that Sun's grandmother (Ciela) had daughters by two different Green brothers (fade in appropriate David Lynch-type music here). It doesn't get any more 'normal' after that. Murder. Art. The Devil. Death. Protest.
On Greendale we get a return to Crazy Horse slow-rocker Neil with touches of the introspective folkie ( despite the delivery, it's pretty obvious that folkie-Neil wrote these tunes). The music is very straight ahead Crazy Horse garage rock (without Frank Sampedro's second guitar though...hmm, I wonder what that's all about). The repetition of musical themes (my favorite is the John Lee Hooker-like "Devil's Sidewalk") makes for a sorta hypnotic listening experience. Everything is slowed down and drawn out as Neil lays out his tales of the Greens. The only musical appearance of Neil the folkie is for the beautiful "Bandit".
The liner notes and artwork bring everything together nicely. Instead of lyrics there are, for each song, short stories that set up the weirdness to follow. Kliban-esque illustrations (hats off to James Mazzeo) complete the oddness that is Greendale.
Not so odd, but still very entertaining, is the bonus DVD, "Live at St. Vicar St.", that has Neil performing Greendale in its entirety on acoustic guitar. In this format the songs lose their sinister quality to become somehow more intimate...despite the subject matter.
You've gotta hand it to Neil Young. It seems like he's been around forever (check out the book Shakey to find out just how much he's been through) but manages to come up with something new after all those years, albums and tours.
Visit Greendale soon.
I missed out on 'early' Radiohead. "Creep" flew under my radar. In fact, my first exposure was a segment about them on Terry Gross' "Fresh Air". Most of the talk centered on the meanings behind the music and lyrics of OK Computer. It all sounded so intriguing. After reading a bunch of articles about them, and despite some pretty wacky Amazon reviews ("...most important...", "...best rock band of all time...", etc), I caved and bought OK Computer.
My first reaction was something like "...are you people out of your freaking minds?!" After all the hyperbole (rabid at times) OK Computer struck me as low-rent King Crimson. While I can dig the whole alienation caused by technology thing, the music and York's voice...well, the whole package really just left me cold.
Then right around the time of Kid A, we get another barrage of media coverage. This time it's about how the boys have turned a corner...leaving rock behind them. I started to see descriptions like "post-rock", "experimental", and "eclectic". Hmmm.....now my nerdy side is interested again (despite the fact that I tend to think reviews employing "post-anything" are full of crap).
The nerdy side failed to win out right away. What happened was that one Sunday afternoon, during a drive through that amazing valley between Oneonta and Albany, New York, I heard a long piece of very interesting and spacey music. It turned out to be some Radiohead EP material that was only released to college radio stations (the College Karma EP maybe?) I don't know exactly which tunes I heard that day (the danged station faded out before they got to that) but the tunes just scratched the right place in the musial part of my brain.
So anyway, I ended up brushing that "OK Computer" chip off my shoulder and bought Kid A....and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a little weird...but not as out there as some folks had suggested. The same can be said for Amnesiac.
Radiohead's transition from a more-or-less straight ahead rock band to, well, whatever they are now...caused me to be more than a little interested in Hail To The Thief. Would it be a step back into the rock past or a leap forward into the nerdy and neurotic abyss? And...will I love it or hate it? Some of the media coverage at the time was just plain silly. Here's a quote from Spin magazine:
And this is what everyone seems to miss about him -- and about Radiohead as a whole: They may make transcendent, fragile, pre-apocalyptic math rock for a generation of forward-thinking fans, but they're still just a bunch of guys.
Riiiiight....
I bought Hail To The Thief last week and have been slowly digesting it: on the way to work, on the way home, at work and, especially, very late at night after everyone else has gone to bed (where hopefully they're dreaming about something a little less disturbing than a pale, scruffy British guy repeating the phrase "the rain drops" over and over again). And so far it's going pretty well. No matter what you think of these guys, you have to give them credit for sticking to their vision (yeah, I suppose it does help that their vision also happens to be commercially successful).
My "music jury" can't put up with crazy things like "best rock band of all time" and the like. But I do like this stuff. It goes into the same bucket as Godspeed You Black Emperor, Tortoise, and Neu. A little spacy, a little intellectual, and a little weird.
Radiohead appears to be one of those bands that people tend to either love or hate. I guess I've done a little of both.
