Exile on Hicks Street

2008-12-13T13:41:00.001-05:00

This blog is into its third year of hiatus. Check out my blog on frugal, freezable recipes at http://icemancooketh.blogspot.com

2006-01-20T09:45:00.000-05:00

Remembering an often underated hero of music - I'm sorry I never got a chance to see him perform.

Wilson Pickett, 64; Soul Legend Sang Hits 'In the Midnight Hour,' 'Mustang Sally'

By Geoff Boucher
Times Staff Writer

Wilson Pickett, the Alabama-born soul singer who brought a raw groove and growling energy to 1960s R & B music, with hits such as "In the Midnight Hour" and "Mustang Sally," died Thursday. He was 64.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member died at a hospital near his Reston, Va., home after suffering a heart attack, according to a statement released by his personal manager, Margo Lewis. Chris Tuthill, of the management company Talent Source, said Pickett had been suffering from health problems for the last year.

His career spanned four decades and, before slowing down in 2005, he had continued to perform, earning a Grammy nomination for the 1999 album "It's Harder Now," which also received three W.C. Handy Awards, the in-genre trophy for blues and soul recordings.

Despite his longevity as a recording artist, his career was truly defined by his raspy, forceful delivery on a run of '60s R & B hits, among them "Land of 1000 Dances," "Funky Broadway" and the telephonic "634-5789."

The singer was nicknamed "the Wicked Pickett" for his gruff power, and no recording captured that intensity more famously than the revving 1966 hit "Mustang Sally," released by Atlantic Records. That song and "In the Midnight Hour" were touchstone hits for young 1960s music fans, and they were revived memorably for a new generation by the 1991 Alan Parker film "The Commitments" and its hit soundtrack. The popular film's plot is about a scruffy collective of young Irish musicians and their ill-fated attempt to meet and perform with their hero, Pickett. Pickett never actually appears in the film (he did show up in two less-celebrated movies, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," in 1978, and "Blues Brothers 2000") but he tapped into the film's spirit and success by performing at the Los Angeles and New York premieres of the movie. That was a shining moment, but his own youth had been as gritty and melancholy as the hard-luck north Dublin characters in "The Commitments."

Pickett was born March 18, 1941, in Prattville, Ala., and his earliest music experience was in Baptist church choirs. His home life, as the youngest of 11 children, was less uplifting.

"The baddest woman in my book … my mother," the singer told author Gerri Hirshey for the book "Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music."

"I get scared of her now. She used to hit me with anything, skillets, stove wood … [one time I ran away and] cried for a week. Stayed in the woods, me and my little dog."

Pickett recalled that he got another beating when his preacher grandfather caught him with a copy of Louis Jordan's raucous but tame hit, "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens." Eventually he had enough, and as a teen he went north to live with his father in Detroit. There, Pickett performed in the gospel harmony group the Violinaires in the 1950s, but by the end of the decade he was pushing into more secular sounds, as were many of his contemporaries who had brought their Southern church sounds north but were ready to move on.

In 1959, Pickett became a member of the Falcons, along with future Memphis soul notables Joe Stubbs (brother of Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops), Sir Mack Rice and Eddie Floyd. The Falcons' hit "I Found a Love" helped land Pickett a deal with Atlantic Records.

There he hooked up with renowned producer Jerry Wexler.

Wexler would be a guiding hand during the 1965 sessions for Stax Records that included the memorable recording of "In the Midnight Hour," a hit that found Pickett delivering a performance that was somehow both polished and raw at the same time. Wexler, who had worked with Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan and Dusty Springfield, said those Pickett sessions were easily among his most memorable moments.

"There was something about those records and Wilson's voice — those were some of the funkiest, deepest-grooving, in-the-pocket recordings I ever heard," Wexler said Thursday from his home in Florida. "The thing about Wilson was he was just a great screamer, but he did it with control. James Brown would scream and it was a scream, but Wilson could scream notes. His voice was powerful, like a buzz saw, but it wasn't ever out of his control, it was always melodic.

