Spring Cleaning, Part.2: Hey, Remember These Chicks?

Ol' OBG continues his spring cleaning. And well, the Jimmy Eat World Bleed American project wasn't the only trilogy I never completed. When I initially posted Fly, the Thriller of mainstream country albums back in May 2024, the idea was that I'd post its two equally good follow-ups in the next weeks, maybe months. And then it took me ten months to post Home, and now it's been a year since I posted that one. What is this, James Cameron's Avatar movies? The album title turned out prophetically, Taking The Long Way indeed. But now that the spring cleaning crew (i.e. me) has found the Chicks' 2006 bounce back album, time to complete one of the best album trilogies by any artist or band, ever. 

"Forgive ? Sounds good. Forget? I'm not sure I could / they say time heals everything, but I'm still waiting..."

Of course, Taking The Long Way wasn't just an album, it was an event, for reasons both obvious and really, truly fucked up beyond repair. The backlash and blackballinng of the Chicks after Natalie Maines' off the cuff comments about George W. Bush at a London concert was some truly shameful shit. It looked already absolutely atrocious at the time, but it looks even worse in hindsight. Looking back on it, it's pretty clear that the outrage and outright banning of the Chicks Of course, Taking The Long Way wasn't just an album, it was an event, for reasins both obvious and really, truly fucked up beyond repair. The backlash and blackballinng of the Chicks after Natalie Maines' off the cuff comments about George W. Bush at a London concert was some truly shameful shit. It looked already absolutely atrocious at the time, but it looks even worse in hindsight Looking back on it, it's pretty clear that the outrage and outright banning of the Chicks had as much to do with misogyny as t did did with (fake, fabricated) ill-advised patriotism. The Chicks, but really mainly lead siner Natalie Maines was an opinionated youg woman. She had a mouth on her, something not everybody in the country music industry loved, but had to put up with considering the Chicks' drawing power for the five preceding years. So when there was an opportunity to shut Maines and her bandmates up and 'put these women into their place', boy, did they ever.

Well, let's talk about the music for a bit, shall we? Because while it's nice to become, somewhat against their own will, unlikely symbols of free speech, you still gotta have something to say. And the Chicks do.
This is their first album in which all three Chicks are credited on all songs, usually with a veteran quality songwriter to put these songs in shape: Semisonic's Dan Wilson, The Jayhawks' Gary Louris, Neil Finn, Mike Campbell, Sheryl Crow, and on the lasr track,  the previously issued charity single "I Hope" ,Keb' Mo. But it's clear tht the Chicks are in control pf this album - "six strong hands on the steering wheel' as Maines intones on the opener and title song.

That song, "Taking The Long Way" deliberately recalls (and references) Home's opener "Long Time Gone", functioning as a sort of sequel, thematizing the Chicks' choices along the way. "Wouldn't kiss all the asses they told me to / but I could never follow" after a quick breather with wonderful ballad "Easy Silence", Maines & Co. put the war paint on with "Not Ready To Make Nice", the single that details their ordeal and the defiant stance they took, or were forced to take. Wilson had come in with, as Maines recalls, "an idea that was some sort of concession, like a 'can't we all get along?' and I said nope, I can't say that, I can't do that". And so Wilson's idea, initially tentatively titled "United" became the Chicks' big, therapeutic fuck off to their detractors. You don't need to know the back story to feel the song's power, but it helps if you do.

Whether the song is an acknowledgment of their new-found notoriety like "Everybody Knows" or a simple old-fashioned barn burner like "Lubbock Or Leave It",  the Chicks are in control throughout the 14 track album, which runs maybe two tracks too long, but is objectively the third killer album in a row. It won four Grammies in what was widely considered a political gesture, of the pop world embracing the Chicks after the country world burned them so badly. But it deserves those Grammies, including song of the year for "Not Ready To Make Nice", and I say that as someone who, like any real music fan, is highly suspicious of these folks and their decision-making.

