Bootleg Country: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Las Vegas, NV (10/28/06)

Originally written in December of 2006. Sadly we’ve since lost Petty which only makes this article sadder.

In his 30-year career, Tom Petty has sold more than 50 million albums, received three Grammy awards, a Golden Note award, the Gershwin Award For Lifetime Musical Achievement, and been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So why doesn’t he seem to get more respect?

To me, it stems from his ability to continually knock out solid albums in a steady fashion for all those years. Every couple of years, Petty puts out an album full of solidly good, if not great material. There are usually a couple of standout hits in each, but no album really rises above the rest. Think about it. Is there one Petty album that you would consider to be an absolute classic? What is his Revolver? Or Dark Side of the Moon? Or Blonde on Blonde? No, in my ever so humble opinion, none of his albums quite make it to that genius level.

Petty’s career has remained relatively stable over the last three decades as well. He continues to put out solid albums, record hit songs, and take his band on the road. There haven’t been any giant breakdowns or burnouts. He hasn’t even faded away. No, there has always been a Tom Petty making good songs and churning out classic rock. Where almost all of your great rock bands have all died by one means or another, Petty has remained one of the few rockers to keep truckin’.

I think by continually putting out good, not great albums so steadily it is easy for the casual fan to overlook Petty’s achievement. Without one brilliant album to cling to, his dozen really good ones get overlooked. By never leaving our presence, it’s easy to sort of forget about how remarkable his career really is.

10/28/06
Double Down Stage
Vegoose Music Festival
Las Vegas, NV

You can grab the show here.

One of the great things about Tom Petty’s long career is that he can play a different set list almost every night and still sprinkle it heavily with hit songs. For this performance, he performs half a dozen of his hit singles while mixing in songs from his newest album, Highway Companion, slightly obscure older songs, and a few BB King covers.

The Heartbreakers never veer far from the original versions of the songs, but perform with the vibrant energy only found at live concerts. Occasionally there is an extended guitar solo, but it never wanders far from the song’s melody and always ends way too quickly for these ears. Mike Campbell proves over and over that while he may never make it to any top lists of greatest guitarist lists, he is more than capable of producing sweet licks and charbroiled sounds.

This is a pretty decent audience recording, and as such there is a good blend of the band playing and the audience enjoying the show. The band mixes are a little muddled, so this is nothing to put on your A-list shelf, but the audience is so exuberant and excited in their response and sing-along that I find myself getting swept away in it all. When the light is just right, I close my eyes and almost feel like I’m right there.

Tom Petty may never find the diehard fanship of The Beatles, Dylan, or The Dead, but by continually writing good songs and putting on shows like this, he’s proven to be one of the most steady and long-lasting performers in rock and roll. Not a bad epitaph to have in the end.

Lucinda Williams – Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, Deluxe Edition

car wheels on a gravel road

I’ve mentioned before that Lucinda William’s Car Wheels On A Gravel Road is one of my all-time favorite albums. It stands to be mentioned again.

Car Wheels On A Gravel Road is one of my all-time favorite albums.

It’s a nearly perfect record. It’s full of sadness and heartache, and longing and lust In my review of the alternate version of Car Wheels I mentioned that I once included “Jackson” onto a mix tape I made for my wife long before she was anything but a friend. What I failed to mention was that I long contemplated putting “Right In Time” on there instead.

“Right In Time,” you see, is all about the singer missing her lover deeply, so much so that she turns off the lights, lies down, and does things that I was ultimately not so sure would turn my friend into the sort of girl I was interested in. Oh sure maybe she’d dig it and get the picture and moan awhile with me, but more than likely she’d take such an overt statement of lust into offensiveness and I’d be left all alone, on my own to moan.

Wisdom got the better of me and I chose the sad song instead of the sex song and years later I’m still happily married to that woman.

It is an album full of love, broken lovers, longing, and lust. From the opening song’s lustful longing to the tragic tale of a woman moving on in “Jackson,” it is an album full of dusty back roads, run-down juke joints, and the untold stories of America.

The good people at Lost Highway have seen fit to release Car Wheels in a two-disk Deluxe Edition full of all sorts of bells and whistles. The whole thing has been re-mastered and it sounds full and crisp and beautiful.

They’ve also included three additional songs to the first disk to add to your enjoyment. “Down the Big Road Blues” is a classic blues number and Lucinda sings it like a pro. She hasn’t belted out this kind of hard-core blues since her first album. “Out of Touch” is a full-on weeper that was later included on her follow-up album, Essence. Also included is an alternate version of “Still I Long For Your Kiss,” which you might recognize from the film Horse Whisperer.

For fans, the real treat is the second disk which includes a full live performance for the WXPN World Café radio show. It’s a spirited performance featuring most of the Car Wheels album, plus a handful of older tracks.