The other night I was reading Paul Zollo's wonderful book Songwriters On Songwriting. In the middle of a 1987 interview with Frank Zappa, Zollo is trying to make the point that a decent amount of good music had been released during the 1980's, most of which the general public remained unaware of. Zappa ,after begrudgingly admitting the author's point (sorta), goes on to make a statement about the music industry and musical culture as a whole:
It still applies today.
that's it, i'm in position to make my millions. my new book is going to be called, well....i'm not sure. but it's gonna have the phrase "We Report, You Decide" in it. that's for sure.
idiots.
In Nick Hornby's book High Fidelity, the main character talks about how he reorganizes his record collection during moments of personal crisis. That's not why I started this project last night. I did it because my LP's were only partially sorted and my recent acquisitions were getting swallowed up ("...ok, where the heck is that Carla Bley record I just bought?!!").
The first order of business was to cull all of the jazz records. That was pretty easy since they were more or less all in one spot. Alphabetize those puppies and I'm done. They go back into the display crates. The same process was then applied to the folk, country and blues albums. My cd's are organized similarly. Those three genres have enough similarities that mixing them together just makes sense to me. Soundtracks and exotica (Enoch Light, Les Baxter, etc) get the same treatment.
There...the easy part is done. Now on to 'everything else' (rock, pop, reggae, metal...all of it).
First, twenty-six small piles are made to begin the alphabetical fun. Then I divide each crate of records into small-ish piles. Maybe 100 records each. Then each pile is sorted (ascending) 'front-to-back'. After all of that craziness was completed I then had to take each sorted pile and distribute the contents to the appropriate 'master' alphabetical pile.
Now, when I started this project (around 7 pm) I figured this would take me, at most, about three hours. Right. I got to the stage of having the twenty six 'master' piles at around 11pm. Yikes.
For the last bit of fun I had to sort each pile before placing the records in their display crate (I use these wooden storage crates turned on their side...so that the records can be viewed, left-to-right, by the spine). The bad thing is that I'm only able to sort stuff alphabetically in ascending order (I can do it descending but it take forever!). That means that I have to reverse everything as they go into the crate. Ugh. No big deal for letters like 'F'. A huge deal for the letter 'S'. Gees, there musta been at least 250 of those suckers!
I was done a little after one in the morning.
Boy are my arms (and fingers) tired! It was worth it though. Now I can actually find what I'm looking for without wasting twenty minutes, all the while swearing about my laziness and lack of organization. My collection is pretty small though (around 1500). I don't know what I'd do if it was in the 5-digit range. Maybe rent a Bobcat or something.
Go ahead, ask me where that Elvis Costello record is. I can find it now!
In a previous lifetime (1992, first marriage, first house, first pickup truck) I was driving home one day from work and heard this really bizarre song on the radio. The band sorta wheezed along, the drummer smashed and clattered away, and the 'singer' was doing his best drunken Louis Armstrong imitation. The song was just finishing as I pulled into my driveway (a gravel driveway....the sound of tires on it used to remind me of 'home'...but later reminded me of a marriage gone sour and a dead-end job....but anyway...) so I had to sit there for a while until the college kid dj told me.....well, nothing. No announcement. Nuts.
So I go to work the next day and mention it to a coworker, and he immediately says "Oh ya, that's Tom Waits!!". So it turns out to be "Pasties and a G-String". I bought Small Change that afternoon.
The Black Rider might just be one of Waits' odder recordings. But this week has been kinda odd (in fact, I picked this cd over Radiohead's Hail To The Thief) and this music fits it perfectly.
(By the way, Greg's dad was a Pentecostal Minister...which works here as Randolph learned his craft in a Pentecostal church playing "Sacred Steel" music)
The lyrics on Unclassified do have a bit of 'indirectness'. Lots of the tunes are obviously praise-oriented...but they can also be read as optimistic statements on what life has to offer. "Smile, for instance, can be seen as a modern hymn, or a long song.
But....for me the most important thing is the music. No matter what the genre may be, if the music's not happenin', well...forget it. You're done.
Robert Randolph & the Family Band are definitely happenin'. Bass, drums, guitars, B3 (oh, ya!), a pile 'o vocalists and the key: Robert Randolph on a smokin' pedal steel guitar.
