The Middle 8

Albums That Surprised Me / Radiohead

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 13:30:00 +0000

ALBUMS THAT SURPRISED ME - 4/10
Radiohead / In Rainbows
2007

It's not like Radiohead didn't put out some decent music at the start of the 21st century. The Kid A / Amnesiac pairing had its share of strong tracks. A few years later, Hail To The Thief had its moments, too (these seem like the right days to ask, Hey, what exactly is myxomatosis, anyway?). It's easy to forget that this trio came out all in less than three years.

I wasn't part of the "Woe is me, where are the guitars?!?!" brigade, but I would say that those three releases moved from strongest on through to weakest. And so it seemed things had moved into an understandably more hit-and-miss territory, both in terms of songwriting and a sound that would strive less often to overwhelm with power and/or beauty. Hey, after The Bends and OK Computer, everything else is/was gravy.

That trend, accompanied by a gap of more than four years, suggested a few possible paths. None of them was In Rainbows, an album that expanded the band's Big 2 by half. It is one song away from no-filler territory -- and oddly it's "Videotape", the final track, that seems like an intentional off-speed pitch to end things on a low-profile note.

An album like In Rainbows, moving between the jittery and the gorgeous as it does, deserved a better cap on it, but so it goes.

If you never saw the In The Basement video featuring several of these tracks, you should check it out. Turns out that contrary to speculation, there was still a real band in there all along, enigmatic as they may have become, and it's kinda fascinating to watch them work. Well played and well made.

Albums That Surprised Me / Rickie Lee Jones

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 00:29:00 +0000

ALBUMS THAT SURPRISED ME - 3/10
Rickie Lee Jones / It's Like This
2000

Rickie Lee Jones tried a variety of approaches over 1995-2001 -- originals, acoustic versions, live album at Red Rocks. But in the middle, she accomplished the unusual -- the quality all-covers disc, coherent in sound and reflecting her diverse tastes in source material.

If you have an album with "Low-Spark of High-Heeled Boys" and "On The Street Where You Live" back to back, I'll probably buy your album. If it has Steely Dan and West Side Story as bookends, same thing. This disc featured both, plus some fine supporting musicians (Ben Folds and Joe Jackson, on the piano side).

Plus, Rickie Lee Jones sounds like Rickie Lee Jones.

Albums That Surprised Me / Cowboy Junkies

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 00:19:00 +0000

ALBUMS THAT SURPRISED ME - 2/10
Cowboy Junkies / Sing In My Meadow
2011

The Cowboy Junkies surprised me (and others) a little like this many years earlier, when their Live! EP (1992) closed with an arrangement of "Sweet Jane" much different than the hushed recording that helped to make them famous.

(We were just talking about that EP this week, since it features Margo Timmons and John Prine reprising their studio duet. Also includes a Gram Parsons cover that will tug at the heartstrings. Check eBay if interested.)

Nothing like that low-key intensity of their early records but an outgrowth of some of their live tendencies, Sing In My Meadow is the only Junkies album I occasionally get a real craving to crank up start to finish. Margo delivering with authority over a propulsive rhythm section and other assorted rude tones.

Michael Timmins: "So this past February the live band (the four of us plus Jeff Bird) gathered in our studio to record all of these songs over a four day period. We approach them all live-off-the-floor: nasty and dirty and disturbing the cold winter’s nights peace. We tried to channel Miles at the Isle of Wight, deep in his Bitches Brew phase; Captain Beefheart and his Mirror Man psychoses; The Birthday Party live at the Electric Ballroom circa 1981 (Margo, Al and I were in that audience); Neil and Crazy Horse in the back room at SIR….overdriven and thick with electricity."

Albums That Surprised Me / Tears For Fears

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 00:12:00 +0000

ALBUMS THAT SURPRISED ME - 1/10
Tears For Fears / Everybody Loves A Happy Ending (2004)

Fifteen years after their last collaboration, I did not expect a solid, full-on post-Beatles baroque pop collection from Curt and Roland. Call it a comeback, and enjoy the title track.

Would it help to mention that we're now further from that album than that album was from Sowing The Seeds Of Love?

Yeah, probably not.

Everyday People / 1968 (playlist)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 02:41:00 +0000

Tonight's listening is 64 minutes of goodness from 1968. You can't exactly say it was a simpler era by any means, but ... well, they had some great music that can offer some transportive properties in these times.

Which reminds me what Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart has said before: "We're not in the music business. We're in the transportation business."

Follow the links for better mental health and enjoy.

Everyday People / 1968

Tighten Up, Part 1 / Archie Bell & The Drells

I Say A Little Prayer / Aretha Franklin

Don't Rain On My Parade / Barbra Streisand

Eleanor Rigby / Bobbie Gentry

Never My Love / Booker T. & The MG's

Hush / Deep Purple

Do You Know The Way To San Jose / Dionne Warwick

Midnight Confessions / The Grass Roots

This Guy's In Love With You / Herb Alpert

Grazing In The Grass / Hugh Masekela

Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing / Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell

Try My Love / Moses Smith

Love Is Blue / Paul Mauriat

With This Ring / The Platters

A Beautiful Morning / The Rascals

Mrs. Robinson / Simon & Garfunkel

Everyday People / Sly & The Family Stone

Come On and See Me / Tammi Terrell

I Wish It Would Rain / The Temptations

Crystal Blue Persuasion / Tommy James & The Shondells

Elenore / The Turtles

Only Daddy That'll Walk The Line / Waylon Jennings

REVIEW - Now Hear This by The Split Squad

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 01:30:00 +0000

The Split Squad may have resisted putting baseball content in the cover art for Now Hear This, but the music on the album from this sort-of-supergroup does mirror the sport in an unexpected way: the power is in the middle of the lineup.

While the band's name refers to a team dividing its roster to go play two spring training games, there's no rookie to be found in this lineup. Blondie (Clem Burke), the Fleshtones (Keith Streng), and the Plimsouls (Eddie Munoz) represent in this side project, along with Parallax Project (Michael Giblin) and (my favorite part) the Boston Red Sox. The occasional keyboard textures come courtesy of Josh Kantor, who serves up an unpredictable mix of tunes at least 81 nights a year from the organist's perch at Fenway Park.

As that sentence implies, Now Hear This is a guitar-heavy enterprise, and it opens up by trying to live up to the succinct "BIG DUMB ROCK" description in the bio. But get to "She Is Everything" and "Sorry She's Mine", and the sound starts spreading out: a walking bass, a real middle eight, and a Beatles 1962-66esque gang chorus flashing more facets of the group's accumulated musical IQ.

The tempo doesn't let up much until the halfway point, but "I Can't Remember" rewards listeners with a dose of tremolo and vintage chord progressions (and yes, a little more breathing room for Kantor). "Superman Says" soars higher with the deployment of a rare acoustic guitar in the mix and a fine backwards-sounding electric solo. In case you're wondering, Superman is ready for a day off and a little appreciation if that's not too much to ask.

"Put It Down" follows the Man of Steel, and it epitomizes the way the middle of this set finds another gear. More finished, cohesive production, smart arrangement, effective half-time bits ... it all clicks. A couple of songs later, "You'll Never Change" checks in as the slinkiest thing on the disc, recalling "Spooky".

While it sounds like the glue for this project may be bassist Michael Giblin, Blondie's Burke did serve brief stints in both the Plimsouls and Fleshtones over the years. In fact, the rhythm section anchors things well here throughout, as the band draws on assorted influences that span at least five decades of rock and pop over the 13 tracks. The Split Squad might be energetic, fun batting practice for these guys away from their real teams, but Now Hear This winds up more fair than foul -- a cool diversion for those of us who would otherwise, in the words of Honus Wagner, just "stare out the window and wait for spring."

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - 10/23/12 Charlottesville, VA

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 19:14:00 +0000

When I saw the band at Nationals Park last month, it was my first outdoor show since my very first live Springsteen experience: the 1988 Amnesty tour stop in Philadelphia. While the Amnesty format left Bruce with maybe 90 minutes back then, the Washington show ran three and a half hours, so that evened out pretty nicely. In fact, it's hard to imagine a better stadium show experience -- good seats, good company, and the sort of pacing and energy only a pro can deliver to entertain a venue that large.

Cut to John Paul Jones in Charlottesville, and "only" around 14,000 people have filled most of a relatively cozy arena for Springsteen's third trip to Charlottesville since 2008. The general admission floor is filled with students and diehards. Meanwhile, about 2/3 back on the lower level, the majority of people around me are seeing Springsteen for the first time. I'm solo for this show -- the first full-band show by myself since that Philly '88 show, too. So between the first timers and wanting my town to have a decent showing here just beyond the E Street DC-to-Boston wheelhouse, I can't help but see the show through that prism. Well, and through the prism of not knowing when the next show will be and thus hoping to luck into my first "Incident On 57th Street". I'm not sure that's actually a prism.

Lights go down, applause goes up, and "Shackled & Drawn" starts the night. Surprising since it's a "deep cut" off the new record and has only opened one other show (much closer to home). But Bruce learned long ago that you can get away with about anything on the first song, because it's the first song. People enjoy the stomp and singalong, and we're right into "Lonesome Day", another song you might expect but definitely not in the #2 slot. The crowd latches on to "Hungry Heart" (which, like the modern "Dancing In The Dark", I'll never get tired of), and the pit does itself proud as they enable Springsteen to crowdsurf from the middle of the arena all the way back to the stage.