For those unacquainted with Lucinda, this is the perfect place to start – you get her finest album in pristine form and some live tracks to round out her older material. For fans, not only do you get a fresh re-master of Car Wheels, plus a few bonus songs but a full disk of unreleased live material.

Lucinda Williams – Alternative Car Wheels On A Gravel Road

Put me on a desert island, make me create a top 10 list, ask me what I’m going to grab while leaping from a fire and you’ll come up with the same answer: Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. It’s right up there in my favorite, all-time anything. Heck, it practically caused my wife to fall in love with me.

Back before my wife was my wife before she was my girlfriend even, we were pals with a predilection for long-distance flirting. I decided to make her a mix tape (for what girl doesn’t love a mix tape?) and included the song “Jackson” from this very Lucinda album we’re discussing. That may seem an odd choice of songs to make a girl like a person, what with the lyrics about not missing the listener when she’s gone, and I suppose it is a little odd. The thing was, there was quite a bit of distance between us at the time and plenty of travel, and anyone can tell that, though the lyrics tell otherwise, the singer is full of nothing but heartbreaking longing.

That mix tape turned out to be the first nudge of the girl who would become my girlfriend who would then become my wife towards becoming all those things. From that one song, she went off and bought other Lucinda Williams albums and has been a fan ever since.

I suspect Car Wheels is an album with a million stories just like that.

The story of the album goes that the record that actually hit the shelves as Car Wheels On A Gravel Road was, in fact, the second version of the album made. It seems, ever the perfectionist, Lucinda recorded the album with Gurf Morlix, but after a few listens scrapped the whole thing and started completely over. Luckily the master tapes for those original sessions were kept and have been making rounds through bootleg circles ever since.

With the re-release of the final version of Car Wheels on a Gravel Road in a two-disk expansion set, I thought I’d visit the original sessions. (And sorry, dear readers, I do not have a copy of this bootleg available to download right now).

While I still have to claim the official album as my favorite version, what landed on the cutting room floor is pretty dang good. I’m really quite surprised she scrapped it in the first place. I’ve paid good money for albums that didn’t sound half this good.

It’s not, in actuality, all that different from what did find its way to the record store shelves. The basic outline for all the songs is here in the original version. The melodies and lyrics are almost identical. The main differences lie in the instrumentation and Lucinda’s vocal delivery.

Where the original version relied heavily on the acoustic guitar, the official version replaces the softer acoustic with the bluesier electric guitar. Lucinda’s vocals are much softer here as well. She sings more straightforwardly, without tons of emotion. It’s a good performance but carries little of the sweat-drenched heartache of the final version.

This is no more apparent than on “Jackson.” The final version is stark in its simplicity and is completely heartbreaking. She sings with such longing that it’s difficult to not fall on your knees weeping after hearing it. Yet in its original form, it’s a much lighter number filled with a fiddle and a two-stepping backbeat. It’s still a beautiful, lovely thing, but completely different in its emotional effect.

“Joy” is the only song that manages to take a completely different turn. Instead of soft acoustics and honky-tonk it throws a curve ball and manages to come out more like snarling funk. It starts with a rolling snake groove and builds into a growl. At just over seven minutes in length, it is the loosest song she’s ever recorded and contains one of the strongest grooves.

There are two additional songs here that didn’t make the final cut on the official version: “Out of Touch,” a Lucinda Williams weeper that found its final resting place in her follow-up album Essence, and “Down the Big Road Blues,” a classic cover song performed like an old Delta bluesman.

It really is a wonderful album in its own right, and though I have to agree with her final decision to recut the entire album, I’m still kind of amazed at what didn’t make it. It’s an incredibly interesting slice of history and some dang fine music for your ears.

The Beatles – Love

the beatles love

Originally written on December 05, 2006

Sir George Martin, working in conjunction with the Cirque de Soleil has recently released Love, a sort of remix Beatles cover album for the famed theatrical group. It has the full support of the surviving Beatles and the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison.

It’s a bit like any cover album in that it is full of both the old and new and comes out as both brilliant and redundant. The old and the redundant come out of it being the Beatles songs with the Beatle’s voices and mainly the Beatle’s own playing. The new and brilliant are all in the arrangement and mix.

It’s all the same songs except that some of them have been slowed down a bit, and Sir George has taken various snippets and moments and slipped them into other songs brilliantly. He’s also added a little bit of his own orchestration to smooth it all out.

It is completely enjoyable to listen to, and quite a treat to hear how it all pieces together. But after a couple of listens, it all seems a little unnecessary. I keep saying to myself, ‘I have these songs already,’ and it seems rather pointless to have yet another grouping of them. To my ears, the novelty runs off pretty quickly and expect I’ll find myself reaching more for the originals more than I’ll ever be listening to this over and over.

