Category: Music

Random Shuffle – July 17, 2006: Digital Underground, Journey, Coldplay, Guns N Roses, & Hart-Rouge

Originally written on July 18, 2006.

“Humpty Dance” – Digital Underground
from Sex Packets

My first thought when I listen to this 80s classic is about how dirty it is. It’s really quite filthy. I’m surprised my mother allowed me to listen to it. Of course, as a child, which I was when this was a hit, I didn’t grasp the blatant innuendo splattered throughout. I just thought it was a funny song with a silly character in a mask.

Reading the lyrics I’m kind of amazed this became a hit and didn’t hit all the censors. If memory serves this was right around the 2 Live Crew law suits – maybe that’s it, nobody bothered with a guy talking about tickling ladies’ rears with his nose when the Crew was being way more explicit. Or maybe the song is so funny nobody minded the crassness.

Now I can’t help but sing along and blush at the filthiness.

“Faithfully” – Journey
from Greatest Hits (You didn’t think I owned real Journey albums, did you?)

File this under embarrassingly sappy songs that I love. My friend Mullins, you see, graduated from Ringling Bros. and Barnum Bailey Clown College. That’s right, there is a college for clowns, and it is amazingly difficult to get into. Mullins went, graduated, and even though never landed a job in the circus is a clown through and through.

There is a lyric in this song that goes something like this:

Circus life
Under the big top world
We all need the clowns
To make us smile

Whatever cheesy parts reside deep in my guts, they get all gooshy when I hear those lines. I can remember driving north of Birmingham, Alabama headed back to college in Montgomery, and tearing up over those lines, missing my pal who had recently taken off to Tennessee. Funny how the mushy parts make us all twirly inside, even though it’s nothing but cheese.

“I Used To Love Her” – Guns N Roses
from G N’ R Lies

A great rock n roller about murder. My friend Juliana (who happens to be married to the clown Mullins) says that all great country artists have to write a song about killing someone. Well, Guns N Roses area bout as far as you can get from country, but this is a great murdering song.

It is a great song to sing loud, and then get evil glares from those who don’t know the song. It’s also a great song to irritate my wife with, and she knows the darn song.

“Yellow” – Coldplay
from Parachutes

For the longest time, I thought this was a Pearl Jam song and it caused my renewed interest in the band. It has since become the only Coldplay song I enjoy. The rest of their songs are too whiney and too soft to be rockers. I always feel like they are playing soft as a tease and then they are gonna hit it with some awesome rock, only to be left with a lot of softness.

I really dig the relaxing summertime vibe of this song. It makes me want to roll out my blanket and lay out under the stars.

“Dieu a Nos Cotes” (With God On Our Side) Hart–Rouge
from A Nod To Bob

Reading reviews of this Bob Dylan tribute album I find that this song is almost universally despised. I rather adore it. It’s a lilting, beautiful thing. Though most reviewers don’t really say why they don’t like it, that it is in French seems to be the problem stewing behind the bad-mouthing. Perhaps this is due to those not understanding the language (and after all, it is the language of Dylan that most love).

The song itself is an anti-war rant that touches on all the major wars of the US up until the cold war. I suspect some detractors rather despise the fact that Dylan is speaking out so directly against war and that this new version may be using his words as a means to rail against the current war in Iraq (and in French no less, how dare those spineless bastards speak out against war, don’t they know we saved their asses in both World Wars?. Never mind that the band is French-Canadian.)

I speak a little French, but I can’t really understand what they’re saying. Looking at comparison lyrics it seems like the translation is pretty literal, but who knows they may have thrown in an “American is a hate-filled war-mongering country” and I might have not noticed. But the thing that is interesting is that none of the reviews mentioned any change in Dylan’s lyrics, but seem to hate it being translated into French. I would think fans would enjoy the fact that other languages are taking note.

Me? I love the song. I’m not a big fan of the English version, honestly, but it is such a soft lilting thing in the French.

Bootleg Country: Jimmy Buffett – Mansfield, MA (09/04/99)

Originally posted on July 13, 2006.  Rest in Peace Jimmy Buffett, I hope you are enjoying a really good cheeseburger in paradise now.

Several years back my wife (then girlfriend) was throwing a small party. I provided the music which consisted of several mix tapes. On one of these tapes was the Jimmy Buffet song “Barometer Soup,” which is kind of a calypso Caribbean rave-up. My wife’s (then girlfriend’s) friend (then roommate), who is actually from Trinidad, developed a rather large sneer at listening to Jimmy Buffet trying to be Caribbean.

