Let's Get Covered In Some Funky Groovy Music Again...

The first volume of this series did come with a bit of surprising backstage shenanigans. Having received a bunch of Little Feat covers from, so I was told, "an unknown source", it turned out the very last second - I was just retagging the files right before uploading them - that the author wasn't that unknown. It was your dear blog pal and mine, Jonder, who compiled the majority of these songs firs, but it was late and I was tired and just wanted to get the whole shebang uploaded, so couldn't include more than a fleeting mention. So yeah, thanks to Jonder for doing a lot of the grunt work on this one. He also right afterwards compiled a fabulous sequel that you should check out. He reused three of the tracks from his older comp, so these will show up here as well, but nothing like hearing a good song twice rather than never, am I right?! 

So, adding to the usual suspects already present on Vol. 1 (Robert Palmer, Linda Ronstadt, Nicolette Larson), we have Lowell's old duet partner (and song co-writer) Valerie Carter on her version of "Heartache", gospel queen Oleta Adams' take on "Long Distance Love" or Bob Weir's take on "Easy To Slip". OBG additions to the playlist this time around include the dark lord of mainstream country that ruled the 90s - let's call him Darth Crooks, shall we? - with a surprisingly credible funky take on "Dixie Chicken", Eddie Money calling up the "Rock'n'Roll Doctor", good ol' Randy Newman tackling "Sailing Shoes" and - fresh outta the press - Pure Prairie League's fun take on "Six Feet Of Snow", one of Lowell's most underrated tunes. 

That song also proudly fits into Lowell's collection of truck driving songs, the first of which was of course "Truck Stop Girl". The Byrds covered that one before it even came out on Little Feat's debut, but Clarence White's take was a strangely nasal take that made some of the lyrics almost unintelligable. So I decided to switch this out for a live track from the Byrds' England tour in 1971. Other additions are Joey Landreth's "All That You Dream" and Jason Dotson's take on "Lafayette Railroad". So that's seven tracks that weren't on the old Little Feat Covered playlist, so I'd highly recommend you pick this up as well. 

As with volume one, there is a ton of variety on these tracks, all coming back to how great these songs are in the first place. So, let's get groovin' with these fine artists and these very fine songs...

A girl with a guitar...but not any girl with a guitar...

I don't remember how I stumbled over Maren Morris, probably an article that mentioned “My Church”. Listening to that song, I was reminded of Kacey Musgraves who I discovered a little earlier. Especially the slighly blasphemous to a certain type of audience lyrics showed a similarity to Mrs. Musgraves' “take no shit/give no shit” attitude to what's usually acceptable in the confines of the country genre. But let's be clear here: On her major label records, Maren Morris doesn't do country. Not really. Nashville has churned out stuff that isn't country in any appreciable sense in what, 40, 50 years? But even the roots pop of yesteryear isn't quite as audacious as Morris' music on 2016's Hero. She mixes pop, soul, hip-hop beats and really only the tiniest hint of country flavoring together in a way none of the Nashville acts do.

By 2019's Girl, she didn't even feel like pretending to cater to a country audience anymore, it's a big, shiny, ultramodern and sophisticated pop production. What can go amiss amidst the impeccable glimmer and shine of the production are some of the songs, as both records flirt with overkill. All or most of it is so steeped in cool grooves, production flourishes and ass-kicker attitude that it can be a bit much to take in. Kind of like a dessert buffet, where after tasting all the treats your tummy is aching and what sounded like a good idea at first turned out...well, not to be that. That's especially true of Girl, whose production can get a little exhausting, but even on Hero you have a bunch of numbers that sound very samey, in a number of assorted styles.

However, Morris' music is not style over substance, the songs came and come first. This comes out best when she does them in an acoustic format, where no amount of fancy production will save or sink a song. Not to mention that that is how Morris started out, as yet another songwriter with a guitar.

Some of the songs on today's little compilation are her big hits stripped down to their basics ("My Church", "The Middle", "Rich", "Dear Hate"). Some come from her independent self-published records phase where to promote them she simply went out with her acoustic guitar. All of them show that Mrs. Morris is more than just glitz and sass. Includes a fab cover of John Prine's “Angel Of Montgomery”, the rest are originals. And there's a fabulous bonus track in the form of a medley I created out of three songs from her appearance on CMT Crossroads with Alicia Keys, where he tackles two of Keys' songs. (Another track on the comp is a rehearsal with Keys on Morris' own "Once"). 

So, yeah, if you don't know Maren Morris yet, go and check this out. And if you do know Ms. Morris, then check this out, too, because you'll hear her here like you rarely heard her. So, let's listen to a girl with a guitar...but not any girl with a guitar...

The Legend Of Ragnarok - Kiwi Psych Space Prog Rock, Anyone?

Ragnarok definitely defied the odds during their existence. That a bar band touring the backwater bar circuit of the North Island would become New Zealand's premier prog rock outfit, all while losing their co-lead vocalist halfway through doesn't sound like a receipe for success. And real, palpable success wasn't forthcomung for the remaining Rangarok quartet, so after a third album failed to take shape, the band called it quits. But for five years and two albums following back to back in 1975 and 1976 Ragnarok were the premier space rock band from New Zealand, having a repertoire ranging from repetitive drones to harder edged rock, incorporating psychedelic elements. During their bar band days they played faithful Led Zeppelin, Yes and Pink Floyd covers, while slowly developing their owwn compoistions, all the while upping the stakes in the make-up and costumes department to somewhat profit from the popular glam rock stylings of the day. 

Female lead singer Lea Maalfrid had a powerful voice, but I generally prefer the lead vocals of her male colleagues. Nothing chauvinist about that, but her voice sometimes has this showtune belting thing to it that I'm not fond of. I'd rather prefer the fuzzy, floating Ragnarok with equally fuzzy and floating, sometime bordering on lazy, vocals from Ramon York. I really like "Fenris", their debut album's opener, where Maalfrid sounds menacing and eerie rather than showboating, the same is true for her second vocal appearance on "Fire On Sky". The incessant touring got to,Maalfrid, so she left after the debut album, with the remaining quartet completing Nooks. 

