Category: Music

Bootleg Country: REM – 06/09/84

I have somewhere around 1,000 CDs in my bootleg collection. I usually get one or two new shows a week. I simply don’t have the time to listen to all of this music. Because of this, a lot of bootlegs get lost in the cracks.

From time to time when I am fingering my way through my collection I am completely surprised by something. Either I have forgotten that I owned a certain bootleg or the music contained therein, while previously dismissed, kicks the tongue to the back of my head.

One of the great things about this series is that I am forced to look closer at the music I may have previously ignored. I am a musical creature of habit. Even though I have thousands of CDs in my collection, there are maybe a few dozen that actually get any type of heavy rotation.

It’s not that I’m opposed to new music, for there is plenty of that rolls across my eardrums every week, but for certain moods or events, I have a select set of music that meets my needs. When I’m feeling sad or introspective I grab Willie Nelson’s Stardust. Or if I want something a little off-kilter that makes me smile I’ll grab some Wilco. In the mood? How about Norah Jones.

This rotation changes over time. New stuff finds its way in, while other music slips away to collect dust until I rediscover it.

With Bootleg Country, I’m continually walking outside my normal musical boundaries to find something different. One of my initial goals in this series was to show the diversity that can be found in the bootleg community. It’s not just a bunch of hippie, jam-band music, but jazz, folk, punk, and every other genre you can think of.

06/09/84
Capital Theatre
Passaic, NJ

My first full-length memory of REM is coming out of play practice in the eighth grade. It was well into dark and I was looking for my brother amongst all the headlights. A moment later he rolled up in his K-Car and as I opened the door “Stand” blaringly filled up the night air. I jumped in singing along at the top of my lungs.

I was not a popular kid in junior high and by singing along with such a cool song I felt that, I too, was cool. As by simply knowing the music, it’s popularity might somehow rub off on me. It was a perfect moment and I savored every minute of it.

It didn’t last, of course, the next day I went to school and I was the same pimply-faced shy kid. No one had even noticed, or cared that I dug REM.

Dig I did that band, for many years. They were one of my first true musical loves and I remained faithful up until a few years ago when they become so maudlin as to nauseate.

I’ve had this show now for many months and not given it much attention. When I would see it I would skip past it feeling it wasn’t worth any more listens. Thinking about that now I’m not sure if this is because of a general distaste I have for the band, or because I have another bootleg from 1995 that’s not very good at all. Whatever the reasons, I haven’t given it a spin in a long time.

Actually listening to it now, I don’t think I ever gave it a spin. The music is completely new to me, so it must have been something that was acquired and immediately put into my collection.

What a shame because the music contained here is as fresh and vital as it must have been when it was originally performed some 22 years ago. Wow, if that doesn’t make me feel old.

This is a band on a mission; they are on fire playing like Greek Gods before the Vestal Virgins. This is well before they become the biggest rock band on the planet, and a few years before “alternative” became an overused buzz word. This is indie rock at its finest.

They open with a sweet cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes” which isn’t as pretty as the Velvet’s version but a lot tighter than REM’s drunken version on Dead Letter Office. Anytime you hear a band cover the Velvet’s first thing, you know you’re in for a good night.

Like a lot of early REM, the music is heavy on the lower end, and light on the high-end levels. Mike Mill’s bass trudges, and thumps along like a Chihuahua on sugar tablets, while Peter Buck’s guitar slithers like a snake. Michael Stipe’s vocals are as muddled as ever, but it all assimilates into a growling, beautiful piece of rock music.

Highlights include a howling “Hyena” that reverberates into my jowls and“Gardening at Night” for the ages.

It is a great bootleg, and one that I’m knocked out to have found again, for the first time.

 

You can grab a download of this show here.

Dirty Dozen Brass Band – What’s Going On

what's going on

Originally written on August 22, 2006.

It’s been a year since Hurricane Katrina blew away much of the Gulf Coast and pummeled New Orleans. There is still much work to do in the city to bring it back to its once renowned glory. To help benefit the clean-up effort, New Orleans’s own Dirty Dozen Brass Band has released a song-for-song covering of Marvin Gaye’s classic album What’s Going On.

It is more of a reimagining than a straight cover version for they have added in fatter beats punctuated by brass horns and brought in a number of guest stars including Chuck D, Ivan Neville, and G. Love.

My perceptions of this album changed during the course of the numerous listens I gave it in order to write this review. In fact, I wrote a totally different review before giving the album one last spin and deciding my initial thoughts were completely wrong.

That’s an interesting side thought, actually, how perceptions of something can change over time. I’ve been writing reviews for about 18 months and periodically I’ll go through my files and check in on what I thought of a piece. Generally, I agree with what I thought back then, but sometimes I’ll totally disagree with myself.

Case in point I wrote a review of the zombie spoof, Shaun of the Dead and I was rather unexcited about the whole thing. I didn’t give it a big jeer, but neither was I particularly enthused. Watching it again, recently, I found myself wondering how I could not have been bowled over by the hilarity within that film.