Bootleg Country: John Prine – New York, NY (09/12/99)

It’s been a long time since the last installment of Bootleg Country, and I’m sorry about that. The truth of the matter is that I do most of my primary musical listening in the car. Sure tunes are often playing in the homestead, but it is usually regulated to the background as when I’m at home I’m either cleaning, or reading, or playing on this here computer and definitely not paying that much attention to the music that fills the aural cavities.

The thing that makes sense in that above paragraph is that I was laid off from my job back in August. Without a daily trip to and from the workplace, my automobile driving is rather limited. Well, I should say my automobile driving of my own car, for when I do go out these days it is usually with the misses and since she owns the better car, we take it.

Thus I’ve had little opportunity to do any listening to bootlegs, and without the listening, there isn’t much to write about.

Thanks to a long drive to visit my folks out in Oklahoma I’m happy to present the newest edition of Bootleg Country. I’d like to promise regular upcoming editions, but there still isn’t a decent job in sight.

Back in the days of college, I had a friend, well I had lots of friends, but there was one in particular that stood out. Musically that is. He had this big giant tape collection filled with all sorts of musicians I had never heard of.

You see when I was in the age of growing up I only knew music through the pop radio station, MTV, and my mom. MTV and the radio both played basically the same songs, that is to say whatever was a hit at the moment, while my mom had a nice collection of classic rock vinyl. It was there I first heard Dylan, the Beatles, Sonny and Cher, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beach Boys and many others. But even all this was not cutting very deep into the pantheon of rock music.

It was in the latter days of high school that I began to search out music out of the mainstream. With magazines like Spin and Alternative Press I began to learn of bands like Fugazi, Dinosaur Jr., All, and Operation Ivy. Periodically I actually had the cash to buy the albums I was reading about and my musical knowledge grew.

Then there was this fella in college who had such a lovely collection of tunes. We became friendly enough, and I dropped by enough that he gave me a key to his dorm room and I would often slip in while he was at class or on a date or whatever. I would sit all alone in that room playing tape after tape, filled with new music.

It was within those walls that I first heard a Grateful Dead bootleg. It was there I first fell in love with a man named Willie Nelson. And it was there I discovered Lyle Lovett, John McCutcheon, and John Prine.

John Prine
09/12/99
West 54th Street
New York, NY

In the liner notes to the first John Prine album, Kris Kristopherson tells the story of hearing an unsigned and unheard of John Prine play a few songs in a little club, after hours. He relates that moment to what it must have been like to hear Bob Dylan at the Gaslight in the early sixties. Kristopherson, no stranger to great songwriting, knows of what he speaks.

Prine laughs off the Dylan comparison in an interview on this bootleg with a breezy, “Yeah there were four or five of us,” and while Dylan comparisons aren’t really necessary, Prine has written some of the best-danged folk songs this country has ever seen.

This bootleg is from a taping of the television program, Sessions at West 54th and as such you get a few things that differ from the normal bootleg. The sound quality is great, though having been compressed for television signals, the extreme audiophile may beg to differ. The set is relatively short, fitting nicely onto one blank CD. And there are a few interview sections with John Hiatt.

I should also note that my bootleg is missing a few songs from the official set list, which makes me assume that it was recorded straight off of the television show, and not the later DVD release, or soundboard feed.

As an added bonus there are a few duets with the always lovely Iris Dement. The taping comes off of Prine’s release of the album, In Spite of Ourselves, which heavily featured Ms. Dement.

The show starts with a rollicking, rambling “Spanish Pipedream” with a full band, and they sound like they are having lots of fun, even if the music is a bit of a mess. It still remains one of my favorite songs and contains an oft-quoted (at least by me) chorus:

Blow up your TV, throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try an find Jesus on your own

The band settles down to a gentle “so sad it’s pretty” version of “Six O’Clock News” followed by the relatively new, but still utterly sad “All the Best.”

Iris Dement sings on four songs (“(We’re Not) The Jet Set,” “Let’s Invite Them Over Again,” “When Two Worlds Collide,” and “In Spite of Ourselves”) and while she is always a welcome voice to my ears, on this set she only accentuates the raggedness of Prine’s natural voice.

There is an amusing anecdote given before “In Spite of Ourselves” where Prine discusses how he had to cajole DeMent a little to sing the song with him due to its “questionable lyrics” (which include sniffing undies and convict movie fetishes.) Ultimately she was won over and we have a song that’s pure Prine – raunchy, sweet, and hilarious – and the world is better for it.

During one of the interview sections, Prine mentions how he got started in the business by playing at an amateur hour for a local club. After hearing the first three songs he’d ever written Prine was hired permanent.