From there, we move straight into the four-song every-night set piece, drawn primarily from Wrecking Ball. "We Take Care Of Our Own" gives me the distinct impression that not many folks outside the pit have heard the new disc at all. Uh-oh. "Wrecking Ball" fares well, and damn if that song doesn't always sneak up on me. I start all, "Oh, 'Wrecking Ball', well OK ..." and then by the bridge and the "hard times" verse, smoke is getting in my eyes in a nonsmoking facility. "Death To My Hometown" is another stompish track, not exactly cheerful and unfamiliar to the majority, but the band doesn't flinch. With "My City Of Ruins", the tempo slows to something soulful as Bruce outlines the show's focus on our evolving relationship with "spirits", connecting with the audience through the band's own prominent losses.

It's a meaningful but fairly stretched-out performance, and when the band lingers over the atmospheric intro to "Spirit In The Night", the pace has dragged a little and a lot of the crowd has heard probably two songs they know in around 40 minutes. But "Spirit" is a pleaser as usual, and the audience has already adopted Jake and his saxophone, just like all the other audiences this year.

As Bruce mentions in any Charlottesville or Richmond gig, Richmond truly was the band's second home in the very early days ("the only place between us and starvation" is close if not verbatim). That may or may not explain a following segment that was unpredictable as usual (at this point of the show), but more obscure than usual (for Virginia in 2012). The only successful sign request of the night, caffeinated outtake "Seaside Bar Song" kept the guys back in 1973, making its 4th appearance of the tour (and only 5th appearance ever outside of New Jersey).

Inspiration hit, and the band literally has to wait and see what song Bruce has started playing next, as he strums and tells the audience about his idea for a dating service for people who all like his music. ("They already have something in common! Loving me!") This leads to the the tour premiere and fourth-ever performance of "Give The Girl A Kiss". This is my favorite then-newly unearthed song from Tracks, and it's a blast to hear, but the horns weren't ready for it (unlike Charlie Giordano with the organ break), and the fact that it was a total audible kept this performance from nearing the studio version's exuberance. So, maybe a little off, but an incredible rarity I wouldn't've dared hope for.

I'm having a great time as a diehard at this point, but I feel for a lot of the reserved-seating crowd, who heard two Tracks songs where many audiences get much more recognizable tunes. Roy opens with some dramatic chords, and the pick was so far off my radar that it took me a few seconds to realize this was "Lost In The Flood". A ripping song from his first album about returning Vietnam vets, it's only been played four other times this tour, once in Europe and three other times up the 95 corridor. It coming out here is another headscratcher -- although the night after a foreign policy debate, a prescient line of "hey kid, you think that's oil? / man, that ain't oil, that's blood" is not lost. It's a tremendous performance (enhanced by some quality lighting) and marks the shift to the "blistering guitar" portion of the show.

"This Depression" from the new album follows in only its 5th appearance. It's as upbeat as the title suggests on Wrecking Ball, but it has more life here, including a guitar solo that raises its profile. The guitarslinging picks up steam with "Murder Incorporated", played for a dozen international audiences this year but making its U.S. tour debut (headscratching, cont'd). Beginning an explicitly gun-themed pair, it also smoked as usual, with all the guitarists getting in on the action.

Nebraska's "Johnny 99" has worn some different arrangements over the years, but the modern construction may be my favorite -- it creates the largest disconnect possible between the relentlessly sad tale of two murders and the increasingly joyous music, until the discord loops back on itself almost like a jazz funeral and makes perfect sense. Happy to hear it anytime.

And then, finally, the show broke open, so to speak -- two songs in a row that everyone knew ("Working On The Highway" and "Darlington County" -- reliably giving crowds a breather since 1984), followed by the Official 21st-Century Singalong, "Waiting On A Sunny Day". Not so interesting for me, but at that point I was glad to take a quick break and to see the casual fans have some fun.

The leg's first three shows had included no "epics" whatsoever, but this was the conventional slot for one. I expected that streak to end tonight anyway, but I also knew that "Lost In The Flood" really sort of qualified as one already. Plus, this was just a truly odd set -- two hours in, the stalwart trio of Born To Run, Darkness On The Edge Of Town, and The River had been represented by exactly one song. Would we see another epic, and would it be "Incident"? Yes, and no, as the "Backstreets" intro pealed forth from Bittan's piano. Once upon a time, this personally would've been a lesser candidate for an epic slot, but not tonight. A good tempo and collective focus from the band makes for a pretty riveting performance, transporting the crowd from comfy C'ville out to the us-against-the-world romance of the beach on Stockton's Wing, and around to the hard memory of those backstreets again.

If "Backstreets" roused the crowd's passion, "Badlands" brought them up out of their seats. After three shows at JPJ, I'd say our crowd is moderately knowledgeable but thoroughly up for a good time, even if it doesn't know every lyric or every song. They didn't get to stretch those muscles consistently Tuesday night, but they did when given the chance. "Land Of Hope And Dreams" closed the main set, now much more familiar due to all the TBS baseball promos.

One final headscratcher, but in the best way: just two songs since "Backstreets", the encore opened with "Jungleland". That really doesn't happen much anymore. And as Brucebase would point out, the trio of "Lost In The Flood", "Backstreets", and "Jungleland" thus graced the same setlist for only the second time since 1978. Back at that first show in 1988, I'd seen "something special for Philly" as the ultimate street saga had its first outing since the BIUSA tour. I'd seen one in Detroit after that, and another "Jungleland" in Charlottesville shortly after Danny Federici's death. While this one was obviously the first without Clarence, it hit the hardest. Maybe part of that was because of Clemons' absence and the way nephew Jake stood and delivered in those very large shoes. But a good deal of that was owed to simply an electric performance across the stage (including the signature guitar break that often isn't remembered as belonging to Little Steven). It was a huge ten minutes, down to the commitment and power behind those last, wordless wails.

And with that, Springsteen pivoted the band into the final, delirious sprint to the three-hour mark. Personally, it was halfway through "Born To Run" before the lingering "Jungleland" dust had fully dissipated, but it did its lights-up magic and then slammed into "Seven Nights To Rock", a fun cover I had never seen (and the fifth first-for-me track of the night).

"Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" kept up the energy as the band cruised its way through one of two songs to address the Crucial Moment in the band's own history. At that critical moment, what happens every night of this tour happened, and I'll save it just in case some of you don't know and will get to experience it. The energy swelled into a greater version of itself, the song rounded out, and Bruce brought back the night's theme by asking us, "Do you feel the spirit?" ... and it was over.

Between the tenor of a lot of the new album and the older songs chosen, the average fan had more than enough metephorical darkness to wade through on the whole. And yet, there we were, 180 minutes and 25 songs later, and I'm pretty sure a lot of folks there, however briefly, felt like they had swelled into a greater version of themselves, too. That's the thing about a Springsteen show. It looks on the world with, if anything, an increasingly unflinching eye. But that goes double for the moments of joy, which only deepen in their resonance and make more sense, not less, as the evening rolls on.

"Backstreets" from Charlottesville

"Seaside Bar Song" from Charlottesville

"Johnny 99" from Fenway Park earlier this summer

"Lost In The Flood" from NYC 2000 (its first performance since 1978)

"Jungleland" from Charlottesville

An audience recording of the full show, with photos

Springsteen Reimagined - Born In The U.S.A. (double album)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:26:00 +0000

Southern Culture On The Skids has a song called "Too Much Pork For Just One Fork". In addition to sounding like part of a lost verse from "Pink Cadillac", its title describes the dilemma in the Springsteen camp after four distinct phases of recording spanning two years' time. Eventually, the question became: How could Born In The U.S.A. *not* be a double album? As we would find out in June 1984, the answer was: Of course it'll be a double album!

Given the songs in the pile of material recorded for The River, for example, it was impossible to give those sides too much organization as far as lyric content. However, the variety in Springsteen's 1982-1984 output allowed three of the BIUSA sides to come together cleanly behind three distinct themes, while still working as plain old good listening. Lining those up after a first side that favored some pop-oriented content over a hard theme, Springsteen and Landau built a release that, unlike most double albums, actually made some sense. The sides' basic themes were not listed officially, but they were picked up readily enough (and are included below). Fans embraced these to the point that later on in the BIUSA tour, Springsteen would occasionally play a full side in order.

Did some critics suggest a little hubris was in play, with this double album following a bunch demos copied off an old cassette, which had followed yet another double album? Sure. But there was no denying that any single album would've required some criminal omissions. Most also recognized that the spectrum of moods and characters across these songs provided the infrastructure to make Born In The U.S.A. stand up -- from the clarion call of "No Surrender" to the shattering title track, with all the lovers and goofballs and other humanity in between.

With a couple more notes on sequencing after each side, here's the release that outsold Frampton Comes Alive. It catapulted Springsteen out of mere stardom and into a new pop culture constellation, but with material good enough that most diehards didn't even complain. Except when it came to moving into and selling out stadiums. Plenty complained about that. But both the venues and the shows themselves had no choice but to expand in response to the volume of fan interest and new songs, including uptempo outtakes like "My Love Will Not Let You Down" and "Cover Me" that would enjoy some popularity on tour.

