Allez, Enfants De La Patrie De Tous Des Perles Et Aucun Cochon!

Bonjour chers amis de la France, pays des mangeurs des grénouilles et d'escargots et des fromage un moitié pouris...it is the national holiday here in France and this morning followed with a quarter eye the big-ass military parade through parisian Boulevards that the wife and kids watched on TV. The real national celebration will of course hopefully happen tonight, when the French national team beats Spain in the Football World Cup semifinal. I'm not the biggest fan of the squad, though family loyalty means I have to be rooting pour les bleus, but I certainly don't want to see the sneaky Spaniards squeek into the finals. I have yet to be impressed by that squad, other than the individual brillance of Lamine Yamal, who is as good as advertised, and see them underwhelmingly make round after round...the worst of course would be to have Spain meet Argentina, who have also squeeked through in even less impressive ways. They have basically played every game a little worse than the preceding one, yet somehow are two games away for the title. I might even have to swallow my usual discontent for the Brits - more aimed at their asshole fans than the team itself, they are the absolute dirt worst - and root for those guys to go to the title match. 

Wait a minute, you say, did I go to the right place? Since when has One Buck Records turned into a sports blog. It hasn't, of course, but I feel like chatting about this and that, because, well, this newest installment of All Pearl, No Swine has me with little to say. after having done forty of these suckers, you run out of useful things to say -  you know what these are and how they work. I could annotate some of the artists, but that would be relatively random, and if one of these songs makes you want to investigate the guilty party, you can hop on Google or Discogs and find out more for yourself. So I'll just talk a bit about why I compiled this volume as I did and then I'll be out of your hair and, uh, let the music do the talking...

You will find that there's little of the usual folk and country rock on this album - since I was compiling in the moment, I was in the mood for something a little funky, even in its mid-tempo songs, so this is a volume of All Pearls, No Swine that moves a lot more than some of its mellower siblings. For variety purposes we do get a belated return appearance of fey folkie James McCarthy - it's ok, James, no need to declare that you are "Born A Loser" - and of soft acoutic duo Joe And Bing (cf. the two sensitive gentelemen above). And since Bonnie Tyler just died a couple of days ago I thought it would be neat to have something from her on here as well, so I put "Hey Love (It's A Feeling)" on here. 

So, what else is going on around here? A bunch of midtempo groovers from folks like Redeye, Shawn Harris, Riverson, Carmen, and others. There's also a bit of a psychedelic bent to some of the songs here, whether ir's Dory Previn's ballad "The Game", Creme Soda's "Tonight" or Major Arcana's "Wsteren Wind". And did I mention crunchy guitars? Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have crunchy guitars. Power-poppers Bram Tchaikowski set the tone with the opener "Lullaby On Broadway", we get the punk-ish "You're The Disease" from The Outcasts, Luke & The Apostles' gospel-ish "You Make Me High" gets high on electric guitars, and finally Kiwi prog rockers Ragnarok - having previously been compiled here on One Buck Records, and pictured below - show their roots as a bar band playing covers by bringing out a super-heavy version of Led Zep's "Whole Lotta Love" that brings things to an end in suitably thunderous fashion.

So, twenty underappreciated quality tracks from the 70s. You know what to do. 

 

The Return Of The Ozarker

 

When last we saw Israel Nash - and that was a while ago - he was wearing unkempt hair and a long cowboy poncho, having seemingly stepped right out of Laurel Canyon in the early 1970s. The music he brought with him was also of that exact time and place - Israel Nash's Rain Plans sounded like a long-lost Neil Young record, which of course meant that together with my reworked Harvest of Uncle Neil Rain Plans became the most popular item on this blog, and - if the three popular items on the bottom of the front page tell true - still is, at least in terms of page views. Rightfully so, 'cause it's a great album, but Israel Nash is not one to sit still and dwell in what's done. His earlier album Barn Doors And Concrete Floors - whivh I picked up after Rain Plans - sounds a lot more of its time, reminding you of Son Volt and the whole No Depression scene of the 90s that it was influenced by. 

