Go to your respective rooms, you rabblerousing Elton John covers!!!

So, this is how it goes sometimes. In the thread for last weekend's Tina Turner post reader Thames brought up Two Rooms, the tribute record to the songwriting team of Elton John and Bernie Taupin, via Tina Turner's excellent cover of "The Bitch Is Back". Which in turn led to us discussing Two Rooms as one of the best various artists tribute albums, with nothing to throw or skip. I realized also that it had probably been years that I last listened to it. 

I discussed Tina's AOR years a bit last weekend, revealing my childhood-memory-related knack for AOR radio. Well, am I covered with Two Rooms or what? Bryan Adams is missing, but otherwise all the usual suspects I would hear on the radio are here: Tina, Phil, Rod, Joe Cocker, Sting, et al. Not a hipster-approved assembly of musicians, for sure, but the star power here is undeniable. Throw in The Who for one of their one-off reunions, the Beach Boys still riding high on the memory of "Kokomo", Kate Bush, plus three recent female sensations. Shinead O'Connor had just broken through the year before with "Nothing Compares To You 2 U", Wilson Phillips had become a success out of nowhere with "Hold On" and "Release Me" both topping the charts, and Oleta Adams had toiled away in semi-obscurity until Tears For Fears found her in a Kansas City nightclub and featured her on 1989's The Seeds Of Love, including her amazing co-lead vocals on top hit "Woman In Chains". 

It's a strictly personal thing, but there are a couple of numbers here that I prefer to John's originals. O'Connor's deeply emotional take on "Sacrifice" completely dusts John's slightly too MOR version. Something about Elton's falsetto 'na-na-na-na's' in "Crocodile Rock" has always deeply grated me to the point where I would skip the song or change the station when it came on, but The Beach Boys cut a great version of it.  Even as extremely diminished as this version of the Boys was, they could still record quality cuts from time to time, and this one, with its retro rock'n'roll feel and doo-wop vocals stylings was an open lay-up that the Boys didn't miss. Thames and I agree on Tina's "The Bitch Is Back" (which, say, Allmusic singled out for criticism) being great and its lyrical content arguably more fitting for Tina's persona, and The Who's version of "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" has only grown in my estimation, as - like the Beach Boys cut - it showed their unmistakeable band sound while also paying honest tribute to the original. 

It might not best the original, but Kate Bush's version of "Rocket Man" is extremely interesting (and was voted 'best cover of all time' by the readers of The Observer). Bush, ever musically adventurous, marries moody synths to a light reggae rhythm, and then later in the song the Celtic instrumentation she started to explore in the late 80s comes in. This version of the song sounds like nothing else. Every song got a little annotation by the artists in the booklet, mostly little love letters that explained their love for Elton or the song in question, and how they first heard it etc. Here's Shinead O'Connor's text in its entirety: "I can't believe no one did 'Candle In The Wind'." Truly, the (in)famous no bullshit/speak your mind attitude of Ms. O'Connor on full display. Back then I didn't get it and found that comment weird, now I find it absolutely brillant. 

As said before, everything on here is good to very good, and nothing is eminently skippable. And yet, and yet, listening to the album in its original configuration your hand might still linger towards the skip-button, because Two Rooms is an unwieldy album. Before ripping it to Mp3s this week I hadn't realized that the album is 79 minutes long, taking full advantage of CD-capacity, while also testing the listening capacity of its audience. If you have been here long enough and read along a bit, you know that I harp on a lot about flow and sequencing and perfect length for comps. Well, guess what, folks, I'll take that ol' hobbyhorse for another tour 'round the stables today. So, I think that any listeners gets kind of tired and worn out by around the 70 minute mark, and its true that with the original Two Rooms, despite George Michael's closing number "Tonight" being one of the highlights here, you were rightly slipping in attention by that point. 

