Sweet Sixteen! With The Usual Mandolins, Fiddles And Banjos Of Course!

So we got another killer line up assembled here, both in artists and songs, starting with the real groovy double opening punch of "Rock'n'Roll All Night" by Cornbread Red and "I Love Rock'n'Roll" by Iron Horse. Series vets really coming through here, and from there we hit highlight after highlight. 

There's a row of new artists makinf their first appearances here, but coming back with more cool songs in the future. For example genre vet Frank Solivan, who together with backing group The Dirty Kitchen bring us our first Steely Dan cover with "Rikki Don't Lose That Number". We also heartily greet The Barefoot Movement, a band that exists for almost two decades now, but one I just recently discovered. They make their debut with a wonderful version of "Penny Lane". There is also Caltucky, a band playing hard-edged rock'n'roll bluegrass, but for their debut here I've voted for a rare all-acoustic rendition of Alice In Chains' classic "Rooster". 

And no one can claim I didn't search high and low for cool covers of Bluegrass tunes. One unexpected place where I found just that? Brazil. Meet Mr. Maze (up left) who is a balding, bespectacled middle-aged dude looking a bit like your slighly over-enthusiastic music teacher from back in the days (and his accent easily gives away that English isn't his first language), but when he hooks up with backing group RockGrass - from two to four guys, depending on song and availability, I imagine - he produces some very fun Bluegrass Chartbuster candidates, leading of here with "You're The One That I Want" featuring an Carol penhavel as his Olivia Newton-John. 

As for the one-and-done's? Double one-and-done for the price of, uh, one. There will be only a single Billy Joel cover appearing in this series, and the band doing it will also only show up this once, but they make it count. First of all, how cool is their band name? The Bluegrass Regulators. 10/10, no notes. And they cover Joel's "The Downeaster 'Alexa'", my personal favorite of Joel together with "Miami 2031 (Seen The Lights Go Down On Broadway)". So, a win and a win. The other band showing up just once is The Lil' Smokies who normally don't do covers in favor of their original material, but got invited by The A.V. Club to do a 90s cover and chose Counting Crows' "A Long December". Lovely stuff.

But the returning roster ain't no slouches, either. I really dig The Fly Bird's take on Radiohead's "Creep", can always groove along with the Infamous Stringduster's take on "Sharp Dressed Man", bop to Honeywagon's cover of "The Rock Show" or admire the picking in Bourbon Revival's cover of "Dead Flowers". Also kudos to Dave Dick and his assembled band for adapting the Eagles' "The Last Resort", a sneakily tricky proposition, and doing it really well. Volume 16 of the Bluegrass Chartbusters flows beautifully and is one of my personal favorites from the series. So, celebrate the Bluegrass Chartbusters' Sweet Sixteen with another twenty top notch quality Bluegrass covers lovingly assemnled by the One Buck Guy for your listening pleasure...

The (Almost) French Connection: Bonjour, C'est Monsieur Pop Qui Vous Propose De La Musique Populaire Aujourd'hui...

Iggy's recent cameo on this site - to duet with recently departed Catherine Ringer of Les Rita Mitsouko - and especially his chatming attempts at speaking French reminded me of this little bijou. If the Iggy of the 70's is known as a devil-may-care spit-and-blood berzerker on stage (and off of it), the James Osterberg of the 2000's is a decidedly different fellow. If he occasionally indulges in loud and noisy rock it almost always seems to be with some invisible quotation marks around it. See, guys, I can 'still rock', in a sort of half-nostalgic, half-ironic way. But I suspect his heart isn't that much in it anymore. From time to time, he plays the noisy Iggy of old, but it's almost like your friendly but decidedly weird uncle at a family reunion getting out a football and arthritis be damned wants to show off his moves from when he was a football star in high school. That said, on 2023's Every Loser Pop he lets it rip with an all-star band for support.