So many things can affect our consumption of an artwork, and then our own critique of that work, that a review – something set in stone for the ages – is an odd thing. Does Ebert ever go back and admit he’s wrong, I wonder.

For What’s Going On, I initially dismissed large parts of it as having hip-hop and rap roots. I am too old, too white, and too from Oklahoma to ever really get rap music, and it wasn’t pleasing to my ears to have rapping over one of the classics. In my mind’s eye, all of the songs had some kind of rapping going on over what was actually pretty good back-up music.

Listening to the album again, I realized that only the first and last songs actually had rap artists laying down rhymes over the music. The rest of the album is either instrumental, or has guest artists actually singing along. Some of the beats are deep and fat, and certainly there are hip-hop influences throughout, but very little actual rapping. I suspect the bookended rapping caused me to believe there was more on the album than there actually is.

So, my review changed and was updated to reflect the new reality.

Covering a well-known song, less an entire album, is a difficult task for any artist. If you stay too close to the original then critics will say it is frivolous and redundant. If you completely rearrange the song making it your own then fans will cry sacrilege and call out for the Inquisition. An artist must ride that line, staying close to what made the original a classic while still maintaining their own uniqueness in the song.

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band manages to find sublime methods of doing this. Often the horns will blow out the lines normally sung, and in the case of the titular track, Chuck D raps his own lyrics, while the musicians stay on track with the melody.

The title track is where I previously spent a lot of negative energy knocking the album. “What’s Going On” is a classic, beautiful piece of music. You can’t not like that song. In this reimagined version, Chuck D gets his rap on and throws down some hard political lines dissing the aftermath of Katrina and the US government’s response to it.

It’s not that I’m against political statements in art, or even specific words towards specific situations, it’s just that Marvin Gaye created a song that is universal. Though he was speaking about the Vietnam War and the political, racist environment of his time, his lyrics maintain a resonance today. His statement speaks out against our current situation and will continue to speak to generations to come. I’m not sure Chuck D’s words will hold up as well.

However, what the Dirty Dozen Brass Band lay down behind the rhymes shakes me inside and out. Like their name implies they hit some brassy, dirty beats with a little Dixieland thing thrown in for fun. They aren’t afraid to lay down deep, heavy beats either, and I’m not afraid to like them.

I can see myself cranking this disk at full volume and shaking my middle-aged-white-boy arse all night long (or at least until 10:30 which is still past my bedtime.) What’s Going On won’t make you throw out your original copy, but it stands enough on its own to find itself in party rotation or anytime you just want to groove.

Bootleg Country: Jimmy Cliff – Towson, MD (12/17/01)

Before I begin talking about Jimmy Cliff I must first admit I know none to very little about reggae music. Sure, I’ve got Bob Marley’s greatest hits package, Legend, and do dig it from time to time. That live version of “No Woman No Cry” is a marvel to hear. I’ve got a couple of other Marley bootlegs that are also quite awesome. But other than those, I’m pretty useless when it comes to Jamaican music.

This is most probably because of the sheer crappiness of the non-Marley reggae music I’ve heard. Anytime I’ve heard reggae music being played on the radio or some city festival somewhere it’s all heard like generic, worthless garbage. It all has the same monotonous, rhythmic beat that makes everyone in the near vicinity move up and down like ducks on a pond. It’s just inane and annoying.

I realize that’s not particularly fair to reggae music. It would be like writing off pop music after listening to nothing but Top 40 radio, or 70’s rock from the Classic Rock stations that play the same four Led Zeppelin songs over and over again.

I only happen to have this Jimmy Cliff bootleg due to Nick Hornby’s book, High Fidelity (or maybe it was the movie) where the main character notes he would like Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross” played at his funeral. I quickly found a copy of the song and came to realize he was right – that is one danged fine song to go out on.

From the single, I put myself on a bootleg vine for this very recording.

12/17/01
Recher Theatre
Towson, MD

Coming into this bootleg I thought “Many Rivers to Cross” was the only song I knew of Jimmy Cliff, he quickly finds fault in that belief, running through a stream of familiar songs. I have multiple recordings from a series of shows in the early 90s with Jerry Garcia and David Grisman playing “Sitting in Limbo.” I dug the song enough to include it on a Christmastime mix tape for my wife, and never even knew who wrote it. Cliff shows me who is the master of that song and performs it beautifully.

Later he rises up for “Many Rivers to Cross” and brings it to the people on a hymn. It lifts and praises this beast called man as we journey to our final destinations. He then tears through a version of “The Harder They Come” that leaps and roars across the land. Coming but three months after the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers there is both a somber and angry political tone attached to many of the songs. His song “Terror,” written specifically about those attacks, speaks out against both the acts of terror by Osama Bin Laden and the retribution from the USA. Terror, he says, comes from every side, and must end for there to be peace.

With other songs he finds hope. With “Wonderful World, Beautiful People” he sees the beauty in all people. Covering Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now” he seems to point to a brighter future for us all.

And with that, I think I’ll go back to the record bin and find some more reggae music. For if this is the sound of Jamaica I need to do some exploring.