And of course, as I'm prone to, I had some problems with the sequencing. I found Eric Clapton's Dr. John-styled take on "Border Song" to not be a terribly great choice for an opener, Sting's austere "Border Song" came too early in the program etc. etc. You know, the usual OBG gripes.  Oh, and that Sinead O'Connor aside about no one doing "Candle In The Wind"? Well, someone did! Kate Bush cut her version of that song as the b-side to, or technically, a double a-side with "Rocket Man". So it made sense to include that here, even if it is less adventurous than her take on "Rocket Man". What also made sense to include, because it came out in parallel to this compilation, was George Michael's live version of "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me", featuring Elton John himself. The reaction of Wembley Stadium to John appearing as a surprise guest on that duet, introduced by George with the now legendary 'Ladies And Gentlemen, Mr. Elton John' is amazing, a gargantuan crowd pop for John, whose European-wide release of The Very Best Of the year before had brought him back into the spotlight. 

Bringing out his version of "Sun" - recorded as his version of "Tonight" on the album during his Cover To Cover tour - was a savvy move by George. Two Rooms colleague Oleta Adams' gospel-take on the very same song was chosen as the album's lead single and had been out for two months, reminding people of the greatness of the song, then Michael's version climbed to number one on both sides of the Atlantic. And, honestly, it's probably the best version of this song, hands down.  

So, the solution to the above-mentioned issues, with an already long running time now seeing two extra tracks included? Why, treat the whole thng like a vinyl rather than a CD affair. If sequenced into a double vinyl album configuration with a running time of 45 minutes per album/disc, the whole thing becomes a whole lot more digestable. The two albums/discs - or, in the parlance of the comp - two rooms - were sequenced according to my personal taste, obviously, but also for a good flow between slower and quicker numbers. Both have a great rock'n'roll number as openers ("Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)" and "Crocodile Rock"), a moody female-led track right after ("Rocket Man" and "Sacrifice") and so on, both ending with a big George Michael live number. I think this improves the flow considerably, and - if taken in two hearings rather then the extremely long original one - go down better. 

Two Rooms will appeal to you, if you have a heart for veteran rockers'n'poppers and the AOR sound of the late-80s and early-90s, as your host does. If nothing else, these songs will remind you what a writing team John& Taupin could be, as they were supposed to. I'd say that's already more than enough. So leave your hipster cred by the door and dive in... 

Feel The Goo Once More! Get Those Dolls Lined Up! For GOOd Old Days Are Here Again!

Having recently mentioned the Goos over at Jokonky's (and reupped the fabulous original GOOd Old Days, that you should get if you don't have it yet), I remembered that I had never posted the second volume of my sojourn through the Goo Goo Dolls' discography. Time to rectify that. GOOd Old Days Are Here Again is, in many ways, a real 'Greatest Hits Vol. 2', as record companies would throw it out in the olden days. Since all the real big hits were already on Volume 1, Vol. 2 has deep cuts and minor hits, together with the occasional big hit that was already on the first volume, in a live or demo version. So, you get the same thing here, 

This compilation is also a tale in two parts. The (d)evolution of the Goos is clearly on display here. From their grunting punk rock beginnings towards the corporate-disguised-as-alternative rock of the mid- and late-90s to the increasingly AOR/adult contemporary music of the 2000s all the way to now. So, if you prefer the Goos as a kick-ass rock band, you can probably cut off this comp after the first twelve songs or so, if your aversion to, uh, slighly gooey adult contemporary ballads is high, you can probably listen all the way through and find the occasional highlight in the back half of the comp. 

What you will get here, though, with the big hits out of the way which were pretty much all Johnny Rzeznick's, is a bit more of Robbie Takaj. As the original lead vocalist for the first two albums, Takaj was always the lovable caveman sidekick to pretty boy Johnny, with an appropriately grunting and primitive take on things. Where Rzeznick's songs would become slicker and hookier and tailored to mainstream radio, Takaj pretty much stuck with a simple 'pedal to the medal' approach to rock, which nicely contrasted with Rzeznick's style on the two or three numbers he would get on each album. Since the, uh, songwriting of their self-titled debut is, uh, rather undistinguished - to go with the muffled, rudimentary sound of this $750 production - I decided to include their cover of Blue Öyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper"; "James Dean" from follow-up Jed is Rzeznick's first lead vocal and the first acoustic song the Goos ever did - the road to stardom starts here, even if the song itself isn't a precursor, but rather a prolonged set up for a so-so joke. 