You wouldn't be able to tell from the first twenty years or so of his career, that really, James Osterberg was a crooner at heart, who just tried to get out under the maniac and increasingly scarred skin suit the Popster donned for those first twenty years of his career. I'd argue that when he teamed up with future dad rock great Don Was in 1990, this was really the beginning of crooner Pop, some swerves into noise - with and without the reformed Stooges - notwithstanding. But the number of collaborations outside of the noisy rock spectrum, his penchant for unexpected covers and rather unexpected sonic explorations in the last three decades and change really made you think that Iggy Pop as elder statesman of rock is a very different beast from the classic Iggy. And why wouldn't he be? Once he hit middle age, and now senior citizenship status, is there still a point in doing the wild man on stage? Not for your hips and back, for sure, but probably also not for your musical spirit. So he spent basically the entire 2010's as a crooner before the aforementioned rock'n'roll comeback at a sprightly 75 years of age. 

Pop explains the why pretty succinctly in his liner notes: "All popular music forms of today get their strength from the beat. Rap, hip-hop, metal, pop and rock producers will tell you that the beats they use imitate the human heartbeat and that is where the power lies. The feeling of listening to any of these forms is always some variation on excitement, but before the birth of the blues there was another form of popular song, in which the timing comes from the human breath and the feelings are much more about emotion." He also adresses the elephant in the room, as far as song choices: "Many of these songs are in French, probably because it is French culture which has most stubbornly resisted the mortal attacks of the Anglo-American music machine."

So, Iggy Pop the francophile elder statesman crooner. Pop had both started a real effort at a rock'n'roll-less album and his first attempts at French on 2009's Préliminaires (note the title, will ya?), which itself was a second attempt at an art-rock album after 1999's Avenue B, with a cover of "Les Feuilles Morts", but he really plunges into the Seine of memory  on Après, while also repurposing 60's chestnuts like "Everybody's Talkin'" or "Only The Lonely". You want Pop do Gainsbourg? Check. Joe Dassin? Check. Brassens? Check. Piaf? Of course. And then, for an Anglo-Gallic marriage, The Beatles' "Michelle", naturally, probably the first song that gave Anglophile audiences un goût de la France, so to speak. 

So, is ol' man Pop the best crooner of all time? No sir, Frank Sinatra he decidedly is not. But is Après a very fun diversion, du bon divertissement, comme on dirait chez nous? Ah, ça oui, absolument. Pop is trying, and his croon warble has a real charme to it, much like the so-so at best French pronounciation. Pop might be somewhat of an enthusiastic dilletant when he's trying to evoke a French-English mix pop record, with more than a few jazz influences, from the 1960's with Après. As it would have been in the 60's, Après is an exceedingly short record, not even hitting the 30 minute mark, although with two extra tracks not on the original edition, they creep over the 35 minute mark. The first of these, a lovely cover of Sacha Distel's "La Belle Vie" was a digital bonus track I believe, then added to the tenth anniversary edition, while his duet of "I'll Be Seeing You" with the late, great Françoise Hardy was a one-off from 2000, but - unlike "Les Feuilles Mortes", which I didn't include for that reason - fits the tone and sound of the album perfectly. 

So, here's Après (with a little something ajouté après), for a hopefully lovely autumn stroll this weekend, for real, or in your mind and musical memories. See yourself walking down along the Seine in the late 60s or early 70s, while Monsieur Osterberg softly croons in your ears. Elle n'est pas belle, la vie? 

All Pearls, New Wave, Lush Pop, No Swine

 

Don't fear the Reaper Neon! It might look like it, but this isn't a pure synth pop affair like Vol. 33 was. No, instead All Pearls, No Swine Vol. 44 is smuggling in a whole bunch of New Wave of all kinds and a whole lot of pop. It's all in the title, folks. Lovers of uptempo fare will be served here by a couple of bands that walk the thin line between punk rock and power pop - say hello to Australia's Mad Turks From Istanbul, Slaughter & The Dogs, the Bleeding Hearts and the Fascinators. The power pop hero for insiders is back - yup, its Jonathan Kupersmith. And if you think, that "Pauline" sounds vaguely familiar to the trained ear of the APNS veteran, you're also right! The issued version was featured way back on volume 13, the series' fourth trip to the 80s. This, however, is the demo version of the song, which is almost as worthwhile. And in absence of more Kupersmith material that i could unearth, it'll have to do. And it does. 