But Ozarker is something else entirely, once again. Eagle-eyed and even half-blind visitors have seen that Israel Nash's return is tagged with the Born In The USA Appreciation Month tag, and there's a reason for that. Namely, that Ozarker sounds not much like Rain Plans, but it does have distant echo of - you guessed it - Bruce's mega album of the 80s. Ozarker, despite the gaudy album cover which makes you think that Nash has gone full glam, is his version of a heartland record, and, notably, a heartland record recorded in the mid-80s. You can think John Mellencamp or maybe Tom Petty, but good ol' Bruce should definitely cross your mind when you listen to this. It definitely crossed Nash's when he recorded this. 

I have a theory concerning musicians of roughly my generation and slightly older. They all listened to bits and bops - if not the entire thing, of Born In The USA when they were kids, mainly because that record with its seven top ten hits was so inescapble at the time. After, when these boys grew into rock'n'rollers and and country rockers and such, they left all embarrasing memories of ever having liked "Born In The USA" or danced around to "Dancing In The Dark" behind, and focused on their more srious endeavors. But hidden deep in the lizard part of their brain is an abiding love for Born In The USA, and even its - shall we say divisive - audioscape. And that love will out, sooner or later. 

Ozarker is, as the title indicates, a return to the roots. Israel Nash spent most of his life in Texas, but was born in Aurora, Missouri, and spent his childhood there. The album is, in many ways, a reflection on his growing up, the family and its roots - the title song chronicles the love story of his grandparents - and, obviously, the music that he listened to when he grew up. And if you grew up in Missouri in the early 80s, you definitely heard some heartland rock. Gripka has mentioned that he listened to two albums in the run-up to Ozarker, Tom Petty's Damn The Torpedoes and, yup, Bruce's Born In The USA. Nash even writes his own, updated  version of "Born In The USA", chronicling the return of veteran's in "Lost In America". The jungles of Vietnam have been replaced by Middle East deserts, but the sentiment of being, well, lost and sold out, and full of regrets, are the same: "It was God and country, cash in hand / for a one-way ticket off to them far east blowing desert sands / I won't forgive and I can't forget / All that I saw an those thigs that I did". Another long-gone daddy in the U.S.A, now... 

Listen to opener "Can't Stop": Once you get past the moody, synth-backed opening and the chorus kicks in, you'd think this is a Tom Petty outtake. As in, a really good Tom Petty outtake. "Roman Candle" fleetingly makes youthink of another heartland rocker, good ol' Bob Seger. But let's be very clear: These aren't Ryan Adams-style pastiches of things he likes, these are Nash's songs cast in the shadow of those heratland rockers you would hear in a small town in the Ozarks in the early and mid-80s. There's even some 'Sha-La-la's' on the title song that seem to be imported directly from Bruce's record, and "Pieces" sound like it could have been written as such by the man himself. Considering the records that inspired this, Ozarker's sound is slightly synthetic and huge, as it should be. You go mid-80s heartland rock, go fuckin' hard and really freakin' big. 

Ozarker is a fantastic album, if you like Petty, if you like Springsteen, or if you just like damn good rock music with an honest country heart. A concise ten track, 45 minute set of wonderful country-tinged heartland rock, that shows again why Mr. Nash is an underrated American treasure. 

My Bonnie Is Over The Ocean...

 ...well, so to speak. You know, that big-ass dark unknowable ocean that we all have to cross someday. Well, today was Bonnie's day. Gloria Gaynor a.k.a. Bonnie Tyler died yesterday. I knew she had been sick, and had just come out of a medially induced coma last week or so, so I figured she was doing a little better, but, uh, nope...another one of the old crew gone. And Bonnie Tyler was definitely someone I heard a ton on the radio when I was young. By that time, she was already - like her sister in roaring vocals, Tina Turner - in her MOR/AOR phase, which made her a perfect fit for my parents' preferred radio station, fitting in neatly amongst your Elton John and Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams. Her biggest smash, "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" was still played all over the radio, as were the old classics "It's A Heartache" and "Lost In France" and her frecent work  also got some air waves. 