There was much discussion of how gawd awful the song was, and how unauthentic the steel drum sounded. I tried to give some sort of recompense for these ‘sins of the Caribbean’- Jimmy Buffet has spent much of his life in South Florida and the Caribbean, he uses authentic Caribbean musicians in his band (that one I’m making up, but it sounds good even if I don’t know if it is true) – but in the end, these reasons fell flat on my friend’s ears. The real reason I included the song on the mix tape – the only reason to include any song on a party mix tape is that it’s a lot of fun.

You could probably sum up Jimmy Buffet with those words. He’s not the world’s greatest songwriter or a master musician, but he knows how to have fun, and his music shows it. He’s made a career out of island escapism.

It’s hard not to be jealous when listening to a guy who has made a career (and big bucks) from sitting on beaches, munching cheeseburgers and sipping margaritas.

09/04/99
The Tweeter Center
Mansfield, MA

The thing about Jimmy Buffett is that he’s really got his shtick down to a fine T. He knows how he is supposed to act, and he knows how to please his audience. The thing that annoys me about Jimmy Buffett is his audience is made up of a lot of drunken buffoons.

This is a theme concert of sorts. The Beach House on the Moon album had just come out and Jimmy has planned a concert around it. It’s a pretty broad concept mainly consisting of Jimmy telling the audience they are going to fly to the moon, a few silly sound effects of a rocket ship, and a few sillier jokes about landing on the moon and returning homeward. All fitted around his songs.

In fact, it gets rather tiring listening to Jimmy try to segue into the next song and tie it into a part of the “trip.” To segue into “Coconut Telegraph” he notes that the only communication device that they will be using on the flight is, you guessed it, a coconut telegraph. And it really never gets better than that. The whole moon flight is just, well, lame.

Throughout the show, he throws in all his hits, a bunch of new songs, and even a cover of Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl,” Crosby Stills and Nash’s “Southern Cross,” and the Grateful Dead’s “Uncle John’s Band.” All are played with his typical island schtick, which basically means steel drums in the foreground.

Ed Bradley, of CBS fame, plays tambourine on a couple of songs. I’d say he played a mean tambourine, and he does as far as tambourine guest performers go, but we all know guest tambourine players only come on stage because they can’t play a real instrument.

Jimmy’s between-song banter is as moronic as it is straight out of a frat boy party, the “concept” is just as lame and the music is uninspired, but I must admit it is all rather fun. It’s the type of bootleg I’d throw on while sitting around the pool, or on the back porch sipping something fruity. And in the end, if music can’t be fun once in a while, then what’s the point after all?

Random Shuffle (06/10/06) – Sarah McLaughlin, The Lemonheads, The Black Crowes, Prince & Nico

Originally posted on July 11, 2006.

“Building a Mystery” – Sarah McLaughlin
From Pure Moods – Celestial Celebration

I’ve never been much of a Sarah McLaughlin fan. I like her whisper of a voice but there is something about her songs that just don’t move me in anyway. This particular song I like okay, mainly because it brings up a fairly specific time frame (college years) that I enjoy getting nostalgic about.

This particular version is a rather scorching live version (sorry I couldn’t find the clip on YouTube). Sarah really gets into it (she even lets loose with an F-bomb) and the band behind her nails the groove. It is off of one of those new agey Pure Moods disks that my wife got from the library. Most of the album was way too ‘new jazz’ for my tastes, but there are a few good numbers that go well with a nice mix tape to get the wife in the mood.

“Frank Mills” – Lemonheads
From It’s a Shame About Ray

Speaking of Nostalgia, this Lemonheads brings me back to my late high school years like a bullet. On the liner notes of this album were all the lyrics to the songs, but they were jumbled up like. So you might get one line from song 1 then it would go to another line from song 2. I spent several hours one night going through each song and matching up the lyrics.

Yes, I was once a lyrics freak. I used to keep a notebook of my favorite lyrics. Of course, I used to also consider myself a poet and kept a notebook full of those awful things.

Speaking of lyrics I once tried to write out the lyrics to Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” and got them all wrong. I was way too young to understand the overstated sexual overtones of the song and thought it was a nice ode to vegetables and picnicking. Hilarious.

This is, of course, a cover of a song from Hair. Evan Dando pretty much nails it with his soft-man voice and an acoustic guitar. He hits the hippie naivety of the song without an ounce of irony. Much better in fact than the more popular cover of “Mrs Robinson” he also sings on the same album.

“She Talks to Angels” – The Black Crowes
From Shake Your Money Maker

Throw this one into my pile of all-time favorite songs. Most of the Black Crowe “rockers” I could live without, but there is something about their organ-laced ballads that melt my kidneys.

This one with its tale of a misguided lass moves me in ways I can’t speak of around children.