Simple but effective: the great cover art for their first album

A trio of songs from Nooks - "The Volsung", "Semolina" and "Paths Of Remembrance" - remind me of  the peaceful, friendly Pink Floyd of Obscured By Clouds - my favorite Floyd - having the same mellow, drifting vibe and acoustic backbone. Speaking of the Floyd: Ragnarok harken back to their old days of with a 16 minute+ medley of essentially the entire second side of The Dark Side Of The Moon. I dubbed that track "Dark Side Too", and the mimicry of the band is astounding, they really come quite close to the real thing. The other cover taken from a live recording is a Rory Erickson tune, with the lively "I Fall Apart" reminding people that these guys started out as a bar band called Sweetfeet.

Long form tracks "Dream", "Raga", "Nooks" and "Rainbow Bridge" have been edited for this collection, which splits pretty evenly between the self-titled debut and Nooks, plus the two live tracks. This is probably all the Ragnarok you need, or at the very least a really nice teaser to let you check out this fascinating little band. So get ready, folks, for the twilight of the gods... 

Glitter, make-up, fancy costumes...sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do...

Hair Metal Veteran Native American Shouter With Rapidly Receding Hairline Starts To Mellow Out, One Buck Guy Helps Him Out In Assembling Really Nice Album...

Ok ok, I admit it, I just wanted to see how many characters would break blogger's limit with my admittedly silly title, but it seems I'll have to try again some time in the future. 

By the early 1990s Blackfoot's glory days were done, and so were Ricky Medlocke's days as a hair metal teen idol, if he ever was one. The irredeemably awful Ricky Medlocke & Blackfoot from 1987 was the absolute nadir, an awful record that saw Medlocke pushed front and center, with a reconfigured Blackfoot relegated to backing band status. By the time Medicine Man came out in 1991, Blackfoot were has-beens, or rather has been Medlocke and a buc nh of hired gun never were's. But sometimes from such a situation some surprisingly good music can spring forth. And it did. The fact is that neither Medicine Man nor After The Reign were good albums per se, though the latter came much closer. But they had makings of good music, and so the idea here was to combine the best of both albums (the best according to me, obviously) into a single album, hence After The Medicine Man's Reign. 

The original Medicine Man is still firmly stuck in AOR/heavy metal mode for the most part and has a number of rather stupid songs that sadly try to recapture Medlocke's mid-80s Blackfoot heydays. Thus, only three songs make it into the new line up: The first-acoustic, then-pedal to the medal "Soldier Blue" as a kick-ass opener, the little instrumental "Navarre" and the lovely "Guitar Slingers Song & Dance".

The last Blackfoot line up - something tells me these guys loved hair, no shirts and posing.

The seven remaining tracks all come from After The Reign. Overall, that album seems to pick up where "Navarre" on its predecessor left off, going more often than not for a mellow, acoustic groove rather than the dumb heavymetal/AOR mix of the albums that came before, with the absolute nadir of those being; Old school One Buck Heads will remember "Rainbow" from my Country Dreamers comp. In the same country rock vein is the band's cover of Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey", and Medlocke also tries it's hand on the old standard "Sitting On Top Of The World". "After The Reign" is a bit more uptempo and thus a good side two opener, while "Tonight", an song that's admittedly really close to AOR power ballads, seems like a good album closer. 

Another notable point is that the lead guitar slinger on the Medicine Man tracks is One Buck Records favorite Neal Casal, which allows me to post a great picture of Medlock and Casal, the latter as a full-fledged hair metal hard rocker: 

Ricky and Neal - notice rapidly receding hairline on one and beautiful flowing mane on the other...

So, this reconfiguration doesn't reveal a lost classic of any kind, but a nice album of somewhat slowed-down and countryfied grooves from a once mighty Souther Rock band, whose lurch into the twilight generated a couple of underrated gems, right After The Medinice Man's Reign. 

Lindsey Buckingham gets screwy...or screwed ?...again

From the minute Lindsey Buckingham started to really let loose during the making of Tusk, furthering the minimalisms of "Never Going Back" and cranking up the paranoia and craziness, there was no going back. He might've liked being a pop star, but he also was the joker in Fleetwood Mac at the time, and the joker's wild. If you wanna go back to Liddy Buck the nervy new waver be sure to check out Not That Funny, the OBG alt album that presents variants of Lindsey's Tusk contributions as his hypothetical solo debut. But with today's One Buck Record you can easily go back, at least partly, as my version of Gift Of Screws has anumber of decidedly Tusk-era Buckingham jams, none more so than the unhinged title track, whose blast of nervy, even hysterical energy serves as an energetic album opener here. But tracks "Twist Of Fate" and the miniature "Given Thing" also give off that loony Liddy vibe. 

On most of the other tracks, Buckingham,shows that his gift for writing perfect pop melodies hadn't diminished. In fact, you could argue that he wrote some of his best and most beautiful pop songs during the period that Gift Of Screws covers, and then let only a part of the songs be heard. Because the story of Gift Of Screws is one of commmercial considerations, unfulfilled potential and compromises. The original Gift OF Screws is an album that never existed as such, only as an idea of Buckingham fans who had gotten hold of some of the demos he recorded in the latter part of the 1990s, somewhat overlapping with the Fleetwod Mac comeback with The Dance. So when he presented his work - a sizable number of elaborate demos and finished songs, all finished mixes - to his label as the first version of an album he wanted to call Gift Of Screws, Warner Bros./Reprise asked Buckingham to hold some of the material back and rather use it for the proposed upcoming Fleetwood Mac album, which he finally did.   

Whether that was the right decision is certainly up for debate, but what isn't for debate is that a number of worthwhile songs bit the dust due to the decision to move some of the material to Say You Will. When Buckingham finally issued his solo album called Gift Of Screws in 2008 only the title song had made the cut, though most of what's on my version of Gift Of Screws had made it into the world in one way or the other. "Miranda", "Steal Your Heart Away", "Bleed To Love Her" and "Say Goodbye" appeared with minimal extra touches on Say You Will, and "Down On The Rodeo" and "Someone's Gotta Change Your Mind" - both recorded with Mick Fleetwood and John McVie - appeared on the 2006 solo album Under The Skin, together with his cover of Donovan's "To Try For The Sun". Probably as a warm up during these demo sessions he also cut a beautiful finger-picked version of "She Smiled Sweetly", which is one of the tracks that never saw official release. 