Those three songs? “Souvenirs,” “Paradise,” and “Sam Stone.”

As Hiatt says in the interview, “Good God, I would have hired you after that too.”

For those of you unfamiliar with Prine or those songs, that would be like Dylan saying his first three songs were, “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Blowing in the Wind,” and “The Times They Are A-Changin.”

This is the best-sounding Prine bootleg I have, and despite a somewhat ragged performance, it is still a great disk.

The entire session has been released on DVD and is available through Amazon.

Random Shuffle (11/27/06) – Motley Crue, The Mamas and the Papas, Lyle Lovett, The Clash & Natalie Merchant

Originally written on November 28, 2006.

“Girls, Girls, Girls” – Mötley Crüe
From Girls, Girls, Girls

I have previously mentioned my undying love for all things hair metal, and Mötley Crüe were the unquestioned kings of the hair. They rocked, they rolled, they barely survived their own hedonism. Even their power ballads are pretty good. Who doesn’t get all teary-eyed when “Home Sweet Home” plays over the loudspeakers?

I am particularly fond of this song, or rather its accompanying video. As the title implies, it was all about the ladies, and more specifically the scantily clad ladies. For a young teenage boy, there isn’t anything better than scantily clad ladies.

I can remember sitting with my cousin at my grandma’s house watching MTV in the back bedroom. “Girls, Girls Girls” was in heavy rotation. Every time the video would come on, my cousin would turn the volume way down – I guess because he was afraid someone would hear and chastise our viewing tastes – and we would sit watching the gyrations in silence.

It was a good time.

This gives me an odd remembrance of the song, though. I remember the girls, but it is one of the few Crüe hits where I don’t really know the music all that well. Too much mute I guess.

“Dream a Little Dream of Me” – The Mamas and the Papas
From the Papas and the Mamas

This song will forever remind me of the film that bears its name. An odd, dreamy movie starring the Coreys. It was probably the first non-mainstream, weird, art film I had ever seen. It showed me how the film could be different and interesting and not follow the same standard plot lines. I’ve been a fan of weird films ever since.

The song is nothing but loveliness. Mama Cass’ big beautiful voice singing nothing but beauty. It is a song I used to listen to and dream little dreams of my own. It’s the sort of song I used to play and wonder when someone would dream of me. It’s a song I played at my wedding reception. A song I now enjoy with my wife.

Fat Babies” – Lyle Lovett
From I Love Everybody

Lyle Lovett is the sort of artist who can write nonsense, humor, and poetry. Sometimes all within the same song. Though I Love Everybody is far from his best album (The Road To Ensenada gets that award) it is the first album of his I ever heard.

In college a good friend of mine had this giant tape collection filled with all sorts of artists I had never heard of. I’d often sit in his dorm room and pick out tapes at random just to find something interesting. I heard my first Grateful Dead bootlegs in that room as well as John Prine, John Mccutcheon, and Willie Nelson. Well, ok I had heard Willie before, but it was in that room that we began our love affair.

Lyle was first heard by my ears between those walls as well, and it was this album that made me a fan. It’s not exactly country as it is filled with big jazzy horns and a few blues riffs. But it’s not jazz or blues or rock and roll either. These days you’d probably call it Americana, but I didn’t know what the crap that was back then. What I did know was that it was different, and exactly the kind of acoustic sound I had been looking for.

“Fat Babies” is a silly little nonsensical song on an album full of them. Lyles singing about things he hates which include hippies, cornbread, and fat babies. But then he turns around and likes a girl simply because she likes him and she don’t like much. None of it makes much sense, but it doesn’t have to. It’s just fun and silly and a nice piece of music. Sometimes that’s all a song needs to be.

“Train in Vain” – The Clash
From London Calling

I spent a long time declaring I didn’t like the Clash even though I’d never really heard many of their songs. I knew “Rock the Casbah” of course and liked it too. But the few other songs I had heard all had this annoying reggae jive going for it and did nothing to make me want more. A local radio guy is a big fan and periodically plays Joe Strummer solo stuff, but it too seemed to have this faux reggae feel and I just don’t like faux reggae.

I kept hearing how great London Calling was and eventually decided to have myself a listen. I got the disk and expected to hate it and was already writing a scathing review in my head. It never got out of my head because, as it turned out, I loved the disk. There’s a few reggae beats in there, but it really encompasses so many genres that I hardly noticed.

Turns out there were also a few songs I already knew and enjoyed but didn’t know it was by the Clash. “Trains in Vain” is one of those songs, and it s a good one.

“San Andreas Fault” – Natalie Merchant
From Tigerlily

I’ve always been a very casual 10,000 Maniacs fan. I have a few of their albums, and whenever I play them, I enjoy them. But they never made what I’d call a stand-out album and for the most part, their music sits in the back of my collection, only surfacing periodically.