You don't get to hear the pedal steel in a rock context very often so that alone makes this feel pretty fresh. Randolph's became the new king of the instrument when he made The Word a while back with John Medeski and the North Mississippi Allstars (why the heck don't I own that record?!) The band itself seems heavily influenced by Sly & The Family Stone, Stevie Wonder and maybe a little Neville Brothers too. Toss in Randolph's white hot pedal steel and it's sorta like a funky gospel-inflected blues band.
There are several instrumentals on Unclassified too. When I first got to "Squeeze" it received the repeat treatment (also with volume tweeks) several times. Dang, the combination of the steel guitar and poppin' bass was just too much! It's funny. There's something about an insistent pedal steel guitar line that really gets me cranked up: same thing happens when I pull out my Junior Brown or David Lindley records.
Now, this release being a sorta christian thing....makes me wonder if it can shake off that perception and gain a little crossover sucess. And will the contemporary christian folks come along for the ride?
Too bad for them if they don't.
Did the RIAA ever stop to think that their heavy-handed schemes would end up basially clogging avenues for new music?
Probably not.
By the way, if you're interested in checking out anything on Trailer, I'd suggest either their sampler "Doublewide" (dang, I love that title) or maybe Greg Brown's Over and Under: where you can hear things like the drunken, crazy 'eulogy' of Ina Bell ("Ina Bell Sale") or Greg's country love ballad "Like A Dog".
can we just scrap our entire fricken' political system and start over?
Does it really help deter theft? C'mon, really?
It took me about five minutes to get the stupid thing off....so I started thinking, hmmmm, I own a couple thousand cd's. I'd say about three quarters of them had the labels. Now, if I use the generous estimate of about one minute per label, that comes out to...25 hours. Oh my gawd, I've spent over a day just peeling sticky bits of plastic off of cd jewel cases! Not only do I hate the things, but I've lost a chunk of my life to 'em.
Ok, ok....relax, you may be thinking. There are bigger problems in the world: children are starving, terrorists are plotting, dividends are being overtaxed. But still, just think how nice it would be to just take your shiny new cd out of the bag and pop it right into the player.
Uh, ok...maybe not.
Norah seemed to have a spectacular ability to get inside a song and immerse herself in it...immediately
These were Peter Malick's thoughts about the magic that happened during the recording of the title track to New York City: two takes, the second is what you hear on the record. Dang, I call that big ears.
The story goes this way...Malick had written some new material that needed a singer. He first heard Norah Jones at The Living Room on New York's Lower East Side. The song was Dinah Washington's "Since I Fell For You"...and that was all it took. In his own words:
...I was struck breathless. Here, in the tradition of Billie Holiday, was a stunningly beautiful, blues infused voice
Now before anyone gets crazy about the Jones/Holiday comparison (sacrilege!!), remember that Norah herself would probably blush before thanking you shyly. As I said in my review of her Boston show, she turned out to be one of the most down to earth performers I've ever seen. A surprise considered her recent "instant" fame.
Some of the tunes on New York City do sound like they'd fit on Come Away With Me. The difference in sound being Malick's smooth yet bluesy guitar lines (think Robert Cray by way of Mark Knopfler). "Deceptively Yours" could be their tribute to Bonnie Raitt. My favorite slow blues on the record is Sam Maghett's "All Your Love". It starts with a smokey riff right out of the atmosphere of Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train and does a long, sexy burn from there. But the fun really begins with the rocked-up blues duet "Things You Don't Have To Do"...great to hear Norah trading lines with Malick, who sounds like a young Lou Reed here (with a firmer grasp on the key!)
I haven't checked out any sales figures or anything but I would expect that fans of Come Away With Me would dig this stuff. You don't see a whole lot of either artist longevity or fan loyalty these days. I guess we'll see, won't we?
Ok, I admit it....I'm hooked.
The inside of a fisherman's boot in Newark
Hawkeye Pierce once described some food at the 4077 that way. well, that's what the weather is like up here in the northeast....and i know it's kinda silly to complain about the weather, seeing as how you can't do anything about it....but true new englanders can bitch about the weather in any season. ayuh!
The best Police record? Dunno. In fact, in my mind I go back and forth trying to figure out which is my favorite Police record. Today it's this one. Love the sparse sound and killin' drums.