Thankfully for everyone involved, Buckingham's songs for the original Gift Of Screws album, given to Warner Brothers on a CD-R quickly got leaked on the internet, so a look at what the original Gift Of Screws could have sounded like was the intent behind this alt album. I dropped a couple of songs from the line-up, as with the full twenty songs the album just ran too long, whereas at fifteen tracks - some of them quite short - and a running time of around 57 minutes, this is pretty much the perfect length for a CD era album. And an album this is, after careful sequencing, rather than just a bunch of songs. And considering how strong the material here is, this version of Gift Of Screws quickly becomes a contender for best Lindsey Buckingham solo album of all time. The cover art came with the booted tracks, it obviously is too nice looking to be mine...

So, sit back and listen to how Liddy Buck's best album in years, if not ever, could have sounded like, had it come out in 2001...

The Metallica Blacklist...shortlisted

When I started my slimmed down versions of (too) massive tribute albums with the one on The Grateful Dead I talked a bit about my motivations to do so - mainly a weeding out the chaff and going for better listenability thing. But rarely are they needed, strictly speaking. In the case of The Metallica Blacklist, I would argue, something like my little compilation is definitely needed, for two reasons. One is the classic massive overload of material, in this case worsened by a lot of the music sounding quite samey and also being samey, because they are the same damn songs. Since there were no equal terms on who was covering what, and the album that is being paid tribute to only has twelve songs there is a massive overlap in songs, since many artists when for the big, most recognizable songs. But all that would have still been a minor inconvenience if not for the absolutely insane way the compilers of the box set decided to present things. They kept the running order of the original album, which might have seemed like a good idea until a couple of minutes in, when you realize after the first song that there is another five consecutive stabs at "Enter Sandman" coming your way before you hear something else. There are seven consecutive versions of "The Unforgiven" and a mind-blowing twelve versions of "Nothing Else Matters" - an etire album's worth! - all programmed to run one after another. Nothing else matters, indeed. Or, you know, maybe it does. 

So my version does take the original concept, without the insane amount of same songs and repetition. So you'll have one representation each of all songs of Metallica's 'black album' in the original running order, plus a bunch of the best variants as bonus tracks. Pretty straightforward, and as with all my comps, programmed to be able to fit to burn on a disc should one so desire. Let's be real: No one needs covers of the Black Album songs for four hours, and certainly not in the way the original box set was programmed. My criteria for choosing were obviously personal preference, but also the originality of the cover version and the variety of style, if proposed. A lot of the covers were essentially well-meaning karaoke, so I refrained from putting those on there, if possible. If you want something that sounds like the original, just listen to the original, which is still a great album by the way, sell out whiner crowd be damned. 

There were two competing takes on "Enter Sandman", both of which I liked a lot, but the version of Alessia Cara & The Warning beat out the one by Rina Sawayama by a slim marging, maybe because I like the "who-o-o-o-o" after "off to never never land", thus pushing Rina's impressive industrial rock reading to bonus track status.  

Jason Isbell's take on "Sad But True" goes for deranged hillbilly rockabilly (hillrockabilly?), which then, incidentally, sounds really close to what those Finnish pranksters Steve'n'Seagulls were up to with the same song. 

Biffy Clyro start slowly and relatively sweetly, but boy, when the heavy guitars kick in, they really kick in. Much heavier than I thought these guys would be. They continue this little interplay, which gives "Holier Than Thou" its appealing dynamics.

Again, quite a lot of choice for "The Unforgiven", but I went with Ha*Ash's beautiful version, including a surprise appearance of one chorus in Spanish. 

I wasn't particularly in love with any version of "Wherever I May Roam", with most of them feeling like o.k. karaoke, and had J Balvin's take, doing a smooth Latin rap (I'm told it's calles trap these days?!?) over the riff of the song, with James Hetfield's vocals coming in at the end, in the line-up. But if we're fair, that one's more of a remix than a reinterpretation, so I pushed it into bonus track status at the last secons, replacing it with Jon Pardi's stadium country rock verion with its crazed fiddles. 

French house producer's SebastiAn's contribution was an off mash up with a transition that really didn't work, but none of the other covers of "Don't Tread On Me" worked for me, so I kept this, a short 80s electronic funk with Hetfield's original vocals. It's pretty fun, and much better without the akward transition into an orchestral "Nothing Else Matters".

Nigerian artist Tomi Owo's take on "Through The Never" probably takes first prize for 'biggest re-invention', turning Metallica's thrash number into R'n'b territory, and doing it exceptionally well. So well that I lopped off the frankly stupid heavy metal instrumentation they added to the last minute of the song.

The second biggest transformation probably belongs to My Morning Jacket who transform "Nothing Else Matters" into a mix between power pop and the Beach Boys, as improbable and hopefully appealing as that sounds. It did to me, beating out all the mellow or dramatic takes on the song, though Dave Gahan's stately take on the song as well as Phoebe Bridgers' delicate folk interpretation both show up as bonus tracks. 

"Of Wolf And Man", one of the true deep cuts on this album, only has one representation on The Metallica Blacklist, thankfully Goodnight, Texas' spooky Americana take is a good one. Imelda May turns "The God That Failed" into a swampy, swaggering blues rock number, while Frenchwoman Izia turns "My Friend of Misery" into very nice mainstream rock. I originally had Kamasi Washnigton's almost seven minute jazz tour de force in this spot, but it slowed momentum down too much and thus got a trip to the bonus track bench. 

And then we close out with the delicate acoustic fingerpicking of Rodrigo and Gabriela, the sole representative of "The Struggle Within", but again, thankfully a really nice one. 

So, liner notes, huh, they sure make those write-ups end up a bit on the long side, right?! So time to let the music take over...here's almost 80 minutes of some very varied takes on some really good Metallica songs. Devil's horns up, amps all the way to eleven - let's rock!

 

Jolly Roger And His Band Of Merry Country Pirates

Well, well, well. Right to business, folks. I already said all I have to say about Cardiff Rose in my write-up two days ago, so we'll move right on to Band Of Pirates, the little companion album I prepared as a special chaser for the original album. 'Little' is definitely fitting here, as Band Of Pirates with a slim runnning time of under 27 minutes is what would have been marketed as a mini album in the 1980s, when they tried to establish slimmed down albums of around eight tracks and 25 to 30 minutes as an option between an EP and an LP. 

