The Vanishing: How Barbara Keith Dropped A Classic Album And Then Simply...Dropped Out

Time to check back in with one of the venerated perfomers on our beloved All Pearls No Swine series. Barbara Keith wasn't as obscure a name as some of the others featured on the very first APNs, but she made herself obscure by simply vanishing at the tie he brought out the album that could and should have been her big breakthrough. Keith had played the folk clubs of Greenwich village, before playing with the folk-rock combo Kangaroo, led by future Orleans-leader John Hall, who published an album in 1968. She then recorded her self-titled debut for Verve Forecast, which had some decent numbers on it, though nothing exceptionally striking. Allmusic's Richie Unterberger is right, when he says that it is " respectable, slightly above-average singer/songwriter musicn with a strong country-rock flacor", the latter of which of course pleasing the One Buck Guy. 

But the real stunner came, when three years later she recorded and released another self-titled album, this time on Reprise. As one would imagine from a Warner Brothers/Reprise recording, the cream of players showed up to help out, including Lowell George (whose slide elevates Keith's classic "Detroit Or Buffalo"), Lee Sklar, as well as Spooner Oldham and Stinky Pete Kleinow on pedal steel. 

"All Along The Watchtower" is a truly intriguing take on Dylan's classic, including some electronic effects that imitate the growling cat. The paranoid, apocalyptic atmosphere of the song really comes through and if Keith's version has a minor fault, it's that it fades out too quickly, just as the electric guitars start to get going. "The Bramble And The Rose" is a superior ballad,as is "Rainy Nights Are All The Same", and I've already talked about what a great song "Detroit Or Buffalo" is, as it was done by both One Buck Records-featured Bruce Stephens and Neal Casal. The gospel-inspired "Burn The Midnight Oil No More" or the anthemic "Free The People", almost immediately covered by Delaney & Bonnie - Barabar Keith is taking the 'all killer, no filler' concept to heart here.

Despite the quality of the album - ten tracks, some classics, none less than very good - there was one major critic of the album - Barbara Keith herself. "It didn't feel like me yet, and so we gave back the album advance money and quit". Keith had just married Keith Tibbles, the songwriting partner of the album's producer Larry Marks, and - with the album somehow not matching the sound she imagined for herself, Keith up and went and quit the music business entirely, to start a family with Tibbles. With Keith dropping out, Reprise did little to no promotion for the album and it was almost immediately withdrawn, only adding to the album's myth. For years and years there were no signs of Keith, then 25 years later she resurfaced with the family band The Stone Coyotes, consisting of Tibbles and her stepson, as a local attraction in the Springfield, Massachussets area. But that's another story. 

Now, I don't know what could have probably been Keith's problem with the album, as everything here is top-notch: Keith's songwriting, with only the Dylan number coming from the outside, the production, the playing. This is nothing less than fantastic. Then again, so was The La's' only album (the curse of the self-titled albums?), and Lee Mavers couldn't hear it, and also dropped out. Whaddayaknow, right?! Either way, listen to this, and tell me I'm wrong. 

In addition to the classic 1972 eponymous (there! I said it!) album you'll get a whooping twelve bonus tracks, eleven tracks from the debut album and its singles, as well as a modern remix of "All Along The Watchtower". I didn't include the two Kangaroo tracks, as their acid rock fuzz guitar intermezzos, even within Keith's folk-rockn don't really match with the rest of the music here, though fans of that type of music can probably worse than checking it out. But befor these extracurricular studies, check out Barbara Keith and wonder with me how she could possibly quit the music business with that album in the bag. 

The More All Pearls No Swine Change...

 ...the more they stay the same, obviously. Taking a second visit into the 90s yields one of those APNS volumes that is low on truly rare and/or odd stuff. Then again, in the golden age of the CD, a concept like private press records could not be more out of style. Instead All Pearls No Swine Vol. 34 presents a bunch of underappreciated and too little known recordings, with the occasional indie weirdo thrown in. 

With the 90s really being the birthplace of Alt Country/No Depression, this volume has a number of entries in that particular subgenre, starting with the kicking-ass-est of kicking ass openers, Uncle Tupelo's "Gun". Of all of their heavier, punk-inspired songs this is by far my favorite, with a chorus I will always sing/shout along with: "Just don't tell me which way I oughta run / or what good I could do anyone / 'cause my heart it was a gun / it's unloaded now, so don't bother". From there we dip right into 90's slow-core with Red House Painters' amazing cover of Kiss' "Shock Me", then check in with a pop/new wave hero (and ex-punk-ish) Midge Ure with the anthemic "I See Hope In The Morning Light" from 1991's Pure, which I fished out of a bargain bin for a buck (where'd ya think my name came from?) without particularly high expectations, but which really is an underappreciated, extremely well done pop album, that just had the misfortune to come out when that kind of music was just starting to feel a bit passé, what with grunge and alternative rock starting to push the old-fashioned pop establishment towards the door. 