Now, unlike for Tina - for whose comp I did serve up a number of MOR/AOR classics - I had compiled a pretty neat compilation of Tyler's early years, before the frivolous hairspray and equally frivolous production took over. There's no shame in liking that Bonnie Tyler - and I really do - but her early, grittier, earthier work deserves another look from a lot of people put off by the puffy hair, the cocaine-addled videos and the really mainstreamy production of the 80s. 

That's why you should check out Really Cool Antiques, if you didn't at the time. 20 early tracks before folks like Jim Steinman and *shudder* Dieter Bohlen got their hands on her. The two early classics, plus gritty takes on classics like "Living In The City", there's lots of stuff to like in here and remember our sweet Bonnie over the ocean... 

R.I.P. Gaynor "Bonnie Tyler" Hopkins

1961 - 2026

I Feel Like Ol' Michael Corleone And Here's Why...

 

"Just when I thought I was out - they pull me back in". 

Yup. I do feel like Michael Corleone being dragged back into the mafia life. Except here the Cosa Nostra is them Bluegrass Chartbusters. I mentioned in my write-ups that this series is in constant revision. I also said that with this ever-expanding series I was done setting somewhat artificial limits, but admit that secretly, I did. I thought I'd wrap up the series in 25 volumes, but had too much overflow at about 27 voumes and then said to myself 'there's no way we're gonna go beyond 30'. Thirty seemed like a total resonable number to go with, I figures if I come across three or four stragglers, I'll swap them in for a couple of numbers on the last volumes et voilà, my work is done. 

And then reader Kyra Dean pointed out in a comment on the last volume of the Bluegrass Chartbusters that two all-female bluegrass bands, The Fly Birds and Della mae, would possibly make fine additions to this series. Damn you Kyra ! Thank you Kyra! These are indeed excellent bands and they also have some very sweet cover versions, especially The Fly Birds. So both bands will obviously become regular contributors to this series, starting with their lovely cover of James Taylor's lovely "Sweet Baby James". 

But, of course there is not only enough overflow tracks now to go past thirty, this discovery brought out the hunter and gatherer in me once more. I don't know what it is especially about this series, but I'm like a freakin' shark having smelt a tinsel of blood in the water, now scoring the internet and the Youtube once more for cool bluegrass cover of popular rock and pop tunes. Happily I have found another batch of songs and bands /artists I missed the first time around, but of course this means that I have to rework the next, oh, twenty volumes of this series. Just when I thought I was out...

The tons of volues still to come also explains the relatively quick turnaround between volumes this time. And need I specifically point out that volume eleven has another excellent line-up of artists and songs lined up? I don't, but I will anyway! As the last volume before the re-make/re-model work begins, this one is still very much in the old school 'mostly CMH/Pickin On... artists with a growing number of other artists mixed in' mold. Pickin On...'s most popular band Iron Horse have a whooping four numbers here, including their epic take on "American Pie" as a run-out groove. The Sidekicks cover Jimmy Buffet for the firt time with "Son Of A Son Of A Sailor". Brad Davis makes us forget about Huey Lewis, or almost, with his take on "The Power Of Love". Cornbread Red are back with "Be My Yoko Ono" and "Sweet Emotion". 

As for the relative newcomers, Love Canon are back with great takes on "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" and "Danger Zone", The Infamous Stringdusters have an off-the-cuff version of The Killers' "When You Were Young" and Bourbon Revival cover another song ready-made for Bluegrass, Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide". Greensky Bluegrass, not in action since volume 8, check back in with a take on Dylan's "When I Paint My Masterpiece". And as for real newcomers, in a one-off we welcome Theo & Brenna and their wonderful take on The Ronettes' classic "Be My Baby".

As you can gather, another 20 song program full of great tunes, well-played and sung with the quality stamp approval of your truly. Have a quality hoedown with these, same as it ever was. 