Another big part of this comp is some lush, sopphisticated pop by the likes of Aztec Camera, Crowded House, John Howard, Goanna or China Crisis. So, yeah, some of these names will be familiar, and maybe even their songs, so I tried to keep the 'hidden gem' part of the bargain, by including some songs in different mixes from the classic versions. And there is, as usual, a ton of little known artists to discover on here. Or, you know, a big name, but with a way less big song. Daryl Hall, with comrade Oates in tow, was of course a constant guest in the Top 40 throughout the 80s, but "Survive", the album closer here, is from the outlier in Hall's discography, the Robert Fripp produced artpop album Sacred Songs. 

One thing I've always found fascinating in music - and the sheer number of alternate albums on One Buck Records will attest to that - is the 'what if's'. One of these 'what if's' is present here on All Pearls, No Swine Vol. 44. When Giorgio Moroder was tasked with creating a love song for Top Gun, he and his former car mechanic Tom Whitlock came up with "Take My Breath Away", which they first gave to New Wave/power pop band The Motels. But Moroder wasn't happy with their versionn, and then approached Berlin, or rather lead singer Terri Nunn, as no other Berlin members play on the hit version, which unfortunately and infamously caused the band to immediately break up after their biggest hit. Here's the original Motels version of the song, quite close to the Berlin/Nunn version, so I'm not sure what Moroder was bothered by. 

A compilation that has place for both 60's icon Ronnie Spector and Irish pych punk misfits The Golden Horde? Yup, here it is. So I hope you enjoy the pop songs from a wide range of styles that make up All Pearls, No Swine Vol. 44. 

Americana 2

And another one that's been a long time comin'. Americana Vol. 1, as seen in the title, was always supposed to have a sequel, but in between the Bluegrass Chartbusters series and a couple of alt albums or One Album Wonders it always got pushed back, as I don't want this place to only become OBG's Americana corner. But after a year and a half, it seems about time to actually get to Volume No. 2. The idea is still the same: There is no specific idea, other than compiling 20 tracks from the Americana spectrum. Some refugees from the Bluegrass Chartbusters, who were either not Bluegrass or Chartbuster enough, have found a home here, plus the usual stray tracks I stumbled upon one way or the other. Some are relatively newcomers, other are vets. No real structuring principle either, other than flow and variety.  

Having said all that, the newcomers are clearly having the upper hand here, and there's a reason for that. A bunch of these, by such unheralded artists as Gene Gainey, Bryan Yurcan, Jung Bergo, Sean Whalshe or Madmans Moustache, are escapees from yet another project that will debut soon on One Buck Records, but were quote-unquote too country for that one, so they found the perfect new home right here. Also relatively newcomer-ish: Swedish Americana artist Magnus Hansson alias Maybe Canada, Melanoid, and Song Preservation Society. Lots of people to discover here that I'm sure most of you haven't heard of yet, but if these selections are any indication, deserve a closer look in the future. 

The vets brought in range from pioneers like cow-punk legend Jason Ringenberg to cult artists like Will Oldham a.k.a. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, to artists creeping into the vets camp with each passing year like Maren Morris, here still a teenager. There's also a young Kacey Musgraves with a wonderful take on Uncle Neil's "Heart Of Gold". Throw in the Counting Crows with a really neat live in studio performance of the Grateful Dead's "Friend Of The Devil" and Chris Stapleton's "Outlaw State Of Mind". And a word for Bill Miller, the rare Native American Americana/country rock artist, whoese 1982 debut Native Sons, from which "Two Places At Once" is taken, is an underappreciated early example of what we'd call Americana later on. 