Speaking of the establishment: There's a ton ofrejuvenated  veterans showing up on this volume: After his, uh, not unanimously loved comeback as a hair metal hero in the late 8s, the early 90s was a bit of a more low-key time for Mr. Vincent Furnier, which means that a great little song like "Lost In America" might have slipped through the cracks, in which he hilariously talks of the trials and tribulations of a disaffected young guy. The lyrics are too long to quote, but I love his deadpan delivery towards the end, when he reiterates that he's looking for a girl with a gun and a job, then adds "and a house...with cable". Tom Petty shows up with the home recorded demo of "Wildflowers", while the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band deliver one of their best tunes of this relative down period wth "Angel". Other Americna vets in play: The Flying Burrito Bros. Mark 112 or so covering Son Volt's classic "Windfall", while ex-Byrd John York shows up again with the lovely "Whose Door".

A loose Americana affiliation can also be given to the two rarities: Tom Kell's "The Gun", and Ed & Pat Gibson's "Ode To Billie-Joe Tucker", both awesome. Enough has been said on these pages on the greatness of Neal Casal, checking in with "Day In The Sun" from his classic debut album, while Gillian Welch's & David Rawlings' fabulous"Birds Of A Feather" was demoed, but didn't make it onto the former's debut album. Which is a shame because it's country harmonising heaven, as one would expect, and livelier than a lot of stuff that made it onto Revival. And finally there's Alt Country mainstays The Jayhawks, here in it's Mark Olson-lesslater iteration, with the excellent "The Man Who Loved Life" from the underrated Sound Of Lies.

It's not all Americana or Alt Country, though: Great popmoments from Icehouse, Jackie Leven and the ever-reliable Aztec Camera. A pop classic of another kind is "Velvet", made famous by A-Ha, but here in its original form by Pal Waaktaar's band Savoy (named after his wife and co-vocalist, ahhhh, cute). Waaktaar always dreamed of making moody guitar-based rock, and arguably did it as well as possible on this track. Blur team up with their French heroine Françoise Hardy (immortalized with a fab comp on these pages) and the Bhundu Boys take us away into the orient, and out of All Pearls, No Swine Vol. 34, with their "Foolish Harp".

An eclectic program with ton of good stuff to discover. Same as it ever was. 

There's Bob Dylan's (Hired) Guns Across The River, Tryin' To Pound You...

The Billy The Kid Sessions outtakes have been around for the better part of forever, but they always were a frustrating listen: Reflecting the shambolic nature of the sessions itself, there's tons of false starts, both musically and vocally, as well as talking to the engineers in the sound booth, people laughing and caughing through the music, and lots and lots of dead space. I compiled a version of these many years ago, notably before I discovered Audacity, and it remained a frustrating listen, despite the many fun, even slightly revelatory moments coming from the sessions, as it was hard to - you know - concentrate on the music in the middle of all the detritus. So, finally I got down to do something about it: The music of Dylan's Billy The Kid Sessions, and only the music. No bullshit. No talking until strictly necessary. No time wasted. Music, all I hear is music..

As said above, the sessions from whence this music came were aything but sharp or concentrated. Dylan - already in a wtriting drought forthe better part of two years - had ambled down to Mexico to also play in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garret & Billy The Kid, in a performance that didn't make him out to be a future star of the silver  screen. His mostly silent role as henchman Alias is mostly (in)famous for Dylan's big scene being the one in which his character reads labels of canned food. Somebody get that man an Academy Award! Asap! Tasked with producing a soundtrack, there was a whole lot of aimless jamming, a few unsuccesful stabs at songs such as "Goodbye Holly", "Sweet Amarillo" (later sung on Dylan's Rolling Thunder tour in a more finished form by Cindy Bullens) or "Rock Me Mama" (outfitted with new lyrics and finished by Old Crow Medicine Show in 2003). 