"Wexler described Pickett as a "black panther" in those days before the term took on a political connotation. The expression spoke to the singer's glower and confidence, but those same traits may have hindered Pickett's career. Steve Cropper, the guitarist in Booker T and the MGs, was a key sideman in the soul explosion of the 1960s, and he co-wrote "In the Midnight Hour" with Pickett. He said Thursday that the same passion that produced magic on vinyl could rub people raw in person — it was also one of the reasons that Pickett's career never earned the acclaim of singers such as Al Green and Sam Cooke or the fiery but charismatic Otis Redding.

"It's absolutely true, and I think some of that had to do with Wilson himself," Cropper said. "He could be difficult and he didn't really reach out to people. It wasn't like Otis — if you met Otis, he was your best friend on the spot. He engaged people. Wilson was more distant and sometimes he had that angry-at-the-world attitude. But if you got in a studio, he was amazing. Just amazing.

"That disconnect, between ability and acclaim, was made clear in a Times review from 1982 of the singer's show at a local club. Months earlier, Brown had sold out the venue, but Pickett came to the stage to find the room half empty. Still, he raced though an intense performance that included "dramatic spoken passages, extended vocal cadenzas (usually delivered in falsetto) and dropping to bended knees … to scream," the reviewer wrote. Somehow, it all worked, thanks to Pickett's "sheer command and a singularly candid sense of humor."

Pickett is survived by two sons, Lynderrick and Michael; and two daughters, Veda and Saphan. A viewing is being arranged in Virginia next week. Pickett will be interred with his mother, Lena, in Louisville, Ky. Copyright © 2006, The Los Angeles Times

2005-12-07T23:52:00.000-05:00

Not to be a nag or anything but...

Okay, almost nobody downloaded the Graham Lindsey stuff I posted recently. I've reposted them here at the top (scroll down to read the original post) because if you have ears you need to hear it.

www.grahamlindseymusic.com

Emma Rumble (via Savefile)
Hutch Jack Flats Rag (Via SaveFile)

2005-12-05T21:40:00.000-05:00

Raising Hell in Mt. Airy

Saw Bettye Lavette on Friday night. Damn. She looks and sounds way godd for 59. The story on her is that she was destined for soul greatness but got screwed by her record labels so bad that her 1972 debut album came out in 2002. She's comes off more blessed than bitter (although both are on the menu) and puts on a classic soul show.

Why should I bother reviewing it all when DeLuca at the Inky has done so quite well here?

Lavette has a fine new album out on Anti- that you should buy - all the songs covers of country and pop by women and I've never heard a certain Fiona Apple song sound so good.

Visit www.bettyelavette.com/ for more info, tourdates, etc.

Anti- has generously provided the following tracks for download:

You'll Never Change (Classic)
Let Me Down Easy (Classic)
The High Road (New)
Down To Zero (New)

Good stuff but the live act is way heavier.

2005-11-30T20:51:00.000-05:00

A circle needs a what, now?

Okay, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy is a great musician and all. But he can't seem to get along with guys named Jay, and he really ought to. Uncle Tupelo was one of the greatest bands of all time, due to the collaboration/competition between frontmen Tweedy and Jay Farrar. But after Farrar left the band (apparently due to some weird shit on Tweedy's part), the first Wilco record, while excellent, didn't measure up to the Uncle Tupelo legacy.

That all changed after multi-instrumentalist studio-whiz songwriter Jay Bennett joined Wilco, however. The band's next three records were groundbreaking masterpieces. Then when Bennett became more of a force in the band (or more of a egotistical perfectist pain in everyone's ass), Tweedy fired him. Predictably, the next Wilco record, A Ghost Is Born, was a bit of a letdown, marred by uneven songwriting and some seriously overindulgent noodling (aided and abetted by Jim O'Rourke). I think he needs another Jay in his life! (Jay Z? ... no, that would end poorly.)

