Some say their music will end in fire, some say in ice...

Quickly, dear reader, when was the last time you thought of Icehouse? That is, if you ever thought at all of Iva Davies and whoever he recruited around him as Icehouse. They were huge in their home country, but basically a one-hit wonder everywhere else. That hit, though, was huge. "Hey Little Girl" made the Top 20 in most European countries in 1982, and it is still playing regularly on oldies stations these days. Weirdly enough, or maybe not, as the U.S. were slower to embrace synth-pop, "Girl" didn't even chart in the U.S. (though it made both the rock and dance charts), but five years later Icehouse became a two-hit wonder there with "Electric Blue" and "Crazy" both making the top twenty. Not surprisingly, as by that time they had embraced a more openly mainstream pop-rock sound.

Icehouse came, like pretty much any Australian band ever, out of the pub rock circuit, because when you were an upstart band down under that's what you did. But, like INXS who started out at pretty much the same time, Icehouse fell under the spell of the new exciting sounds of New Wave and synth pop acts, and much like Michael Hutchence & Co. they embraced that music for the first couple of years of their existence, alternating icy synth songs and nervy New Wave-style rock tracks. Funnily, of course, their debut album isn't Flowers by Icehouse, but rather Icehouse by Flowers, which was the band's name for the first three and a half years of their existence. But when they got European distribution deals and didn't want to get confused witt Scottish band The Flowers, they essentially switched things around, becoming Icehouse instead. Which, ironically means that retrospectively they got their own theme song with the title song of the Icehouse album.  

Icehouse was, and is, and always has been, Iva Davies' baby. He was the bandleader, and sometimes the entire band. Icehouse's breakthrough, 1982's Primitive Man was essentially a Davies solo record (with some help on percussion from co-producer Keith Forsey), later band configurations would sometimes include early band members   like Michael Holste, but essentially Davies recruited whoever he needed at any given time. (There are at least 24 current or former Icehouse members). The music was as fluid and prone to changes as the band line-ups. Icehouse is, perhaps fittingly, the iciest and most European-sounding of their releases, almost exclusively centred around synthesizers. Primitive Man is still pretty firmly in the synth pop mold, but you can hear the rock guitars starting to knock on the door. Sidewalk two years later still had keyboards, but as a background feature for what was now a robust pop-rock sound, as was follow-up Measure To Measure a year later. Man Of Colours, again released only a year later, shows them at their most AOR, mainstream-ready. The band's last two albums, Code Blue and Big Wheel, have the band plateauing, but on a high level, still churning out top notch pop singles like "Big Wheel". 

Ir's interesting how closely Icehouse's evolution mirrors that of INXS, with both making major strides towards the mainstream in 1984, INXS with The Swing (though really, they had already started a year earlier with Shaboo Shooba) and Icehouse with Sidewalk. While INXS placed their bets on slightly r'n'b-influenced dance grooves and the increasingly Jagger-esque vocals of Hutchence, Davies' version of mainstream pop-rock had the slightest hints of heartland rock tucked under its shiny sheens of keyboard and guitars. Both bands realized that the novelty and reach of synth pop was starting to wear off, and adapted appropriately. INXS of course rode their formula to worldwide success, and while Icehouse's success outside of its homeland and New Zealand was more modest, they made a nice career for themselves. 

The Best Of Both Worlds gives you pretty much all the Icehouse you'll ever need. I thought a chronological order wasn't the way to go, instead I tried to go for an anti-chronological, flow-based assembly, that is still following an ordering principle. These 37 tracks are spread out over two discs thematically. Disc One (House Of Ice) has the band's more experimental and electronic work, focusing mainly on material from their first two albums and later songs that fit the mold, while disc two (House Of Fire) has the more accessible mainstream pop rock music from Sidewalk onwards. Most, but not all of their (commercially) biggest songs are here, but also a number of album tracks and single b-sides. I know I harp on a lot on this blog about sequencing and flow and yadda yadda, so I'll keep it short. The slice of moodiness called "Coda" was originally the closing track of disc one, but b-side instrumental "Promised Land" already fulfilled the function of a moody, instrumental outro, so "Coda" got placed at the tail end of disc two, fittingly being the short, sweet coda to the entire Icehouse experience of The Best Of Both Worlds. But in search of bookends, I now looked for a moody opening, a sort of overture to go with this coda, and found it in the (slightly shortened) Midnight Mix of "Crazy", which is almost all atmosphere. 