Sadly, things wouldn't turn out okay, despite the brave faces the Chicks put on here. They couldn' get over it and they are still waiting on full healing. So the band went on hiatus for a decade. Maines especially was so disgusted by the way the country music scene had treated her that she made a rock'n' roll solo album far away from Nashville in 2013, otherwise raising her family. The remaining Chicks, sisters Emily and Marti meanwhile formed acoustic country-bluegrass  duo Court Yard Hounds. Gaslighter, the Chicks' 2020 comeback album, heavily influenced by Maines' bitter divorce from actor Adrian Pasdar, is a pretty good pop album, though not a patch on the Chicks' trilogy from 1998 to 2006. 

The real loss, one could argue, is to mainstream country music, which is a lot poorer without the Chicks in it. With Home they had pushed a stealth trad country/progressive bluegrass album over into the mainstream, and while that probably wasn't sustainable, it showed an interest in country roots that have been waxed  over by barely disguised stadium rock and soft pop with a steel guitar flourish, in a scene subsequently dominated by boorish country bros. The MAGA-fication of the Nashville country scene was a bit hesitant during the first term of Donny the Disgraceful, but - like its leader - has been less shameless in the last years. If my reaction at the time was 'Fuck the Nasgville music complex and their minions', I can't say that my opinion has changed positively in the meantime...

Writing about this album as another dubiously timed and even more dubiously planned US-started war rages reminds us how history can repeat itself, and how we'll always need people who are not ready to make nice - in the entertainment industry, and everywhere else., especially as a crackdown on dissident voices is in full effect. In the meantime, play Taking The Long Way, enjoy some top notch country rock and keep sane, everybody...

Of Saints & Sinners - A Kick Ass Movie With A Killer Soundtrack

 

A couple of weeks ago Sinners made history by becoming the first film to ever be nominated for 16 Academy Awards (a.k.a. the Oscars). Even if we discount a new category this year (Best Casting Ensemble), it would still have beaten out former record holders. This alone should give you a good idea what an achievement the movie is on a purely technical level alone. First of: it's an absolute joy to watch. In this ear of shoddily assembled blockbusters with awful CGI, that is not Marvel-ous at all, Sinners clearly stands out. Set Design, Production Design, Costume Design, Photography - everything here is absolutely top notch. 

This movie also literally looks like no other. When I saw the first scene, I scrambled for the blue ray cover, frantically checking for information on the film's aspect ratio that wasn't there. I was sure that the movie was in scope, but the first scenes were not. In fact, director Ryan Coogler elected to film with the loud and unwieldy I-MAX cameras to allow a fluent change between different aspect ratios, sometimes within the same shot (where the black bars on the top and the bottom slowly disappear). Now, all of these technical achievements would be laudable, but for naught, if the movie wouldn't be any good. But it is, great even, if you keep an open mind. If you haven't seen Sinners yet, do so as quickly as possible, and then get back to this write-up. From here on, there be spoilers !

During it's first hour it's not entirely clear where Coogler's film wants to go, taking it's sweet time to set up its story of two twin brothers trying to create a juke joint from nothing in the 1930's Mississippi Delta. Then the movie pulls off the old From Dust Till Down-gambit going from one type of movie to a complete differently one in its second half, and like the former also somewhat surprisingly becoming a vampire movie. This abrupt swerve into genre fare turned out divisive, to say the least. I, as a horror film fan, loved it, but some viewers caught up in the descriptions of the hard life for black folks in the 1930's obviously expected something different. Still, you have to admire the huge and confident swings Coogler takes with this movie.

A movie about a juke joint better have some great music to really sell its premise, and boy, does Sinners deliver.  It features both a fantastic score by Coogler's frequent musical collaborator Ludwig Göransson and an equally brilliant selection of songs on its soundtrack album. However, there is a lot of music to go through, perhaps too much. Both albums taken together run up to almost 150 minutes of music, which is just overkill in one sitting. Enter the One Buck Guy. As with my previous reworked soundtracks for Dick Tracy and Donnie Darko I combined songs and score cues from the film in chronological fashion, to give the Sinners a real sense of how the film develops musically. The word Edit in OBG is to be taken quite seriously: I edited the absolute hell out of this one, shortening almost every score track, throwing off songs which were not featured in the movie, stitching and medley-ing together, and so on and so forth. Now the 150 minutes behemoth is a much more listenable sub-70 minutes compilation.