Set List:
Samba Reggae
Sitting in Limbo
You Can Get It If You Really Want
The World Is Yours
Many Rivers To Cross
Terror
No Problems, Only Solutions
Wonderful World, Beautiful People
I Want, I Do, I Get
The Harder They Come
I Can See Clearly Now
War in Jerusalem
Black Magic
Vietnam

Poison – 20th Anniversary Remasters

poison remasters

Originally written on August 15, 2006.

Slide into your leather pants. Strap on your stiletto boots. Fray your hair out with 12 gallons of hair spray. That’s right boys, it’s hair metal time.

Hair metal, or glam metal as many like to call it, arose in the late 1970s but became the dominant form of rock music in the 1980s. Equal parts heavy metal and glam rock, hair metal ruled my school for many a year.

Mötley Crüe has been cited as the world’s first hair metal band, and certainly, they brought it to the masses. With the Crüe reaching sales in the millions many bands soon followed with wild hair, more make-up than a cheap hooker, and plenty of loud cock rock.  Oh, and let’s not forget the power ballads.

Ah, power ballads, the way for the tough, ultra-manly boy bands to show their sensitive side (for what better way to get some nookie than show your feminine side – besides the mascara I mean)? I recently made a hair metal mix tape and was kind of shocked to find that the vast majority of it was made up of power ballads.

Here are the big rockers, with the three neck guitars, the heavy riffs, the super-powered machismo, and the songs that I remember are the slow, sappy ones like “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn,” “Home Sweet Home” and “Heaven.” Mary Louise Parker, what the crap is up with that?

My favorite hair metal band has always been, and will always be, Poison. They didn’t have the cops of Mötley Crüe or the longevity of Bon Jovi, but they sure beat the spiked boots off of Warrant.

With the 20th anniversary of their first record, Look What the Cat Dragged In, Poison have re-released their first three albums (Look What the Cat Dragged In, Open Up and Say…Ahh!, Flesh and Blood) in souped-up remastered versions with bonus tracks.

If that doesn’t make you want to tease your hair and put on heavy mascara, I don’t know what will.

The disks all sound great; this is Poison sharper and more glammed up than you’ve ever heard before.

1986’s Look What the Cat Dragged in fell in the middle of the hair metal glory days. Everywhere you turned it was nothing but heavy metal and big hair. Poison maximized everything that was right about the genre. The guitars were loud, the drums were pounding, the lyrics were juvenile, and the music was all metal all the time.

You really can’t blame young men in metal bands for singing about what they want. With songs like “I Want Action” and “Talk Dirty to Me” Poison left little to the imagination in terms of what they wanted, and how they wanted it.

With their first album, they immediately established their mastery of the genre with balls-out rock followed by a big power ballad du jour.

The bonus songs on the disk include two 7” singles of “I Want Action” and “I Won’t Forget You” which, honestly, I can’t tell the difference between this and the regular album cuts. There is also an electrified, hair metal cover of Jim Croce’s “Don’t Mess Around with Jim.”

In the 20 years that have passed between the release of Look What the Cat Dragged In and Open Up and Say…Ahh! the differences in those two albums have blurred significantly. I’ve been a fan of Poison since their first beats hit the Top 40, but I really can’t remember hearing Open Up and Say…Ahh! for the first time.

I remember quite fondly the heavy rotation of “Nothing But a Good Time” on MTV with its slave-to-the-grind restaurant dishwater beginning, but in my memory “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn” and “Mama Don’t Dance” were already big hits, and they were not released until afterward.

This is it for me. This is the cream of hair metal. Give me Open Up and Say…Ah! Along with Dr. Feelgood and you can put me on a deserted big hair island forever.

“Nothing But a Good Time” is cock rock at its finest. It’s sing-along party music and there ain’t anything wrong with that. “Every Rose” is the greatest power ballad ever written, period. I mean, Brett Michaels has it tattooed on his arm, and he’d never do anything stupid.

In 9th grade, a long-haired student pulled out his acoustic guitar and lipped-synched himself a performance of “Nothing But A Good Time” for drama class that left us all teary-eyed. You can’t do that with “When the Children Cry.”

The disk’s bonus tracks include a previously unreleased track “Living for the Minute” and an interview with Brett Michaels.

When Flesh and Bone came out in 1990 I wrote it off pretty quickly. It seemed to me like a couple of hit singles thrown in with a lot of lousy filler material. I wondered if the band wasn’t falling back on its hit-making formula for a few numbers and then just throwing together any old crap to fill out the album.

Listening to it again I can’t believe how wrong I was. This is a band at its most mature. They have grown as songwriters and musicians. The music here is more than just cock rock, it’s infused with the blues and incorporates a range of styles and musicianship.

I can see why I didn’t like it to begin with, for it is quite different from their previous outings. And different is no good to a 14-year-old boy who wants to rock.