The main source of this album is a radio concert in front of a small audience that McGuinn gave with his newly formed backing band, Thunderbyrd, in 1976. This is the first iteration of that band, which didn't last until the album named like them a year later. McGuinn thought they didn't have the chops to produce in the studio, so they got canned and replaced by studio pros like Rick Vito, Greg Thomas and future Poco player Charlie Harrison. But the original Thunderbyrd - James Smith on guitar and Commander Cody's old rhythm section of Bruce Barlow and Lance Dickerson- are really quite good in a live setting. They bring a distintive country rock sensibility to the Cardiff Rose material, including some tasty steel guitar on a number of songs. 

Two songs on this mini-album aren't on Cardiff Rose: Mc Guinn did a bunch of Byrds song or rather: bits of Byrds songs. Some of these were mere snippets, less than a minute long, basically a verse and a refrain. These cut up mini versions to me weren't the absolute best ways to hear that music. So I decided to turn a number of these Byrds songs and snippets into a medley dubbed "Treasure Trove" to go along with the pirate theme around here. The songs included (and in order) are: She Don't Care About Time-So You Want To Be A Rock'n'Roll Star-Hickory Wind-Mr. Spaceman. 

The other song, and the only one not taken from the so-called Living Room Concert - is "Soul Love", a demo produced for possible inclusion of Cardiff Rose. McGuinn doing Bowie? Yes, it happened, folks, no doubt due to some friendly nudging from producer Mick Ronson, who recorded the song later himself. The fact that this is a mere demo with rather rudimentary instrumentation fits rather well for inclusion on Band Of Pirates, so it fits in pretty well with the acoustic vibe of the rest of the tracks. 

Well, and that is that. Seven fine tracks from McGuinn and his merry band of musical marauders, from one of the best periods of him as a performer in the 70s. Arh, har, matey - step on board of the Jolly Roger and meet your captain, Jolly Roger, as well as his merry men...

From The Record Shelf: If you need one Roger McGuinn record, it's this one...

First and foremost, Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue was somewhat of a one of a kind spectacle, the likes of which we wouldn't see again. Dylan had already resurrected his career just before with Blood On The Tracks, though the touring spectacle certainly generated an interest in Dylan not seen in years. The Rolling Thunder Revue didn't just help revive Dylan's career, though. It sure as hell revived Roger McGuinn's creative spirits. By the time Rolling Thunder, uh, rolled around McGuinn was pretty busy doing nothing, when not coasting on his name and reputation. His last album, Roger McGuinn & Band, was a critical and commercial flop, though I maintain that it is not nearly as catastrophic as a bunch of folks would tell you. But yeah, repurposing old Byrds and Dylan songs and otherwise mostly outsourcing the songwriting to his backing band didn't help with the impression/accusation that McGuinn was only half-heartedly following his music career. 

To be fair, that career had flatlined in the mid-70s, with McGuinn's first two albums being decent but completely by the numbers versions of what people would expect from a Roger McGuinn record. So, yeah, Rog definitely needed a pick me up in late 1975, and Dylan's phone call to just come out and join the circus troupe was exactly that. His involvement in Rolling Thunder was relatively small - he'd get a short solo set and then often stayed with the band for Dylan's closing set - but it definitely revived and reconnected McGuinn with rock'n'roll and gave his studio work something it didn't have in a long while - purpose.   

There is real bite and real commitment to these performances, something that was sorely lacking from his previous albums. From the opening chords of album opener "Take Me Away", McGuinn's ode to the Rolling Thunder Revue, the music is tight, McGuinn is in fine voice and multiple highlights follow each other. Incidentally, I am personally not a huge fan of pirate yarn "Jolly Roger", but it's a fan favorite for many. "Rock And Roll Time", co-written with Dylan Crony and Rolling Thunder Revue musical director Bobby Neuwirth as well as Kris Kristofferson, has him on his punk-iest snarl of a vocal, something he would put two years later to great use on "Shoot 'Em". "Partners In Crime", a loving send-up of the Chicago Seven does have all the hallmarks of a McGuinn political satire, using the pastiche approach already familiar from Byrds songs like "I Wanna Grow Up To Be A Politician". 

"Round Table" is another McGuinn rocker about - you guessed it - King Arthur's Round Table, while his second stab at the traditional "Pretty Polly" (the first was an aborted attempt for Sweetheart Of The Rodeo that established McGuinn's arrangement of the song and did end up on my alternate version of the album) is - true to some of the harder edged vocals on the album - a much more frantic, even hysterical performance. Johnny Rogan calls it "much more psychotic" which sounds about right.But McGuinn was of course also the master of vocal imitation, used to full effect here: Dylan's "Up To Me" sounds appropriately Dylan-ish, while ""Dreamland" is sung in a higher register to remind you of its author, Joni Mitchell. 

A big part of the heavier rock sound of Cardiff Rose is of course producer Mick Ronson, whom McGuinn met on the Rolling Thunder Revue. Considering the quality on display here, McGuinn must've been hugely disappointed when the album he was rightfully proud of couldn't even beat Roger McGuinn & Band and actually missed the Top 200 altogether. No matter how you slice it, this is a really good album, and it is arguably the high watermark of McGuinn's solo work, at least until the comeback/legacy sequel album Back From Rio in 1991 which to my mind is a little too conscious about being 'a Roger McGuinn album'. Cardiff Rose is not, it simply stands as a great collection of songs.

This is part of a two-tier project. Be back in two days for Band Of Pirates, a mini-album companion piece to Cardiff Rose, which is obviously a One Buck Records exclusive. We're not just lazily grabbing things from the shelf here, people...even if they are great albums... 

The French Connection: L'Americana à la française...