The music of Sinners is not only great, it also tells its own story, which this added subsequently tries to retrace as well. As the first hour of the film establishes the twins' recruitment of personal for their juke joint, the first half of soundtrack & score is very heavy on blues licks, both from Göransson and special guests like Bobby Rush. Just before the film's big thematic set piece of all timelines and musical eras falling and folding  together, set to Miles Caton's "I Lied To You", there is the first apparition of what I call the vampire theme - you know it when you hear it. 

The appearance of the initial trio of vampires also changes the musical landscape, heavily influenced by lead vampire Remmick's background as an Irish immigrant, trading the predominant blues music for a folk/bluegrass mix of traditional tunes. Their version of the old Irish folk standard "Will Ye Go, Lassie Go ?" (better known as "Wild Mountain Thyme") is not only one of the finest version of this oft-covered tune, but has haunted me for days after seing the movie. A bit (o.k., a lot) earlier I mentioned Ryan Coogler's big swings, and I think none is bigger than the big musical set piece of dozens of vampires, including most of the turned black folks, singing and dancing to classic Irish folk tune "Rocky Road To Dublin", with head vampire Remmick performing Irish stepdancing like a deranged lord of the dance. This was clearly the point of no return for some movie watchers, but again, I absolutely loved the pure chutzpah of it.

In its back third the film's music becomes heavier in support of its action set pieces and show downs (and makes ample use of the aforementioned vampire theme), with Göransson drafting in Alice in Chains' Jerry Cantrell, Metallica's Lars Ulrich and blues power guitar player Eric Gales, before culminating in the double climax of Miles Caton's wordless vocalizing in "Free for a Day" and the film closing song "Last Time (I Seen the Sun)", a duet between Caton and Alice Smith. Like those vampires, it's been a good long while since I've seen the sun in all its splendor, and like for those vamps, music pulls me through.

You might guess from the unusually long write up that this Sinners project is really heartfelt for me. I think this alternate album edit is one of my best editing job and I am very proud of it. I hope you will enjoy this musical journey through the back country of Sinners as much as I've enjoyed making it.Take this write-up as my endorsement of Sinners for tomorrow's Academy Awards, although I don't think it will win the big one. The Academy might have changed quite a bit since the peak Oscar bait years, but 'audacious vampire musical with a mostly Black cast' doesn't necessarily scream Best Film winner, and One Battle After Another seems to have an insurmountable lead. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though. 

In the meantime, enjoy this killer piece of music I have vampired Frankensteined together. It truly has something for everyone: Whether you like Blues, Country, Gospel, Bluegrass, Soul, Folk, Heavy Rock, even Hip Hop...you'll find something to like, or love, here. Or just tick 'all of the above' and  take in that big-ass bad ass musical gumbo that is Sinners - Movie Soundtrack & Score - The OBG Edit, as the gods and ol' OBG intended...

Spring Cleaning, Part I : Hey, Remember These Guys ?

Having finally finished my project on the transitional period of Fleetwood Mac with the compilations on Bob Welch and Danny Kirwan a mere year after starting it, I decided to go through the One Buck Records archives to see what other follow-ups I might have missed. And guess what ? I fell on the third and final part of my Jimmy Eat World Bleed American project. Maybe this oversight is for the best, as after two posts on the album you were maybe a bit burned out on these guys and these songs, after a couple of months off you will hopefully enjoy some cool crunchy powerpop once more.