However, Natalie Merchant’s first solo album, Tigerlily, has always been one of my favorites. I can’t really pinpoint exactly why I like it so much. There are only a couple of songs that I know well or would say are great songs. The rest of them kind of blend together and I couldn’t tell you their names even though I’ve listened to the disk numerous times.

It’s all very low-key, and you wouldn’t be too far off to say it’s mostly kind of dull. Natalie has this exotic, lulling voice that washes over me and sends me to a nice kind of place. It’s really nice background music – the kind of thing to play while reading a book or relaxing with some hot chocolate and a warm fire.

This is my favorite song on the album and it starts off with this marvelous, cooing “ooohs” from Natalie that lay me down and fluff my pillow. It sets a perfect mood for a relaxing evening, morning, or anytime in between.

Random Shuffle (11/20/06) – Liz Phair, Martha Wainwright, Depeche Mode, Van Morrison, & Echo & the Bunnymen

“Never Said” – Liz Phair
From Exile in Guyville

In the mid-1990s I was on a plane flying from Birmingham Alabama to Tulsa Oklahoma. This was a trip I normally made by automobile, but I had recently fallen inexplicably ill. Being a freshman in college I was not accustomed to being inexplicably ill while all alone, hence the trip home via airplane.

On the plane, I was actually feeling pretty healthy and virile thanks to the lovely lady who took her seat next to mine. Perhaps seeing my Walkman or my copy of Spin magazine (in the days when having a copy of Spin magazine exuded a cool hipness) she struck up a conversation about music. The topics ranged from Fugazi and Dinosaur Jr to inevitably Nirvana. She asked me if I liked Liz Phair, and I had to admit that though I had heard good things, I had not actually listened to her. She raved about how amazing and beautiful Phair was and highly recommended I listen to her soon.

As these things do, the conversation waned and we went about reading our magazines and carried through the annoyance that is flying. A few bits of conversation were had here and there and then the plane landed and we departed. I made a mental checklist to listen to Liz Phair as soon as I could and went along my sickly way.

As it turns out I didn’t promptly listen to Ms. Phair and it was in fact this last year that I ever managed to get a copy of Exile in Guyville for a listen. What I was waiting for, I don’t know, but I wish I had paid more attention to that vixen. It is a beautiful and beautiful album full of angst, poetry, and raw emotion.

“Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole” – Martha Wainwright
From Martha Wainwright

Speaking of angst, poetry, and raw emotion, Martha Wainwright has plenty of each flowing from her mouth like blood from a lanced tongue. This song just slays. Her voice is tortured and strangled and pulls it all out of me until I lie flat and still gasping for life.

I can’t say I’m much of a fan of any of the Wainwrights, either Loudon or Rufus. I’m not overly familiar with their music, but what I have heard hasn’t made me seek them out either. They get praised well enough that I continue to think I should dig into their well farther, but well, so it goes. When the Duke lauded Martha with praise and sent a few tunes to the mp3 project I anxiously checked them out.

Sweet chimichanga that girl has got something. Her voice isn’t what you would exactly call beautiful, but there is a certain poetry to her words and such effectiveness in the way she sings that it doesn’t matter.

I honestly don’t really know what she’s singing about here, but whatever it is it breaks your heart. She projects such gut-wrenching emotion

“Just Can’t Get Enough” – Depeche Mode
From Speak and Spell

In my junior high to be hip you had to love U2 and you had to adore Depeche Mode. This was pre-Joshua Tree and Violator so neither of those bands had reached worldwide superstardom yet, though they weren’t exactly unknown indie bands either (this was Oologah Oklahoma, we didn’t know what the heck an indie band was, so just not being on the national charts was obscure enough.) Frankly, I never was all that hip in high school, but my brother was and he used to play the heck out of both bands.

This is the only Depeche Mode song that stuck and has lasted in my head all these years later.

It’s some darn fine synth pop too.

I still have vague memories of the cool kids mimicking the synch beats while goofing in drama class.

“Bucket’s Got a Hole in It” – Van Morrison
From Pay the Devil

From the moment I heard “Tupelo Honey” I knew I’d be a Van Morrison fan forever. I was actually a casual fan before that moment, but that song sealed the deal. I know how people hate to hear about me discovering an artist through their greatest hits packages, but I went through a short period where all I was doing was picking up Best Ofs. I didn’t have the cash to shell out for entire record collections, and this was before I had an internet connection, or even knew of such a place where you could go and get suggestions of which album to start with, so a greatest hits deal seemed like the best way to get a good foundation on who an artist was. I’ll still stand by that idea, for that time at least. I now can download a few songs, listen to snippets at Amazon, or search out my knowledge basis for the best places to start with, but then it made your purchase and pray it comes out all right. And for my money, a hits package was the best bet.