Gene + A Bunch Of Djangos = A Very Good Time

It's been an unconsciously long time that I posted something from Gene Clark, and this will not stand. So I'll post my favorite bootleg of Geno, backed by the Django Band, a short-lived troupe that came out of Gene's long-running 'Tribute To The Byrds' road band. As a matter of fact, outside of this bootleg I have never heard of the band being called The Django Band, but I'll trust the taper on them being dubbed as such. Whatever their name, they were a sympathetic backing band for Geno, led by Michael Curtis of the short-lived Curtis Brothers Band that I have previously featured here, and guitar slinger Billy Darnell who by this time was a four-year veteran of Clark's backing band duty. The line-up is completed by Greg Thomas on drums, and was essentially a mash-up of two different, equally dubious Byrds tribute bands, with Curtis comng over from Michael Clarke's Tribute To The Byrds (and then, his fake Byrds). 

So he has a very fine backing band which does make a difference. While solo acoustic Gene, and sometimes band-backed Gene, would slow down allsongs to dirge-like tempo, here The Django Band prevents that from happening and Gene, who seems to be in especially good humour - alcohol-related or not - hs a blast with these guys, who bring the groove. Like, literally, during a section of "Mr. Tambourine Man", where the classic melody and rhythm are upended by a short groove riffing part. They give a bit of a Calypso feel to "She Darked The Sun" and play "Set You Free This Time" as f it were an old soul song. Several of Gene's old warhorse sound a bit different than thier usual presentation, which obviously freshens them up a bit.

The other thing I love about this boot is the set list, covering a ton of classics - including an abundance of Byrds songs that betray the group's origins as a Byrds tribute band -  but also songs that at this time were rarely playd, "Backstage Pass" and "She Darked The Sun" for example. There is a rare live showing of "Shades Of Blue" that he only ever recorded as a demo. Actually the first set opens with a very nice surprise. As he often would, Clark opens with a short acoustic segment, but here "Here Without You" and "For A Spanish Guitar" are augmented by a mandolin, played by Curtis. And Curtis gets a solo lead vocal showcase in that first set to sing "Southern Cross", a track familiar for longstanding One Buck Heads from that aforementioned Curtis Brothers comp. 

The Django Band also gets busy during the intermission between Gene's two sets, playing a couple of Curtis tunes (including the classic, Fleetwood-Mac covered "Blue Letter") and a cover of "Iko Iko"sung by Billy Darnell, while Gene is away, presumably at the bar, before he joins them for another run through classic Byrds and solo tunes, including a reworked version of "Gypsy Rider" that Curtis would then later cover on a solo album. 

The sound of the boot is pretty good, vocals are slightly distant, but nothing too distracting. I did a bit of work to improve the presentation, mainly cutting out dead space, though I also rearranged the setlist a little. On the original boot, the Django Band solo set was attached to the end of the first set and disc, which I felt made little sense. So the intermission is now opening the second disc. And I moved "Eight Miles High" from its third-from-last place to the closing number, as the 14 minute+ jam isn't all that good, and I tend to like these longform songs as run-out grooves rather than being stuck with them in the middle of a program.

So, enjoy this very lovely Gene Clark program, one of his last moments of glory, and a wondeerful way of relistening to the many classics the man wrote.  

Bruce's Inadvertently Controversial Blockbuster - Listen Again Without Prejudice

Welcome to the month of July, the first (and last) ever Born In The USA Appreciation Month here at One Buck Records. Why?, you ask. Because why the hell not, I say. So, what is Born In The USA Appreciation Month? Well, during the next weeks I will post a bunch of stuff more or less related to that album. Some will be Bruce, some will not. There's at least two albums by younger artists that I want to post that show a clear sonic influence of Bruce' landmark album. There's a tribute album, and at least one alternate album that tries to  recontextualize the tite tune and Bruce's other Vietnam tales. But of course if we start the festivities, and that means starting with the riginal album. I don't know when - if ever - you have listened to Born In The USA, but listen again - without prejudice...