Jay Bennett has since released three albums that prove he is a major talent in his own right (and as a producer he almost made Blues Traveler sound good).

A few years ago I saw Bennett perform with collaborator Edward Burch at The Fire, a scummy dive bar in Fishtown. I rode my bike in the rain to get there, spent my last crumpled fiver on too much Schmidt's (always a regret) and enjoyed one of the best shows I've seen anywhere.

Talk to Me (served on savefile.com)
Want You Back (served by Jay's site)

Buy the albums at www.jay-bennett.com/mail-order.html.

P.S. Stay tuned for a post on Jay Bennett's first band, Titanic Love Affair, which were a total ripoff of The Replacements and Soul Asylum ... but in a good way.

2005-11-28T19:21:00.000-05:00

Another forgotten band: The Dambuilders

My four regular readers know I have a thing for obscure power pop. Here's another band in that mold: The Dambuilders. Their big hit was Shrine in '94. You remember right? She doesn't speak much English but she tells me all her favorite bands...

Well, sometimes a big hit like that, especially a tongue-in-cheek one, can doom your career. (Just ask The Knack.) The Dambuilders got lost in the post-Nirvana indie rock feeding frenzy, tagged as a one-hit-wonder novelty act despite producing two more excellent albums that ended up in the dollar bin. A sad end to one of the only indie pop bands to successfully employ a violin.

There's not all that much info about the band online. It seems the members have all had projects here and there (the drummer was in Guided by Voices for a while). I used to have a great article about them that I cut out of their hometown paper The Boston Phoenix in '94 but I don't know what became of it. Their major-label releases are all out of print but readily available online for $2.50 (as in a penny plus shipping). So anyhow, here are the songs:

You Might Want Me Around (from Against the Stars)
Drive By Kiss (from Ruby Red)

P.S. I don't have their Encendedor album on CD or I would have uploaded Shrine too but you can watch video (and two others) here provided that you have/get a Yahoo ID.

2005-11-28T18:02:00.000-05:00

As promised, more Hamell songs
Two of my faves:
In a Bar
First Date

And please visit http://www.hamellontrial.com/music.htm for Hamell's own generous offerings.

2005-11-25T10:50:00.000-05:00

Hey Hey it's The dB's!

Bands with two singer-songwriters seem to produce some of the freshest, finely-crafted music. I guess it's the power of competition. Of course, bands with two strong songwriters or personalities of any kind tend to explode. "A circle needs a center" is what Jeff Tweedy says when he's kicking guys names Jay out of the band.

Which brings me to the dB's, an early 80's power-pop band fronted by Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey that sold even fewer records than Big Star. But man, they made some great music. Lots of mutual friends with REM but the sound is more in line with bands like Pylon and Dramarama.

The tracks below are drawn from the first two Db's albums, available as a twofer on Collector's Choice.

Download:
Black and White
Ask For Jill

Also visit www.thedbsonline.net/ for more downloads and news about the band, which is apparently nominally reunited, and some new and classic downloads.

2005-11-15T19:44:00.000-05:00

Hamell On Trial

Ever since Ed Hamell, a.k.a. Hamell On Trial, found his voice on his major-label debut, Big As Life (out of print by the way) he has produced some of the most uncompromising, creative, funny, moving, rockin' music anywhere. So why am I still buying his records from Hamell's suitcase after the show? This guy should be huge by now.

I guess American pop culture just isn't ready for a sweaty pasty bald man who plays an acoustic 30's Gibson small body guitar like a Mack Truck and blends top-notch songwriting with a powerful spoken word assault. Silly me.

Just a few years ago, Ed Hamell survived near death after crashing his VW on the PA turnpike driving through the night with nobody by his side but his old guitar, just to bring his music to you. So do your part. Buy all his in-print albums on Righteous Babe. Then go knock on the door of Mercury records and demand that they release the rights to Ed's other albums so you can buy those. And if Hamell on Trial comes to your town, get your butt to the show.