Bruce Springsteen
Born In The U.S.A.
(song title links open YouTube audio in a new tab)

SIDE ONE ([mostly] change over time)
4:02    No Surrender
4:37    My Hometown
3:28    Janey, Don't You Lose Heart
2:19    Lion's Den
4:18    Glory Days
3:48    Bobby Jean
(22:32)

There was a way for side one to hold its theme throughout, but it involved a slew of songs that coincidentally were all in the same key (that's still part of the reason "My Hometown" is up at #2), and it sounded bad.

SIDE TWO (ambition and its cousin, bravado)

3:07    Stand On It
4:50    Darlington County
3:15    Working On The Highway
3:24    Man At The Top (link to live version)
2:46    TV Movie (link to a Clarence-heavy alt. version)
3:37    Pink Cadillac
(20:59)

Fun. Put all these tracks together, and somehow the six-pack becomes greater than the sum of its parts. I've always loved "Stand On It" and like the way "Pink Cadillac" hints at the next side's theme while staying firmly in this side's personality.

SIDE THREE (interiors)

4:05    Dancing In The Dark
4:54    Wages Of Sin
2:42    I'm On Fire
3:29    Protection
7:25    Frankie
(22:35)

Matters of the heart, swinging between the pursuit of romance and something darker (and back again). Little things: I like the contrast between the almost orchestral scatter at the end of "Frankie" and the lone harmonica that is the first sound you hear on the next side.

SIDE FOUR (out in the world)

4:50    This Hard Land
3:57    Murder Incorporated
3:38    Downbound Train
3:52    Shut Out The Light
4:40    Born In The U.S.A.
(20:57)

With the exception of "This Hard Land", firmly setting us back in the external world's landscape of challenges for the homestretch, the single-LP version of this fake album already explained the sociopoliticamusical logic of this side.

Springsteen Reimagined: Talk To Me (and the '78 Sessions box set)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 18:38:00 +0000

(Except for one track, the only things you need in order to play along with this chapter of fake-album alternate reality are Tracks and this.)

Let's have a quick look at the album that actually got released in 1978, then move on to its unusual creation story.

Bruce Springsteen
Talk To Me

SIDE ONE

4:22    Talk To Me
4:32    Hearts Of Stone
3:19    The Little Things (My Baby Does)
3:55    Give The Girl A Kiss
4:21    One Way Street
(20:29)

SIDE TWO

3:49    So Young And In Love
3:16    It's A Shame
3:51    Spanish Eyes
5:05    Sherry Darling
4:10    Fire
(20:11)

Now, as many of you know ... In 1977, the Appel lawsuit was settled at last, and the E Street Band returned to the studio. They recorded troves of material. In a daring move, the 27-year-old Springsteen wielded a ruthless and particular knife, arriving at a stark, hard-nosed album to deliver in time for rush arrival in stores before Christmas.

What, me, unsuitably commercial?

However, after hearing some of the more radio-friendly tunes from the sessions and making some vague threats to this effect , CBS rejected the album as too uncommercial. Where they wanted a follow-up that would expand on Springsteen's Born To Run fame, they had been handed something quite the opposite -- very consciously shying away from anything remotely involving street opera or anyone named Magic Rat. Neither party would budge, and so this gritty collection of songs, with its decided lack of conventional romance and a proposed cover photo that suggests nothing as much as "half-awake former juvenile delinquent," went on to become one of (if not the) most famous unreleased albums of all time: Darkness On The Edge Of Town. It's the amazing new (well, newly official) material at the center of the new '78 Sessions box set.

After the legal marathon, the lengthy the recording process, and now a backstabbing from his label, Springsteen flipped out. In fact, he left. Out of the studio, onto his bike, and out of town, headed west to points unknown. No contact info, just gone. His only parting words, when Miami Steve followed him into the studio lobby and asked, "But what about the album, Boss?", were "YOU take a shot at it, tell me how it goes!"

When reporters started calling, management's press release conspicuously avoided details of the situation, referring to a "recording hiatus" and acknowledging only that they had received a single, terse postcard from an obscure tourist spot called "Cadillac Ranch." Once that much went public, there were regular Bruce "sightings" in a number of odd locales and circumstances between New York City and the West Coast. Elvis would've been proud. In fact, at least a couple of fans were purported to have seen the two men together.

Of course, back at the studio and at CBS, panic mode was setting in. The person who found himself in an increasingly difficult position, besides Jon Landau, was Steve Van Zandt. Given his closeness to Bruce and his experience as musical director/maker of charts, Steve was a keeper of the flame of sorts -- a consigliere to the Boss. Holiday production deadlines came and went, and the pressure to do *something* spiked. Even Landau agreed that more delay would only hurt Bruce's career; as Bruce explains in the new '78 Sessions documentary, if you stayed off the public radar for too long in that era, you became damaged goods.

So, facing piles of tracks and an explicit rejection of the Darkness material, Steve fell back on his own instincts to carve an equally specific but much different LP out of the tapes. He made a straight-ahead, soul- and pop-driven album (10 songs in 40 minutes) with roots in the Jersey shore and AM radio. This was bad news for Southside Johnny, Robert Gordon, and Greg Kihn, whom Bruce had in mind for some of these songs once he had chosen his approach with Darkness. But if Steve barely had authority to do this on Bruce's behalf, he certainly wasn't in a position to give away any songs.

Which is how Talk To Me arrived on record store shelves on the third Tuesday of March, 1978. To nobody's surprise, the album sold quite well, its midtempo and slow-burn romantic complications interspersed with occasional horn-driven giddiness. Critics were generally kind to a retro-minded album that flew in the face of both the early punk scene and (God forbid) disco. While all involved conceded it was no Born To Run, the increase in Springsteen's fanbase created by that album (and the touring during the lawsuit) meant that Talk To Me sold even better than BTR out of the gate.

The album's title track (b/w the little gem, "City At Night") vaulted to a well-deserved #1 slot on the Billboard charts, displacing "Love Is Thicker Then Water" by Andy Gibb. It was immediately crushed by "Stayin' Alive" the next week and fell to #6, but it had a good run on radio rotations nationwide. "Fire" got up to #18 in late April and earned an extra mention in Rolling Stone for "Ain't Good Enough For You," a catchy b-side seen in retrospect as a dig at the CBS overlords. Beyond the singles, the reviews I recall tended to call out "Give The Girl A Kiss" and "One Way Street" as instant favorites.

Fortunately for Bruce, since the age of video hadn't quite arrived, it was easier to downplay the fact that he wasn't around for any of this. But obviously, it was a little weird they were not on the road supporting the record, and that in turn put an already-scheduled touring apparatus in expensive limbo.

Sure, we know now that all this would blow over. Heck, by Thanksgiving 1979, we'd not only be past the brief '78 tour but we'd also have The Ties That Bind, featuring "Loose Ends" and "Stolen Car (Son You May Kiss The Bride)", and a blistering re-recording of Darkness refugee "Prove It All Night". But that's how and why we got Talk To Me, and how we lost Darkness On The Edge Of Town to the shadows of rock legend all those years ago ... until now.

SIDE ONE

1) TALK TO ME

2) HEARTS OF STONE

3) THE LITTLE THINGS (MY BABY DOES)

4) GIVE THE GIRL A KISS

5) ONE-WAY STREET

SIDE TWO

1) SO YOUNG AND IN LOVE (had to resort to a live clip)

2) IT'S A SHAME

3) SPANISH EYES

4) SHERRY DARLING

5) FIRE

B-SIDE - CITY AT NIGHT

B-SIDE - AIN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU

Springsteen Reimagined: The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle (double LP)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:20:00 +0000

Unlike my alternate version of Born In The U.S.A., there's no abundance of outtakes and no fixing any wrongheaded politicization on the agenda this time. Nope, the only goal here is to incorporate the other appropriate Tracks tracks and to imagine that the record company saw the lackluster sales of Greetings and said:

"Well, Bruce, maybe if you put out a double album ..."

Because that always happens.

However, like the single-album BIUSA project, I had to resort to a boot for one track ("The Fever"). And one reason this all fit so easily into LP format is that we don't have a nice studio version of "And The Band Played" from these sessions. Maybe that'll escape the vault on Tracks 2. Until then, I'll settle for and still love its cousin, "Santa Ana".

That's '73 drummer Vini Lopez on background vocals in "Thundercrack", isn't it? He seriously sounds like Richard Manuel in a couple of spots. And sure, you could just slap all this onto a single CD and stay squarely in the 21st century, but it's more fun to experience this one vinyl side at a time.

Bruce Springsteen
The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle

SIDES 1 & 2

4:31    The E Street Shuffle
7:45    Incident On 57th Street
7:05    Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)

4:37    Santa Ana (from Tracks)
7:38    The Fever (from Treasures From The Vault)
7:09    Kitty's Back

SIDES 3 & 4

5:37    4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
8:29    Thundercrack (from Tracks)
4:48    Wild Billy's Circus Story

3:35    Seaside Bar Song (from Tracks)
5:58    Zero & Blind Terry (from Tracks)
9:56    New York City Serenade

"And The Band Played" (aka "Tokyo")

Springsteen Reimagined: Born In The U.S.A.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 03:25:00 +0000

So here's the problem. Well, as much as any seven-single, 15x-Platinum, biggest-seller-of-your-career album can be considered a problem ...

Bruce Springsteen
Born In The U.S.A.