I saw the Crowes at the end of a very long festival concert, and I must admit I didn’t much care for them. But again it was at the end of the night after hearing something like 8 hours of music. This was also Atlanta in the middle of summer so my skin was burnt to a crisp. What really stands out to me is the gyrating couple standing near us. The man was behind doing his thing while the lady was reaching around back and….oh the kiddies again, um never mind.

“7” Prince
From The Hits

This song always reminds me of my cousin Clifton. I have a very specific memory of him playing this song and loving it right before we left for some family get-together.

Prince always reminds me of working on an EPA Superfund project. Me and my boss used to crank up the hits collection and rock out. She was a cool boss. But the secretary there was a total wash-out be-ach. She complained once because I played “Sexy MF” and she was offended by the cursing. The funny thing was she used to get explicit with her own sexual history. Pissed me off. I can’t have Prince get funky, but she can tell me, in detail, about her own funkiness?!

Speaking of that lady, first day on the job she had a 3.5-inch floppy disk turned backward trying to stick it into the computer. I watched her try it three or four times before she asked for help. Hilari-freaking-ous.

“These Days” – Nico
From The Royal Tenenbaums Soundtrack

I usually make a face when someone mentions Nico simply because I have old tendencies towards the Velvet Underground and there was a whole history with Nico and the Velvets. Rumor has it Andy Warhol made the Velvets have Nico sing a few numbers in order for him to fund the band.

Turns out Nico has a really pretty voice and this song is beautiful. She has a very nasally kind of delivery but it matches perfectly with the acoustics and the longing lyrics. It also fits perfectly into the film, something Wes Anderson has a knack for.

Bootleg Country: Norah Jones – San Francisco, CA (12/02/02)

Originally posted on July 8, 2006.

The difference between listening to a studio album and attending a live concert can be enormous. While listening to an album you can control the setting – turn the lights down low for a sensual beat; or turn them completely off while wrapping the headphones around your head to feel every moment of the music pulsing through your neurons and tendons, or wire speakers through your whole house to blast the neighborhood pretty much away for a block party.

You can be as distracted by other things as you want, or completely absorbed in the music. You can play the same track over and over, memorizing every moment until your ears bleed.

But live you only control the immediate environment around you, and sometimes not even that. The band or the venue sets up the speakers, mixes the instruments, and controls the overall sound. An outdoor amphitheater creates a completely different vibe than a small, indoor club, or a giant stadium. Crowds can be utterly hushed, plugged into the vibe of the band, or they can be wild crazy beasts hardly noticing that a band is on stage.

I’ve been to too many shows where the audience spent more time shouting and chatting with each other rather than actually listening to the music on stage. But when the audience is in tune, a live concert can be so much more than a studio album. There is a connection the audience can make not only with the musicians but with each other.

There are moments during those concerts when every member of the audience is singing along, washed away in a spiritual convalescence, a musical wave that sweeps us all away into bliss – those moments are perfect, without flaw.

Listening to a recording of a concert can obtain the best and worst of both worlds. You can choose the setting in which to listen, and if the recording is right, be swept away into that blissful moment. OR, you can hear all the flaws in the instrumentation and be utterly distracted by crowd noise.

Norah Jones
12/02/02
San Francisco, California

Norah Jones has a voice so sultry she could turn an albino chicken on. I remember when she first hit it big and everyone was telling me how sexy she was. I wasn’t much for radio in those days (and I’m still not) and it was during a cheap stretch when I wasn’t buying much music, so I didn’t hear her voice until well into her major stardom. My wife eventually bought Come Away With Me and I eventually gave it a listen.

My lord, they were right…

When I first heard that voice I stopped dead in my tracks and melted into a bed of puddin’. Chocolate puddin’, the best kind. I laid down, turned off the lights, and drifted off into an ecstasy filled …well let’s just say never leave me alone with Norah Jones and a bed full of puddin’.

On this particular night, Norah seems to be in good form. Her voice has retained that sultry siren feel. The backup band plays it nice and smooth. Still, there is something missing, While I enjoy the music, I’m not taken away by the soft lighting.

Part of this is the recording. This is an audience recording and though it sounds quite crisp for an audience mike (the instruments come in clear and crisp, the audience isn’t audible except in the appropriate places) there is something distant and cold in the recording.

Where on her studio albums, Norah feels like she’s sitting next to you on the couch, here she sounds like she’s playing at the bar next door. It really removes me from the recording and makes the bootleg something I enjoy having in my collection, and something I periodically take out to impress my wife, but not really something I search out to find that special secret feeling again.

It’s not just the audience recording that removes me, but also the performance. Again Norah sounds in fine form and there isn’t anything tangible that I can complain about in the band, it’s just that it feels a little…well, clinky.