So here is Trophy Shelf, which raps up all the loose ends from that era. With this compilation you get another batch of alternative versions of the Bleed American songs including a great acoustic version of "The Middle", which approches a Byrds-ian jingle-jangle sound. You will also find a couple of outtakes, including the excellent "(Splash) Turn Twist". Somewhat unrelated, there is also their great, moody cover of The Prodigy's "Firestarter", which they recorded for a charity compilation for the New Musical Express.

So, folks, nothing much to say besides wishing you a good time with about 35 minutes of music from Mesa, Arizona's finest to lively up your day ... 

Enter The Crown Prince Of EYMSSM : All Hail Mark Kozelek

I recently talked about earnest young men's sad sack music, somewhat unfairly attaching these thoughts to a peace on Travis, who only partly indulged in EYMSSM. Time to meet one of the stalwarts of this type of music : Mark Kozelek, the figure head behind Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon.

I've encountered Kozelek around the same time as a musician and an actor. I'm not sure whether I picked up the last Red House Painters' album Old Ramon first, or whether I first saw him as idiot bass player Larry in Cameron Crowe's fantastic Almost Famous. I liked Old Ramon well enough, than dipped deeper into their catalogue when I picked up the two-disc Retrospective, a really well done career compilation, that showcased Kozelek's and by proxy Red House Painters' typical music : very slow, very moody, very sad, sometimes with drowning guitares mixed in, sometimes not. There is a real hypnotic draw to Kozelek's songs, which flow into each other weightlessly.

Famously 4AD-founder Ivo Watts-Russell not only gave Red House Painters their first record contract, but also decided to simply release selected highlights from their demo tape, rather than having the band rerecord these songs. Down Colorful Hill was great proof of talent for a band that had already found their signature sound, shortly followed up by two eponymous albums that cemented Red House Painters as an indie band to reckon with. After toiling away for the better part of the decade and losing their last band album - the aforementioned Old Ramon - to a messy label merger, Kozelek decided to retire the Red House Painters name and restart interests in his group as Sun Kil Moon.

Our One Buck Record of the day is a variation of Down Colorful Hill, but if you have very good eyes you'll see a little + behind the title, as I added some additional demos from around the same time (not sure, if they are from the same demo tape), which I feel make the album slightly sprightlier, and also resequenced the entire album for a better flow, as per usual on this blog. As an introduction to Kozelek's brand of earnest young men's sad sack music this version of Down Colorful Hill should do just fine and remind you of what a major talent Kozelek was, before he started to turn his songs into a weird deformed mirror version of his life as a touring musician.

So, take a tumble Down Colorful Hill with this magnificent songs ...

A Long One While He Is Away: Nonstop Dancing!

 

...well, and now for something completely different. The title of course is supposednto remind you of the German king of easy listening, James Last, backed by his orchestra. These guys would turn popular tunes and the occasional original composition into side-long medleys, thus Nonstop Dancing.

This is obviously not that. As a matter of fact, the Non-Stop is definitely not false advertising, as in one swift click you'll get amusement for about two hours and forty minutes. Talk about a long one while he is away, huh? That was not possible without a stack-a-deck back in the days, but I'm sure James Last would be proud.

The whole shebang starts with, obviously, Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff", the disco anthem any gay, straight or non-binary disco lover will recognize as the anthem of the place. Summer did arguably bigger and better stuff, but she will still be remembered, at least here in Europe, mainly for that one. From there, the Nonstop Dancing - Disco Fever mix runs through all the classics from the mid-70s to the mid-80s, from "Rock Your Baby" to "Ring My Bell", from A like ABBA to W like Ward, Anita (not sure there's an X,Y or Z in there, but I might be wrong!). 

Disco anthems both cheesy and supercool, now and forever, such as Blondies' immortal "Heart Of Glass". We got Michael Jackson to rock the dancefloor, and Prince, and tons of others. Chances are, if you think of a song from the disco years, it's on here. And even if it's not, tons and tons and hours and hours of retro dancefloor fun are guaranteed, here at OBG's Non Stop Dancing. 

So, are ya ready to shimmy? Shake that heini? Blow out those aging hips of yours? Well, here you go...