And from 1990's Hold Me Up on, it was essentially Rzeznick's show, with "Just The Way You Are" announcing the more professional and slicker sound that would carry the band through the 90s and to millions of record sales. Lots of crunchy guitars and nice hooks here. The 'sneak in some hits' tactic yields acoustic versions of breakthrough hit "Name" and "Slide". There are also some genuine hits I didn't include on GOOd Old Days: "Broadway" (in a live version I prefer to the studio cut) and "Black Balloon", Takaj checks back in with "Amigone" from Dizzy Up The Girl, showing how much slicker even his songs were, and from then, well, we enter the AOR portion of the Goos. 2010's "The Sweetest Lie" brings up some crunchy guitars for a last time, while 2019's "Miracle Pill" from the same album is pure pop, but it's really well-made pop. 

So, ready for round two with the Goos for a kick-ass start in your weekend? Goo for it...

Blue And Gray: Poco's Trip Through A Land Torn Apart...

So, after singing the praises for the Eagles' Desperado, here's the second album in a series of country rock albums depicting life in the U.S. in the 19th Century, we go back to one of the OG's of country rock, who by the time they made this album were anything but. Poco might've been one of the first bands playing country rock, but by the time they brought out Blue And Gray, they were anything but. Hell, they weren't even Poco anymore. After the band went on indefinite hiatus when Tim Schmit left to join the Eagles (with the well-wishes of the band, who all felt they had played out the string with Poco). But Paul Cotton and Rusty Young liked to work with each other and decided to continue as The Cotton-Young band, recruiting a new rhythm section and a bit later on keyboard player Kim Bullard. But ABC Records only wanted to release their record under a known name (I.P. isn't just a key word of the last decade or so!), so Poco was reborn. 

The band's first album, Legend, was an instant hit, the first of Poco's long and storied career, and for the first time the band had hit singles: "Crazy Love" and "Heart Of The Night". A quick follow-up, Under The Gun, stiffed however. After trying in vain to replicate Legend, Poco then did something totally unexpected: devisiong a concept album about the Civil War that tore America apart. Blue And Gray was born. 

Young and Cotton never were more than serviceable lyricists, so don't expect any particular insights or authenticity from the lyrics here, everything is kept very vague, with numerous allusions to trouble and conflict brewing in the near or far distance, but little in the way of specifics. Which, given the pair's limitations is probably for the better. There is, however, a fairly subtle concept here that is worth pointing out: Both alternating songwriters represent an opposing point of view and is playing the role of one of the two belligerents, but with a twist: Rusty Young wasn't a Southerner - born in California and raised in Colorado - but he takes over the perspective of the Gray. Paul Cotton, however, was technically a Southerner, born in Fort Rucker, Alabama, but was raised in Illinois, so he is taking the prespective of the Blue. 

Generally speaking, Cotton's songs hold together the best as a sort of loose travelogue of a Northern soldier lost in war-torn enemy territory, a kind of Cold Mountain fifteen years before the novel. Like Young's Southerner(s?), Cotton's Northern soldier says goodbye to his loved one in "Please Wait For Me", then when we catch up to him in this version of Blue And Gray, he is injured and deep in the land of the enemy, making his way through the bayous of Louisiana in the hopes of catching a northbound ship in "Streets Of Paradise". Later, this soldier encounters a single enemy soldier and they both prepare themselves to shoot out who will survive the confrontation in "Sometimes (We Are All We Got)". And then we're leaving him still hoping to catch that ship up north and hoping to go "Down On The River Again". 