Visit http://www.hamellontrial.comfor more info and live dates.

Here are some bootlegs Mr. Hamell has kindly made available on his site. They but scratch the surface of his brilliance...

It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) (.mp3)
Piccolo Joe - Spoken Word (.WMA)
In a Bar
First Date

And please visit http://www.hamellontrial.com/music.htm for Hamell's own generous offerings.

2005-11-13T21:46:00.000-05:00

James Carr - You Got My Mind Messed Up

Some soul junkies like to refer to James Carr as the greatest soul singer who ever lived. Of course, a lot of them are probably insufferable dweebs who think their obscure tastes prove they're better than you. I'm not willing to say Carr was greater than Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye or Levi Stubbs. But he could sure as hell hold his own.

His is certainly a twist on the doomed sould singer story. After all, he didn't meet his end in the flames of a plane crash or at the barrel of a gun. Basically he recorded a bunch of records in the late 60's, had a few small hits, but never quite broke through. He did get his mind messed up though and a lot of the time he should have been singing he was in seclusion or various mental institutions blowing whatever chance he had to finally make it. That's worse, isn't it? For the record, he died in 2001 at the age of 58, having made just the smallest little comeback in the early 90's before he got sick.

There's a hint of detatchment in the music, perhaps the result of Carr's mental state. However, this stuff still sends shivers up my spine. The sound is absolutely classic. The voice is the epitome of soul, and the backup is tight - completely free of the cheesiness that sometimes marred the output of other greats. Carr could make even a silly song sound deep. I'll stop gushing. The songs below (including the classic Dark End Of The Street, of which you have no doubt heard later renditions), say it all.

A great article on Carr can be found here

You should also buy the CD.

Dark End Of The Street
You Got My Mind Messed Up

2005-11-11T18:27:00.000-05:00

Graham Lindsey

Jaded music fan that I am, not many new recordings stop me in my tracks like they used to. And I guess I'm a serious snob now because the music that does impress me is hopelessly obscure - so overlooked I'm amazed I even found it. Which brings me to Graham Lindsey.

Lindsey's record came out way back in September '03 but I just got it today, turned on to it by my Yahoo Launchcast station of all things. Damn. It is really good.

This record clearly owes a serious debt to early Bob Dylan (one song, Dead Man's Waltz is pretty much To Ramona with different lyrics) but Lindsey still manages to offer something entirely his own. Besides, Bob Dylan hasn't sounded like early Bob Dylan for 40 years - somebody ought to.

Here's hoping Graham Lindsey comes out with a new record soon and finds a label that can do a little more promotion than the one that put this one out. He's got a song on the Bloodshot anniversary comp, so that's a good sign right there. If he can hold back the spirit of Robert Zimmerman and come out with another set of songs half the caliber of the ones on his debut, the kid'll be alright.

www.grahamlindseymusic.com

Emma Rumble (via Savefile)
Hutch Jack Flats Rag (Via SaveFile)

2005-11-09T23:07:00.000-05:00

When murder is out of the question...

So I haven't gotten around to posting for a few days - I have some fun stuff planned: obscure classic soul, new wave, and overlooked new alt.country from Graham Lindsey (NOT the Republican senator Lindsey Graham) that'll knock your socks off.

But at the moment, I'm feeling a little cranky and nothing helps more than listening to The Murder City Devils.

I saw them at an R5 show at First Unitarian and they were so good I forgot I was smashed into that hot july basement with a bunch of smelly punks (plus the Devils insisted on burning about 20 candles, which didn't much help.

Anyway, I only have their stuff on vinyl and I haven't gotten around to setting myself up to rip my records, but happily enough Sub Pop has a song posted that does the trick quite nicely. First Unitarian is just a few blocks away from The Mutter Museum, that much storied collection of 19th Century medical oddities (world's largest colon, mummified corpse, etc) which inspired the song below.