And finally, a word (or three) on the special bonus track, which I designed as such, so if you have a strict 'No A.I. in my music' policy, you can just delete it without consequence: You might remember Jared Hutcherson as the AI-generated country singer with the changing voices, who was highly productive, until he got deep-sixed. R.I.P. Jared, we hardly knew ya! But we got one thing to remember you by. Of the half-dozen songs I sampled from 'Jared', one stood out. "Burning Horses" is done in the growly vet voice, for a dark Americana song with apocalyptic undertones. Maybe fitting that it's the A.I. that goes so dark: "This is a call for the burning horses, racing out through hell / they can find you anywhere, anywhere you dwell / flame and fury, teeth and bone / ain't no place to hide alone / burning horses know your name, and they're coming just the same." Whoa, A.I. on a dark death trip. It's a weird song, and I like that, and I really like the song, which is, well, weird. And, you know, "Burning Horses" sentiment of unstoppable, impending doomis  truly fitting considering the rapid-fire development - and not in a good way - in the A.I. department in the last months. Always remember, folks: A.I. knows your name, and it's coming just the same.

An Album, A Monolith.

 

And not one you can piss on. Not one bit.

What an album this is. 

See, a couple of weeeks ago, Babs asked over at her place what our favorite albums of 1971 were, and I hesitated between my all-time favorite Rolling Stones record Sticky Fingers and The Who's Who's Next. I cast my vote for Sticky Fingers, but now I claim that it's been a fraudulent election and a BIG STEAL by SOME VERY NASTY PEOPLE and that indeed the real winner is Who's Next. (Is the dead animal glued on my head still stuck like it should? Is my body still having a magnificent orange glow? Oh, sorry, I'm getting distracted again, as is my habit. Oh, SQUIRREL...)

Sticky Fingers is a really great album, but if we're being honest it has a couple of weak spots like the jam section of "Can't You Hear Me Knocking", and personally speaking, "Sister Morphine" never did much for me.. .Ain't no such thing as slow spots on Who's Next. "Love Ain't For Keeping" is slowish and has some truly horrid early 70s lines ("lay down my darling, love ain't for keeping"...not a great pick-up line), but it's only two minutes long and the acoustic interlude works really nicely. . Some might claim that the long album-closing version a bit too long to be as powerful as the single edit, but it would still blow most other songs out of the water, either way. Monolith, baby, monolith. 

Who's Next is imperial, unimpeachable. You can not fuck with this album. It's the only Who album where there is nothing to throw, no 'yeah, but what about'-isms to be had. Whichever song you think is the weakest here, it is still a pretty good song. Ain't no so-so or bad ones on here. Nine tracks of pure rock'n'roll. The Who were never louder or more powerful. You want to show a young person what rock'n'roll is and why it mattered, play them this album. Even Millenials might only know The Who for contributing title songs to a TV series franchise and Horatio Caine pun-and-sun(glasses) memes. But play them this and maybe they understand. 

Show me a better opening track than "Baba O'Riley". I mean, I'm sure there might be some, but I can't think of many right now. The buiding synth arpeggios which get more urgent, before finally the piano enters at around the forty second mark and then the band joins in at around the one minute mark. They sure knew how to build a song back in the day. Keith Moon might have drummed more ferociously on other tracks, but I like how his drums come in here and demand respect. I love the interplay between the synth arpeggios and the violin and Moon's drums who seem to egg each other on, push each other forwards, quickerv and quicker. I never really got the cult of Moon, but his drum rolls on Who's Next are something to behold.  

And, you know, Roger Daltrey. For the first years of The Who, he was kind of the weak link of the band, while Townshend, Entwistle and Moon caused an unholy ruckus behind him. But here he and his voice take center stage and it's glorious. Hang some respect on my name!, every yowl seems to say. If Robert Plant was a golden god, then Roger Daltrey was a silver seraphim. 

Who's Next. A Monument. a Monolith. One of the greatest rock records of all time.

I don't need to fight to prove I'm right. 