Sure the cock does peek its head out to rock here and there and especially on the hit single “Unskinny Bop,” but they also play with odd experimentation, (“Strange Days of Uncle Jack”), bluesy acoustic instrumentals, (“Swamp Juice (Soul-O”)), and Eagle-esque harmonies, (“Let It Play”).

Together it makes for their best album to date and a movement away from the shallow depth of hair metal and into something, if not exactly deep then a more mature musical entity.

The extra tracks include a blazing instrumental, “God Save the Queen” and an acoustic take of “Something To Believe In” with a few different lyrics.

With the re-release of their first three disks, Poison is giving their fans a better sound than they’ve ever had before, and a pristine example of why they were the kings of hair metal to those who’ve never heard them before.

Random Shuffle: (08/08/06) – Neil Young, Wilco, George Jones, U2, & The Grateful Dead

“Rockin in the Free World” – Neil Young
From Freedom

The first time I ever heard this song was on an MTV awards show – I assume the VMAs, but I really don’t remember. It was an amazing performance with Pearl Jam as the backup band. It was really quite incredible watching the grandfather of grunge jamming like it was the rapture along with up-and-comers Pearl Jam (this was the early 90s so PJ was still fairly young as a band). It was, and is, one of my favorite all-time live television performances (Editor’s Note: You can watch that performance here.)

Eddie Vedder sang the verse about the addict mother putting her kid away to get a hit. The kid, as the song says will “never go to school/never get to fall in love/never get to be cool.” At the time I felt those lyrics were staunchly pro-abortion perhaps because the rest of the lyrics have a liberal tint and Eddie is quite outspoken on his pro-choice views. Over time I have come to feel that it isn’t as pro-abortion as it is a condemnation of a country that can allow its poor and downtrodden to live in such a way that they’d abandon their children.

This is not in any way meant as a means to debate the abortion issue. Believe me, I never intend to get political here. It’s just when I hear this song I always think of that performance and Eddie singing those lyrics so passionately.

This is a less fiery, acoustic version. I’ve heard Mr. Young perform this song acoustically much more than electric, which seems strange to me since it works so much better wired up.

Neil gives it his best shot, and the audience obviously digs it, out-blasting Neil on the final chorus.

“Pot Kettle Black” – Wilco
From Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Have I mentioned I completely adore this entire album? For ages and ages, I had heard about the album and the whole back story about their record label dropping the band because YHF wasn’t commercial enough.

Ultimately I didn’t actually listen to the album until several years later – last year to be precise. I got a copy of the album and listened to it pretty extensively while on a train through the north of France. Turns out YHF is the perfect album to listen to while on a train in France. Watching the picturesque landscape roll by as Jeff Tweedy and company gently rock is just about as perfect as it gets.

This is a great mid-tempo number that conjures up images of rolling hills, tiny towns with their high church towers, and lots of gorgeous French trees.

“White Lightning” – George Jones
From Super Hits

After listening to countless youngsters with their super-loud car stereos roll by, an old roommate, and good friend proclaimed that he too was going to buy a souped-up stereo, but instead of whatever hip-hop record that was currently a hit, he was going to play some George Jones. He never did buy that stereo, but the idea always brings a smile to my lips.

I know this ode to bootleg liquor because of an East Tennessee band Robinella and the CC String Band. They have a great version on their first album. Robinella’s beautiful, country-changed voice is much more appealing than old Georges, and I love George Jones. Maybe it is George’s rather embarrassing drunkenness over the past few years that makes me prefer this song sung by another. It’s kind of like listening to “Cocaine” by Eric Clapton, knowing he doesn’t play the song anymore since he’s drug-free.

Ah, it’s a good song, and George does a good job of making it fun and silly. But a smooth female voice will always win with me.

“New Year’s Day” – U2
From War

Does Epic Rock get better than this? From the thundering bass to the Edge’s screaming guitars to the haunting, mysteriously political lyrics this song single-handedly solidifies U2 as a great rock band, never mind their dozen or so other great songs. It also makes me forgive them for their excesses and rather suckiness of the last several albums.

One New Year’s Eve my brother swore up and down that VH1 would surely play this song as the clock struck 12. They didn’t, but we sat staring at the TV hoping to hear the song and prove him right. The clock kept ticking and we wondered if they had played it an hour earlier for Eastern time, or would play it later for Mountain and Pacific. I’ll never forget the awkwardness of not only wanting to hear a great song but to prove my brother right. He was so sure they would play it that I felt bad for him when they didn’t.

Funny how songs evoke such memories.

“Brown Eyed Woman” – Grateful Dead
From Dicks Picks 7

During my months in Abilene, TX a liquor store used this song in the background for their commercials on David Gans’ Grateful Dead Hour.

One of Robert Hunter’s great western lyrics. He has this amazing ability to represent the mythos of the old west, while still hitting on contemporary themes. This is a pretty straight-up live version, which is to say it’s rather great.

Bootleg Country: Lyle Lovett – Minneapolis, MN (01/27/92)

I really had planned on a Lyle Lovett Bootleg Review before I knew that I’d be seeing and reviewing him for an actually attended live concert.