So anyway, I had the first volume of Van’s greatest hits and loved it. It’s filled with such classics as “Domino,” “Wild Nights,” and “Brown Eyed Girl.” It’s great music and worth every penny. I decided I could be a fan, but instead of searching out a single album, perhaps something with a few songs I now knew I loved, I went for the volume two greatest hits. I should have known better. Few artists have that many greatest hits, and Van’s was filled with maudlin, sappy religious numbers. Gone were the two-stepping beats and killer horn section. Instead, it was slow melodies and sad strings. (Editor’s Note: I obviously love the songs on Volume 2 now.)

Van laid low in my collection for a long time after that. Eventually, I was trolling Napster for some good love songs to put on a mix tape for a girl. “Tupelo Honey” was found and I was back on the track to Vandom once again. I’ve since nabbed many a Van Morrison album and my love has never stopped.

This is Van’s recent take on classic country songs. Honestly, I haven’t given it my full attention yet, just let it play in the background a few times, but from what I can hear he’s still got it.

“The Killing Moon” – Echo and the Bunnymen
From Ocean Rain

Man, what’s up with this list? It is random, but still nabs two alternative 80’s tracks and two raw, powerful women, and Van Morrison.

Back again to junior high (or maybe it was high school, the memory fades these days) the church we went to had just hired a new youth guy and he was chatting me up trying to get a lay of the kids and make us believe he was a cool guy. Anyways he asks me about music and I say I’m into alternative stuff like Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and all that stuff when he asks me about Echo and the Bunnymen. Knowing the name and maybe a couple of songs I say ‘yeah’ and act like they are the coolest. He brings up the soundtrack to the movie Lost Boys and the song “Cry Little Sister” thinking that was Echo and the Bunnymen (though they did cover a version of “People Are Strange” on the soundtrack it was Gerard McMann who did the song in question). Not knowing any better I agreed that it was killer and we basked in our coolness.

We did become great friends, though I learned he wasn’t an Echo fan either, and not really very cool at that.

This particular song I got on a compilation disk from Spin magazine (see there are themes to this post) along with a bunch of other indie/alternative bands they were promoting at the time. It’s still a great song, and I still dig “Cry Little Sister” too.

Random Shuffle (10/25/06) – Robert Earl Keen, Johnny Cash, The Band, Morrissey, & Bruce Springsteen

“Then Came Lo Mein” – Robert Earl Keen
From Picnic

I first discovered Robert Earl Keen through some friends of mine. I think I attended a concert before I’d ever listened to an album. It was a great concert and as I soon discovered, very typical Robert Earl Keen. That is to say full of great subversive country music, raucous and bawdy jokes, and the biggest throwdown of the year.

This is a great song and a great showcase of his songwriting skills. It is a love song with bad jokes and a heart full of something meaningful. It throws together lines like “I was steamed I was fried/But you stood by my life/When I had my nervous breakdown” to make a pun about the Chinese restraint they are in and make an acute observation about the power of relationships.

The music is a soft, rolling thing made into a beautiful duet with Margo Timmins.

Keen is never going to find his way to the top of the charts nor be decried as the next Dylan. His music is like a pot of warm stew in February. It is hearty, filling, and sometimes all you need, but it won’t ever flash or glitter and get your attention like Crème Brûlée. But sometimes all you need is a solid songwriter to get you through the long winters.

“Wayfaring Stranger” – Johnny Cash
From American III

I think there are few songs that I love deep down in my soul like “Wayfaring Stranger.” I’m generally not one for religious lyrics in pop tunes, but this one hits me in a way few things can. I think it is the notion of being a traveler, not bound for one land for long that appeals to me most. I’ve spent most of my life moving about so I know the feeling of being a stranger, yet also understand the joy of coming home.

I don’t spend much time writing about my own spiritual beliefs, but the idea of leaving the harsh realities of this world and crossing over Jordan to that heavenly home sounds somehow comforting.

And when you get Johnny Cash to sing it, well, I think I’m already over that river and headed towards home. I love that Cash makes the recording sparse, just a fiddle, some light strumming guitar, and that Voice. Johnny Cash had the voice of God.

If I get to choose the songs for my funeral, this one is going in.

“Ophelia” – The Band
From Last Waltz

Truth is I’m not much of a fan of The Band. So much praise has been lauded on Music From the Big Pink, but I mainly find it a bore. I love “The Weight” and I think that love ruins the album for me. While it has this great acoustical instrumentation, great lyrics and some perfect harmonies, the rest of the album sounds way too slow and the vocals are just one long whine. I’ve tried many times to relisten to it and find can see what all the praise is about, but it always comes up short.