SIDE ONE
4:39    Born in the U.S.A.
3:27    Cover Me
4:48    Darlington County
3:11    Working on the Highway
3:35    Downbound Train
2:37    I'm on Fire
Total time - 22:17

SIDE TWO
4:00    No Surrender
3:46    Bobby Jean
3:29    I'm Goin' Down
4:15    Glory Days
4:00    Dancing in the Dark
4:34    My Hometown
Total time - 24:04

Born In The U.S.A. is a decent album at best, its few moments of greatness scattered and smothered by filler and bluster. The synth-heavy sensibility of its time dates some of the set, which (especially on side two) is held back further by poor pacing. Putting the title track at the top and stripping away its entire thematic context, Springsteen didn't just write a great song that was misunderstood. He wrote a great song and then, intentionally or not, went out of his way to invite misunderstanding.

The album gets harder to enjoy when you get to know the heap of songs recorded for it. By Brucebase's calculation, the band had recorded 58 songs, and possibly upwards of 70, when the time came in 1984 to cull the tapes into a final sequence. Maybe it was the '80s, maybe it was the impulse to provide some balance to the stark, weathered songs of Nebraska ... either way, it's hard not to see this collection as a product of the same attitude that would yield the bandana'd and overmuscled caricature of Springsteen at his commercial peak.

So let's do something about it, shall we?

The goal: Create a strong album from finished tracks (official wherever possible) recorded during the BIUSA sessions. It should work as a collection of songs built for front-to-back listening, keeping in mind the usual factors and also the LP constraints of the time. If possible, it should also help to avoid the dumbed-down relationship that the title track "enjoys" with politicians and some fans to this day. And hey, I'm not trying to ruin the guy's parallel-universe career. It should also sell.

First, for the time- or attention-challenged ...

JUST THE TRACKS, MA'AM

Born In The U.S.A.

SIDE ONE
4:02    No Surrender
3:28    Janey, Don't You Lose Heart (from Tracks)
3:15    Working On The Highway
7:25    Frankie (from Tracks)
4:05    Dancing In The Dark
Total time - 22:15

SIDE TWO
3:31    Protection (from a boot, like Lost Masters - Essential Collection, Vol. 1)
2:42    I'm On Fire
3:57    Murder Incorporated (from Greatest Hits)
3:38    Downbound Train
3:52    Shut Out The Light (from Tracks)
4:40    Born In The U.S.A.
Total time - 22:20

Get the tracks, make the playlist, go forth and enjoy.

NOW FOR SOME 'SPLAINING ...

SIDE ONE

"No Surrender"
The most obvious choice of the project. Max turns the song's motor over, the battalion of background vocals lifts it up, and any remaining doubters are drawn in with its instant-classic first verse: "Well, we busted out of class, had to get away from those fools / We learned more from a three-minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school ..." Welcome to a new record by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, people. You bought your ticket, come on in.

"Janey, Don't You Lose Heart"
The BIUSA tour would fill up two summers with concert dates around the world. Originally a b-side, here's the breeziest, most built-for-summer song on any of these tapes. The warm consolation of Bruce's vocal delivery and the acoustic strumming on the left, followed by Clarence's solo, make it one of the BIUSA Top 40 singles that mighta/coulda/shoulda been.

"Working On The Highway"
"Darlington County" and this song bring the humor on the released version, and the middle of this side one is a fine place to inject some of it. Its uptempo sound also does a nice job of setting the table for ...

"Frankie"
Even in this alternate reality, it's no single like "Janey". But is there a more romantic song from these sessions? No, there isn't. In this world, the second time's the charm for "Frankie", which was written in '76 and first recorded during the Darkness sessions. With a more delicate riff than most of the iron-pumping hooks of this era, and then the passionate bloom of its swirling key-changed coda, "Frankie" is a fan-favorite throwback. Its daydream quality dissolves into a sweet and scattered ending, giving the listener a second to bask in it before being yanked back to the present in the form of ...

"Dancing In The Dark"
The greatest response to "I dunno, I just don't hear a single," in pop history? Fifteen years later, the guitars would be pulled up in the live-performance mix, but here in 1984, it's a genius bit of alchemy: the existential struggle with connection that is the undercurrent of Springsteen's post-Born To Run work, set in a soundscape for a decade that just wanted to have fun. The lyric also hints at the clouds on side two's horizon.

SIDE TWO

"Protection"
If the first half of fake BIUSA served up plenty to rock, sway, and even swoon to, the flip side stays true to its underbelly status and offers a tour around the idea of personal insecurity. Like BIUSA’s spartan predecessor, side two is a look into some of the various shadows cast during that fabled "morning in America." Not to say you can't delve into these areas and still rock, of course, as this track demonstrates. In our semi-fictional world, Springsteen not only wrote "Cover Me" for Donna Summer as requested, but he actually gave it to her, instead of keeping it and then writing/giving away this superior 3:31 of urgency instead.

"I'm On Fire"
Finishing a pair of songs with, let's face it, some clearly unhealthy and/or creepy content, "I'm On Fire" swings back around to the male side of the stalkerish vibe. It also boasts probably the most vivid couplet on the album to match its minor key and less-is-more production.

"Murder Incorporated"
That edgy feeling moves from matters of desire to the challenges of trying to survive out in the world in general. Instead of falling into outtake purgatory after being considered as a title track itself at one point, this snapshot from an armed and dangerous environment makes the cut to play the heavy.

"Downbound Train"
Having life more or less handled and then falling through the cracks is the next stop on this insecurity tour. Some folks would consider this a candidate for the BIUSA chopping block, but I've always liked those lonesome, hollowed-out keys and its haunted dream passage. Between those and the lyric, it's a worthy (if slightly more toe-tapping) cousin to the "Son You May Kiss The Bride" version of "Stolen Car". A fine downtrodden blues.

"Shut Out The Light"
Finally, we get to one of this album's key goals: going back in time and cutting down on all the regular people and candidates for public office who have pumped their actual and rhetorical fists in the air to the title song with more enthusiasm than understanding. That means giving the track some context -- by setting it at the end of this side's journey, and more immediately, by preceding it with another piece of Springsteen's Vietnam-related writing. Backed with only two acoustic guitars, a violin, his own harmonies and harmonica, and a bare tambourine beat, Springsteen renders a story as pretty as it is somber -- selected scenes from Johnson Leneir's return from war and troubled re-acclimation.

"Born In The U.S.A."
And then, here we are, the only other place to put the release's namesake, which towers over nearly all the other material on it. Except now, along with capping a sequence of songs that works as a side, it finishes the side's "essay" on some causes and consequences of modern insecurity and disconnection, of lives interrupted.

Maybe it's not that big a stretch to suggest that not only is this song sung from Johnson Leneir's perspective, but that "No Surrender" could have been, too. Both bookends hint at not graduating high school and contain military references. Both eventually find their character further down the road and dealing with a world closing in on itself (although the former's "romantic" dreams blur the reading on the emotional temperature of its final verse). This theory has more weight hidden in the two verses Springsteen left out of the released version of "Shut Out The Light" -- the last leaving Leneir standing in the middle of a river with the water rising .

With that and the album's general momentum in mind, it's no longer possible to brush off the "Oh my God, no," that repeats here. Is it the veteran thinking back on the horrors of his time in service, or is it someone else upon finding Leneir? We can't be sure. What we do know is that on this path from "No Surrender" to "Born In The U.S.A.", the tempo has lost a step. The riff has become more of a brute instrument. The relentless drumming that propelled the opener contrasts with the muscular passage in the latter, Weinberg's playing more resembling a breakdown of something formerly formidable. A complement of strong background vocals and buoyant "ley-ley-ley-ley's" in "No Surrender" has been reduced to a single man's howl, an emotional climax when there's no resolution but nothing left to say. "Born In The U.S.A" ... sung not as a celebration, but as a warning.

Yet if this fake album gives Springsteen a prebuttal of sorts against the misunderstandings and misappropriations he would face, I'd argue the listener also just gets a better listen. It doesn't follow Springsteen's penchant for low-key ends to sides or albums, but the sequencing is more dynamic and it contains five "new" songs that are all better than "Cover Me" or "I'm Goin' Down". Yeah, "Bobby Jean" and "Glory Days" and "Darlington County" were tougher casualties, but that's part of why a double-album version of fake BIUSA is on the way. In the meantime, line this one up and give it a spin.

SIDE ONE

4:02       No Surrender

3:28       Janey, Don't You Lose Heart

3:15        Working On The Highway

7:25        Frankie

4:05       Dancing In The Dark

SIDE TWO

3:31        Protection

2:42        I'm On Fire

3:57        Murder Incorporated

3:38       Downbound Train

3:52        Shut Out The Light

4:40       Born In The U.S.A.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - 9/14/12 Washington, DC

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 19:54:00 +0000

There aren't many things worth an unplanned hour of standing around to get in the door and then get something to eat, along with standing another 90 minutes on packed subway trains to get home. However, one such thing is the opportunity, in between all that standing, to stand for three hours of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band.

When they played Charlottesville back in 2008, it was a sad time, fresh in the wake of organist/accordionist Danny Federici's death, and the band was as close as they'd ever get to being recognizably tired. The 23-song set was short by the standards of that tour, but I wasn't complaining. It opened with a real nugget in "Loose Ends", one of my two favorite songs from the entire River era and something I never, ever thought I'd see live. It also included my only "For You" in seventeen shows. My only full "Meeting Across The River > Jungleland" pairing to start the encore was another special moment and made me feel extra setlist-lucky. Still, one couldn't fully shake the sadness.