Rusty Young's songs tend - as they usually would - towards the nostalgic and sentimental, with not one but two songs about the romantic farewells to the troops marching of into war. But whereas "Glorybound", the opener of Blue And Gray captures the optimism of the troops, by the time of the title song Young's narrator realizes that it will not all just be fun and glory: "Baby, now something ain't right / clouds of thunder roll into sight". Still, "The Writing On The Wall" seems to have the soldiers as following a higher calling. Young's groovy and slightly spooky"Widowmaker" is one of his best compositions of the period, but seems to come from another album altogether. Generally speaking, they are so vague in their lyrics that half of them could be about something different than the Civil War. 

But, you know, give them points for trying. Poco had realized that they were at somewhat of an impasse: Under The Gun, despite having a good title song, didn't nearly make the numbers that Legend and its hit singles "Crazy Love" and "Heart Of The Night" did. So Poco decided to go for something more ambitious, even if it didn't quite hold together, mostly due to Young's inability to hold up his end of the deal. Cotton's songs are not only the better compositions, they are highlights, because they bring back hints of Poco's classic country rock sound that were completely missing from their last two albums. Young brings out mandolin, banjo and dobro for three of Cotton's four songs, which helps make them the highlights here, particularly "Sometimes (We Are All We Got)", which is as good as anything the real Poco produced from 1968 to 1977. 

There were two issues with the original album: One was a poor flow with haphazard and not particularly successful sequencing. The two rather slowish Young numbers that opened the album made for a not very succesful start. Inserting Cotton's "Please Wait For Me" in between "Glorybound" and "Blu And Gray" worked wonders, then I rejiggered the rest for a better listening experience. The other probelm was that even for a scant ten-track album , the group couldn't come up with enough songs that fit the concept, so Young just put "Here Comes That Girl Again", an insipid ballad on there, that on this improved version of the album quickly gets shown the door. Instead I inserted the only track worth mentioning of Gray And Blue's successor Cowboys And Englishmen, an awful contract-filler album full of mediocre covers that made Poco sound like a bar band on a slowly tuesday night. Besides all the awful covers, Rusty Young at least has the good sense to bring out one original song, the medley of the old-timey "Ashes"  - which alwas was quite repertitive - and the sprightly country instrumental "Feudin'". The latter is now part of this version of Blue And Gray, with its title fitting the theme and, at least in my mind, illustrating the feuds that would pop up in the rural border regions of the war, and now had an 'official' reason/excuse for existing. Interestingly, it won Poco the only Grammy of their career for 'Best Instrumental Performance'. 

So, this OBG version of Blue And Gray is, if nothing else, an improvement on the original, and an interesting, if pretty much totally fogotten, look at a soft rock band trying to get ambitious. I'm not trying to oversell this album as some sort of fabulous forgotten treasure, but it's an album well worth hearing, and arguably the best of the band's extremely checkered 80s releases. Whether you're a history or Civil War buff or not, there's enough good stuff here to follow Poco on their trip into the 1860s...

P.S.: The music for the other two Poco Alternate Albums on this blog have recently been updated, so if you want to go on a Poco listening spree...

Tina Turner - Definitely An Undisputable Rock'n'Roller

I really don't think you'll get any serious argument from anybody that Rita Mae Bullock a.k.a. Tina Turner did her best work artistically when accompanied by husband/producer/abuser Ike. I mean, "River Deep Mountain High" alone should make her a first-ballot hall of famer. And their amazing two-tempos cover of CCR's "Proud Mary"? At least as good as the original. Commercially, though? Man, did her 80s comeback and the ensuing years of reigning on AOR radio belatedly fill in the coffers, not to mention give her some long-deserved respect and reputation. Of course, no one deserved it more than Tina, not only for all the evil shit from Ike she had to put up with, bt also because when she started her solo career in the 70s, she ws basically left for dead. That a decade later she would fill stadiums and reign the charts was...not something a lot of people would have put money on in, say, 1975. 