The attached album is nothing fancy, the 1995 remaster with bonus tracks. Who's Next stays as is, because see above. I mean you could make a really good argument that "Pure And Easy" should have been on the album, but what do you kick off? So now it leads the bonus track program, which I have slightly reprogrammed to go with the Lifehouse studio outtakes first, then the Young Vic outtakes, their okay cover of "Baby Don't You Do It" and finally the original version of "Behind Blue Eyes". 

The Jon Bon Jovi Record You dind't Know You'd Want Or Need - Now Less Blustery, Still Blazing And More Glorious

It's funny how some things just..slide. Last year I started a little series of reworked and rejiggered soundtracks with an album that combined three sources to make a more satisfying version of a Dick Tracy soundtrack. That was the first publication of the series, but far from its first project, which somejow involved one Jon Bon Jovi. I must've gotten the idea from reading Tom Beihan's great column on number one records, and it talked about "Blaze Of Glory", Jon Bon Jovi's title song for the brat pack Western sequel Young Gunds II. I had liked the song back in the day, and I agree with Brehan that that song slaps, hard,. The same thing, unfortunately cannot be said of the album that it comes from, titled after its big single. 

Here's the issue with that album: Bon Jovi's (the man) blustery hard rock and power ballads are hardly distinguishable from Bon Jovi's (the band) blustery hard rock and poer ballads, so Blaze Of Glory isn't a particular good listen. It's just too much of, you know, blustery hard rock and poer ballads. So I had an album that I had picked up from the bargain bin for its big single, but that I barely ever listened to. Then I realized that I also have Alan Silvestri's score to Young Guns II, which I also don't listen much to, either. So, that"s where the rejiggered soundtrack impetus originally came from. I figured, I have two albums that I rarely ever listen to, maybe I can use these to create one I would like to listen to? 

Oh boy. JBJ thinking he looks like a cool-ass cowboy. Never change, Jon, never change...

So I started that project, getting busy on Audacity, then - presumably for time reasons - stopped...and just never picked it up again. Blaze Of Glory went from first rejiggered soundtrack to last. I finished it after  - in a stroke of holiday-related music activity - I finished the three rejiggered soundtracks I had either started or planned. And to my surprise, almost all the work was already done, I just had to assemble the pieces. I tried to turn down the blustery hard rock factor, by a lot. Obviously by throwing out a number of songs, including his "I Hear You Knocking"-rip off "You Really Got Me", for which he only didn't get sued 'cause it was an album track I reckon, the theft is so obvious. And then I replaced a couple of songs which the production make hard to appreciate by acoustic versions from radio appearances and concerts. In one specific case - you might've heard this before from me, as I tend to hold a grudge - I had no choice, because the worst decision of Bon Jovi and his team concerning Blaze Of Glory was murdering its second-best track mid-glory. 

"Blood Money" is the only acoustic, countr-sounding number on the album, and thus its biggest outlier. Which someho got the people putting together that album to brutally fade it out in the middle of the song, right during its chorus! I have rarely heard such an odd fade, but since - as can be heard on the full four minute version - Bon Jovi launches straight into the next verse, they kind of had to. Or, you know, not. On an album on which nearly every big blustery rock song - including the title track - is running too long, they couldn't find another minute and a half to let "Bloog Moeny" play out? Low-down bastards, the lot of them! Mongrel dogs! Red-haired stepchildren! (Ok, simmer down, OBG, simmer down...) Seemingly the idea of an accordeon-led track on a Bon Jovi album was too much to take for the powers that be to let that song alone. Breihan says that no one cares about Jon Bon Jovi's take on country blues, but I beg to differ, sir! Them's fighting words! 

Full cover art included. Not the best resolution, but I liked the idea of a wraparound cover

The solution of having the (admittedly slightly muffled) acoustic full version of "Blood Money" and then the produced but amputated studio version as its reprise isn't ideal, but that's what I got. I also found a short track of Jeff Beck trying out ideas for solos for "Bang A Drum", so I added some Beck guitar at opportune moments (tracks 2, 13 and 18 if you must know). More Beck for your buck, never a bad deal, right? (The man was quite busy at the time adding guitar to soundtracks). 