To go back to the studio again, Norah’s albums have that soft, lush feel to them. The production brings out the music like crushed roses. It makes my knees quiver. It is extremely intimate. This live recording just doesn’t have that. In the live setting, on CD, that intimacy is lost. I’m sure for those who were there in Davies Hall it was all intimate and beautiful, but that’s the thing with bootleg recordings, the experience of listening to it is often much different than actually being there.

On some songs, she is able to create an intimate, lush space for which to listen. On “Something Is Calling You” I feel Norah sneak up on me and lay my head on her shoulder as she coos me to sleep. But then again on the opening song, “Turn Me On” she fails too, something I would never expect from Norah.

While listening I found myself continuously wishing I had the studio counterparts instead. It’s either that or having Norah live in the flesh singing to me whilst I sleep in a bed of puddin’. Chocolate puddin’, the best kind.

Random Shuffle (06/27/06) – Elvis Costello, Lyle Lovett, The Rolling Stones, Ben Folds & Bob Dylan

“Allison” – Elvis Costello
From My Aim is True

I’ve never really got Elvis Costello. Most of his songs don’t really translate well into my brain waves. I don’t really have anything against him, I don’t dislike his songs, but I don’t find a whole lot in them to really like either. Which is weird to me, because I rather dig his nerdy schtick and I know folks who totally dig him, and those folks are folks I can generally groove with. I do, however, dig his wife, Diana Krall.

This is one of the few songs I really, truly dig. It’s got that romantic groove going and the close-out line “my aim is true” that cuts deep.

“What’d I Say” – Lyle Lovett
From Smile

Now Lyle Lovett is an artist I can fully and wholly dig. He’s a darn fine musician, a wonderful songwriter, and seemingly an all-around good guy – or at least a wry, funny one.

This is from an album full of songs he has performed for various movies. Lyle is quite a movie man, having performed songs for all kinds of films, and even acted in a number of Robert Altman flicks. None of the songs here are original, it is a bunch of covers, generally really slow covers – which means it’s an album I’m not all that fond of – with a few exceptions, notably this Ray Charles cover.

No doubt this is a great song, and Lyle gives it his best go, but it is a song I’ve long since grown tired of; which is no fault of its own. It’s just one of those songs I’ve heard so many times I can’t listen to it anymore.

The Lyle version is a fine rendition, but nobody beats Ray Charles, especially on the orgasmic moans toward the end. Lyle just can’t get into the sex of it.

“You Got the Silver” – The Rolling Stones
From Let It Bleed

My favorite incarnation of the Stones is the country honk version. I’m an old-school country man anyway, and the way the Stones can cut country music with a raunchy rock n roll edge slays me.

This is a slow-paced, fast song. It’s a simple love song sung plain by Keith Richards. The organ solo in the middle of this two-minute ditty nails everything a good song should. When it’s followed up by a jaunty, rollickin’ piano-based rave it’s pure joy.

“Brick” – Ben Folds Five
From Whatever and Amen

A song about abortion that never mentions it. It weighs like a ton of blocks named in the title. If you let it, it will make you see the misery and loneliness of life.

In but a few verses Ben Folds tells a story so completely, and with such heartbreak it’s hard to believe it is just a pop song. It is a song I both love and hate. I love it for its perfectness, for its ability to transcend pop and convey real, raw emotions. I hate it for the same reasons, it’s just not something easily listened to, for it is too real. How this became something of a hit is beyond me.

“I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” – Bob Dylan
From Biograph

It’s hard to choose a favorite Dylan. There is the political spokesman, the prophet and preacher, there is the storyteller and poet, and then there is the lover, whose words penetrate the heart and soul – ok, yeah, I gotta go for the lover. His words are so heart-achingly beautiful, that it’s hard not to fall in love all over again.

This is a perfect love song. The melody is simple and sweet the lyrics are the whisper of a lover who promises nothing more than a wonderful tonight, but he doesn’t have to promise more. Tonight’s enough.

Bootleg Country: Nirvana – Seattle, WA (10/31/91)

Originally posted on June 23, 2006.

Back about 12 years or so I was a counselor at a summer camp. It was a great couple of weeks spent playing games in the sunshine, hanging out with old friends, and mentoring young people. At the time I thought there would be nothing better than being a teacher, a molder of young minds.

The decade since either brought me to my senses or slipped right by me.

During one of the weeks at camp, I had to go to a concert that I had no interest in. While there I bumped into a girl with whom I had met a few months prior. We began chatting it up and digging each other.

I noticed some scratches on her arm and listened, fascinated, as she told me how she had etched “Kurt Forever” into her skin with a knife. This was not long after Kurt Cobain’s suicide and like a million other young people who are perpetually affected by such things; she took this selfish act to heart.