Ah, 'tis the season. The rainy season. The getting dark early season. The season prone to slightly melancholic music. Or is it already The End Of The Season? To Redeye, it is. The French singer-songwriter who is behind the Redeye moniker, has studied the art of Americana well, and brings a pretty perfect simulation of the real thing made in France. 'All tracks written and performed by G. " Redeye" Fresneau' reads the booklet, somewhat akwardly. Mr. Fresneau seemingly hides his first name to, uh, hide that he's a dyed in the wool Frenchman, maybe? It's okay, Guillaume, Windows Media's automatic album recognition destroyed the mystery. Redeye's wish for authentic Americana-ness is cute, if not a little overzealous. Until this album, I have never seen a booklet proudly announce where it was printed. But since End Of The Season's was printed in Oregon, the booklet proudly announces this, as if to say 'See how Americana we Frenchmen really are? Even our booklet comes from there!'. 

There is, however, a good reason that Redeye's music sounds so close to the originals it tries to emulate: Fresneau spent four formative years in Austin, Texas, one of the capital's of No Depression/Americana. And like fellow Texans Midlake, there is a good amount of folk and psych elements in Redeye's music. D'ailleurs, the preferred nomenclature for his music, as per Fresneau, is psych-folk, but whatever you want to call it, it's really nice mood music if you are in the mood for some autumnal melancholy. 

This is the kind of sadly beautiful Americana that I would have killed for twenty five years ago and am still A okay with today. The tempo never rises above midtempo and Redeye draws in the same coloring book for most of this album.On the other hand, he has a real knack for this kind of music and this can proudly be put with your other melancholy Americana/singer-songwriter albums. Lucile Vallez' mournful violin wanders through most of these songs and give them a big part of their appeal, though there is also some tasteful accordion and saxophone on the cajun-style "Sunny Roads" and some horns on "Cold As Ice". This isn't just some guy strumming on his acoustic guitar, but beautifully produced music. It also seems no coincidence that the latter two songs with their expansion of Redeye's sound find themselves in the middle of the record, as if Redeye realized that to fight a certain sameyness in his music it would be wise to color a bit outside the lines on these tracks. A trumpet accompanies "Season's Ending" as well, another welcome bit of offsetting the usual instrumentation.   

Since this, his debut album, Fresneau has turned Redeye into a real band, now normally going under (This Is) ReDeYe, still plowing that psych-folk-Americana field he first worked on End Of The Season. But check out the beginnings of Fresneu's faux Americana (Fauxmericana?), because it's better than quite a bit of the 'authentic' stuff...

  

This Just In: Cameron's Second Still His Best...

I am currently watching The Terminator as I write this. Goddamn, what a great movie this is. I probably haven't seen this in twenty years or so. If a Terminator movie shows up on TV it's usually the sequel. Now that is also a fantastic movie, that every time I land on it wile channel-surfing I have to watch the damn thing. I usually think to myself 'Ah, I'll just watch a scene or two' and then end up watching the whole thing anyway because it's so well-made. But yeah, the first one and James Cameron's sophomore effort (after the ridiculous Roger Corman b-movie Piranha 2: The Spawning) rarely shows up on TV, so when tonight it did I had to watch it (despite, you know, owning it on DVD for more than twenty years as well...). 

Cameron might have made smoother-looking films with better special effects, but he never made a more efficient film than The Terminator. The whole film is like a well-oiled machine, constantly moving forward, like the Terminator itself. Exposition is the first half of the film is embedded into the action scenes, the movie doesn't slow down until good guy Reese is captured by the police. (Which, incidentally, is where we are now as I write this. Live commentary!). And of course Cameron did it for peanuts. Arnie's Austrian-accented Terminator just operated his damaged eye, and yes, you can see that Arnie's head is a plastic fake when we see his exposed eye, in the same way that the miniatures and stop motion effects are easy to identity now. But hell, give me that over weightless, spotless CGI any day and twice on sunday, which it is today. 

You know what's also great about The Terminator? It's unforgettable title theme. On one hand, Brad Fiedel uses a cheap-sounding synth. On the other, that makes the theme sound like one of John Carpenter's, which is a good thing! Fiedel's score was one of the first entirely electric scores, all what nowadays would probably be called darkwave. Like Carpenter's scores, it gets a little repetitive here and there, but it's a fine time capsule and a fine reminder to go watch that movie again whenever you can. 

So, while I continue watching this classic  - thus no tagging the tracks, I'm lazy tonight. Go do it yourself if you have to! I'm watching a movie, man! - have some fun with Friedel's score. 

Bob Carpenter Tries One More Time...(And Nobly Fails, One More Time)

Last we talked about Bob Carpenter we relayed the sad, maddening story surrounding the release of his only official record, the amazing Silent Passage. By the time that record came out almost a decade after the initial release date, Carpenter was more or less done with the idea of a successful music career. But he did give it another shot, briefly, discreetly, in the late 1970s. Carpenter went into a studio to cut a number of demos, essentially as publishing demos for other artists, or to possibly entice someone to give him another recording deal after things turned so badly with Brian Ahern and Warner Brothers. Alas, no covering spree of Carpenter songs or recording contracts followed these demo sessions, and so Carpenter floated back into, well, whatever he was doing. The really really last shot was then a couple of years later around the release of Silent Passage, but when that album didn't become a surprise bestseller, Carpenter really was done with the music business. He still gave the occasional concert and contributed a track to an obscure Canadian various artists collection in 1991. But for all intents and purposes, he was done after 1984. 

And yet, and yet, after the initial disappointment and more or less official blackballing in the mid-70s, he did try one more time, and we get One More Time out of it. There's not much info on what made Carpenter return to the studio in 1979 to cut the eight tracks that were released in 2010 by trusty Stony Plain as Eight Demos 1979. But Carpenter clearly intended these to be used or discovered. The sound is crisp and clean, and so is Carpenter's singing voice. The weird, gruff garble on some of Silent Passage looks in retrospective more and more like an artistic choice, as his voice on these songs sounds younger and fresher than on Silent Passage, where maybe he methor acted the 'gruff mountain man from the Canadian plains' persona a little too much. Also, these aren't "a man and his guitar on a tape recorder"-type demos, but rather fully produced. Spare backing all in all, sure, but tastefully done and with just enough little touches to elevate the music above 'only for cultists' level. 

Speaking of the production: You will see that the closing tracks of what would be the a- and b-sides of One More Time are quite different from the rest, no more so than on album closer "Satan's Golden Chain". That song, as well as "Mister Blue" aren't from Eight Demos 1979, but rather a Stony Plain label retrospective published a few years later. Again, I don't have much info on these tracks, but from the sound they clearly come from the 1980s, so my best guess would be that these were recorded as either a prospective promo single or follow-up single to the release of Silent Passage on Stony Plain in 1984. And while the delicate and subtle "Mister Blue" easily slides in with the unplugged feel of the record, "Satan's Golden Chain" looks like the wild card of the pack. 