Lyle Lovett is, perhaps, best known for his short-lived marriage to superstar Julia Roberts. When they wed many folks were asking, “How could she marry him?” but to partially quote marketing material from Say Anything, to know Lyle Lovett is to love him.

Recently while trying to compose a list of my all-time favorite bands, I kept coming back to Lyle. He isn’t a poet like Dylan or a pop craftsman like Lennon/McCartney but he definitely has something that elevates him above just about everyone else. To me anyway.

His lyrics have a way of being both hilarious and poignant at the same time. In-person, he has a dry, rye delivery that makes even the most mundane of stories beautifully humorous.

His style has changed a lot over the years from straight-ahead Nashville country to Texas swing to the more folkie-alt.country stylings of today. He’s a bit like Willie Nelson in his ability to write songs that hold true to whoever is singing them.

01/27/92
Guthrie Theater
Minneapolis, MN

This is one of my favorite all-time bootlegs. The sound is absolutely perfect. It makes me feel like Lyle is in my living room, playing for my friends. The music is lovely, and Lyle chats it up as if he is at a family reunion instead of in front of a paying audience.

He is playing with a scaled-down version of his Large Band. The horns have been nixed, the backup singers are gone, and all that’s left is Lyle on acoustic guitar, then we have drums, acoustic bass, and cello. Similar to Nirvana on Unplugged, this spare style highlights Lyle’s beautiful songwriting ability.

It was recorded a few months before the release of Joshua, Judges, Ruth so all the material here is more than a decade old. Yet it still sounds vital and refreshing. It helps that much of what is played is new material, so classic songs like “Church” and “The Last Time” are revitalized with an audience laughing for the first time at the jokes.

In fact, “The Last Time” is a great example of lyrics that provoke both a sense of humor and depth. It starts out with,

“I went to a funeral
Lord it made me happy
Seeing all those people
I ain’t seen
Since the last time
Somebody died.”

Immediately, there is the ironic humor of being happy going to a funeral and yet the understanding of truth lying behind how we often don’t see those we love unless something serious happens.

If I have a complaint on this disk at all, it is that during “You Can’t Resist It” he allows his musicians time to solo, spoiling an otherwise wonderful song. I’m all for good soloing, but there is only so much cello-bongo soloing I can take. But this is but a few minutes of two disks full of nearly perfect music.

The sound here is pristine. I don’t have any conclusive source material, but it’s as close to sitting on stage as you’re going to get with a bootleg.

You can download the show here.

Concert Review – Lyle Lovett: St. Louis, MO (07/28/06)

For many a month, my father and I were planning a vacation to the Glacier National Park in Montana and parts of Canada. Being the generous, family-loving man that he is, my father invited my two siblings. As with all plans that involve numerous people, hammering out the details proved quite difficult.

Timing was the hitch. The sister and her husband reside most of the year in Shanghai, China, visiting the States for a few weeks out of the year. This summer they were already planning a multi-state trek to visit friends, and family and tour with Pearl Jam for several weeks. Finding time for me and the Glacier was proving problematic.

In the end, they canceled for fear of total exhaustion. The father figure then canceled because he chose not to miss seeing his daughter for the tall trees and the bald eagles. I canceled because father had planned to pay.

My anniversary plans were ruined because I had planned on using the Glacier trip as the anniversary present. For what wife wouldn’t love to celebrate four years of marriage with a 7-day 2,000-mile road trip with her in-laws? With the trip canceled, I had to actually come up with a real plan.

A little research found that Lyle Lovett would be doing a free concert in St. Louis. Praising myself for finding something quickly that would be on the way to my folks in Oklahoma, thrill the wife, and be cheap, I quickly booked a hotel room and let the wife in on my beautiful plans.

The concert was right on the river underneath the St. Louis Arch. A beautiful setting if there ever was one. After walking around downtown we debated on whether to branch out and see some of the gardens on the other side of the city, or stay close so that we might get a good seat. Knowing it was a free concert we expected the area to be pretty much packed.

Deciding to stay close we crept back to the motel for a nap. Afterward with nothing else to do we headed in the direction of the Arch. They had begun to set up a perimeter around the stage area so we ducked in quickly to not have our bags dug through and our camera discovered.

It was still a good three hours until Lyle was scheduled to perform. We found some shade (which lowered the temperature to a moderate 95 degrees) and tried to enjoy ourselves.

We sped up time by ordering too-expensive and too-hot pizza, hastily made lemonade with the sugar still undissolved at the bottom, and making laps past the merchandise booths and kiddie playground. Finally, we buckled down and found a seat on the arch steps. The heat was excruciating. The wait was intolerable.

After two hours the time neared. The Large Band minus Lyle performed a rousing version of “She Makes Me Feel Good.” Without Lyle’s lead, but with the backup singers’ punctuations, the song took on a jazzy, New Orleans-style improv.

Too quickly the performers left and the sound check was over. Then the rains came.

Two hours standing in the freaking heat and we’re going to get rained out. Many ran for cover, but I refused. No way was I going to lose my seat after getting fried like a worm on Sunday.