This was long before I understood terms like “scarring” or that thousands of young people do such things to themselves every day. I didn’t understand the pain, or the crying out such things often represent. I simply thought it was a pretty cool thing to do, if rather weird. While I was saddened, and angered by Cobain’s act, the thought of carving up my own skin because of it was something of incompressibility.

Around the same time I heard “Come As You Are” on the radio which was followed by some smart-alecked DJ making sarcastic comments about Cobain lying when he sang, “And I swear that I don’t have a gun.”

My friend who happened to be a girl who later became something of a girlfriend, became very upset at this comment. She couldn’t understand how someone could joke about the death of an artist, and certainly not the suicide of a genius.

These days when I think about Nirvana, I think about those two girls and their incredibly strong reactions towards the band, its singer, and the songs they produced. In my full-on grunge days I dug the crap out of Nirvana (though truth be told I was always a Pearl Jam man) but these days they barely garner a ‘meh.’

I dig the influential nature of the scene. Rock certainly needed a good swift kick from hair metal and Arena Rock. And when listening to the MTV Unplugged album, you can really get a feel for how great a songwriter Cobain, et al. was. But these days, my musical tastes swing the long shot away from the amped-up new punk that is the bulk of their releases.

Nirvana
10/31/91
Seattle, WA

A Halloween show just after Nirvana became the saviors of rock music. It is loud, full of angst and anger, and some pretty stinkin’ good melodies underneath it all.

From my 30-year-old head, which prefers Donna the Buffalo to Soundgarden, Norah Jones to L7, this guitar-heavy neo-punk music takes a while to warm up to. After the first listen I was bored. So I turned it up a few notches, this is rock ‘n freaking roll after all, and it needs to be cranked.

That helped, the rhythmic pounding blasting from my little Saturn’s speakers got me head banging, all the way down to my pancreas.

But it still wasn’t enough; I kept wishing I had a copy of Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions, or maybe a Bruce Hornsby bootleg, circa 1997.

By the third listen my nerves had calmed down, my mind accepted the distortion, the noise, the grunge of it all and I began to digest the music.

For the love of grunge, this is some great rockin’ shite.

For a band with only two albums under their belt they mix it up pretty well. They cover a good portion of Bleach and Nevermind, throw in a couple of new songs, and even manage to cover the Vaseline’s “Jesus Don’t Want Me For a Sunbeam.”

The band seems to be in good spirits. Besides a rockin’, they make some cracks about the audience not being dressed up for Halloween, white boy funk, and John Jacobs and the POWER team. But mostly they just rock out.

Listening to these guys throw down the heavy stuff for a fourth time didn’t make me join the cult of Nirvana once more, but it reminded me why I was once part of the faithful.

Random Shuffle (06/20/06) – Loretta Lynn, The Bangles, Phish, Ben Charest & Natalie Merchant

Originally written on June 20, 2006.

“Portland, Oregon” – Loretta Lynn with Jack White
From Van Lear Rose

Over the last several years I’ve heard a lot of buzz about Jack White and the White Stripes. They were leaders in the whole garage rock will save us trip a few years ago when a few guitar-heavy bands with singular names began to bust down the teen pop revolution from the likes of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.

I was certainly no fan of teen pop, but musically I was in my own world of bootlegs, folk, bluegrass, and jam bands. If I wanted garage rock to save my soul I had music from the 60’s to do it. What did I need the Vines or the Shins or Jack White for?

When White produced a highly praised album by Loretta Lynn he got my attention. I didn’t know much about Loretta Lynn except her old-school country roots, which was more than enough to get me to buy this album.

Truth be told, I flippin’ loved it. Loretta’s country charms and home-spun tales mixed perfectly with Mr. White’s loud rollicking guitars. Loretta seemed to give White a grounding while he stirred up Loretta’s dust.

This is, perhaps, the best song on the disk, a duet no less with a good story to back up the electricity.

I’ve found the truth in the White Stripes and I’ve begun to find the path again to Rock ‘n Roll.

“Manic Monday” – The Bangles
From Different Light

Somewhere in the 90’s nostalgia for everything 80’s began to come around. Halfway through that decade, it seemed all of my peers were enamored with the one we had just left. I spent the latter part of the millennium picking up every greatest hits package I could find from the “Me Decade.”

For the most part, I’ve lost patience with all the one-hit wonders and giant popsters. I think I saturated myself too intensely with the stuff. It’s kind of like on pop stations today where they play the same four songs over and over again. Even if those songs are fantastic, you get sick of hearing them. There are a lot of songs from the 80’s, but there isn’t a “hit” that I’m not sick of hearing.

That being said, the Bangles were one of the larger rock acts of the time, and this song is a nice one (though I’d still take “Walk Like an Egyptian” over this one.)