Enjoy!

Murder City Devils - Midnight Service at the Mutter Museum

2005-11-06T23:04:00.000-05:00

Some kind of savior singing the blues

Musician's Musician - n An artist unknown to the world at large yet venerated by singers who sometimes actually sell a record or two. See Blaze Foley.

The late Blaze Foley is a legend in the Austin, TX music scene and beyond. You can read all about Foley's wardrobe of duct tape and aluminum foil, semi-homeless "couch circuit" lifestyle and more here, but the music really beats the hell out of the myth. Merle Haggard learned his song his song "If I Could Only Fly" from Willie Nelson, played it for Tammy Wynette's funeral and made it the title track of his most personal record. John Prine and Lyle Lovett have both included Foley songs on their recent albums. Townes Van Zandt wrote Blaze's Blues for him and Lucinda Williams composed Drunken Angel as a memorial. Do you really need more convincing?

Two CD's drawn from a live performance at a neighborhood bar in December 1988, two months before he was murdered are available at Lost Art Records and you should buy them. The label is nice enough to provide these three tracks for you to sample:

If I Could Only Fly (live/solo)
Clay Pigeons (live/solo)
Oval Room (live/solo)

Some full-band studio cuts Foley made around the time of the above recordings were thought lost but were recently found on an unmarked burned CD and have been restored and released as Wanted More Dead Than Alive. That label has also graciously provided these tracks, albeit versions of the same songs offered above:

If I Could Only Fly (studio/band)
Clay Pigeons (studio/band)

Another studio album was released in very limited quantities but the masters were supposedly confiscated by the DEA (you would think maybe our good Texan in the White House could clear that up). And apparently the masters from another record (or was it the rediscovered one?) were stolen from the back of a car. So maybe with renewed interest in Foley's music, more stuff may one day be released.

2005-11-03T20:11:00.000-05:00

Your Sister Says That I'm No Good

Most are aware of the amazingly influential music recorded by Big Star in the 70’s. I think some reviewer or another quipped that only 10 people bought Big Star’s original records but they all started bands. Alex Chilton gets most of the credit, his name in the title of a Replacements song, his latter day career mumbling obscure covers buttressed by the reputation of his former band.

Let’s not forget, however, that Chilton shared singing and songwriting duties with Chris Bell on nearly every track of #1 Record. Listen to Chris Bell’s solo recordings collected on I Am The Cosmos if you don’t believe me. Every element – the vocals, arrangements, songwriting - are spot on, standing right beside the first two Big Star records and far outshining anything Chilton has produced on his own, including Sister Lovers and that new “Big Star” he just released, from the little I’ve heard.

Okay, it’s not as good as the second Big Star record, Radio City, on which Bell’s participation was apparently quite limited. But I’m still willing to say Chris Bell was the real brains behind Big Star. Had he had the chance to release a proper album before his wrapping his TR6 around a telephone pole ’78, maybe he would have managed to find the fame that Big Star never did.

Buy I Am The Cosmos (I'm serious, do it. i didn't upload the amazing title track and a lot of other killer shit)

Here are a couple tracks I did upload for your sampling pleasure, in keeping with my tendency to post one sad song and one rockin' song:

You and Your Sister (alternate "country" version) via savefile

2005-11-01T19:15:00.000-05:00

Wilson Pickett In Philadelphia Hey, I'm feeling a little down on the city right now, what with the SEPTA strike and city hall corruption and cheesesteaks being so damned bad for you. But hey, we did produce The Philadelphia Sound.

Wilson Pickett is one of the most recognized soul/R&B singers in history, but he is often remembered mainly for his raw, "aggressive" dance songs, more James Brown than Sam Cooke. I think the diversity of his catalog is often overlooked.