The soundtrack that finally emerged from these sessions was decidedly a minor work that showed Dylan's somewhat mitigated concentration, as well as his continued inability to come up with tunes. He only completed two real songs - the classic "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" and "Billy", a ballad about the title character present in three different versions, arguably to take up space on the album. The rest were instrumental score pieces, even though, well, if you hire Dylan, you don't really hire him for a score. Here's the leading lyricist of his generation, stayiong relatively speechless, not to mention that his compositions are missing the dynamic of a trained score composer. So Dylan's Pat Garret & Billy The Kid wasn't a particularly satisfying listen, but the whole thing was treated as a minor side project anyway, with Dylan rebounding with Planet Waves six months later. 

All of these factors make the music on the Billy The Kid Sessions both fascinating and frustrating. You wonder what would have happened to the aforementioned song fragments and abandoned songs had Dylan concentrated on finishing them. There are a ton of moments - some admittedly fleeting - in this bootleg, where the music perks up and risks to become more interesting than what ended up on the album,  but just as often suddenly ends, as the music sputters out or some other incident stops the take. This stop-and-go pattern was undoubtedly one of the biggest frustration with listening to this set, and so the idea to streamline the music was born. Historical the bootleg might be, where you hear Dylan mucking around in the studio, but it was simply an awful way to listen to the music. 

Now that only the music was left, I was still left with a dilemma of sorts: Does all of this stuff deserve to be heard? How much wordless (and, let's be fair here, sometimes tune-less) vocalizing from the Bobster is too much? Is the often repetitive nature of the tunes endearing or annoying? I am genuinely of two minds about what's better: a slightly repetitive 55 minute version that gathers pretty much all of the worthwhile music from the sessions, or a more streamlined, 'could have come out on vinyl' 46 minute edition. So, I'll do something Solomon-ian that's a first for this here blog: I'll leave you the choice.

If you are a semi-casual listener (because let's face it, if you are here and intersted in outtakes from an obscure Bob Dylan soundtrack, you might not  be a casual listener) the vinyl version of this should suffice nicely, if you want to dig even deeper inton the scraps, you can go for the CD edition. The biggest differences in the set list are the loss of several "Billy" variations, including "Funky Billy" - the third version of "Billy" on this album, where they try out the song with a markedly funkier guitar riff, that was both interesting as well as slightly incongruous -  and a number of reprises in the shortened vinyl edition. 

No matter which edition you choose (choose your own adventure here at OBG's!), there's some fine music to be found in the midst of the murk, and I am happy to present you these moments in what I think is easily the best way to listen to this music. So take it away with Billy The Kid Sessions, and a still searching Dylan wandering the wilderness, down some interesting dusty backroads...

The Full Monty...ah...Whoops, No, I Mean The Full Donnie...

The problem with starting, like, half a dozen or so loose series of themed albums is that it's easy to forget them and then, only a couple of months later say, 'oh, I wanted to post a follow-up to that'. When I posted my rejiggered version of the Dick Tracy soundtrack back in *checks archives* July I promised a series of reworked (and thus hopefully)improved soundtracks, then promptly forgot about posting a second album for a cool six months. But here it is, and it is a doozy, folks. A great score and some, uh, interesting pop music cobined to give you the whole Donnie Darko experience. 

Speaking of interesting. That is probably the word that comes easily to mind when thinking about Richard Kelly's debut film. Weird, fascinating, overwrought, (over)ambitious - lots of other adjectives come to mind. Truth is, though, when that movie came out in 2001, there was nothing like it. People will of course remember the dark, winding, weird and finally relatively impenetrale story of doomed teen Donnie Darko's adventures including a pedophile self-help guru, a scary-ass 6-foot+ rabbit (well, a scary-ass six foot+ dude in a rabbit suit), wanton destruction and arson, a plane crash, time travel and, uh, the end of the world. Donnie Darko came out as part of a series of mindfuck films around the millenium, none of course bigger or mindfuck-ier than Fight Club. Where is my mind? 

Now, it's been a good long while since I last saw Donnie Darko - at least twenty years ago. And I wonder whether it'll hold up, as so many of his mindfuck movie brethren fail to, once you know their story secrets. But I suspect it might, even if the crazy-ass story becomes less important than the look and feel of the film. Donnie Darko had a number of intriguing surface features: the moody cinematography courtesy of veteran Steven Poster, the acting by a young Jake Gyllenhaal in the title role, joined by produceer Drew Barrymore and Patrick Swayze playing against type. And it has a distinctive setting - the fall of 1988; with Michael Dukakis' disastrous bid to beat Bush the Elder being the background for the film's crazier adventures. And sometimes these surface features make all the difference. That's why a film like The Sixth Sense still holds up even if you know the twist - it's just so well designed and shot - back when Shyamalan wasn't synonymous with charlatan. Or why The Usual Suspects still works, even if you know who the hell Keyser Soze is - the fun-as-hell actors and surehanded direction make the film worh a revisit either way. 