Maybe that "short" set contributed to a surprise in the form of another C'ville stop just over a year later. We were fully into the jukebox/request-a-rama that the Working On A Dream tour became, but even before the signs, we got the tour's only "Roulette" (guess this town is just lucky when it comes to River outtakes). Then the request portion gave us the tour's only "Gypsy Biker", a song that has held up well from Radio Nowhere. I got to take in the show with an old friend seeing Springsteen for the first time, and if the main set didn't make enough of an impression, the band pounded us into submission with a high-octane encore. Even I was surprised with an audible "Detroit Medley" to close out the evening, plenty of butts wiggling with the house lights up to end a good show.

So now, it's a beautiful night at Nationals Park. Paul and Christian and I have made it inside (a coincidence outside the gates: we're waiting when a non-concertgoer pulls up to the light, windows down and radio blaring Manfred Mann's hit cover of Springsteen's own "Blinded By The Light". What were the odds?). There we are, offering our gratitude to the concert gods for some very good seats on the field, wondering what the show would bring. To deal with one expectation right up front, the night would not bring a three-hour show. It would bring a three-and-a-half-hour show.

This tour had raided the "seriously, I never thought I'd ever hear this" closet once or twice, and Bruce plucked one example to start the festivities: "Prove It All Night ('78 intro)". If you don't know, this arrangement involves an extended piano- and guitar-dominated intro that, shall we say, conveys a certain intent, an instrumental reminder that the title of the song is not, in fact, "Suggest It Until The Clock Reaches A Reasonable Hour To Quit And Go Home". And as you may have shrewdly deduced, that intro had existed in the sphere of live performance for one and ONLY one tour ... before making a most improbable resurrection 34 years later.

The rest of the opening four-pack of older songs included a Born In The USA outtake that never did much for me ("My Love Will Not Let You Down"), and a River duo of "The Ties That Bind" and then "Hungry Heart", which like "Losing My Religion" and "One Headlight" is on the list of songs I never get tired of.

Then to the next four, from last year's Wrecking Ball. The title track gets mentioned (and booed in football towns) for the Giants trash-talking line, but its central metaphor really blooms in a last verse and subsequent "hard times come ... and hard times go ..." section that packs a punch, and which can even make me forget that this is a song that (to use the word loosely) rhymes "ball" with "balls." The theme of the passage of time and its consequences came to the fore in this mini-set, between the stage talk and the songs themselves.

The traditional next-slot oldie pivoted gracefully on that theme. "Spirit In The Night" brought the energy up, and the spirit of Clarence walked right downstage and sat down next to Bruce, thanks to Clarence's nephew, Jake, who is more than holding his own in his uncle's spot this tour. That reckoning with time's march has its lighter moments, too. Before starting another verse about youthful semi-fictional adventure, Bruce turned to Jake and said, "This was all before you were born." Jake and the crowd laughed. Bruce paused again, turned back to him, and said, "Wayyyyyyyyy before."

After the surprise of my first full-band "Blinded By The Light" (the night's only tour premiere, no less -- and holy cow, the guy with the car radio! the guy with the car radio!), we moved through the making-ends-meet reportage of "Jack Of All Trades" and dropped one more alpha slot for a good but almost out of place "Jackson Cage".

The next trio was a personal highlight of the evening. There's a certain human gratification, a sort of gallows humor, I guess, in infusing tales of tragedy or life's hard truths with a knowing exuberance. "Cabaret" is one of those songs in proper context (thank you, Kander & Ebb). And, especially in its modern arrangement, "Johnny 99" is another. One man's tale of hard times, an unfortunate and violent choice, and a life sentence take on additional power when it's sung with the usual gusto and buttressed by a serious horn section, nearly approaching a New Orleans-funeral feel. As John Perry Barlow wrote for the canon of another legendary live band, and to only moderately dilute the effect I'm talking about, "I may be going to hell in a bucket / But at least I'm enjoying the ride."

The best one-two punch of the show (for me) continued as "Johnny 99" turned right into "She's The One", a song I spent much of my early serious Bruce fandom thinking I would never see. "Darlington County" would've been a sort of downer usually, but I spent an earlier part of the summer doing something really nerdy -- finding a tracklist and sequence for Born In The USA material that I actually enjoyed. I'd finally warmed up to this song (it only took 28 years) and it sounded great. For all the ways BIUSA carries Nebraska's somber outlook into a stadium-style musicality, the album blends in its share of humor, too.

Skip ahead three songs, and the end of "The Promised Land" tells the veteran setlist spotter that the opportunity for something special is upon us. Would Bruce see the "Incident" sign near the stage and play the one yet-to-see song I'd like the most? Springsteen spoke about the old Walter Reed and the veterans at the show (he reportedly always saves a section of good seats for them when he comes to town), dedicating the next song to them as he cued Roy.

To the average fan, the most famous Roy Bittan intro is probably "Jungleland", but I'll go out on a limb and say for the diehards, there are no opening piano notes that go right to the heart like the ones that tell you that you've been lucky enough to show up for a setlist that includes "Racing In The Street".

And this one was a beauty. Springsteen sang the first two verses at a standstill, holding that old guitar aloft with one hand. He brought it down, told the rest of the part of the story that you can tell with words, and the band entered what you'd consider a sacred space in the Church of Bruce, the "Racing" coda. Roy took the spotlight on the piano but didn't overplay his fills, and as they appeared to sit there on a stage in a center field on a warm, cloudy night in Washington, the band motored through a stretch of paved and lonely sanctuary in Just Outside Somewhere, New Jersey.

(That may have been The Moment of the night, but I always miss Danny when I hear that music. As I wrote in a piece that by a stroke of luck Backstreets published shortly after Federici's death, if Roy's piano is the motor, Danny's organ was always the sound of something more ethereal in that instrumental "Racing" tableau -- the tall sky sprawling above that road, the wind and the twinkle of the stars.)

With that, the climb up and out and on toward the life awaiting us commenced for the band and crowd. The ascent began in the World Trade Center buildings ("The Rising") and moved out to middle America ("Badlands") before reaching the oft-visited, nowhere-and-everywhere train station ("Land Of Hope And Dreams").

The spectral theme of the night (and the tour) made its next-to-last appearance in "We Are Alive" to start the encore, the last of several good new songs. From there, Springsteen pointed the stadium straight toward the particular and redemptive powers of rock and roll. "Thunder Road" was thankfully brisker than previous tours, regaining its energy and propelling us directly into "Born To Run", lights up at full power and a revelation of sorts for any first-timers.

That gave way immediately to a definite audible, my second "Detroit Medley" in two shows. How do I know it was an audible? Because you could see Bruce yell to Steve, who didn't quite get it, whereupon Bruce got closer, put his hand on Steve's shoulder, looked him in the eye, and yelled "DEVIL WITH THE BLUE DRESS!". That did it. A few seconds later, back in Section 5, I was pogoing as that fat intro choogled up to full speed. Right on its heels, a roar of recognition arose as the blessedly guitar-centric 21st-century arrangement of "Dancing In The Dark" cranked up, and there I was again with the pogoing, a little like this but definitely for not as long:

Nearing the half-hour mark of the encore and the three-hour mark of the show, the crowd had a question to answer: Were we ready for the 10th? Shorn of the preacher shtick it housed in earlier tours, this was closer to the classic, lean and mean "10th Avenue Freeze-Out". However, the night had one more pause, one more ghost -- as we finished singing "The change was made uptown and the Big Man joined the band ...," the band stopped on a dime. As the applause swelled, that communal fusion of joy and grief and joy and sadness and memory and joy and ... life swirled around the stadium in its fullness, and everyone breathed it in, and then everyone tried to breathe it out again without tearing up a little. Some succeeded, some did not, doesn't matter.

The rowdy jig of "American Land" has become a staple at DC appearances (the night's only quasi-political statement, along with an earlier ad lib among usual patter of how the band "has traveled thousands of miles to be with you tonight ... here in the nation's capital ... BECAUSE YOU NEED SOME HELP!"). I was ready to get a jump on the outbound crowd, but Paul wisely recommended against it, and sure enough, what would normally be the closer instead made room for one more ("For the Navy!") in the form of "Twist And Shout". By that time, the performers and the crowd were both in a state of semi-delirium, equal parts exhaustion and indifference to exhaustion. In the end, if you've done it right, I guess it all comes back to "Twist And Shout".

You go to a show to hear the music, and there was plenty of the "majesty of rock and roll," so to speak, there in the ever-artfully constructed setlist and the improvised detours inserted along the way. But it got distracting as the night wore on -- watching a 63-year-old man do what he was doing, summoning what is truly an unfathomable reserve of energy. Same could be said for Max Weinberg, whose unwavering focus and powerhouse drumming get overdue attention thanks to the crisp video screens. These days, Springsteen achieves a singular peak of energy, like he has gone against Ghostbusters standard procedure and crossed the energy streams of Elvis Presley and Jack Lalanne. This truly unique point in rock performance history dwarfs the show's minor miracle of arranging a 17-person band so it doesn't sound bloated or awkward at any point in a 30-song set.

Two thousand words later, what's the point? If you can go, then go. Just get a good night's sleep, and wear comfortable shoes. Rock and roll does not exist to give you all that you can sit.

Levon Helm

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 01:31:00 +0000

The family of Levon Helm says the great drummer/singer known primarily for his work in The Band is not doing well after a fight with cancer.