Here we have a couple tracks from In Philadelphia, an album cut at Sigma Sound Studios with the legendary Kenny Gamble and George Huff at the helm. The "Wicked Pickett" signature delivery is evident here, but the production adds a complexity lacking in many of his recordings. It was the second to last album Pickett cut with Atlantic before departing for RCA. Bad move - Pickett never had another hit.

I often wonder what would have happened had Picket moved instead to Philadelphia International, the label Gamble & Huff launched around the time of Picket's label jump. Judging from the quality of this record, it's best not to think about what could have been. Both of the tracks below tend to get short shrift in reviews and compilations, and the album itself is out of print, although a nice Rhino reissue CD was out a few years ago. Help The Needy is a ballad that shows off Pickett's sensitive side without sounding sappy. International Playboy is downright silly, but I like it more every time I hear it.

Pickett is apparently still alive but doesn't seem to be playing the oldies circuit or making any new music. Joe Henry should really give him a call. Better yet, Rick Rubin.

~~Help The Needy~~

2005-10-30T23:48:00.000-05:00

"Oh the last bus is gone. Or maybe I'm wrong - it just doesn't exist ... so I'm walking the long miles home."

yes, there are songs at the end of this rant

It's official - SEPTA is on strike. So Philly's 400,000 bus, trolley, and subway/EL riders (wage slaves, fixed-income elderly, high school students, etc.) are up shit creek with a turd for a paddle. The last strike was 40 days.

I can't believe that after narrowly escaping massive layoffs due to a state bailout, these workers are risking permanantly weakening their employer because they don't want to contribute 5% of their health insurance costs. Which is a far better deal than most of their riders get, including yours truly ($130/month thank you). To be fair, of course, SEPTA management is barely qualified to run a hot dog stand.

Lucky for me I'm only 25 blocks from work - a nice bike ride when it's not raining. But man, the traffic - riding up 16th Street was like weaving through a parking lot this morning and if it rains hard I guess I'll get wet or stay home. Of course, it's not all glum - this is a great time to be Curtis at Via Bikes or a used car salesman, that's for sure. Parking attendents and cabbies will no doubt be raking it in as well.

So anyhow, for those in Philly, here's some songs to get you through it. And for those who don't, enjoy getting to work on time.

~~Violent Femmes - Waiting For The Bus~~
Richard Thompson - Walking The Long Miles Home
Hindu Love Gods (Zevon fronting REM)- Walkin' Blues
King Arthur & The Carrots (a young Kinky Friedman) - Schwinn Twenty-four

2005-10-27T20:47:00.000-04:00

Uncle Tupelo. Seminal would be one word. Kick-ass, another
I'm sure many of you know that Uncle Tupelo was a band that brought together punk and country in the early 90's, helping to usher in a whole genre of "alternative country." Yeah, there was outlaw country in the 70's and cowpunk in the 80's, but Uncle Tupelo helped craft a lasting movement. In fact, the preeminent magazine covering "alt.country,whatever that is," No Depression, grew out of an AOL newsgroup named after the title track of Uncle Tupelo's debut album (it was also an old Carter Family spiritual - that was pretty radical right there).

After releasing several critically acclaimed independent albums, they got signed to a major and released Anodyne, a beautiful album that brought them to the verge of something big.

Then, of course, they broke up. Specifically, soulful-voiced Jay Farrar left the band over rivalry with the other singer/songwriter in the band, Jeff Tweedy. Jay formed Son Volt. The rest of the band become Wilco. The rest is (ok, recent) history.

Son Volt's first album, Trace, was inarguably a classic, while Wilco's A.M. was a pleasant but lightweight effort. Since then, however, Jay has released a string of nice but ultimatley forgettable records while Jeff has inspired record reviewers all over the world to take bootlicking to levels of Waylon Smithers-like proportions.