But maybe the most stunning was the use of music: Michael Andrews' beautiful, or suspenseful (mostly) piano miniatures alternating with a number of 80s pop and alternative rock? I remember how the film immediately hooked me when Echo And The Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon" played over the opening of Donnie riding his bike. Both the score and the soundtrack album got released, but they missed out on what made the music of the movie special: It was the mix of Andrews' score intermingled with these 80s tunes. So this OBG-reworked soundtrack of Donnie Darko tries to do right by this intoxicating mix of the classical and the classics from yesteryear by mixing them up in the chronological order in which they appeared in the film (with one major excdption). As such, you get a sort of mind's eye version of the film, spurred on by the music, with most of it being simply fabulous. Maybe not, you know, Duran Duran's "Notorious", but it was part of Donnie Darko and is largely compensated for by the presence of The Church, Joy Division and 'Til Tuesday.

So, here you get the music the way it was in the movie, and the way it was supposed to be heard: Andrews' sometimes unsettling, sometimes sweepingly beautiful score rubbing shoulders with the 80s tunes that worked so well and felt so fresh in the early 2000s. Now, almost a quarter century later, too many films have gone to that well too many times, but back then Donnie Darko was one of the first - and best - to do it.  ow, about that big exception: The soundtrack of Donnie Darko actually spawned a hit single - the slowed down, elegiac version of Tears For Fears' "Mad World" as sung by Gary Jules. I seem to remember that a couple of weeks ago someone commenting over at Jokonky's called that version the biggest travesty or some such thing, but I couldn't disagree more. In Tears For Fears almost cheerful synth version the downbeat lyrics bounced off the beat in a rather incongruous way. In Michael Andrews' and Gary Jules' version the song sounds like its sentiments. Whether that makes it more or less attractive, I'll leave up to you. Not wanting to wait until the very end to listen to the song, I frontloaded it, then put the alternative version at its natural place towards the very end.

So, enjoy this improbable but intoxicating mix - as improbable and intoxicating as the film itself. One of these days I have to get back to revisit Donnie Darko, but in the meantime we can all revisit its splendid soundscapes...

PS. The Michel Gondry-directed video to "Mad World" is definitely worth a rewatch if you haven't seen it in 24 years...

This Just In: All Pearls, No Swine - Megapack 3 *updated link*

 

Well, well, well...now that we are in the Thirties of One Buck Records' flagship series, and recently a new visitor to these realms asked for a reup of the previous two, here's All Pearls, No Swine Megapack 3, including Volumes 21-30, in case anybody has missed these and wants to check these out. Which means that now, all thirty volumes of APNS are online and available. 

I thought of this because I forgot to set a link to the first adventures of Waylon & Willie in the review to the sequel, which is now set as well. So there. New music coming up soon, as usual. 

Edit: When posting this I was simultaneously setting the link for Waylon & Willie mentioned, and there was a snafu when copying & pasting links, as a visitor pointed out. This error has now been corrected and you will now find the correct link leading to APNS 21-30.

The Outlaws Ride Again...And This Time They Brought Some Friends...

Sequel time! My first compilation of Waylon & Willie, done years ago for my own personal listening pleasure, was an unexpected success, with a bunch of you appreciating some old school Outlaw country, vinyl crackles and all be damned. No such thing here for round two with our favorite outlaws, everything here has been digitally sourced. And, to make sure the Outlaw party keeps rockin', we have invited some ol' friends along for the ride. That includes original outlaws Tompall Glaser and of course Waylon's wife Jessi Coulter (who had a cameo appearance on The Outlaws Ride!). Both were originally featured on the 1976 Wanted: The Outlaws album, but I didn't carry their songs over to keep it strictly W & W on that first volume. Both get their due here, showing up with solo showcases. 