It also includes all the contradictions of Bob Carpenter in one tidy (or rather:messy) package. The instrumentation is extremy slick, pure mainstream soft rock, with every production touch that an early-to-mid 80s production would imply. But of course Carpenter can not help himself and sabotages whatever (improbable) commercial appeal the song would have by including a yodeling section, several times. That's our Bob. 

One More Time doesn't have the timeless, eerie mystique of Silent Passage, apart from "Falling Night" which could have fit right in. But even these unpublished songs in their unfussy, warm arrangements are titles lesser artists would kill for. How many thousand dudes with an acoustic guitar couldn't come up with a killer tune like "Magdalena", the lovely "Dreaming" or the grooving newly minted title song "One More Time"? These songs are also less of a 'mood piece' type of music as Silent Passage was, so One More Time is an entirely different, but no less pleasant listening experience, maybe even more pleasant in some ways. 

This is great music and deserved to be heard back then. It sure as hell deserves to be heard now. 

OBG's Antique store offers Bonnie's Beforehand's Best...

Here's an idea for a fun party game. You take some deep cuts from Rod Stewart and Bonnie Tyler, play a ten or fifteen snippet of it and then your guests have to guess. Is it Roddy? Is it Bonnie? Their voices are so alike that without being an expert in both artists' catalogue, you just might get fooled. On a visit to my parents (already a good long while ago) they played me some music in hopes that I might guess what it is. "Uh...is that Bonnie Tyler?!" I asked, which, duh, it wasn't. Turns out it was one of Rod's Great American Songbook series, which is pretty awful all in all considered. I mean, do we really need Rod the Mod soft-sing his way through Gershwin and others? 

So, here's the thing. We can all hate on Stewart's mid-career choices, starting with Atlantic Crossing. His shameless trend-chasing, disco-embracing, mainstream-caving music of the late 70s and early 80s hasn't aged terribly well. I can't hate it too much, because this is the Rod of my childhood, the Rod that would get played on the MOR/AOR station my parents would listen to in the car and at home. But yeah...at least Rod, along with his time in the Faces, still has that handful of albums on Mercury that started his solo career. These are genuinely good to great albums, as I would find out later, and even the biggest Rod-haters have to admit that he was up to some fine stuff on those discs...

I'm not sure Bonnie Tyler ever got the same benefit of a doubt. Like with the Rodster, I mainly knew Bonnie from her mid-80s to early-90s MOR hits, because that was what was played on the radio. Only much later, a couple of years ago, did I realize that Tyler also has a secret stash of early solo albums that are much better than her reputation from "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" onwards would suggest. So this is where the One Buck Record of the day, Really Cool Antiques come in. Because those old songs from good ol' Bonnie, especially the deep and album cuts surrounding the two major hits "It's A Heartache" and "Lost In France" are much better than one would think. 

If, say, you wouldn't believe that a blond Welsh woman named Gaynor Hopkins could do justice to Stevie Wonder's "Living For The City", then listen to this and be proven wrong. She also has great covers of "(You Make Me Feel) Like A Natural Woman" and "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" and even does a really lovely version of Tom Petty's "Louisiana Rain". But more than a talented interpreter of others' famous songs, it's some of the originals here that deserve attention. Her managers Ronnie Scott and Steve Wolfe wrote the lion's share of the original songs for her tenure at RCA, often also co-producing her records. None of these are necessarily great songs, but they are a very fine mix of country-ish and vaguely r&b-ish pop songs. "My!My! Honeycomb", a 1976 non-album single and the opener here, gives a good indication of whether you'll like this or not. 

So, Really Cool Antiques hopefully does for Bonnie Tyler what one of the many Mercury compilations did for Rod Stewart: Remind you that before the glitzy and sometimes chintzy stuff towards the middle of their career they had some good years, good albums and good songs. Some really cool antiques, if you will...

Call him Cool Hand Elvis or Cowboy Costello...how Declan McManus' West was won...

Storytime with ol' OBG, who's going to tell you a litte about how Elvis Costello could have become a country star, years before genre exercise Almost Blue got him in a country kind of mood. The year is 1978 and My Aim Is True has come and gone. It did some business as an import disc in the US, but couldn't get a distribution deal there. Single release "Alison" also failed to chart. But wait - somebody somewhere had to adopt the song, right?! The student community of the University of Texas at Austin embraced "Alison", making it a local hit record. Which got tiny local country label Tumbleweeds Record thinking. So an inquiry of Tumbleweeds Records reaches the offices of Stiff Records. Would Elvis Costello have more country-ish songs in the vein of "Alison", to be released locally on Tumbleweeds Records, with the hopes of a grass roots movement pushing that country rock record further than the Austin area.  

Costello is in London busy working on what will be This Year's Model. But, in turn,  Elvis gets to do some thinking. The guys at Tumbleweed Records want another "Alison"? He's got that. They want more tried and true country stuff? Well, he got that, too.Kind of, sort of. And to give the Tumbleweeds records guys a whole album, he's diving into his back catalogue. Deeply back. 

Costello has two very recent, obvious contributions lying around: The fantastic, George Jones-esque (soon to be recorded as a duet with Jones!) tearjerker "Stranger In The House", that the powers to be at Stiff convinced him not to put on My Aim Is True. And he has "Radio Sweetheart", a number he cut as a demo for Dave Edmunds at the behest of Stiff Records. But two albums do not an album make. So Costello reaches back to his semi-recent past on the pub rock circuit. More explicitly, to his time with Flip City, the pub rock group that dabbled in country rock, or more precisely the kind of vaguely soul-inflected roots rock that a lot of pub rock bands were doing. And it so happens that Flip City recorded a song that sounds like an absolute dead ringer (or rather, a blueprint) of "Alison", "Imagination (Is A Powerful Deceiver)". Plus a bunch of other vaguely country-ish songs, including covers of The Amazing Rhythm Aces' "Third Rate Romance" and Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door". 