The title of the compilation I sourced most of the music here from is called Queen Of Rock'n'Roll, but you know what was missing from it? Real, bad ass rock'n'roll! Most of the tracks wade in a very safe AOR mainstream sound that rocks a little bit, but please not too much or too hard to not chase any radio listeners away. And to be fair, Queen Of Rock'n'Roll had another issue. Three discs with 20 songs each is an impressive package, but 60 tracks mostly from Tina's AOR/Adult Contemporary years is...a lot of the same thing which is not the best thing. There is not a lot of music from discs 2 and 3 covering the late 80s, 90s and early 2000s on this comp, and that despite me having a natuarally high resistance to mainstream AOR radio Tina. 

That was my Tina, as she was inescable on the channels my parents listened to in the car, or occasionally at home, when I was young. So yeah, gimme "The Best", gimme the "It Takes Two" duet with fellow AOR hero Rod Stewart, hell, gimme her cover of John Waite's "Missing You", a great AOR treasure in its own right, that I didn't remember her covering. But the ton of mid-tempo, just sort of there AOR/adult contemporary fare was left in the dust, and this badly needed an injection of more rock'n'roll, so I added a bunch of rockers, movers and shakers: "Steel Claw" from Private Dancer which deserves better than being an almost forgotten album track, the driving "Keep Your Hands Off My Baby", the chugging early "Bayou Song"  plus a folk/country rock-ish take on "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You", and "Rock'n'Roll Widow", a Private Dancer era b-side that is just on the right side of the line concerning power ballads.

Now we're talking Queen Of Rock'n'Roll, or rather Undisputed Rock'n'Roller, as the compilationj is now called. Epecially when also highlighting her superb and quite transformative cover of "Whole Lotta Love", one of my favorite covers ever, with a really intriguing funk plus stabbing strings arrangement, as well as new (almost) title song and early barn burner "Root Toot, Undisputable Rock'n'Roller", and mid-80s singalong classic "We Don't Need Another Hero". Throw in her slinky and/or sassy covers of "Let's Stay Together", "Help" (a U.K. only single) and "I Can't Stand The Rain" plus the Bowie torch song "Girls" and you have yourself an attractive package of what Ol' One Buck Guy thinks is some of the best work of Tina's solo career.

Check out these twenty tracks and see if you agree. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Queen Of Rock'n'Roll, an Undisputable Rock'n'Roller...

And The Electric Eighties Just Keep On Comin'

When I posted the alt Trans last sunday, I didn't think I'd follow it up with another Neil Young post, nor that it would align completely with this, our next installment of the granddaddy of 'em all (series here on One Buck Records, that is), All Pearls, No Swine. This volume is not only set in the 80s, but like the slow riders before them, it is a special themed edition of All Pearls, No Swine. In this case: synths, baby, synths! Condisering that the musical directions on my 80s-set APNS volumes seemed to go further into all kinds of directions, I thought I'd group the electro- and synth stuff together in one handy volume. And so this is it. 

A lot of these are again from obscure releases - yet the album also contains a hit, though I didn't realize how big of a hit that was when I compiled this. That track, Freur's "Doot Doot" is also proof that the details of when you consciously hear a song for the first time matter: I was visiting family, in a rented appartment, with nothing on TV worth watching, so I put on satellite radio and said there in the half-dark living room, when suddenly this little synth intro and those little 'doot' 'doot' came swirling around me. I was mesmerized by that song's opening. I realized only later that I already had the song on one of those 80s hits compilations you had to pick up in the old days before finding everything (or almost) on the internet, and for years, but it never registered. It was this very specific listening situation that made me fall in love with Freur's "Doot Doot" and that's why it's here. 

Oh, okay, you guys...I see you got that 80s thing down pat...

There are some other somewhat known names here: The Psychedelic Furs sneak in with the US Remix of "Love My Way" and if you know the origins of your beloved mid-80s AOR bands you might remember that Mr. Mister's Richard Page and Steve George started as a synth-pop outfit called Pages who are represented with "Automatic". You might also remember 'The White Zulu' Johnny Clegg from South Africa, who had a couple of international hits, the biggest of which is probably "Scatterlings Of Africa", also featured on the soundtrack for Rain Man. Here he's climbing "Kilimanjaro" with his first group Juluka, notably the first interracial group out of South Africa. And finally, Johnny Stew strikes again. I already highlighted John Stewart's new wave adventures, but he really throws on the sequencer and dips fully into synth rock with his "Home From The Stars" whose opening sounds like a lost Vangelis track. 