“Belleville Rendez-Vous” – Ben Charest
From The Triplets of Belleville

Ah, this is more to my liking these days. The movie, Triplets of Belleville is a lovely, stylistic, beautiful tale of a French bicyclist who teams up with some vaudeville-style singers to rescue his kidnapped grandmother. It is told with almost no dialog but engages the viewer with glorious visuals and a soundtrack to dance to.

This is the theme song, and it’s a bouncy, jazzy, dance-along affair. The kind of song used to impress young college girls and music store hipsters. This is the French version, so I can’t actually understand much of what is being sung, but I don’t care. It’s enunciated in a manner that allows me to sing along while totally destroying the words.

Watch the movie, and buy the soundtrack.

“Waste” – Phish
From Billy Breathes

I’ve never been much for Phish. For a while many claimed they were descendants of the throne of the Grateful Dead, a proclamation that garnered them as many detractors as it did fans.

I think they are astute musicians with some pretty darn fine chops, but I just can’t get into their songs. Partially it is the lyrics. Lyrically they are more Zappa-influenced than Robert Hunter. Though I’m not really a lyric guy, I want what I can understand to make some sort of sense – to be funny, poetic, or at least interesting. Phish seems to be mostly silly, and it kind of annoys me.

Billy Breathes is supposed to be their American Beauty, their masterpiece. And while it does have some killer songs, as a whole it doesn’t get a lot of spins at my house. “Waste” is a pretty mellow rocker, with some lyrics I can actually kind of dig. “Come waste your time with me” is something I can put my larynx into.

There is a nice follow-up with the lyrics, and the melody is nice and smooth. If the rest of their songs had this kind of flow, I might become a fan.

“Wayfaring Stranger” – Natalie Merchant
From House Carpenter’s Daughter

I’m an old 10,000 Maniacs fan, and followed Natalie into her first solo disk. After that I kind of lost track. I’ve dug the hits and nearly bought her folkie albums, always balking at the ever-increasing charge for a full album these days.

“Wayfaring Stranger” is absolutely one of my all-time favorite songs. Its lyrics burrow down into the depths of my insides, and its sad weepful melody knocks me out. Natalie’s accented, lisp of a voice carries with it some kind of mystery. The backing band on this live version (not actually on House Carpenter’s Daughter) plays the song in the reserved, hushed tones it deserves.

Bruce Springsteen – We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions

bruce springsteen - seeger sessions When I first heard that Bruce Springsteen was releasing a Pete Seeger tribute, I was intrigued.  Not for anything Springsteen – whom I’ve never managed to get, he’s just too earnest for my ears – but for Seeger whom I adore.

Upon the continual praise lauded upon this new disk from Sirs Saleski and DJRadiohead I finally went out and bought the disk.

Sweet jeebus!  Holy mother of folk!  What a great freaking record.

If I was an explorer and I came across some lonely tribe in the deepest, darkest African jungles that didn’t know what music was – had never heard a note – I would play this disk for them.  I would introduce music into their world with these songs

It’s that good.

If the big one dropped tonight, destroying this sad world we’ve created; years later when the few survivors crawled out of their holes, I would play them the Seeger Sessions to remind them that this world can still hold beauty.

It’s that amazing.

Years ago, when I was but a lad, I attended a Christmas celebration at my grandmother’s Southern Baptist Church.  It was a spirited, holy-roller affair.  There was shouting, and praising, and the raising of hands, the talking in tongues, undulating palpations and laying on upon hands.  My little eyes didn’t know what to think.

My uncle was there.  He is an old-school man.  He is big and tough and sometimes mean.  He doesn’t cry.  He doesn’t feel.  He can rib a man to death with venomous jokes.  He’s a good man, but made from a mold of man they just don’t make anymore.  He was at this church.  He was on the stage.  He was crying, shouting out for Lord Jesus, weeping in that emotion.

This album is a lot like that.

It is both holy and profane.  It has the hushed tones of the haughtiest church and the wild secularism of the Saturday night brothel.

Springsteen is the preacher, the poet, the sinner, and the shaman.  He stands on the altar giving salvation to the listener.

It is a big tent revival, a barn burner.  The band is full of the holy spirit of rock music and it’s the judgment day.

There isn’t a song to highlight; there is nothing that stands out above the rest.  As I listened for the first time, I kept thinking it couldn’t get any better than the song playing.  I was proven wrong 14 times until the CD stopped playing.  Every song is perfect, every note spot on.

Take “Shenandoah,” it is one of the few songs that can make me weep every time.  No matter where I am when the first longing notes begin to play I must pause and feel the weight of life sweep away.  Bruce simply nails it.

He stares into the deep darkness, like the cold Missouri waters he sings about and sees the mysteries, and finds truth.

