Tomorrow, my wife and I are headed to Kentucky to visit her side of the family and celebrate Christmas/New Years. We’ll be gone a week, maybe, or less if we get bored. I won’t say that I will not be writing during my absence, as the in-laws do have an Internet connection, but I won’t say that I’ll do any kind of writing either (as they still have dial-up.)
Until the next time, Happy New Year!
Popularity: 5% [?]
My dear wife found these guys last night. Amazing that we never saw or heard them while we were living in Bloomington, as that’s where they hail from. This is a lovely, and quite funny a capella take on the classic Christmas song.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Long ago and far away there was an actor. He was, for a brief time, the actor, perhaps. He was intense. He was awesome. He wasn’t afraid to get naked, or jiggy. Then he died. Well, ok he didn’t die. Mickey Rourke just kind of disappeared from the mainstream. Here and there he pops up again, only to disappear once more. Soon he will be playing in a Darren Aronofsky picture entitled The Wrestler. The buzz is begining to get mighty.
I am a fan of Aronofsky - he of the Fountain, Requim for a Dream and Pi fame - and always look forward to something new from him. I can’t really say the same for Rourke whose only film I really remember from his heyday is Wild Orchid, and believe me it wasn’t him in that movie I was watching. The Wrestler looks…well it looks interesting at least. Aronofsky is always interesting and with Rourke wearing crazy long hair and sporting wrestling tights I’m sure I’ll at least get a laugh.
Oh and Bruce Springsteen has written a song for it.
Popularity: 8% [?]
“The First Fall of Snow” - Hank Williams
From Mother’s Best Radio Transcriptions
This comes from a Hank Williams boxed set of a radio show he used to do many years ago. The show was sponsored by Mother’s Best flour. At the end of each song Hank and an announcer sit around talking about how wonderful that flour is. Sometimes their talking is longer than the song that preceded it. It is an obvious throwback to a time gone by. It is a bit annoying to hear the advertisements between songs, but also a little nostalgic (if something can be nostalgic when I wasn’t even alive when it first came out.)
Listening to it I can’t help but think of the current woes within the music industry. Millions of people simply don’t pay for music anymore, radio hasn’t played a good song in a decade and lots of great bands struggle to get heard by the masses. Maybe it is time for another Mother’s Best Radio Hour with say, Ryan Adams, or Alejandro Escovedo.
Or maybe not.
Last year Wilco put their songs on a few VW commercials and many fans went nuts calling them sellouts. The band defended themselves by saying that there was no other way to get their music heard by lots of people. Who can blame them really? It’s hard to make a buck in this new world.
Did anyone call Hank Williams a sellout back in the day, I wonder?
Popularity: 8% [?]
I haven’t done one of these in awhile and since I am on a roll with the posting tonight I thought I’d do another quick one. I sling a lot of indie rock up here, yet I don’t actually talk about it all that much. Truth be told there is something of a gap between the music I put on the blog for free, and the music I listen to. Part of this comes from the idea that indie artists don’t mind if you give out some free music, where other artists might. Part of it is also that with most indie artists I simply don’t have much to say about them yet. They aren’t as big a part of my lexicon. I listen to a good deal of indie music, just not as much as say Bob Dyland or Ryan Adams.
Noah and the Whale and hale from England. Their name comes from their favorite movie, The Squid and the Whale (but don’t hold that against them, their tunes are much better than the movie.) Their songs blend rock with a bit of folk and indie pop. On their best songs they are catchy as crap and the lyrics spin poetry and whimsy.
My favorite line comes from “Two Atoms and a Molecule” and reads: “If love is just a game, then how come its no fun? If love is just a game, how come I’ve never won?”
Kinda funny, kinda sad. Very true.
The music that accompanies those lines if bouncy and energetic and fun. That’s the album. That’s the band.
This may make my top 5 list of the year if I ever get around to making one. Good stuff.
Popularity: 9% [?]
I’m tempted to call this octuplet just another indie pop band trying to carve a niche in the already swolen post-myspace, Facebook world of ours, but then there’s something different (and perhaps off) about these guys. Sure, they’ve got the traditional indie lo-fi sound, but then they throw that tradition a bit on its side and create something lurid and fun.
Take “Take Me Home” (please!) it starts with some familiar syncopated beeps and bips and then just as I’m thinking this is all too familiar in comes this bizarre high-pitched falsetto ala Prince or, perhaps, David Byrne and all of a sudden we’re going somewhere different. Then comes the big horns and voices that seem to harmonize (or at least blend in some strange way) with that crazed Michael Jackson voice and I’m so totally there.