But the rest of the album is, as it should be, filled with virtual unknowns, one-off adventures, private press adventurers or never-was's (as opposed to has been's). Some of this is what some would call outsider art, like Bryce Wemple's DIY synth rock on "Scene 58", Apeiron's "Dancing Spirits" (which was only ever issued on casette tape) or Michael Iceberg with his, uh, idiosyncratic cover of "Here Comes The Sun". There is also a distinct World music aspect here: Canadian synth poppers Strange Advance are back with "She Controls Me", and, from the ranks of the amaeurish and completely unknown, we also have German electropop outfit Caraganda with the weirdly cheery "Living In A Sect". There's French coldwave band Coldreams with the icy "Eyes" and Kiwi band Dragon who were big in Australia with mainstream-friendly pop rock in the late 1970s, but dip more than a toe into synth/new wave rock on 1983's "Rain", also your kick-ass opener du jour, and, as something of a series tradition, we end things with a longer track, the DIY synth ambient piece "Dancing Spirits" by Apoeira. 

We're coldwave, man, so b/w pics and no one looks at the camera, alright...stare dreamily into the distance, guys...

So, there's tons of things to discover here, if you are somewhat willing to let the synth sounds of the 8às in your heart. And why wont you? If Uncle Neil could do it, if ol' Johnny Stew could do it, so can you...

Keep On Rockin' In An Eighties World, Neil!

So, I hadn't really planned to follow up my alternate Trans post with another Neil Young post so soon afterwards, but as these things go. A comment by C in Cali about a fab live version of "Sample And Hold", my own comment discussing "Landing On Water", in short: the little discussions about (mostly) Eighties Neil and his various misadventures led me to check a live bootleg from the mid-80s that I remembered as really good. It's the famous and a thousand times bootlegged 1986 show from the Cow Palace in Daly City that has absolutely outstanding sound quality. One could argue better sound quality than certain records of Uncle Neil with Crazy Horse. This is, however, no coincidence. Two shows just three and two nights before were recorded for a new album, with some tracks heavily tinkered with, that would turn out to be Life in July 1987. So, two conditions were fulfilled: High end recording equipment was used to tape this show for radio braodcast, and the band was well rehearsed and in fine form. 

Beware though that this is just a small sampler, a companion compilation to that Trans album that thus leaves tons of old Neil warhorses on the side - good as they might be - to focus on his Eighties work. It has three Trans numbers: the "Mr. Soul" electro-remake (without vocoder, but otherwise still very much in the Trans vein), plus really excellent takes on "Computer Age" and "Sample And Hold" (which might be the one you have, C!). It then has most of Neil's best stuff from the rock-oriented Geffen albums of the 80s (no country stuff which I might reserve for another comp in the future): "Violent Side", "Mideast Vacation", "Around The World" - "Hippie Dream" is missing, but most of the good stuff is here. I even had space to smuggle in "Too Lonely" which might be better than that on Life.

The same is even more so true of Reactor number "Opera Star". If you want a version of "Opera Star" in your collection, make it this one. On record, the number is completely ridiculous, especially the duel of ho-ho-ho's between Neil and Crazy Horse, sounding like a drunk Christmas munchkin sing-off, or everyone taking the piss and no one giving a fuck. This version, with barely a ho-ho-ho heard, pounds that original studio version into fine dust, then stomps on its remains just for fun. This is, generally speaking, true for all the rock songs on this. They rock much freakin' harder than their studio counterparts. I do miss the swirling synths Neil added to "Around The World", but this version is a barnburner nonetheless. 