Helm may be nearing the end of his song, but people will be singing this or that part of it for years to come. I have a feeling none of them will inhabit songs like "Up On Cripple Creek" or "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" as he did. And I'm positive none of them will sing any of it as well while playing the drums.

Wishing peace and comfort to him and his family.

Work music: Suzanne Vega / Close-Up Vol. 1, Love Songs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:57:00 +0000

Both the theme and Vega's decision to strip down and re-record the songs give the disc a strong sense of continuity. Thus it dodges the thing with some comps where you get jarring and/or dated production differences from track to track. And of course, Vega is such a lyric writer that the "love songs" thing might not occur to you otherwise and never gets tired.

"Caramel" always seemed like a "late" instant classic to me, at least in songwriting terms of constructing a small, semi-blue thing. Here's the original.

p.s. Listening again, let's put it in the same category as this classic, the Neil Finn song that Elvis Costello once said he would've given his left arm to write. Or maybe it was his right arm. Anyway.

The 100 & 10 (2012 edition)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 02:55:00 +0000

The rules are: The 100 albums you would keep right now -- not necessarily your all-time favorites, but the 100 that are the most, well, useful or attractive to you at this point in your life.

You can also add 10 compilations from artists who are not on the 100 list. With an emphasis on start-to-finish quality in the album list, narrowing down the comps may be a lot harder than you'd expect. Which is why I settled on 11 of them. Sue me. And then work up your own 100/10 and post it in comments.

(These are in sorta record-store, sorta iTunes order, no ranking. Grouped in 10's to make it easier to look at, but I'm picking art for something out of each ten that might be underrated imo or a little lesser known compared to the other nine. I generally linked to AllMusic reviews where available. If they agree with me, they're totally on the money; if they don't [and there are quite a few], well, everyone knows you can't trust music reviewers.)

100 ALBUMS

A Girl Called Eddy – A Girl Called Eddy

Aimee Mann – Lost In Space

Allman Brothers – Wipe The Windows, Check The Oil, Dollar Gas

Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha

Annie Lennox - Medusa

Bela Fleck – Perpetual Motion

Bela Fleck – Tales From The Acoustic Planet

Billy Joel – Glass Houses

Billy Joel – Songs In The Attic

Billy Joel – The Nylon Curtain

Bob Dylan – Love And Theft

Bob Dylan – Time Out Of Mind

Bruce Springsteen – The Promise

Bruce Springsteen – The Ties That Bind

Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle

Calexico – Feast Of Wire

Coldplay – Viva La Vida

Cowboy Junkies – Sing In My Meadow

Crowded House – Together Alone

Dave Dobbyn - Twist

Dave Matthews – Some Devil

Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds - 4/22/93 @ Prism Coffeehouse (DMBLive)

DMB – Live At Red Rocks 8.15.95

DMB – Live Trax 8 (8/7/04)

DMB - Complete Weekend On The Rocks (9/2005)

David Garza – This Euphoria

Dire Straits – Communiqué

Doves – Kingdom Of Rust

Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid

Elton John – Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy

Eluvium – Talk Amongst The Trees

Eric Clapton – 461 Ocean Boulevard

Fastball – All The Pain Money Can Buy

Feist- Let It Die

Finn Brothers – Finn

Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

Foo Fighters – There Is Nothing Left To Lose

Genesis - Seconds Out

Genesis – The Way We Walk, Vol. 2 – The Longs

Genesis – Three Sides Live

Gomez – A New Tide

Grateful Dead – Dick’s Picks, Vol. 36 (9/21/72)

Grateful Dead – Dick’s Picks, Vol. 31 (8/4,6/74)
Grateful Dead – One From The Vault (8/13/75)

Guster – Easy Wonderful

Guster – Keep It Together

George Harrison & Eric Clapton – Live In Japan

Hem – Funnel Cloud

Innocence Mission - Befriended

Innocence Mission – My Room In The Trees

Iron & Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog

James Taylor – One Man Band
Jerry Garcia Band – Jerry Garcia Band

Joe Henry – Fuse

Joe Henry – Tiny Voices

Led Zeppelin – Houses Of The Holy

Los Lobos – Tin Can Trust

Maria McKee – Maria McKee

Matt Pond PA – Several Arrows Later

Miles Davis – ’58 Sessions

Miles Davis – Bitches Brew

Miles Davis – The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions

Miles Davis – Kind Of Blue

Miles Davis & The Modern Jazz Giants

Milt Jackson – Bag's Bag

Modern Skirts – Catalogue Of Generous Men

Neil Finn – Try Whistling This

Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

Nick Drake – Bryter Later

Nick Drake – Pink Moon

Old ’97s – Fight Songs

Paul Simon – Concert In The Park

Pernice Brothers – The World Won’t End

Peter Gabriel – So

Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here (Experience edition)

The Police - Synchronicity

R.E.M. – Reckoning

Radiohead – In Rainbows

Roger Eno & The Harmonia Ensemble – In A Room

Rush – Exit Stage Left

Seal – Seal

Shawn Colvin - A Few Small Repairs

Shawn Colvin - Live

Simon & Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water

Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Stars Of The Lid – And Their Refinement Of The Decline

Steely Dan – Aja

Sting – Ten Summoner’s Tales
Tears For Fears – The Seeds Of Love

Toad The Wet Sprocket – Fear

Tomo Iwakura – J.S. Bach: Partita II & Sonata III

U2 – Achtung Baby

U2 – Boy

U2 – The Unforgettable Fire (super deluxe)

West Side Story – OST

The Who - Who's Next

Wilco – Sky Blue Sky

Wilco – Summerteeth

Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Windham Hill Records Sampler ‘82

10 ... MAKE THAT 11 COMPILATIONS

The Beatles - The Beatles In Mono (MMT, Sgt. Pepper's, Mono Masters)

The Cars – Complete Greatest Hits

Elvis Costello – Girls Girls Girls

Hall & Oates – Starting All Over Again

Indigo Girls – Playlist: Very Best Of …

Paul McCartney & Wings – Wingspan

Pretenders – Greatest Hits

Rolling Stones – 40 Licks

Tragically Hip – Yer Favourites

Stevie Wonder – Original Musiquarium, Vol. 1 & 2

Yes – Definitive Rock Collection

2011 In Review: 5 Album Letdowns

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 02:01:00 +0000

Not saying any of these are bad albums, because they're not. But it's pretty much impossible to avoid standing a new album up against the previous one that you absolutely loved (or against a larger body of work). And in the ruthless world of "what should I listen to right now?" these never got out of the shadows of that or other patently unfair and/or shallow comparisons below.

Elbow / Build A Rocket, Boys!
Previous disc was in the top tier of favorites from the last decade. This set is not as consistent. Its 8-minute opener does join "Art Of Almost" in making 2011 a good year for long openers, but other tracks wear out their welcome in much less time. One of the better tracks is "Jesus Is A Rochdale Girl", although my notes read, "Leave it to Elbow to work a duvet into the lyrics."
PICK 3: "The Birds", "Lippy Kids", "Jesus Is A Rochdale Girl"

Radiohead / The King Of Limbs
My review opened with "Welcome to a good minor Radiohead record." Turns out there was no "other record" to follow it, after all. Modest ambition, modest accomplishment. Personally, this has still never been the answer to "Some Radiohead would be good right now, but which album?" I'm not sure any other disc of theirs has managed that for this long.

Robbie Roberston / How To Become Clairvoyant
His first solo disc in forever. Unfortunately, once you get past the genuine appreciation that Robbie Robertson put out his first solo disc in forever, the quality doesn't compare favorably to either his older solo work or the Paul Simon album that came out at the same time.

Death Cab For Cutie / Codes And Keys
We've already pretty much covered this.

Gomez / Whatever's On Your Mind
First problem was the title, which as usual was reported well before any music was heard. Whatever's On Your Mind? It made a bland first impression. Then later, the actual album cover: The band name in white, dropping into a vat of milk, or cement, or papier mache, or some other slightly more grayish white substance. It only reinforced every negative perception of washed-out, uninspired content that had formed around the title. Finally, the music, which did in fact seem to lack some inspiration, some spark, especially compared to the sleeper front-to-back favorite that the previous A New Tide had been. Was my perception overly tainted by all this, or by later reading that the guys had basically recorded the entire thing without ever being in the same recording studio? You be the judge. I love the band; I've bought my ticket to their next show in town. But this just fell flat.

Revisited: Sting / Bring On The Night

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 03:43:00 +0000

"Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river!"

- Mark Twain, Life On The Mississippi

Seventeen years old, checking out record stores as a matter of course, but not yet regularly aware of what records were coming out when: that's one of the sweet spots in the life of a music fan. It's a sweet spot that follows you around, so I was squarely in it enjoyed it even when Hunter and his mom were kind enough to take me along for a campus visit to Chapel Hill at the start of our senior year. They were also nice enough to indulge me with a stop into some tiny, narrow record store as we strolled down Franklin Street on a warm fall night in 1986.

And that is where this sweet spot preserved the element of surprise upon seeing a live double album by Sting, and so soon after his solo debut. It was a little thrill made larger through mystery, a stunned and giddy WTF in the era before WTF. I got my copy and waited to get home, where I could drop the needle on a souvenir from the only Sting tour I wouldn't see in person for the next thirteen years.