As an aside...

"Time everlasting, time to play b-sides, time ain't on my side" sang Donald 'Buck Dharma' Roeser on Blue Öyster Cult's "Burnin' For You"...yeah, time to play b-sides, but sometimes that's harder than necessary. Technically I should probably say 'play side two's', but that doesn't sound as cool. And b-sides, whatever the preferred nomenclature, we're talking about a problem all of us music lovers know: The album that is front-charged with hit singles or its biggest, more memorable songs on side one, and then presents more or less well done filler and 'the rest' on the second side. 

Why am I thinking and now talking about this? Listening purely by accident in the last two weeks to three albums that are suffering from this problem, that's why.  The albums in question: Tracy Chapman's debut album of the same name, which has its three big and memorable singles, plus the oppressive, a cappella "Behind The Wall" and the equally memorable race fable "Across The Lines". Five great songs in a row that I can more or less sing from memory. And then? Well, then there's side two, with songs that to me are much less memorable, and sometimes with a more cluttered production. 

Next candidate: Nirvana's Nevermind, of course opening with a killer one-two-three punch in "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "In Bloom" and "Comes As You Are". Plus "Breed", "Lithium" and "Polly". There's some good stuff in the half dozen songs on side two, but there's no way it can compete with that opening salvo. And while I'm willing to hear opposing voices that defend the b-sides of those albums, I don't for Blue Öyster Cult's Agents Of Fortune, where all the memorable songs parade through the first five tracks, while the second side has unmemorable hard rock in diverse varieties. 

So, folks. These are just some examples for front-loaded albums, what are some examples that come to your mind ... ?

What are some of your favorite supercharged a-sides ?

What are some underrated b-sides ?

It's A Weekend Hoedown With The Bluegrass Chartbusters !

And the hits just keep on coming. Literally. And I am also proud to report that with this new volume of our Bluegrass Chartbusters series there is an even bigger variety of artists and picking styles than ever before. We are having the hole beloved roster of Pickin' On artists - from Cornbread Red to Iron Horse and Bread Davis - and also bring back Honeywagon into the fold with their cover of Michael Jackson "Thriller". Plus Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard ! Plus The Wooks ! Plus The Grass Cats ! 

We also welcome a couple of new comers into the fold: Dale Ann Bradley is, hitherto unbeknownst to me, a five-time Bluegrass vocalist of the year and will from now on grace this series with her presence, starting with a fabulous version of the Greatful Dead's "Ripple". Also say hello to the Sawtooth Bluegrass Band, checking in with a tremendously fun version of "Jet Airliner". Getting back to the Pickin' On guys for a second, they got an attention-catching casting coup when assembling Strummin' With The Devil, their tribute to Van Halen. They got David Lee Roth to front the John Jorginson Bluegrass Band for two numbers, including a memorable take on "Jump".

This volume of Bluegrass Chartbusters also includes a couple of numbers that improve on the originals. To be fair, I have no idea what Imagine Dragons' "Demons" sounds like, though, but The Sidekicks' version of it is a total killer. I also never had much use for the Eagles original of "Already Gone", one of Glenn Frey's typically boorish 'Evil Woman'-type songs with its ridiculously overwrought whoo-hoo-hoo's. The who-hoo-hoo's are still present in Dave Dick & Band's take on the song, but they are severely understated, and the song is all the better for it.

Eagle-eyed viewers will realize, that "Southern Cross" was already on the first volume of the series, but this is a different version by the Sidekicks that is almost as good as the Cornbread Red one. If I have two great version of a song, there will probably both show up on different volumes of this series. The word Chartbusters doesn't necessarily apply to every single track on here, as I believe Modest Mouse's "Ocean Breathes Salty" didn't bother any charts anywhere. But it is a great song and a great performance by Iron Horse, who sometimes seem more engaged - and engaging - on lesser known band's material than on some of the big hitters that they cover.

All in all, as ever you get about 80 minutes of fantastic Bluegrass music. So let the Hoedown begin ...