The other two songs I’ve included here do a complete turn around from “Take Me Home” and do something different. Their webpage notes that they are taking an iPod approach to their new album in that instead of trying for some uniting theme with the songs they made it more of a shuffle. That, I can dig. I hope you do too.
“Meanderings & Musings”
“Take Me Home”
“While We Were Asleep”
And for extra, the video to “Take Me Home”
Popularity: 8% [?]
I’m not usually one for Brit-Soul, White-Soul, or even the regular-type soul music. I got no beef with it, really, but it isn’t usually the kind of music I find myself gravitating towards. Oh sure there is Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and even Amy Winehouse in my collection, but I wouldn’t go near to calling myself a soul-man if you know what I mean.
Maybe it is because it is close to Christmas and I need a break from the onslaught of all that jingle-jolly music. Or maybe it is because I haven’t posted some music in a long while. Or maybe this is just a darn good little number. I don’t know, but I just found myself bobbing my head with my wife to Alice Russell singing “Got the Hunger” and just maybe you will too.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Bootleg Country scours the globe (and the Internet) in search of incredible live music recorded to tape. It presents the best (or at least the most interesting) here every week whenever it feels like it.
You can’t turn on a classic rock station anywhere in the U.S. without eventually hearing a little Creedence Clearwater Revival. They were massively successful in the late ’60s/early ’70s and are still incredibly popular amongst those who listen to classic rock. I used to call them the godfathers of grunge, and to this day I still play their version of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” whenever I go to a Waffle House as it gives you the most bang for your change.
I wore out their greatest hits package back in college and it still stands as one of the all-time “best of” type albums out there. The thing is, that’s the only album I ever knew. Their hits were the only songs I had ever heard the band play. That is until the Concord Music Group recently reissued all of their albums, but the last one. Those reissues have been something of a small revelation to me.
CCR, it turns out was much more than their greatest hits. I’m finding myself enjoying several non-singles more than many of their big hits. The boys sure knew how to rock that’s for sure and Fogerty is a top-notch songwriter.
He was also a bit headstrong and pushed his band-mates a little too hard, resulting in a much discussed break-up. Then there were the arguments (and lawsuits) with his former label-owner Saul Zaentz causing much aggravation over the Fogerty-written, yet Zaentz-owned CCR music. For years Fogerty refused to play any of his old CCR songs, relying on his solo material to fill his concerts. It was, in fact, but a few months before this particular concert that Fogerty first busted out his old CCR songs at a concert with Bob Dylan and George Harrison.
This concert is the second time he played any of his CCR songs in 15 years. He’s actually a little bit sneaky with it at the start of the show playing the first few notes of his solo hit “Old Man Down the Road” before turning it into a rousing version of “Born on the Bayou.” From there he plays nothing but old Creedence songs.
There is a moment in this show, filled with a large amount of Vietnam Veterans on this Independence Day, where John tells the crowd that he has “gone through about twenty years of pain” but has finally decided to face it, and as he says, “drop it.” It seems he has finally settled his difference with his old bandmates and Zaentz and has decided to move on and embrace his legacy.
It is the heavier songs that carry the most punch. Songs like the aforementioned “Bayou,” “Bad Moon Rising” and “Up Around the Bend” rock it like a full-forced gale and never let up. However on the softer songs that incorporate a lead line on piano or acoustic guitar there is a bit of let down in the quality. The playing is still good on these songs, but the sound just doesn’t quite cut it. Likely this comes from playing in a large arena where the sound needs to reach a big audience and thus manages to lose the subtlety needed in songs such as “Down on the Corner” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain.” One last note on the sound: for some unfortunate reason on “Fortunate Son” John’s voice has some kind of delay on it so that it sounds as if it is overlapping on itself. Maybe this was a neat trick in the day, but now it sounds simply lousy.
The songs are all played well and with gusto. The band is in fine form. It is full of energy (at one point John exclaims “this feels so good!”) but pretty by-the-numbers in terms of arrangements and structure. There is very little extemporaneous jamming, and the songs stick pretty close to the way they sound on the albums. This is forgivable as they hadn’t been played in over a decade, but also amounts to a less than a memorable bootleg.
Download the concert: Intro, “Old Man Down the Road,” “Born on the Bayou,” “Down on the Corner,” John Talking, “Who’ll Stop the Rain?,” “Up Around the Bend,” “The Midnight Special,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Fortunate Son,” “Proud Mary.”
Popularity: 11% [?]