There, that's it. Sequencing discussion over. That was short and painless compared to some other write-ups, wasn't it? So, now it really is off to the music, which - if you are not a somewhat commited follower of early Aussie 80s synth pop or early 90s Australian mainstream rock, a bit of a niche genre in both cases I would think - you are in for some surprises, and a collection of interesting synth and New Wave ditties on one hand, and really well-made pop and rock confections on the other. The Best Of Both Worlds, indeed. 

Hotdayum! Them's Chartbusters back, fellas, so let's start the hootenanny...

Round two for our dip into bluegrass takes on popular songs from...oh...about the last 60 years or so. Volume one was exclusicely sourced from the Pickin' On... series, which will stay the main source of that series, but I decided to open up the series for any well-done bluegrass cover of a popular song. This mainly happened because, Honeywagon, one of my favorite bands on the CMH/Pickin On... roster , well presented on volume one, left relatively quickly. Then again, so did Cornbread Red, who at least left a ton of music behind. So, Honeywagon released at least two albums covering a single artist after leaving the Pickin' On... series, covering Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga. One is more likely to be featured here than the other, I let you guess which one it is.  

Besides stalwarts Honeywagon, Cornbread Red and Iron Horse we also have the return of The Sidekicks, though that is, as I speculated last time around, not a real band, but whatever studio pros mark Thornton is lining up in his Sidekcik Sound Studios in Nashville. Consequently, The Sidekicks have a ton of different vocalists and not really an identifiable style, unlike the three former bands. 

The Sidekicks might be anonymous, but their studio logo is pretty cool

Newcomers to Vol. 2 of Bluegrass Chartbusters are The Petersens, a family band from Branson, Missouri, the "live music capital of the world". The mom as the steadying presnce on upright bass, her three daughters and son, plus a family who mainly plays the dobro. They play gospel standards as well as - more interesting for these comps - pop and rock classics. Also showing up for the first time are Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standards, who produced an album of Lynyrd Skynyrd covers for CMH and Tim May, already featured on these pages with his Neil Young tribute.  

The list of artists covered include, among others,  Steppenwolf, The Mamas & The Papas, Journey, The Doors, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Buffalo Springfield, and Aerosmith for the classic rock era; Whitney Houston, Men At Work, Survivor, and Bon Jovi for the 80s; Pearl Jam, Barenaked Ladies and Green Day for the 90s, and Lifehouse, Aloe Blacc and Colbie Caillat for music from the 2000s. 

This volume follows in the footsteps of the first one, in that I stuck with serious readings of these songs. For now I have excluded acts like The Cleverlys or Boss Hoss (I'm kind of on the fence as far as Hayseed Dixie are concerned), who are really doing a piss-take on the genre, and are really leaning too much into the country yokel humor part for me. No, these aren't parodies, these are well-done, respectful bluegrass renditions of some very fine songs. That may be your gig, or it isn't, but for the former of y'all, there's 75 minutes of very fine music awaiting you. Now, about that hootenanny...

The Man From Outside - Return To David Bowie's Art Crime Time

I hadn't planned on posting anything Bowie-related, or anything from the Outside era, but, as it so happens, a pretty nice piece on The Quietus on Bowie and Scott Walker and their respective albums 1. Outside and Tilt, both celebrating their 30 year birthday. That piece is right here. 

So time for a little reissue of our own, here on One Buck Records. Because if you say 1. Outside, you also have to say 2. Downtown. For newbies, this is the has-never-existed sequel to Bowie's first entries in a 'hyper cycle' chronicling the adventures of his tough guy PI Nathan Adler. I tell you a ton about the whole project in the original write-up. Suffice it to say, I recently listened back to the album, and without wanting to toot my own horn - but toot! toot! - it still works pretty well. 