Another friend that can very loosely be lumped in with the Outlaws is Merle Haggard, whose take on a cowboy ballad with Townes Van Zandt's "Pancho and Lefty" got him and Willie a charttopper in 1982. But the real joker in the pack is an outlaws who wasn't always, or even most of the time, country: why, it's Uncle Neil himself! Actually, the idea for this sequel sprang, surprisingly, not from listening to the W's, but from me immersing myself in some mid-80s Neil while working on the automated Trans and its live companion. While listening to the cheapo Geffen years compilation Mystery Train I stumbled onto "Bound For Glory", Neil's duet with Waylon Jennings from Old Ways, and I was struck by how much it sounds like a classic Outlaws duet from the 70s, except with Neil's voice in place of Willie's. Which in turn brought me to check into the possibility of letting those outlaws ride again. 

And ride again they do. In addition to the aforementioned tracks and artists, I collected the most outlaw-ish tracks from Waylon & Willie, starting with "Write Your Own Songs", Willie's skewering of conservative-minded record execs, sung as a duet with Waylon. Two other times do the W's sing together, including on Steve Earle's outlaw anthem "Nowhere Road". Obviously we can't go with some trademark Waylon outlaw anthems: "Ladies Love Outlaws", "Slow Movin' Outlaws", "I'm a Ramblin' Man", his version of a different type of outlaw classic, "Midnight Rider". and his theme song for The Dukes Of Hazzard which is of course the first Waylon Jennings I ever heard. My favorite just might be "Too Dumb For New York City" with the protagonist's realization that he likes the midwest best cause he is "too dumb for New York City and too ugly for L.A.".

Ol' Willie recalls the first volume with the original Waylon-less version of "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" and a bluegrass take on "Good Hearteed Woman" that Willie rcorded at the sprightly age of 90, while otherwise showing his gift for balladry with songs like "So You Think You're A Cowboy" or "Hands Of Time". 

The Outlaws Ride Again! is, I'd say, as good a listen as The Outlaws Ride!, even if (or because?) it's taken from a much wider selection of albums. Tons of great Outlaw Country, just like you'n'me'n'everyone else  likes. So, let those outlaws ride once more, always remembering the old proverb. Where there's a Will(ie), there's a Way(lon). 

Let the sunshine...let the sunshine...shine over some Alabama ridges and creeks...again...

Okay, okay, if you have been here for a long time, you realize that this album is a bit of a 'the emperor's new clothes' proposition, essentially a repackaging of an album I posted back in February 2024. But I think quite a number of you weren't there for it, and that album passed a lot of folks by, and it really shouldn't. A couple of days ago the album came on in the car, and I once again marveled at how splendid this album is. You can read up more about it in its original write-up, but I'll just quickly quote myself, because I still like what I wrote back then. Here's OBG from about 21 months ago. 

Songs like "Montgomery Town", "Ridge Song" and "Madison" sound like old friends, and once you've heard them you'll never want to let them leave. Well, I don't. Not to mention that in between these and Steve Young's "Seven Bridges Road", Madison County starts to sound like the most beautiful place on earth. Law at times has a perfectly 70s cosmic cowboy thing going, getting metaphysical on tracks like "Tomorrow's Always Today" or "Shine Sunshine". Or, you know, maybe good ol' George was just a heavy stoner, after all he did name his label Bongwater Records. 

He is backed on the album by jazz-prog group Backwater, which includes producer Tom Nist. This might also explain the rich instrumentation, including flugelhorn, clavinet and electric organ. That is probably also one of the secrets to the beauty of this album: The warmth and richness of its sound, certainly unusual for a self-released, private press record. 

George Law really does sound like the best parts of your favorite 70s music, or at least, well, mine. "Martha's Song" sounds like Jackson Browne wrote and sings it, while on beautiful album closer "Shine Sunshine" he sounds a little like Jimmy Spheeris. Even the least memorable track on this album (my vote: "Clouded Mind") is never less than beautifully played and sung. But really, there are no losers here. All killer, no filler, as they like to say, and all that in half an hour. Short and sweet.

Listen to this, it'll be the best half hour you can spend on music, or almost. 

And it still is. And yet, there was one area of improvement. I already clowned on Law and his goofy-ass mug that adorns the cover in the original write-up, but this album which -  as said - sounds amazing for a private release needs some better cover art. Something which represents the sound and feel of the album within. After having spent a long time perusing pictures of Yellow Leaf Creek, I finally opted for a picture of some Alabama sunshine over a mountain ridge that recalls both "Ridge Song" and the fabulous "Shine Sunshine", which is the newly minted title song. 

If you already have this, I hope you love it already and just wonder whether you should upgrade the cover art. and if you don't have it, then get this immediately. It's a truly wonderful little record, and during these dark, and at least in these parts, rainy winter days will bring a bit of sunshine your way...