The rains let up and soon enough Lyle came out to play.

The show started softly with just Lyle with an acoustic guitar and a John Hagen on cello playing the tender ballad “Don’t Cry a Tear,” and then a cowboy song that I’d never heard before.

Slowly the rest of the band came out, adding new members after each song. The effect was quite dramatic as the number of performers increased and the music took on an increasingly bigger sound and feel.

The performers truly showcased Lyle’s different styles as a songwriter. The backup singers added a gospel feel, the horns brought in jazz and swing, and the mandolin player from the Chieftains brought old-style bluegrass along. Lyle was at home in all of these settings.

The between-song banter was priceless. As with many of his songs, Lyle has a dry, wry delivery that elevates everything that comes out of his mouth. At one point he decided, for whatever reason, that a portion of his audience was of the Lutheran faith. After discussing this idea for a bit he threw out this little nugget:

“Do you know why Lutherans are against pre-marital sex?
They think it will lead to dancing.”

Late in the set he introduced the entire band, then for his own introduction spoke, “I’m the guy who sits next to you,” which is the first line of the song “Here I Am” to which the band promptly joined in for a marvelous, souped-up rendition.

As is the way things go for my concert attending, the audience wasn’t always into what was happening onstage. There was quite of bit of rambling chit-chat going on when a middle-aged lady walking past noticed what must have been a long-lost friend. With a squeal usually reserved for pigs at a trough, she ran up the steps and hugged said friend and they both began to reminisce with great volume.

There was no attempt at moving someplace where their chatter might not annoy. In fact, the first lady kind of pushed the innocent fellow sitting nearby out of her way. The squealing and the loudness continued for two songs when Lady # 1 finally left.
Not but minutes later the young man sitting next to me received a phone call on his cellular and chatted through yet another song. Having seen that he can get away with loudness he began discussing the concert in progress with the lady next to him.

“That sounds like Scott Joplin on the piano.”

I know it is a free concert and all, but if you want to hang out and talk, go the freak somewhere else!

Moving closer to the front to get away from the chatter we found ourselves amongst more chatter, but at least the volume was loud enough to drown it out.

The Large Band cooked something hot that night. The backup singers, especially Francine Reed, have toured with Lyle for years and are well greased in his teenage. On songs like “(That’s Right) You’re Not From Texas” and “Church,” they swing and fly like a well-oiled locomotive.

As I complain about the audience I must also say many were quite enthusiastic as well. There was much white-boy country boogying going on and we all enjoyed Lyle allowing the audience to finish “Here I Am” by shouting “Make it a cheeseburger.”

The concert employed two people to sign for the hearing impaired. It was beautiful watching a kind-looking young lady perform what may have been the world’s greatest air cello performance during John Hagen’s extended solo.

The show ended without an encore and an apology from Lyle for not being able to play longer due to a city ordinance. The band left the stage to a beautiful, if short, fireworks display over the river.

Cost of a free concert:
$120 per night hotel
$3.00 per gallon of gasoline
$15 average cost of five meals dined out
$8.00 seat cushion to fend off wife’s fanny from hard Arch steps
$4.00 drinks at the concert
$300 in total.

It was worth every penny.

Set list:
Don’t Cry a Tear
Old Cowboys Sang??
This Traveling Around
Instrumental
I Will Rise Up
It Could Be All Downhill From Here
(That’s Right) You’re Not From Texas
I’ve Been to Memphis
The Last Time
Cute as a Bug
My Baby Don’t Tolerate
San Antonio Girl
That Old Train??
I Live in My Own Mind
Bottomland
Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down
Down the Old Plank Road
More Pretty Girls
If I Had a Boat
Give Back My Heart
Here I Am
What Do You Do
Sugar in My Bowl
Church
Cello Solo
I’m Going to Wait
Here I Am (Instrumental)

Random Shuffle: July 25, 2006 – Beat Farmers, Pearl Jam, Wilco, Bruce Hornsby & Jim Croce

“Happy Boy” – Beat Farmers
From Tales from the New West

A local radio station plays this song every Friday at 5 in the PM. It’s a great, zany way to begin the weekend. It is a short little ditty with odd little lyrics (about putting his dead dog in a drawer and forgetting about him). But it is full of bouncy beats and a chorus that goes something like “hubba hubba hubba”. For Friday rush hour traffic it is just about perfect.

There was a radio station in Oklahoma that used to play “Land of a 1,000 Dances” every Friday morning to get people prepared for the weekend. It seems strange that radio stations play the same song every week. You’d think we’d all get tired of it. Yet there is something sort of comforting about that routine. It is a full reminder that the weekend is here.

Of course, radio stations have been playing the same songs a lot more often than once a week for years now…

“Dissident” – Pearl Jam
From VS

Right around the time I bought Pearl Jam’s second album, I read an article that talked about listening to one album over and over for days and weeks. Something struck me about that concept and I began listening to VS over and over again. I both took great pleasure in listening to the album and fulfilled some secret yearning to love a piece of music so much that I couldn’t listen to anything else.