I’d pretty much given up on the band, in fact, until I watched The Last Waltz on television a while back. This is the Band I’d dreamed about. Great music, great performances, and a group worthy to be the most famous incarnation of Dylan’s backup band.

It wasn’t just the assortment of all-stars, including Dylan, joining them for this last dance. The Band cooked like fried rice. These guys were obviously having fun and holding their own with some of the great artists in music.

“Ophelia” is just the Band, no celebrity filler and it still kills. This is the type of music that floats in my head most of the time. A big band with blazing guitars, thumping bass, keys, and horns all meshed together in a brilliant ménage a groovitude.

“Certain People I Know” – Morrissey
From Your Arsenal

Morrissey, with or without the Smiths, is a musician I’ve pretended to love for many years. It’s not that I don’t enjoy his music, because I certainly do, but rather that I’m just not terribly familiar with it. Not enough for the amount of name-checking I’ve done with him anyway.

The Smiths are one of those bands like the Sex Pistols or the Clash that give extra cool points to those who profess their love for them. I admit I have used them all to gain an edge on new friends or to feel a little more special to an extra special girl.

Morrissey is the only one I actually really dug a record from (I’ve never managed to really get the Sex Pistols and only have recently found the joys of the Clash). Your Arsenal is the record of choice as it came about during my finer years and in the midst of the whole alternative is a huge ordeal in the early 90s.

A recent run to the local library has yielded a bustle full of new Morrissey records and I am in the midst of a rebirth in his music. This one is an oldie and one I’ve enjoyed for many years. Not exactly typical as it has a more rockabilly feel than most of his work, but still a good one.

Maybe now I can whisper to my wife how awesome I think the man is, and really mean it.

“Buffalo Gals” – Bruce Springsteen
From We Shall Overcome

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not much for Bruce Springsteen. I can see he is a good writer and performer, but he’s always seemed just a tad too earnest for my tastes. Whenever I listen to Springsteen or hear the devotion from his legion of fans, I get a little nervous. It’s a bit like having die-hard Jesus freaks over for dinner. I get what they are saying, but they’re just a little too into it to make me feel comfortable.

At least I did feel this until I heard his Pete Seeger tribute. Man that album rules. “Buffalo Gals” is probably my favorite tune in the bunch. There is such joy in this music. It’s a group of outstanding players playing their hearts out and having fun at it. It’s the fun part that wins me over. This is Springsteen finally tossing out the fire and brimstone and enjoying himself.

This is a hoe down of a song, a real barn burner. It makes me wish I could play an instrument or have some rhythm to dance to it. It makes me glad to be alive. It makes me happy. And if that ain’t the point of it all, then we might as well all give up now and go home.

Concert Review: Tea Leaf Green – Bloomington, IN (10/19/06)

I should have known better than to attend a concert while still recovering from a rather rotten head cold. “But it’s Tea Leaf Green,” my wife pleaded, and “we haven’t been out in so long.” And so there we went out in the cold and the rain, sniffling, sneezing and all.

To tell the truth, it was a bit odd to hear my wife excited to see Tea Leaf Green as she wasn’t at all familiar with the band’s material. Me either except for their recent DVD release, Rock N Roll Band of which I had recently played numerous times and reviewed right here. But she had enjoyed what she had heard, and the idea of going to a concert always has its appeal.

We showed up early, nearly half an hour, as it was general admission and we wanted to get a seat, instead of standing for the entirety of the performance. Early wasn’t needed, as the place was nearly empty.

We sat, the two of us looking ragged and full of head germs, and waited. Nine o’clock came and still there were but a few folks gathered about. We pondered the meaning of the sign announcing “56 Hope Road” and showing us a cute little deer’s head. “Could it be a brand of beer?” we pondered. “Or perhaps it is a new teen show on the WB.” “I know,” I declared, “It has to be Locke’s home address on Lost.”

As it turned out it was the name of the opening band. They played for the few folks standing about as if they were at Madison Square Garden in front of a full crowd. I was duly impressed. They jammed out every song and had a good thing going, though it was hard to discern more than the electric guitar and drums from the distorted sound quality.

A few more folks came, including a large group of college kids who plumped down right next to us. I feel like an old man on a rotating record when I complain about the kids today, but dang they sure don’t have any respect for anything.

Though there was a band playing their hearts out right in front of them, and though they had surely paid good money to hear this band, they paid no mind at all to the performance. Instead, the men applied their attention to the ladies, scooting their chairs right up against them so as to look deeply into their eyes, and entwine legs like a spider. The ladies meanwhile, retracted their cellular phones from their purses every two minutes as if they were expecting a call for the next world summit.

Meanwhile, some sparkling good music played on.