If ever the question is asked what Crazy Horse brought to Neil's music, you might as well play that person some of this - they're just crushing it here. A good example: their great take on "Powderfinger", which I smuggled n as the only-non-80s number in here...So, as said, this is just a teaser to remind you of, and collect in the same place, some of the strongest work of what was admittedly a complicated period for Uncle Neil. But there are songs from that time period that have stood the test of time, especially in these extra heavy versions from Neil and Crazy Horse.  

Giddy up y'all. That there Bluegrass Chartbuster show is in town again!

Time for round three of these, with a-many more coming your way. Originally I planned to have, like, three volumes of this, which means that the series would be coming to their end here. But, uh, that excalated quickly, as the saying goes. So now we're in double digits for the Bluegrass Chartbusters and have no end in sight, so I hope some of y'all are clamoring for more cool bluegrass versions of rock and pop (and punk, and country rock, and so on and so forth) songs from about the last half-century or so. Of course, knowing what I know I would have used the best tracks from my beloved Cornbread Red (pictured below) more sparingly, instead of just piling these onto the first volume especially. Oh well, I just have to go with slimmer pickings and more obscure (to me) songs from these guys once we crawl towards those double digit volumes. Incidentally they have only a single song on this volume, and it's a holdover from the Green Day comp I did a couple of months ago.

That is so because Volume Three became the most reworked of all the episodes here, as I started to really branch out of the safety of the Pickin' On series on later volumes, and then reworked the earlier volumes for more balance: Instead of only having the Pickin On housebands like Cornbread Red, Iron Horse, The Sidekicks and - increasingly - Brad Davis with band on the first handful of volumes and half a dozen other cool acts in later ones I switched and changed and juggled and replaced - and now Volume Three has somehow become the most diverse of all editions in this series - boasting no less that 15 different bands and artists for its twenty tracks! Besides repeat offenders quality contributors like the aforementioned bands we got a number of cool bands that show up here for the first time.

Two bands I recently discovered are the now sadly defunct The Wooks (who are only not called The Wookies for copyright reasons), who were mainly doing original songs, and really good ones, but also recorded the occasional cover, with their fab take on Bruce's "Atlantic City", that is slightly reminiscent of The Band's awesome cajun-flavored almost-bluegrass version. Another great recent discovery are The Grass Cats, also szdly defunct, who had a great twenty-year run, mainly as a local attraction in their home state of North Carolina. They left behind a couple of good albums and some great covers, the first one of which, a really sweet take on REO Speedwagon's "Take It On The Run" graces this volume. Happily the last of my recent discoveries, Town Mountain are still active, they clock in here with their take on alt country classic "Windfall". 

But we'll see more of these bands in the future, which isn't the same for the one-and-done that is Thunder & Rain's, uh, sweet take on "Sweet Child O' Mine". That band mainly does original songs, though they drew a lot of eyeballs on Youtube with this cover a couple of years ago. This is the original live take, not the studio version they put on an album later - this one sounds more natural and spontaneuous. 

By the way, I kind of like how the above cover recalls the mostly generic covers that the Pickin' On Series used for a decade or so before Iron Horse's Metallica album changed how they made, presented and mareketed albums. This looks like something you could take out od a rotating CD rack display in any truck stop in Rednecksville, Anywhere, U.S.A.! And that's on purpose! But it's a hundred times more awesome of course!

Artists covered include CCR, Prince, Pearl Jam, A-Ha, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Eagles/J.D. Souther, The Band, Black Sabbath, Oasis, The Rolling Stones and The Who. I also have to mention opener "Don't Stop Believin'", one of the best numbers of the entire series with some extraordinary mandolin and fiddle work by Pine Mountain Railroad that feel totally at home in the song and turn in from a somewhat hackneyed AOR song into a marvelous bluegrass number.

Anyway, Bluegrass Chartbusters Vol. 3 keeps up the quality of the first two albums, and the tons of new artists on here give the album a real freshness, due to the slightly different varying approaches of covering famous songs in a bluegrass style. Good stuff all around, one again. Get the bluegrass jukebox goin' once more...