Listening to the song, and album, now I’m not sure why I couldn’t give it up. My friend Eric Berlin recently posted his top 5 favorite bands of all time and asked for everyone to release their own lists. It’s a difficult thing to do. Bands like Pearl Jam would have once topped that list. For a time in my life, I loved PJ immensely. But over the years I found other bands and let Pearl Jam slip into the background. Bands that I love right now like Wilco may, in ten years, slip away as well. So, how do you choose your all-time favorites?

“(Was I) In Your Dreams” – Wilco
From Being There

My wife put this song on the only mix tape she ever made me. It was long before we were married or even dating. It was while she was living in Canada – having a miserable time in the snow – and we had become good friends with a hint of romance simmering behind the scenes.

With every song, she included an appropriate lyric and commented on why she included it in the tape. For this song, she had to not so subtly remind me that she just liked the song and that she didn’t expect me to be dreaming of her. It was very typical of her strategy at the time to give me something that hinted at something more, but then immediately take it away.

It remains one of my least favorite Wilco tunes.

“The Way It Is” –  Bruce Hornsby
From 10/09/97

Bruce Hornsby plays this song for nearly every concert he performs. Having been written nearly 20 years ago, that adds up to thousands of performances. You’d think he’d get tired of the song. Truth is, Bruce is such a cool guy he continues to play the song because he knows his fans love it. He understands that at each performance a percentage of the folks paying to see him are people who only know his hits. To make them, happy, and for them to get their money’s worth he always plays several of his big hits, and “The Way it Is” is the biggest.

To true fans eternal joy, and to not get too bored with the songs, he often changes the arrangement. I’ve heard it done slow, fast, and with weird rhythms. That and Bruce’s insatiable desire to improvise create a thousand different versions of the song for him to play.

This performance was actually with the Roanoke Symphony. For the most part, you wouldn’t know it on this song because Bruce rocks it out pretty much. He stretches it out for 8 minutes and keeps it completely interesting.

“Time in a Bottle” – Jim Croce
From Classic Hits

Another song that stirs the old memory cords. My first true love and I were really better friends than lovers. We came to know each other in what I’ll call pivotal moments in our lives. We were both teenagers and full of angst and lust and wonderment over what would happen to us in the future.

We were the best of friends for a long time until we decided to become more. Problem was we lived some hundred miles apart and finding the time for the physical ties that belong with something more was difficult. Truth being told I had also very limited experience with the somethings more and was too shy to do much in that regard. We did spend a great deal of time writing letters (was in the time before e-mail) and chatting on the phone. Letters involved much drawing of hearts in the margins and the quoting of poetry and lyrics.

My dear once wrote the lyrics to “Time in a Bottle” for me in the margins and I treasured them dearly.

During the summer past my senior year I broke up with the young lass. In a few weeks I was headed to college many a mile away and I knew our love would not see us through. Intending to make the transition easier I ended our short-lived fling. This was during a week of summer camp and for the talent competition she sang this song to me. It was a beautiful, lovely, weepy thing, and my last true memory of the girl. A treasure for a life time.

Bootleg Country: Lou Reed – Hempstead, NY (12/16/72)

Originally written on July 23, 2006.

Picture this: The year is 1998. It is Thanksgiving weekend. My mother and her friend have picked me and my friend up from college to bring us to the Thanksgiving feast. We’re in the mom-mobile (similar to the Pope-mobile, but less stylish) riding on I-65 between Montgomery and Birmingham Alabama. I pop in Lou Reed’s Transformer album and “Walk on the Wild Side” begins to play.

Just as Lou sings “never lost her head, even when she was giving head” Mom freaks.

“Did he just say what I think he said?”

Me mumbling something, quickly ejecting the tape wondering how I forgot the depravity on this tape.

“Mathew, I can’t believe you’d listen to something like this. That’s disgusting.”

I apologized over and over as I tried to find something clean and pleasant, like Hootie and the Blowfish.

To this day my mom won’t let me forget that moment, or the time she read the lyrics on the cover of Jane’s Addictions self-titled album.

I still listen to both albums. I still find meaning in artistic expression that doesn’t necessarily fit into my own neat little morality.

Lou Reed always had a way of singing about the darker personalities; pimps, transvestites, drug pushers, and anyone else who lives on the outskirts of normal society. And he did it with great art, influencing countless musicians behind him.

12/16/72
Ultrasonic Recording Studio
Hempstead, NY

This is what rock is supposed to be. Two guitars, bass and drums. No frills, all rock.

The show kicks off with a thumping “White Light/White Heat” that makes me want to grab my leather jacket, shave my head, and kick somebody’s ass.

After that, they play “something off the new album” which turns out to be “Vicious.” It’s played to perfection and is something even mom could enjoy.

On “Heroin” Lou remarks on the irony of the song being banned in the early days (so much so that they couldn’t even advertise the album) and now they’re going to play it on the radio. We get the “rock version” of the song which means a lot more guitar and less distorted violin which makes for something a little more listenable, but it loses the sharp edge the song takes in the studio version.