56 Hope Road played a good hour set and Tea Leaf Green came on around 10:30. The room had since filled up to about half capacity, but what was there was energized and ready for the headliners.

It is always an interesting thing to attend a concert where you aren’t familiar with most of the band’s work. There are no songs to sing along to, nor grooves to groove along with knowingly. It’s all shake it as you can. We remained seated as our bodies were in no shape to groove anyway.

Seated it was still a darn fine groove thing. The band plays like a well grooved machine and they know how to work the crowd. The thing is on the aforementioned DVD it kind of irked me to watch the lead singer, Trevor Garrod, work the crowd like a crazed cross between a Southern Baptist preacher and PT Barnum. Grabbing the microphone like a dagger he’d swagger and sway with the music while singing his lyrics like the Holy Word. It irked me because I tend to prefer musicians who approach music with importance and leave the posing to those on TRL. However, in person, it is quite impressive, and it must be said that young Trevor hits the keys as much as he shakes it for the crowd.

Despite our illnesses, the wife and I both forgot everything and fell into the trance of great music. I got up into the crowd and swayed and moved like a teenager once again.

The darned kids were still at it with their cell phones and make-out moves. The two girls seemed to be texting each other back, while another guy somehow managed to talk to whomever, though standing but feet from a fat round of speakers.

Kids today and their rock and roll.

The first set concluded around midnight. It was a high performance and we’d had a grand time, but old age and illness took hold. My wife declared that she could barely hold her eyes open any longer, and I knew I wasn’t long for this cognizant world, and so we headed home.

A younger me would have cursed the day I ever left a concert before the last note was played, but the older me has learned when I’ve had enough no matter how killer the show.

I’ll never know what madness occurred in the second set, but having seen the first half I’ll surely catch the band the next time they come around.

Tori Amos – A Piano: The Collection

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I don’t believe there is a girl between the ages of 25-35 who didn’t fall madly in love with Tori Amos’ first album, Little Earthquakes. It was a perfect album for a perfect time. In the midst of grunge with all its loud guitars and thundering bass came this sprite woman plinking a piano. Forging a path through what stood for females in rock music – Paula Abdul and Madonna with their glimmer and shake – came a fiery red-headed creature singing about God and sex in a voice that spoke – really spoke for her generation.

With songs like “Me and a Gun,” an acapella, heart-wrenching retelling of Amos’ own rape, she ushered in a new era of songwriting. One that was introspective, brutally honest, and completely feminine. She doesn’t try to be the masculinized version of female that so many other artists have succumbed to, she is purely herself, and we related – by the millions.

By those same numbers, most of the people I know who fell in love with that first album, have since fallen away from the Cult of Tori through subsequent albums. Refusing to rest on her own laurels Tori’s follow-up albums got heavier instrumentation and less immediately revealing lyrics. Adding in guitars, drums, synth beats, and more her songs have become denser, layered things, which often obscures the straightforward intensity that made her famous.

Nevertheless, she has continually stretched her legs as an artist, releasing albums with divergent styles and accessibility. Doing so she may have lost some of her original fan base, but she has grown an intensified, cult-like following.

A Piano: The Collection is a five-disk boxed set that covers all of her albums from Little Earthquakes through The Beekeeper. Various alternate versions of songs, demos, and B-Sides are included.

It comes in a lovely-looking box that is shaped like a piano, with plastic keys and everything. In fact, when the Fed Ex man brought it I wondered why anyone would send me a synthesizer. Tori has made extensive notes on the collection detailing her experiences with each record and some of the songs.

For someone who lost track of Tori after Under the Pink, this is an excellent way to catch up with the ever-experimenting singer. I’ve got to say though, that after Little Earthquakes, while she always maintains an emotional intensity in her songs, I’ve not been able to latch onto anything I’d like to keep.

Much of the problem lies in that I have trouble hearing exactly what she talking about, or bobbing my head along to the tune. I know that’s a rather juvenile approach to music criticism, but as a listener, I need something to maintain my attention. On songs like “Silent All These Years” the lyrics were easily understood and filled with an emotional intensity, while with “Happy Phantom” the lyrics might be a little opaque, it was a jaunty little ditty and great fun to sing along with. While there is a certain poetry in “Suede” I can’t actually understand the words, and the music is so thick I can’t help but find it dull.

It is true that I’m not really Tori’s audience. I’m a middle-aged male whose musical tendency runs towards the hippies and the hillbillies, not sophisticated, alternative feminists. My wife has been enjoying the boxed set, and I’m sure many others will too. It has enough alternate material to please the hard-core fans and covers her studio thoroughly enough to give a good scope of her recorded output thus far

As for me though, I think I’ll grab some Ralph Stanley from the record shelf and take a nap with a good book.