As for Alan Silvestri's score, I wanted to keep the Western/cowboy feel of things, so I greatly de-emphasized the fully orchstrated stuff and mostly kept the more acoustic stuff with guitar, lots of percussion, even banjo! This means, that some of the cues are really short, serving as little interludes between the songs. Of the songs I kept, there are the two songs from the film (the title song and "Billy Gets Your Guns") - both running over the end credits, thus really, really stretching the 'From And Inspired By The Movie' moniker of the album - as well as the pretty good, albeit too long and thus edited "Justice In The Barrel" and "Bang A Drum" with more Jeff Beck on guitar. "Bever Say Die" and "Santa Fé" have been replaced by acoustic takes. 

And that's pretty much it. Don't let the name Jon Bon Jovi put you off before giving this a listen, as I think it's certainly better than the two albums associated with Blaze Of Glory. It maybe isn't the absolute best album you've ever found on these pages, but worth a listen either way. 

How 'Bout A Nice, Banjo-Slingin', Harmony-Singin' Bluegrass Chartbuster Weekend, Folks?

Because havin' a good ol' hoedown with some fun versions of some fine songs from the pat, who'd deny such a thing? I mean, probably a number of y'all, but that's your personal problem, eh!? Because again, we have some good stuff loaded up in this slick, black-and-white packaging. It's never too late to jump on the Bluegrass Chartbuster Train, 'cause that train is gonna drive 'round these parts for a good long time, bubba. Volume 15 is one of the all-new created volumes done after, uh, expansion wave three or four, I lost count here, folks. Seeing how it was created quite a bit later than the backbones of a ton of other volumes, we have a ton of newcomers or recent additions on here. 

Considering the age of him and his co-horts, we have veteran newcomer Daniel Upstaff, together with the Uptown Troubadour doing another very nice Tom Petty cover, the underrated "Angel Dream" from the She's The One soundtrack. Jill Tonic, who are just enough Bluegrass to be featured (they're basically a banjo-enhanced guitar band) cover Jimmy Eat World's modern classic "The Middle". Mark "Huggy Bear" Lavengood - friend to Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, and a number of other artists featured here, it really is a pretty tight-knit community, where most young 'uns know each other - covers Bruce's "Hungy Heart. JD Casper - getting national attention on The Voice, or so I heard - covers Post Malone's "Chemical" from the very latest Pickin' On album project. And finally Americana cult hero Chuck Prophet is joined by an All-Star Bluegrass Band to cover "Sweet Jane". Yay!

As for other unusual covers, well, did you think that you'd get a Bluegrass version of a Devo song in this series? If you did, I salute you, you might be Nostradamus! Love Canon go quite a bit outside of the usual cover material for "Whip It". The Brothers Comatose turn to Huey Lewis & The News for "I Want A New Drug". And Molly Tuttle, backed by Golden Highway, really respects the original's psychedelic bent on her cover of Jefferson Airplan's "White Rabbit". Far out! Plus, you know, the standard excellent work of series stalwarts Cornbread Red, Iron Horse, or The Infamous Stringdusters. 

On the 'we're doing this with a big-ass smirk on our face' front, we got Finland's own Steve'n'Seagulls opening things with a fun version of Iron Maiden's "The Trooper", while we also have another band that's walking on the very thin line between fun cover and send up. A couple of volumes ago, I asked for suggestions from the small commenting readership group, and Berni - some people, notably me, call her Bluegrass Bernie - suggested Hayseed Dixie, a band that I had previously banned from the series for being too jokey and tongue in cheek. She also sent around a collection of the more serious-minded cover versions of the band, and well, I can be swayed by well done counterarguments. So, starting from this volume, the jokesters from Hayseed Dixie will occasionally bring their own brand of Bluegrass fun to proceedings, starting on here with "Mrs. Robinson". 

So, another batch of twenty solid to great Bluegrass covers of songs from - and here it's pretty much true - the last sixty years. That should be enough to conjoure a good time over the weekend. Listen To the pickin' and grinnin', and hum, hop or grin along.