In some future post, I'll feature the work of another musical partnership Jeff Tweedy couldn't deal with, but for now, a track from Uncle Tupelo's 1991 raw-around-the-edges masterpiece, Still Feel Gone, in which the band really came into its own. The second featured track was a single that is happily given a home as a bonus track on the remastered edition of the album. It was actually the first Tupelo song I heard, as featured on a 1993 Dutch East India comp, Buy This Used CD sold to my impressionable teenage self for $3.99 as I recall.

So enjoy Uncle Tupelo. They didn't exactly start it all, but their contribution was incalculable nonetheless.

Unclue Tupelo - Gun (via savefile)
Uncle Tupelo - Sauget Wind (via yousendit, expires 11/1)

2005-10-26T23:28:00.000-04:00

Hot Damn - The BellRays
My friend saw this band at some club on the lower east side recently and turned me on to them. I don’t have the record yet but I am pretty excited about The BellRays.

The lyrics are retro to the point of kitsch (their whole '81 punk image is too) but there is no arguing with the sound, the concept of which is basically Tina Turner fronting a hardcore band. Which actually ends up sounding like your basic Ike & Tina track, which is just fine. Here are some places to listen:

Someone has a geocities site with some mp3's up.
Their myspace profile has three songs in the internal player.
Their home page has some downloads but they are .wma files.

Now come play Philly you bums!

2005-10-25T22:34:00.000-04:00

Oh Bearded Ones (who mope)

What is the deal with this Sufjan Stevens guy? Am I the only music fan doesn’t think he’s the second coming? Okay, he’s a talented arranger but a mediocre singer/songwriter. Halfway through his songs I’m convinced they’ve been on repeat for 20 times. Is he exercising some kind of hippie Christian mind voodoo on the whole world or is it just his dreamy good looks?

I’ll tell you what – if he looked like these guys...

…he’d still be at home programming his laptop midi crap. Yeah, that’s right. I’ve had it with these slavish imitators of Nick Drake and Eliott Smith: Quit trying to ape their beautiful music and follow their OTHER example!

So yeah, there’s these two bands - one that's really just one guy and another that is one guy and a parade of about 50 friends sitting in on various sessions. Different process, similar results (and how). They are Iron & Wine (or here) and Willard Grant Conspiracy. Yes, this is what mopey avante folk music should sound like. They both seem to like their shroud of mystery and I won’t interfere. Just check ‘em out further. Iron & Wine has a gorgeous EP out in collaboration with Calexico right now as well as a couple fantastic solo albums. Willard Grant has am impressive discography as well.

Here are my download picks but there are plenty on each artist’s web site and of course go buy the records.
Another Lonely Night - Willard Grant Conspiracy
Naked As We Came - Iron & Wine

2005-10-24T22:57:00.000-04:00

Walkabouts: Das Ist Gut Seattle Rock Musik!

Hey, anybody remember that Sub Pop anthology, The Grunge Years? I think I must have bought it at Record & Tape Traders when I was a geeky Bel Air, MD 8th grader, and it introduced me to the existence of underground music via its inclusion of a single-only Nirvana track. A whole post could be devoted to it at some point but anyway... one of the several bands I discovered via that disc was The Walkabouts.

Very different from the stereotypical Sub Pop band, The Walkabouts were and are a punk-influenced folk rock band with a dark, dare I say grungy? sound that I can’t always put my finger on. In their two decades they have never earned the stardom they deserved, but they are apparently huge in Germany for some reason. In fact, it appears that they don’t even bother touring the states anymore and their latest album, Acetylene is, as far as I can tell, only available in Germany. Maybe they live there (although they are from Seattle) – I don’t know. As far as I can tell, they don’t even maintain a web site of their own.

So anyway, apparently they have a new album available only as an import. Says band leader Chris Eckman: "I wondered what it would have been like if Neil Young had stopped by Wire's rehearsal space, sometime in 1977? That seemed like a good place for us to start."