This album, this collection of songs, pushes aside all that is wrong with music and the industry it supports.  It cracks the hard, crusty casing of pop music and finds something new, something mysterious.  If you look hard enough, if you stare into its cold dark waters you might just find a little sliver of truth yourself.

Random Shuffle – KC and the Sunshine Band, Arrested Development, John Prine, Elton John, & Donna The Buffalo

“(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty” – KC and the Sunshine Band From The Best of KC and the Sunshine Band

Truth be told, if the story comes out, I’m really not a fan of dance music. Disco, hip hop, techno, and rave music all get a collective ‘meh’ from my bones. Maybe it’s that I’m a middle-aged white boy with a Church of Christ background (where dancing is a sin) but the appeal of the dance club is completely lost on me. The loud music, the smoke, and the embarrassment of having to shake my hips in rhythm just turn me off from the whole scene. This being true, the music involved has never really done anything for me, either.

There are a few exceptions. “Shake Your Booty” is one of them. It has enough infectious pop grooves in it to make a grandma shake. It also reminds me of a Simpsons clip show where they play this song along with a montage of all the Simpsons’ nudity from previous episodes. Hilarious stuff.

The booty shake of the music isn’t enough to get me out on the dance floor mind you. If played in public, I might jiggle my buns for the laugh effect, but then I’d keep myself firmly rooted in standing-ness, or sit-down-ness and just sing along. If the mood struck me, and I was feeling particularly frisky, I might get down a little in the privacy of my own home. The problem then comes back to my non dancing background and any attempt at hip movements from this old body usually results in laughter from my wife.

“Tennessee” – Arrested Development
From 3 Years 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of…

I grew up in the 80’s. My musical sensibilities were developed in the early 90’s. I don’t like dance music. Rap and hip hop mean MC Hammer, Young MC, and Vanilla Ice to me. I came of age musically at a time when radio wasn’t dominated by hip-hop acts. This isn’t really to diss the genre of music, I just don’t get it. I see guys I work with, a good 5-10 years younger than me completely engaged with rap artists. I suspect if I had been born a few years later, I too would have at least some existence with this culture. As it is, what I know of it comes from a period of time when it was marginalized as a novelty. Hammer and Vanilla were not real artists, they were mocking the true performers. They were circus performers, acceptable to the mainstream audience at a time when they didn’t know what to do with hardcore artists.

Even so, I think Arrested Development put out some dang good music for the time. “Tennessee” along with “People Everyday” stands up to the best music in my collection. They have just as much in common with what is now termed “Americana” as they do with rap. They threw in fat beats along with a folksy, country twang.

I know I’m no longer hip. My musical universe is so outside the popular or even hip world it would make me sad if I cared. I don’t know where Arrested Development fares amongst the kids today and their Eminems and Tupacs. What I do know is “Tennessee” is a great freaking song, no matter what genre you put it in.

“Fish and Whistle” – John Prine
From Souvenirs

Souvenirs is Prine’s album full of cover songs, except that he’s covering himself. Essentially he wrote a whole bunch of beautiful songs as a young man, but as an older man, he felt he could do better. Sometimes he’s right, other times he sounds pretty much like he did when he was younger.

For “Fish and Whistle” I can’t make any proclamation, for I’ve never heard the original. But I must say this version is a treasure. Prine’s voice has aged gracefully over the years. It is never something you would call beautiful, but now the ruggedness has been toned down by something sounding suspiciously like wisdom. His lyrics have always been beyond his years, and now his voice has caught up to that.

The music here is lilting, catchy, and sunny. Honestly, I have no idea what the lyrics mean. They sound like Prine is making some kind of joke that I just don’t get, or being cynical about religion without being too hateful about it. Either way, it’s fun to sing along even if I don’t know what I’m saying.

“Candle in the Wind (acoustic version)” – Elton John
From Yellow Brick Road

Elton John completely ruined this song for me with his Princess Diana tribute. I was never mesmerized by the Princess in life or death. I didn’t wish her any harm, and she seemed to have done some good in this world, but she lived in a world I just wasn’t particularly interested in. John changing his lyrics to lionize her, however honest and heartfelt, always seemed like a cheap way to make a buck.

This version begins to sway my feelings back. It is an acoustic version with a guitar playing the piano parts. It seems more stripped down, more honest. Like it has torn the exuberant, Liberace Elton away from the honest songwriter.

It is a beautiful, heart-tearing version of a song I’m happy to relive again.

“Conscious Evolution” – Donna the Buffalo
From Live from the American Ballroom

I must say the time I caught this band live here in Bloomington it was a much better show than what I hear from this live album. Maybe it was that I was but ten feet from the band, or maybe it was the pretty girls dancing around me, but that show was so sweeeet, where this disk is a good deal of fun, but nothing mind-blowing.