Cut to last night, and "Bring On The Night > When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What's Still Around" comes up on shuffle. The late, great Kenny Kirkland starts tearing up his solo. Of course, I've played, listened to, and written about a lot of music in the 25 years since the first time I heard Kirkland's playing through the turntable and speakers in my bedroom upon arrival back in Richmond. It isn't a surprise anymore, but just as Twain remembers a certain sunset from years earlier in the essay above, I can still connect to the wonder of that first listen. I never became proficient at jazz, which helps in this case. I've accumulated enough aptitude to appreciate Kirkland's dexterity and skills, but still little enough so that even now I can't fully understand what he was thinking in parts of it as I listen, the shapes or fragments of logic forming in his head an instant before transmitting to his fingers. The experience of listening to those runs remains akin to comprehending the meaning of a poem written and read to you in a language you don't speak. Magic.

And that's when the mini-epiphany hit me, a corollary of sorts to Twain's lament: We get the most pleasure from what we only partially understand.

Time (well, along with the internet) also lent me additional perspective in appreciating Bring On The Night as a career move, both in terms of artistic choice and sheer physical and creative accomplishment. Look at this sequence of events.

- March 4, 1984 - The Police play the final concert of a three-leg, 107-show world tour in support of Synchronicity.
- Summer '84 - Sting has begun writing material for his first solo disc.
- January '85 - He recruits a band full of jazz musicians.
- March '85 - Early that month, the band goes to Barbados to record the album. They finish in seven weeks.
- June 1, 1985 - Dream Of The Blue Turtles hits the shelves.

So less than fifteen months after ending a three-legged tour as the frontman for arguably the biggest band in the world, Sting has left the band, written an album of usable (to put it lightly) material, formed a band from scratch (made of players from a different genre), recorded an album with the new band, and made a documentary about the process leading up to the group's first shows together.

Oh, yeah: he also CHANGED INSTRUMENTS. Handed the bass to Daryl Jones and played rhythm guitar in a band for the first time in his professional life.

It's worth observing a couple of decisions that went into the tour set and the album tracklist. Unlike McCartney after the Beatles broke up, he did not run away from his body of work with the previous band. Just under half of the average night's setlist came from the Police catalog. However, the main set's Police material was short on hits. Instead, he rescued and/or revamped songs with the end result that more than a few Police fans would not have known they weren't new songs altogether. I'd call them improved in all cases, from the now uptempo "Shadows In The Rain" opener to two highlights of the show in "I Burn For You" (originally a contribution to the Brimstone & Treacle soundtrack) and "Low Life" (born as b-side to "Spirits In The Material World").

"Driven To Tears" and "Demolition Man" gave the main set some adrenaline while also playing into the social consciousness of much of the new record. Later on the in tour, the "Tea In The Sahara > Walking On The Moon" duo entered the set. Only in the encore did he allow for some pure "give the people what they want" fun -- "Roxanne", "Every Breath You Take", "Message In A Bottle" -- but even then, the warhorses had the advantage of interpretation by a fresh lineup.

In fact, my main criticism of the live document would be that in leaving so much popular material off the album, Sting created a slightly skewed picture of what this tour was. Not that I can exactly argue with the Blue Turtles b-side "Another Day" getting a deserved high-profile re-airing, or the inclusion of the reconstituted Police songs. But ignoring the above trio of Police classics left off (we'll chalk that up to forging a new chapter of his career), isn't it discretion run amok to leave "If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free" off this album?

Yet in the end, what did make the cut overcame the omission of the hit single (and the fades between tracks, poor production form for any live album). It's even a double album that escapes the common (and often correct) "should've been a single" critique. Say what you might about Sting, but if you spend a few centuries taking 10,000 frontmen/songwriters for the biggest bands in the world at their given moments in time, you won't find another one who introduces that degree of change and invites that level of scrutiny into their next move.

Maybe that Twain passage is better applied to Sting circa 1984 than to me. As the singer said back then, after so many years in (and writing for) a trio, there are no surprises. As a byproduct first of interest and then talent, Sting (like Twain) had gotten to know the river too well. Not that Twain didn't do OK for himself in his second profession, of course. However, Sting deserves all the credit he gets (and some he doesn't) for navigating his own situation by daring to get off the boat and go find another river.

"I Burn For You"

(How much of a badass is Omar Hakim?)

Get up, try and understand. Raise your hand!

noreply@blogger.com (prs) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 23:51:00 +0000

The twin gods of commerce and memory are conspiring to commemorate albums both significant to me (Achtung Baby) and not significant (uh, Nevermind), but this fall is the 20th anniversary of an event even more important to me and the other, more-frequent, author of this here blogthing. Sometime in the fall of 1991, Robert and I went into the basement of 5917 Blackhorse Lane and listened to a CD.

So what, you're probably saying. I bet this happened a million times, right? Right, but it only happened for this particular CD once and the chain of events that have occurred directly as a result of that fall evening is one of the longest and shiniest of my life.

The CD in question is disc one of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's Live 1975-85 box set, and I literally have not been the same ever since I heard it that night. Of course, I'd heard Bruce before that night, and even waited out all night long in 1986 in the parking lot of Tyson's Corner Mall in a futile attempt to buy tickets for one of those huge stadium shows during the Born in the USA tour, but my fandom was casual at best. I had not yet been converted.

I can tell you from direct experience that if you're looking for a conversion experience, you could not do much better for Holy Shit moment than a fall evening in a basement in Roanoke, Virginia, and a disc that starts with a piano/vocal version of Thunder Road and ends with Bruce Springsteen telling you not to wait on what you want, what you need and to open up your windows and wake the neighbors.

(Alright, it technically ends with Two Hearts, but go with me here...)

I haven't had many experiences in my life that I would classify as spiritual, but that night was certainly one of them. For the rest of the next year, both Robert and I busily pursued Complete Catalog Consumption, one of the most pleasurable aspects of musical obsession. Robert started out with more records than I had, but we both had the whole set by spring, and we had untold conversations with ourselves and others that consisted of little else than re-purposed lyrics. We made mix tapes, not only to woo women, but to woo ourselves. We annoyed family and friends with all the fervor of the recently converted. We became friends beyond friendship.

And that what it's all about (in this case, "it's" will refer to Bruce Springsteen's music and ethos, which is roughly equivalent to all the positive vibrations that humans are capable of, which is not any kind of overstatement). There's a tour next year, and I hope we can take in a show together. How many more there will be is a sad mystery, but we know that we can't take them for granted. We have to take them as they come.

Buon anniversario, mio caro amico. Due cuori sono meglio di uno.

Monday Morning Quarterback: Beatles For Sale

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

I should've been doing other work, or at least figuring out an approach for end-of-year posts here, but instead, I watched some football and listened to Beatles For Sale. Well, not exactly Beatles For Sale ... the version fans would've bought if I'd been in charge and if the Fab Four had not had to deal with the whole "you need to record and release singles, and none of that is allowed on the album" mentality.

This is one of the nerdy projects that came with the '09 remasters -- making your alternate versions, with all the recordings from those sessions eligible (e.g., "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" can be on Sgt. Pepper's). At ten songs, my version runs a slim 24+ minutes, but I dare you to say it ran short on musical goodness. All tracks from the stereo album unless otherwise noted. There's really only one way this album should have started ...

1) I Feel Fine (Past Masters, Vol. 1)
2) No Reply
3) I'll Follow The Sun
4) She's A Woman (Mono Masters, Vol. 1)
5) Eight Days A Week
6) Honey Don't
7) Every Little Thing
8) I'm A Loser
9) Baby's In Black
10) Rock & Roll Music

Whenever I talk about Beatles For Sale and this piece of their career, I have to mention how much these recordings are marked and improved by George Martin's piano (see "No Reply"). So there, now it's mentioned.

Also, have you listened to "Eight Days A Week" lately? Perhaps with headphones? Listening to all the choices in that arrangement, it's obvious that despite all the advances in technology, not a whole lot has changed in the world of what makes a great pop single. What a great track. (I know they were thinking mono back then, but I'll take the stereo in part because it's easier to isolate and enjoy some of those choices. Dig those handclaps on the right.)

You Can't Break 'Em: Springsteen GPS For 2012 Points To E Street

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:10:00 +0000

One argument you see a lot after someone in a band leaves -- or worse, dies -- is what should happen to the band. I've seen people express surprise or disapproval that the remaining members would continue, or continue with a certain swiftness. As if their primary purpose is to protect and enhance fans' favorite/preferred version of the band, the one they fell in love with.

But the fact is, these are human beings, living their own life as well as providing some soundtrack for yours. It's human instinct to gather after a loss. Music can help healing like little else. So when a true band suffers a loss, actually about the most sensible thing you can expect a bunch of musicians to do is get back in a room together and do what they do. Doing it for some other people doesn't hurt, either. (New album next year, Europe tour in late spring/summer. History suggests U.S. dates after that, or some select U.S. dates before Europe, with a "proper" tour after.

Given the theme of community in Bruce Springsteen's work over the last thirty years, I would not guarantee that another E Street record was at the top of the list (as opposed to, say, a solo project) before Clarence's death (maybe it was, I don't know). But given what this year has held, I'm not surprised that he took another look at his notebooks and picked up that phone.