But since a straight up re-issue would be kind of lame, here's what's not lame: BONUS MATERIAL! Yup, that's right. If you want to check the original Leon stuff that surely could've given Walker's Tilt a run for his money in terms of avant garde ourgageousness, there are the Leon Suites, the three suites of mixed up craziness that were Bowie's proof of concept to bring to record companies who all recoiled in horror. And, to really get you your fill of the time period, I also throw in the Outside Mix, a bootleg combining three excerpts from the tape that most closely resemble songs and rehearsals from before the Outside tour, including Outside songs, but also refurbished warhorses like "Look Back In Anger", D.J." or "Breaking Glass". Both freshly tagged with track info and artwork for your enjoyment.

Now that's a lot of Outside-related stuff for your buck, which as usual isn't one but none. So, have fun in going back to Bowie's creative rebirth in the mid-90s and a deeply flawed, but extremely interesting adventure in a discography that has no shortage of that. 

And if you are hoping for some new Bowie-related stuff, fear not, dear One Buck Heads. I just finished compiling a new Bowie project, so as ever, stay tuned...

Digging the beauty out of ruins: Dennis Wilson's Bambu

Of all the mythical albums that never were, it's amazing that one rather, uh, limited and terminally unhip band is associated with two of them. Smile is of course the most famous lost album in music history, but it's telling that another long lost treasure to many music afficionados is Dennis Wilson's never finished second solo album Bambu, an album that gained near mythical status more for what it might have been or could have been, spurned on by bits and pieces of it coming out on bootlegs, as they tend to do with all things Beach Boys. Wilson worked on the album feverishly during 1977 and early 1978, before circumstances - both of his own doing and of others - slowed him down, then all of a sudden it was a year later, Dennis was way into hard drugs, Bambu was put on the backburner, never to come back from there, before Dennis' stupid, maddening death in 1983. By that time, whatever Bambu was, or could have been, was nothing but distant memories of those that worked on it with Dennis. Most never forgot a bit of a delicate melody or a strong, emotive performance by Dennis - but that's all they were, memories. 

The great album that was to confirm the promise of Dennis' really strong debut Pacific Ocean Blue would never come out in an official release - until 2008, and even then it didn't. Not really. The form in which Bambu (The Caribou Sessions) was issued made it impossible to hear a great, or even particularly good album, in its haphazardly assembled form. But we'll get to that in a bit. Yet, going through the unfinished work, glimpses of brilliance kept showing up, and when you looked and listened real hard, there were more than just glimpses. 

One of the things one realizes when listening closely to the Bambu material is how much Dennis had learned from big brother Brian. Like Bri, Dennis would more and more start to compose the famous pocket symphonies, songs that were made of of several sections, or movements. Now, the cynic in me will probably say that the way Dennis worked on Bambu - piecing things together whenever he had inspiration, time or a moment in a recording studio - led to some of the songs moving rather incongruously from one section to the other. But the believer in me thinks, that maybe Dennis learned a lot more from Brian than his 'let's just go to the beach and surf' persona let on. Whichever explanation seems more likely, the proof is in the pudding. Dennis was easily the mpost adventurous and creative of the Wilson brothers behind Brian. 

This means that on Bambu you get something you rarely get from a Beach Boys album, and certainly any Beach Boys album after Holland/ Sail On Sailor - the music can, and does, surprise you. Take "Are You Real", a song that starts exactly like you'd think a Dennis song with that title would - like a big heartfelt Dennis ballad. But then,only about fourty-five seconds in, the song suddenly changes, the drums start to pound and a keyboard melody takes over that seems to have not much in common with the slow first part. It's Dennis' very own variation of a power ballad. Or check "I Love You". It starts as a sort of groovy love song, but only for about 45 seconds (again!) before the drums fall away and the song segues into an angelic choir chorale section which then about later segues into a solo piano melody...and the whole thing is clearly a sketch that's barely two minutes long. It wasn't much of a song that's why on this version of Bambu it segues directly into the lovely "If Love Had Its Way", on the official release issued under its working title "Cocktails" though it really isn't cocktail music. Which makes me come back to the way this material was originally released, and how that caused this album to be a real challenge to assemble.