Actually, I think it just sounds like Neil Young’s On The Beach myself, which is a good thing. The tracks available online are a lot more angry and raw than their sometimes detached earlier work, but not quite as accomplished either. I’ll have to devote another post to their best work, but this is pretty good nonetheless. No other band captures The Walkabouts’ odd mixture of isolation, desperation, and good ol’ rock n’ roll.

Devil In The Details
Fuck Your Fear

2005-10-20T20:02:00.000-04:00

Even Freedom Will Not Make Free (and what's that got to do with me?)
I had PBS's The News Hour on in the other room tonight and every night they do the "honor roll" - saluting soldiers who died in our overseas misadventures. I've gotten a little jaded lately - I remember when every death was it's own news story and now it's just a blurb - Dow Jones down 400, 3 dead in Iraq, more after this.
But see - on News Hour, they don't read the names or do any profile. They just show the pictures and the names in total silence. So all the sudden I'm thinking "what happened to the TV" and it hit me - that many guys died over there.
Which is to say, I got to thinking about Phil Ochs. Phil Ochs wrote a lot of protest songs and some of them are dated, and some are a little condescending. But he nailed it on these tracks - they ring truer today than they ever did. These aren't the songs about flowers and wind you think of when one mentions 60's protest. War Is Over mixes hopefullness with heavy cynicism, and Pretty Smart On My Part is sung from the point of view of one of those paranoid militia types.
Ochs was more than just protest songs - on his last few records he really branched out into the personal. Most of it was pretty dark. His last album was considered career suicide and he followed that up with the real thing in '75.
Pretty Smart on My Part
War Is Over

2005-10-19T22:12:00.000-04:00

Moviola - At least one good thing from Ohio

I don't know too much about this band other than their album just keeps playing and I don't get sick of it. Here's a blurb from their press kit: Columbus, Ohio’s Moviola have been together for ten years, on and off, living, working, and rarely straying from their homes in the Midwest flatlands. They’ve made six records and countless singles by themselves in coal storage rooms, converted cement factories and elsewhere, which music-heads from Amarillo to Amsterdam—folks who can simultaneously dig Kristofferson, the Louvin Brothers, and, say, Spacemen 3—hold close like a secret.
Live appearances, few and far between. Eleven kids between them. Split singles with everyone from The Handsome Family to Cobra Verde. And vive la difference: in this band everyone writes, everyone takes a turn singing lead. It’s a five-headed beast, the result of which is a well-deep collective of dusty country-through-a-space-echo, folk-soul, and adult lullabies.

Here's one nice track. Kew Garden Hills

More info and more mp3's can be found at www.moviolamusic.com and http://www.anyway-records.com/moviola/ where you can also buy their records. Please do - they deserve it!

2005-10-19T21:34:00.000-04:00

Kinky Friedman ... Why The Hell Not?

Kinky Friedman has made a living writing mystery novels about himself and his buddies, and now he's running for governor of Texas as an independent (his slogan? Why The Hell Not?). But before that, he was the first Jewish Texan country and western singer, touring the country with his backing band, The Texas Jewboys.

His songs range from crudely funny like this Merle Haggard parody Asshole From El Paso to extraordinarily moving like Ride 'em Jewboy, probably the only country song about the holocaust.

These tracks are live numbers pulled from a very shoddy comp Da Kinkstah produced before his old records were re-released, called Old Testaments & New Revelations. More on Kinky can be found at www.kinkyfriedman.com

Asshole From El Paso (funny)
Ride 'em Jewboy (sad)

2005-10-19T19:08:00.000-04:00

Really old blues song about meat

Jim Jackson was from Memphis and he knew a lot of songs and contributed a lot of verses to the blues vernacular. I like this one from 1927:
I Heard The Voice of a Pork Chop
His complete works are collected on this CD but it, as well as volume II, is out of print. I don't have it either, I only have a compilation, Wild About My Lovin' that is also out of print and cuurently selling for way too much. Great song though.