So, with the two country numbers he hasn't found room for elsewhere and the best of the Flip City stuff, Costello has the country rock record that Tumbleweeds Records wants. To sound more country, Flip City are being redubbed The Flip City Ramblers, while Mr. Costello gets of course top billing. Yet Radio Sweethearts, the resulting album, doesn't sell much outside of the faithful, and the two singles Tumbleweeds Record launches ("Imagination" and "Radio Sweetheart", are little more than turntable hits on student radio. So, Elvis' career as a country star have to wait, while he strongly rebounds with This Year's Model, paving the way for another country sojourn down the line...

Well, this is where we get back to reality, where no such record exists - until now! One Buck Records is proud to present how the first country record by Elvis Costello could have really sounded like...

Now, that rusty ol' truck there needs some remodeling, hoss...

You ever had the long slow burn of an album that’s a grower? No, I don’t mean in the days after getting it. An album that doesn’t just grow over the first couple of listens, but takes its sweet time, growing and growing and growing...over a couple of years. Rusty Truck’s album Luck’s Changing Lanes is such an album, at least for me. It’s an album that’s been sitting pretty in my record collection since 2013 and until last year it was sitting there waiting to get played once a year, maybe. And then, over the course of a couple of month, something strange happened. Having had its yearly outing, the melodies and words kept creeping back up on me regularly, and I caught myself humming or singing a couple of lines...then had to remember what they were...then realized...Rusty Truck!?

When I picked up this album I had never heard of Rusty Truck before. Nor did I necessarily know who Mark Seliger was. But a sticker promising, among others, special guests Sheryl Crow, Jakob Dylan, Lenny Kravitz, Willie Nelson, and Gillian Welch had me intrigued. Googling Mark Seliger, I realized that I had probably seen the name a bunch of times, seeing how he was essentially the house photographer of Rolling Stone magazine for more than a decade, shooting most of their iconic covers from the 1990s and the photo series for articles. Becoming friends with Jakob Dylan, towards the end of that run, had Seliger pursue his life-long love for country music. Dylan produced a first demo and fellow wallflower Rami Jaffee put together the band that became Rusty Truck. And despite the array of famous guest stars and helpers, Luck's Changing Lanes isn't some sort of all-star revue, a sort of alt-country Supernatural. Most stars' contributions are playing an instrument or the occasional backing vocal. 

If I remodeled the album, that’d already be the second paint job on Rusty Truck's debut album. The record was first published in 2003 as Broken Promises on the tiny Coda Terra label, and despite all the guest stars went almost immediately out of print. It may pay to have friends in places, but not if neither you nor your friends can get heard. The album then got re-issued five year later by Rykodisc as Luck’s Changing Lanes, dropping two songs from the original release and replacing them by two others, which is the version of the album I have. And it’s here where they fucked up terribly with an absolute screw job of epic proportions in terms of sequencing.

I remember my initial, sharp disappointment with much of the disc. Having picked this up in a record store in Edinburgh, there we were driving up the hillsides into the Highlands, and after a promising opening track and an okay second one the album just sort of vanished into a vapor of samey-sounding elegant but sleepy midtempo sound of country crooning that bordered on boredom...”What did you put on there?” my wife inquired for it was she who was driving, “that’s gonna put me to sleep”...and out of the car’s CD player the disc went to then make its very infrequent appearances over the years. I could not even blame my wife, but rather blame whoever put the disc together. Sequencing, maaaaan, you ever heard of it? 

Unfortunately, no one involved with Luck’s Changing Lanes seemed to take the importance of an album's flow much into consideration, as after the first two tracks the album programmed four mid/slow tempo songs which all more or less sound the same back to back to back to back. That’s a lot of back there, hoss. Any momentum the album wanted to build was immediately undermined by a section that invites fingers to approach the skip button. So I did what I do with a disc that has such strange sequencing errors, I essentially skipped the “boring” first side entirely and started with track seven to the imaginary second side which had both stronger tunes and a better flow. I hadn’t started to tinker with re-sequencing albums yet, but boy, if ever an album needed some help to find a better flow, it’s this one.

And it’s worth it. Because those lines and choruses I started to hum almost unconsciously...that happened for a reason. Luck’s Changing Lanes, now re-sequenced for a better listening experience with no prolonged lulls in the middle of things, is full of charming, but ultimately extremely endearing tunes. The instrumentation is rich and varied, some songs like the reggae groover “New York Fallen Angel” with Burning Spear on backup vocals (one of the two new songs) and “Malibu Canyon” are almost pure pop and the only thing that makes this alt country is that Nashville and its radio confections don’t sound like this, unfortunately. The weakest thing on here is probably the duet with Willie Nelson (which gets very close to the ol’ Willie countrypolitan sound), but even that one is endearing. 

For further listening pleasure I attached a couple of live bonus tracks at the end plus two tracks from the follow-up album. It’s interesting to see how they turn “New York Fallen Angel” from a reggae-pop tune into a honky tonk one live. Without further ado (as that was a lot of ado already!), here’s that ol’ twice  remodeled Rusty Truck.

KT's (Less) Drastic, Fantastic Makeover

Some alternate albums you look for, some alternate albums are looking for you. Especially if they have the help of an algorhythm. Algorhythms are funny things, of course, and sometimes dumb things, too. I bought KT Tunstall's Drastic Fantastic on a special sales promotion for my wife, because a couple of years earlier she had loved "Black Horse And The Cherry Tree". Plus, you know, KT as a cute rock chick in a short white dress with a shiny guitar - that lady knows how to sell herself. The album is pretty neat, a bunch of well-written and produced pop and rock songs. But, you know, I had never remotely imagined that of all the  albums in my home, Drastic Fantastic would be on the short list for a patented OBG alternate album treatment. Enter Amazon. 

You know what's great about the, oh, two dozen albums or so that I bought on Amazon that had a digital version attached? Amazon's algorhtyhms don't necessarily know - or care - which version of the album I bought. So, while most album are exactly like I bought them, some others...change. Usually for the better. Amazon has (inadevertently?) upgraded a bunch of albums, adding bonus tracks or - as in the case of our dear Ms. Tunstall - a whole deluxe album version. So, all of a sudden I had a bunch of Drastic Fantastic bonus material on my hands...and that could obviously only mean one thing. 