You sit and wonder just who's gonna stop the rain
Who'll ease the sadness, who's gonna quiet the pain
It's a long dark highway and a thin white line
Connecting baby, your heart to mine
We're runnin' now but darlin' we will stand in time
To face the ties that bind
The ties that bind
Now you can't break the ties that bind

Dancing With Mr. G: Rolling Stones Release Brussels '73 On Google Music

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 02:22:00 +0000

(Note: I was wrong. Not free. It's $4.99. The new DMB release from this summer *is* free. But not the Stones. I guess in retrospect "free" and "Mick Jagger" go together even less than I surmised. Sorry for the error.)

In the annals of classic Rolling Stones boots, two shows from '73 tend to dominate discussion of that era, and one of those is Brussels Affair. As mentioned on Keef's site, if you're the type who would sign up for a Google account and download their music manager just to get a cheap, official, professional mix of that show, then you're in luck. That's exactly the offer on the table from Google Music and the firm of Jagger, Richards, Watts & Associates.

Richards' website says there will be more shows forthcoming. In fact, let's hand it to Keith ...

As you'd expect, while the bootleg was known for its relative sound quality, the professional mix just blows it away. I've never been a big fan of Get Your Ya-Ya's Out, and the Stones have released their share of dubious live albums in the intervening years. But this? With Mick Taylor and the horn section and Billy Preston on the organ (particularly more audible than on the boot)? It's a gas, gas, gas.

The Rolling Stones
Brussels Affair (Live 1973)

brown sugar / gimme shelter / happy / tumbling dice / starfucker / dancing with mr. d / heartbreaker / angie / you can't always get what you want / midnight rambler / honky tonk women / all down the line / rip this joint / jumping jack flash / street fighting man

Quick news: Sting 25 For The iPad

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:46:00 +0000

I'm just getting into this Sting 25 For The iPad app, but I can already tell you it is a terrific deal for the price, because it's free. It's big, not much under 500 MB, but on flip side, there's the one obvious draw I've seen: a few professional full-song videos of performances from his 60th birthday "party" at the Beacon Theater. Specifically:

- "I Hung My Head" by Bruce Springsteen (including original E Streeter and later Sting sideman David Sancious on keyboards)
- "King Of Pain" by Lady Gaga
- "Fragile" by Stevie Wonder
- "Wrapped Around Your Finger" by Rufus Wainwright
- "Consider Me Gone" by Herbie Hancock & Branford Marsalis

I can't guarantee it's all great, but it is at least taking a serious shot at embracing the capabilities of the iPad from what I've seen so far. Some video and/or audio clips from each album (both from the time and some modern-day reflections), and a ton of photos/captions from over the years, etc.

The Washington Post reports this app cost over $1 million to make. Sting is quoted as saying it's free because he wasn't sure what to charge for it (picking up a little sponsorship from Chevrolet and American Express probably helped preserve some uncertainty). In any event, welcome to the awkward adolescence of financial models for complex iPad apps from rock stars; enjoy its short-lived fan benefits. I passed on the actual box set because there wasn't much new there for me. But here, I'm watching Rufus Wainwright (with Sting on bass) right at home belting out lines about Charybdis and alabaster and whatnot, and my recommendation echoes Ferris Bueller: "If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up."

Review: Death Cab For Cutie / Codes & Keys

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:11:00 +0000

This album came out in what, late spring? After Plans (along with Gimme Fiction) started to change my view of modern rock in 2005 and Narrow Stairs followed as a worthy complement, this year's Codes & Keys struck me as a serious step backward. I listened to it two or three times and moved on.

Now, it's time for end-of-year reviews. Could it really have been so bad? Well, not exactly. But it is the most confusing (and possibly confused) record I heard this year.

When the pulsing but light electronic bed of rhythm and ambiance sets up under (and then over) a minimalist guitar in the opening "Home Is A Fire", I like it. Sounds good in general. The neat, quick ending that decays away? Also a plus. Could my dismissal have been as simple as the difference between approaching the first listen while thinking "I hope they've made another good one," versus "I'm probably not going to like this very much"?

Sadly, no. It turns out Codes & Keys does, in fact, deeply mislead the listener and kneecap itself by taking two of the three weakest recordings on the album and making them half of the first four tracks.

The title song, with its kick drum thud and a pounding saloon upright, has no exceptional quality. But that's better than "Some Boys", where "some boys" are doing this, that, and the other, but that's OK because "some boys don't know how to love." And it gets worse: "Some boys are filling the hole" while "some boys are sleeping alone." Srsly? Lonely teenage boys, as I recall, don't delude themselves with that kind of rationale, and they also write better poetry than that (and to be clear, they don't write good poetry). Also, *that* is the pivotal third song on a DCFC record? Dumbfounded.

Things never get that bad again. A couple of other songs ("Doors Unlocked And Open", "Unobstructed Views") hint at a decent departure of an album that could've been good, say, for listening while driving alone on the Autobahn on a cloudy day. But an actual guitar riff(!) pops up on "You Are A Tourist", and most of the second half is a demonstrably more energetic, better constructed, more interesting (and interested) batch of music.

I have to mention the last two tracks. "St. Peter's Cathedral" gets extra fruit cup for echoing two sentiments I share: the title building is awe-inspiring, and when you die, you die. I admire any band who takes pains to make either of those points clear. Do both, and you're doing something that qualifies as art, if not necessarily great art. Depending on how you care to look at it, DCFC either had the grace or lacked the chutzpah to end the record on that note, instead capping with an antidote in "Stay Young, Go Dancing". A six-string acoustic makes a cameo to inject some warmth, alongside some strings and a refrain of "life is sweet ..."

In the end, Codes & Keys sounds like two different thoughts about how it should be made, each denied full authority and forced to share a small office together. Both have their imperfections, but the decision to display the worst so prominently is perplexing. The Autobahn record had potential. The more traditional record was off to a decent start, too. In an age where a running order has gone from a set-in-stone mandate to a mere suggestion -- if you even fetched the whole album in the first place -- maybe Codes & Keys requires only a little trimming, a little denial, and a little sequencing to finally become the two decent EP's it wants to be.

Review: Tom Waits / Bad As Me

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 18:40:00 +0000

In case you're in a hurry: this is a great Tom Waits album. To give the rest of you some context, I'm not a diehard -- of his "classic" catalog, I only ever bought Nighthawks At The Diner, which was entertaining but not exactly five-star material for my personal taste. However, after taking most of the '90s off, Waits got my full attention at the end of the century with Mule Variations. That debut of what's been a fruitful relationship with the ANTI- label contained several strong tracks -- including "Get Behind The Mule" and later, "Take It With Me", which is, in fact, one of not very many no-questions five-star songs on my iPod. It's one of those songs where you listen to it, it breaks your heart, and then you thank it for the privilege.

Twelve years later, following a live album that I reluctantly passed on because his voice just sounded godawful (yes, even by Tom Waits standards), out comes Bad As Me. The samples sounded encouraging, and I got the deluxe version. Yes, 16 songs is a lot of Tom Waits at once, and that concerned me, but there was no way I was passing up a Waits composition called "After You Die".

Bad As Me finds Waits riding comfortably in any of his usual gears -- Waits The Howler, Waits The Philosopher, Waits The Crooner, plus assorted other characters. Tremolo-trimmed nervous energy, sweet waltzes, a frantic two-step, even a little Tex-Mex balladry with some Real Book old-school chord changes ... it's all here. Beyond Waits, the credit for this kind of sonic toolbox goes to the personnel. Marc Ribot is back with his guitar, all angles and feel at the same time. Los Lobos' David Hidalgo is a welcome name on most of these tracks, even pulling out the violin on one. Augie Myers (lately of Bob Dylan's recent output) contributes some piano and stabbing organ, while Charlie Musselwhite's harmonica dirties things up just so.

Bass? Yeah, Flea and Les Claypool chip in there.

Lyrically, there's a lot of moving, leaving, and lament of insufficient character in the first half (of course, in some songs, his character may BE the one with insufficient character, but that only supports his point, doesn't it?). For the amount of stylistic diversity, there's more thematic continuity than you might expect, and that plus fairly lean running times helps Bad As Me feel like an album instead of a bunch of songs that share a disc.

Of course, this universe isn't especially sunny, but it's rendered so well in terms of observation ("Why does a wedding ring have a heart of stone?") and its part-antiquated, part-industrial sound that it's, well, better. And one odd thing about Waits is that when he sounds his most unhinged vocally, there's a decent chance he's the most focused lyrically, as in "Hell Broke Luce":

Nimrod Bodfish, have you any wool
Get me another body bag the body bag’s full
My face was scorched, scorched
I miss my home I miss my porch, porch
Left, right, left ...

Other times, he gets into list mode and just starts letting fly with the little detailed images. That's entertaining enough on one level, really, but the coherence of the overall effect is what rookies can only (and should) aspire to. I probably wouldn't be here to enjoy the rants, though, if he couldn't deliver the occasional set piece designed for emotional impact. One PR item for Bad As Me is Keith Richards' appearance on a song called "Satisfied", replete with references to "Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards". But the real treat of Keef's visit is the next song, "Last Leaf", where he shares vocals as well as guitar duty.

I’m the last leaf on the tree
The autumn took the rest
But they won’t take me
I’m the last leaf on the tree

You can see why Richards was amenable to participating. If Tom's voice is a dealbreaker for you, I get it. But if it's not, and you're a casual Waits fan or more, then you should participate, too.

Tom Waits / "Last Leaf"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 16:52:00 +0000

A metaphor that's been waiting around forever. And Tom Waits. And Keith Richards.