This song has a good deal of verve to it. They get out there a little bit with a revolution groove that jiggles my innards. There is a curviness to the guitar that completely melts my inner sanctum.

Halfway through it morphs into “Working on a Building” an old spiritual that fits perfectly into their root’s musical background and their own spiritual lyrics.

Editor’s Note: I couldn’t find a Youtube clip of the live version of the song I’m writing about here, so I found a different one.

Bootleg Country: U2 – Dublin, Ireland (08/28/93)

Originally posted on June 12, 2006.

When asked what season I love the most, autumn is the usual reply. What with the cool, crisp air, the turned leaves that resemble Joseph’s magic Technicolor coat. But when spring comes, I always reconsider.

The sun returns from its slumber. Flowers burst forth and the weather warms my toes – for it is barefoot season again. Spring also makes me fall in love all over again. And when I say love, I mean lust. What with the acres of exposed skin, seething flesh, long luxurious legs, and bountiful boobies.

Yeah, boobies. I love spring for the boobies.

My first true love, the one I’ll always remember is a little Irish rock band called U2.

The year was 1987 I was 11 years old, puberty was in the air, and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” was in heavy rotation. What a great, f-ing song. Seriously, it’s one of the greatest rock songs ever. Put me on a desert island and that song, nay, the whole bloody album will be coming with me.

That year, and for many to come, I ensconced myself in U2. I went back and bought their old albums, I practically lived with Wide Awake in America in my car. They went live with Rattle and Hum, I memorized every line from Bono’s mouth. They became electronic and ironic, and I came along for the ride.

They were my band.

Over the years U2 and I have parted ways. The dance beats of Pop didn’t move me. They repented their ways and returned to their roots, but I moved on. I discovered jazz and the jam. But no matter how far apart we’ve grown, I’ll always remember my first true love.

U2
08/28/93
Dublin, Ireland

This was the final stop of the European leg of their Pop Mart tour. What better place to finish up than back home? It is some year and a half after they unveiled the ironic sensibilities of their Zoo TV stage presence. Bono has now become The Fly an enigmatic caricature of a rock star – part Jim Morrison, part Lou Reed – donning leather pants, slicked hair, and wrap-around bubble sunglasses.

This is a far cry from the black-and-white earnestness of Rattle and Hum era U2.

The boys start out breaking one of my rules for a successful concert. That being, don’t play every song from your new album right off the bat. It is seven songs into the show before we get a song that isn’t off of Achtung Baby. Sure, it’s freaking “New Year’s Day” and it stinking rocks, but shouldn’t you treat your home audience to more than just your new songs?

It’s true that Achtung Baby is over a year old by that point, and certainly, most of the Dublin audience would have digested it already, but it still seems a little rude, to me anyway. However, since this is a bootleg, and it’s now 2006 those songs are old and now classic.

The new music is still played with ecstasy. You wouldn’t know that this is the end of a long tour for the band. It is energetic and fantastic.

From everything I had heard about this tour, I suspected the music to take a second seat to all the postulating and cheeky visuals. Maybe there were loads of cheeky visuals that I just can’t see through the music, but the songs don’t suffer for it. There are a few moments when Bono rattles on and flips through the channels on that enormous TV, but mostly he keeps quiet, allowing the songs to say it all.

The band is still clearly clued into its audience. Even with the newer songs you can hear everyone in the audience sing along. They mix in some old classics into the new songs – The Righteous Brothers “Unchained Melody” is perfectly tagged into the end of “One.” The Beatles classic “Help” helps begin “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” and the show ends with a lovely sing-a-long version of Elvis’ “Can’t Help Falling In Love.”

My favorite moment, in fact, is sans band. Bono sings an a capella version of “Help” with the audience singing at the top of their lungs. It is a perfect moment where the audience becomes an intimate member of the production, and where I can’t help but sing along too. It is a testament to the powerful Beatles song, the power of music, and why U2 remains the biggest rock band in the universe.

Another wonderful moment is “Where the Streets Have No Name.” It follows a super version of “Running to Stand Still,” where that song closes, “Streets” opens with a quiet meditative organ. You can feel the audience realizing what they are about to hear with an explosion of cheers just as the guitar erupts and the crowd goes completely bonkers. The song spreads into the cosmos and everything is just alright.

In the last issue of “Bootleg Country” I talked about the ability of the Grateful Dead to change a simple song into something different, something exploratory. U2 is not a psychedelic jam band. The songs here are treated pretty much as they are on their perspective albums. What they create in this live setting is an energy, a connection with the listener that is just as transformative.

This was a great concert from one of the world’s biggest bands in the middle of a transformation that would lead them to something further and grander.