Short dress + big guitar...we got a winner, baby

The Allmusic review to Drastic Fantastic noted how it was a fork-in-the-road kind of moment, where she could have chosen to be more of a gentle, slightly sleepy singer-songwriter or more of a pop star. As said, the chose the latter, and while the pop production on that album is good, some people probably had hoped for that other option. My alternate version of the album does this, to a degree, by sourcing seven of the tracks from the All You Need Is Mud documentary that was issued around the same time and featured Tunstall playing the tunes from Drastic Fantastic as live acoustic versions. 

Less Drastic, Still Fantastic - as I have dashingly called the album - also includes a number of outtakes from the album that are as good as those that made it on it, plus Tunstall's take on Beck's "The Golden Age", which she had issued on stop-gap release Acoustic Extravaganza a year earlier, but I decided to include anyway because it's a great song and KT's version is really good. And finally, included in this Ultimate Edition that was dropped in my lap was a whole disc of instrumental versions of the tracks. I'm not sure what the use and especially the relisten value of that is, but well, I didn't want to let it go to waste entirely either, so I created a handful of small interludes out of that. Result: An album that is 100% different from the original, but an equally good listen. 

Yup, that combo really works...no wonder I had to buy this...

Whether you like KT Tunstall, or have never listened to her before, check this out if you like unpretentious, well-made pop and rock music. And why wouldn't you? 

The Beatles Trap...And Now You're In It...

 

The Beatles are the most overrated music group in history. Discuss. 

Let the World-Eating Start...with Jimmy Eat World's Early Days...

Well, this has been a long time coming. I wanted to start posting some Jimmy Eat World for a good long while now but something else always jumped the line. But now we finally launch the series of albums from Mesa, Arizona's finest. Like that other punk-cum-pop band Jimmy Eat World needed a couple of albums and a change of lead vocalists two albums in to really get somewhere. And the somewhere is Jimmy Eat World being probably the most beloved of all 'emo' bands coming out in the late 90s and early 2000s. And then, with Bleed American in 2001 they actually did hit the big time. 

The emo tag shouldn't turn you off, by the way, as misunderstandingit might indicate that this is somehow music for teen boppers. Instead, it is some of the best pop punk and power pop you'll hear. It's lyrical content and pleading vocals could probably account for the 'emo' label, but as someone who never was 'emo', I can't really say much other than that Jimmy Eat World are first and foremost a kick-ass rock band with smarts and songs to spare.

But it's undeniable that Jimmy Eat World make music for young people - or at least the young at heart. The - yes - emotional content amplifies and accompanies the heightened emotional states of teenagers and young adults, the time where every romantic drama promises to be the end of the world and everything feels ten or a hundred times more important than it turns out to be. But that's what getting old(er) teaches you. Anyway, I digress. So, whether you call them punk, or emo, or power pop, or simply good old fashioned rock'n'roll, Jimmy Eat World was a great band for a couple of years around the change of the millenium. And today's Earlybird Special will hopefully start the mission in style, while focusing on the quicker and heavier music they did during their early days.  

The main basis for Earlybird Special is their Singles compilation, from which ten of the sixteen tracks here are sourced. There is one track ("Splat Out Of Luck") from their demo tape (just edging out the same track in the finished version from their not particularly impressive debut album), three from Static Prevails, their sophomore effort and major label debut, which has its moments - most of them collected here - but not hinting at what they could and would be just a little later. The one track from their self-titled 1998 EP, album closer "Roller Queen" already points in that direction, as do early versions of "Cautioners" and "The Most Beautiful Things", both of which would show up on Bleed American. There is also their cover of Duran Duran's "New Romance" which for some copyright dispute reasons wasn't included on Singles, with Jim Adkins' liner notes advising the reader to "get it off Napster or something. You have our blessing". well, that's nice; It also really dates the release and these liner notes...I mean, when was the last time you heard the word Napster..?

So, who's ready for some crunchy guitars and some well-adjusted noise? Get the jump on these guys early during their tenure here at One Buck Records and enjoy this Earlybird Special, for a kickass start to your weekend...

Long Time, No Seventies Pearls...but that's about to change...

Woof, time flies. I say that a lot around here, don't I? But yeah, it has been a while that we were back in this series' original roaming grounds and natural habitat, the 1970s. In order to confound expectations this time out, I'll start with some prog rock courtesy of Booth, Davis & Lowe. Usually I put the more proggy stuff towards the end, as sort of cosmic run-out grooves, but hey, gotta shake things up a bit from time to time, eh?! And this is definitely on the rockier side of the proggy side, ifyaknowwhaddamean. 

Sometimes a good cover version can reveal a song. I never much noticed Jackson Browne's “My Opening Farewell” on his debut album, and I can say I definitely prefer Michael Johnson's take on the song. Johnson's debut album, from which this is taken, sold pretty much nothing, but he became quite popular later in the 1970s, and then as a mainstream country star in the mid-80s. He is probaby also the biggest name around here. 

Portrait of the artist as a young man

I seemingly was in an upbeat  mood when assembling this, judging from Peter Goodale's groovy "Peter's Song", the b-side to his only single for the former memeber of Canadian psych band The Cycle. The Hoodoo Rythm Devils live up to their name with the ultra-heavy swamp groove of "Black Widow", while Heaven Worth "Ride The Tide" also lets the guitars loose. 

Another Canuck with another b-side to his only single is Bob Brunton with the mainstream pop-adjacent "Lies", complete with authentic vinyl crackle all over. Larry Groce's "Sad Bird" sounds appropriately sad, while my pedal steel gently weeps. And, in a totally different register, I also really like Eclipse's off-its-time disco arrangement of "Born To Be Wild". It's groooovy, baby!

Words fail me. Just...wow...

And didn't I mention that I usually put long, proggy stuff as an esoteric run-out groove. Oh boy, are you gonna be served here. German electronic ambient musician Michael Hoenig - later successful scoring movies  in Hollywood and video games - takes us on a trip for his "Departure From The Northern Wasteland". It's epic, it's cosmic, it's 18 minutes of spacey atmospheric music (slightly edited from the even longer original). What a way to take All Pearls, No Swine Vol. 22 home, if I might say so myself. 

So, get this, groove to this, tell me 'bout your favorites...