Born In The USA was famously or infamously was boorn out of the same sessions that birthed Nebraska, and it would take only a little bit of tinkering to make it a lot more...Nebraska-esque. In the same way that his electric Nebraska demos - finally revealed to the public last year - showed how Nebraska could become more like Born In The USA if the Boss had chosen so, the demos and bootleg cuts show that Born In The USA could have been as big a downer as Nebraska, had Springsteen chosen to do so. Instead he went for the biggest, shiniest sound of his career, and things got...muddld...and complicated. But you can hear the pessimism and downbeat atmosphere of Nebraska through the haze of Max Weinberg's thunderous drus and Roy Bittan's keyboard fanfares. There's hints everywhere. Of a deep and dark uneasiness. Of tragedy disguised as comedy. Of depression disguised as upbeat dance tunes.

One of the infamous memories of Bruce's Born In The USA era is him jiving akwardly with a teenage Courtney Cox to "Dancing In The Dark". When Jon Landay told Bruce that what was missing from the album was a hit, and Springsteen went home and wrote a piece that delivered on that front, you culd accuse Springsteen of seling out, or what not. But when was the last time you really listened to the lyrics of "Dancing In The Dark"? "I take a look in the mirror, I want to change my hair, my clothes, my face / I ain't nothin' but tired / and I'm just tired and bored with myself." Like the lyrics from the title tune, there is an obvious disconnect between the upbeat, joyful music and the downbeat sentiments. It's possibe to look at "Dancing In The Dark" as one of the first expressions of what we now know were bouts of depression that Springsteen was battling with. 

Now, about those production choices. Springsteen approved them, and owned them, and in some ways he continued the 'one for the large audience, and one for me (and the critics)' principle he had established with Darkness On The Edge Of Town and The River, then Nebraska and this album, and arguably continued with the subdued Tunnel Of Love and the glossy Human Touch. And it's just so easy to get caught up in the soun dof things. The album came with a lyric sheet, so people could have (and should have) easily sussed out the bitter Vietnam veteran tale in the title song, but Max Weinberg's huge drums - sounding, according to Bruce like handgrnades, which is correct and like the sound of panic, which isn't - and Bittan's triumphant keyboard melody covered the lyrical concerns up real good and real quick. 

The hints of a darker, less mainstreamy album remain, if only in hints, on the album. "Glory Days" started as a one-verse-and-chorus fragment during the Nebraska home recordings, decidedly differently, in that the chorus stated that the protagonist never had any glory days. But even if the final singalong version inverses sentiment and feel of that original idea, if you think about it, "Glory Days" just isn't as glorious as it pertains to be - and again it's easy to get suckered in by the boisterous chorus. But no amount of sha-la-la's can cover up that the heart of the song, with the baseball player's and waitress's lives peaking in high school and then - like John Mellencamp's Jack and Diane,getting on a long downhill slope, is sad, whether acknowledged or not. Like a ton of other protagonists, these folks are on a downbound train. 

Soringsteen did his best to dress up these tunes. "Working On The Highwy" gained a singalong chorus and lost the rather sordid backstory of its original incarnation titles "Child Bride". And "No Surrender" and "Bobby Jean", both songs that adress hois colleagues - the E-Streeters in the former, and the departing Steve Van Zandt in the latter - stay beautifully anthems to friendship and persistance. But yeah, you listen closely to this album and through the extremely Eighties production, and the album suddenly seems to be a lot more complicated than its popular reception and misappropriation of the Reagan administration among others, suggest.

When Bruce had finished the album, his friend, rock critic Dave Marsh, told him that the sound and sensivity of the album's title track and iconography would cause him trouble, but Bruce just laughed the idea off. He would learn the hard way how right Marsh was. But that doesn't stop Born In The USA from being a highly fascinating album, on a number of levels. So, listen again - without prejudice...

I Am...I Said (No Neil, But Lots Of Other Diamonds)

 

I am The One Buck Guy.

I said that once I completed the next decade of All Pearls, No Swine, I would post an All Pearls, No Swine Megapack to permit people to pick up missing volumes, notably 31-34. 

Well, I Am...I Said...And here it is.  

Not to turn this into repost city, but a promise is a promise. And this I promise as well: I'll be back with new music shortly...