“Heroin” is probably the first Velvet Underground song I ever heard. They had it on the soundtrack to the movie about the Doors – an album me and my friend Candy listened to so many times we had every note memorized. We used to play a game during “Heroin” and “The End” to see who could get each line, each note exactly perfect. I loved that song. Still do.

Later we come to a first in my “Bootleg Country” series. Lou sings “Satellite of Love” just as he did with Bono on the U2 bootleg. I’ve now got bootleg carryover. This is something I suspect will happen a lot before the series is finished. Unfortunately, I don’t particularly like the song and find myself skipping it on both versions.

“Satellite’s” bass line morphs into “Walk on the Wild Side” with an uproar of cheers from the crowd and a little smirk on my face. Sorry mom, I still dig the crap out of that song.

Some versions of this tape are listed as having an interview with Lou in the middle of the show. As it was taped for a radio program that seems logical, but my copy doesn’t have the interview so we’ll continue with the music.

Actually, the source material lists the radio station as the venue, and considering the under an hour-performing time I suspect this show was actually performed in an auditorium in the radio station itself.

It is a short set, but a good one. There are only a couple of songs I don’t really care for, the aforementioned “Satellite of Love” and “Berlin.” Maybe that’s because I’m not really familiar with either song or they are both slow songs during an otherwise rocking set. The rest of the songs are straight ahead rock n roll and pretty much take me to the places I’d like to go with Lou Reed.

Set List:

White Light White Heat
Vicious
I’m Waiting For My Man
Walk It Talk It
Sweet Jane
Heroin
Satellite of Love
Walk On the Wild Side
I’m So Free
Berlin
Rock ‘n’ Roll

CD Review: Bruce Hornsby – Intersections 1985-2005

bruce hornsby intersections

“Brrrrooooooooooo…”

The crowd of several thousand standing in the Atlanta Fairground shouted into the bright, hot, southern sky.

“Are they saying ‘Bruce’ or ‘boo?” Juliana asked.

“It’s hard to tell,” I replied. “I for one, am shouting ‘Bruce.’ How could you boo the spidery fingers of Bruce Hornsby? Especially during such a hot version of ‘The Way It Is!’”

“They must be yelling ‘Bruce.’”

And they were, as hundreds of thousands have yelled the same throughout Hornsby’s twenty-year career.

That night Bruce was playing keys with the Other Ones – the first Grateful Dead reincarnation post Jerry Garcia’s death. It was but one of many collaborations in a career full of imaginative, incredible ensembles including Ricky Skaggs, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt, and Pat Metheny.

To say Bruce Hornsby is a multifaceted musician would be like calling Leonardo DaVinci a Renaissance man – certainly, it is true, but also rather superfluous and redundant.

With the release of the new boxed set, “Intersections Bruce Hornsby has shown just how multi-talented he really is – from piano-based power-pop to bluegrass and century’s old fiddle tunes to improvisational jazz the songs covered in this set stretch across the American songbook.

The bulk of the music presented here is culled from previously unreleased live cuts. This is not only good news for the hardcore fan who already has all the studio tracks but for the casual listener interested in understanding Hornsby’s work. As is the way for many of the artists I enjoy, Hornsby’s studio albums are often less than totally satisfying. In a live setting is where Bruce has always found his own, and performed nothing less than inspiring.

The set is separated into three categories spanning four disks. The first, “Top 90 Time” contains the hits and singles, albeit often live and in a different arrangement than what is found on the original album.

The second disk, labeled “Solo Piano, Tribute Records, Country-bluegrass, Movie Songs” contains just that. The first seven songs are instrumental piano numbers uniquely titled “Songs A-H”. The rest are songs Hornsby either played for friends and co-conspirators, movie soundtracks, and tribute albums.

The remaining two disks, named “By Request” are fan favorites and personal selections.

Interestingly, Hornsby has elected to keep most of his up-tempo numbers as the officially released studio version. It is on his slower ballads that he has brought unreleased live versions to this set. This is perhaps because fans were treated to primo live versions of his faster songs on the 2000 release Here Come the Noisemakers. Or, perhaps it is because live, his up-tempo numbers can stretch into double digits, minute-wise, which would leave few spaces for more songs.

Whatever the reason, we are still left with a tremendous collection of songs showcasing one of the more talented musicians of the last 20 years.

The boxed set is encased in a lovely three-fold binder and includes a 59-page booklet highlighting his career. It includes a personal note from Bruce about each of the songs, numerous photographs, and a tongue-in-cheek retrospective of the critical assessment of his albums (including a number of reviews completely panning his work).

Also included in the set is a DVD full of video clips (ranging from super cheesy ready-for-MTV videos from the 80s to highly stylized clips directed by Spike Lee to live performances with the Grateful Dead, Roger Waters, and even the “Star Spangled Banner” performed with Branford Marsalis at the World Series.)

This is an excellent set, filled with enough new material to please the biggest fans, and yet so accessible as to find a few new fans along the way.