Scrolling through my front page, I've seen that the biggest groups of items on this blog are by far alternate albums, something I wouldn't have bet on when I started thjs adventure more than two years ago. Some of these are really just resequenced or thinned out versions of albums, so while they are alternate albums, there isn't a ton of work I did on them. On the albums that I really did re-construct, I mostly had a precise idea what I was going for: knowing which outtakes or alternate versions of songs I would use, which songs I'd kick off, which songs would be the album or side openers and closers, and then just had to figure out some minor sequencing stuff in the margins. This is not what happened with this version of Dennis Wilson's Bambu. In some ways this is the alternate album I'm the most proud of, because I didn't know what I was doing, where to begin and if I could pull it off.  

But pull it off I did I say without aiming for false modesty. I think this is the best and most coherent version of Bambu that you are going to hear, a real album, full of the ebb-and-flow dynamics of an album. An album with beginnings, middles and endings to their two album sides. But boy, it wasn't easy. Like most people I got the Bambu stuff on the bonus disc of Pacific Ocean Blue. And while I was happy to listen to the music Dennis Wilson did manage to put down on tape between 1977 and 1979, I didn't listen to that bonus disc called Bambu (The Caribou Sessions) - which even got a separate release a couple of years later - all that much. I understand why this material was released the way it was: it's an archival release for historical purposes, with the accompanying problems: Haphazard, somewhat random-seeming sequencing; song sketches that go nowhere and don't have real endings...even when these were the cream of the crop, they were simply not presented in a particularly listenable form. 

This looked like a job for the One Buck Guy. But yeah, when I threw the Bambu material into a folder to at some point give it a try I had nothing: no running order, no real idea how to arrange stuff, just the vague notion that I should try my hand at this one of these days. So when I posted my rejiggered version of L.A., Light Album Relit a couple of weeks ago, and kind of immersed myself into that period for a bit, I gave this a real shot. And somehow, everything fell into place just perfectly. Opening tracks were easy, they had to be the two calypso numbers from Carli Munoz. And the indelible melody of "Holy Man" was immediately scheduled as the album closer. The "I Love You / If Love Had Its Way" felt right as the closer of side a. Then juggle the slower ballads and uptempo number. 

"Tug Of War" was one of the best numbers Dennis had composed and recorded for Pacific Ocean Blue, a typically entrancing ballad with enough little weirdness, slight psychedelic flourishes added, to stand out from the work of a man who did many, many heartfelt ballads. I still feel it shouldn't have been bumped off the Pacific Ocean Blue in favor of "End Of The Show", but it obviously had to become part of Bambu now. The only number not from the official release is "Wild Situation (Reprise)", taken from a bootleg, which has no verses and few lead vocals from Dennis, with the harmony/ group vocals (and the drums!) really high in the mix, giving it a decidedly different feel, and making it the most Beach Boys-sounding track on the release. I just love how different and lively this one feels compared to the 'official' version with these group vocals (and drums!) way buried in the mix...

It's a shame that this music wasn't released at the time, a waste really, much like the life of its creator between 1979 and 1983. With these tortured genius guys like One Buck Records favorite Gene Clark, it's always easy and more romantic to blame the record companies or this and that in outside circumstances (and the loss of his own recording studio, co-owned with Carl and sold in 1978, did put a huge dent into the progression of Bambu), but let's be real: These guys fucked up a lot of stuff in their life, both privately and professionally, all by themselves, and no amount of retrospective love is going to erase that. Dennis, especially, took some exceedingly stupid, horrible decisions in the last years of his life - that life, like his body, his voice, and his music ending up in ruin. 

But the music remains, and it doesn't care about any of that. Everything that made up Dennis Wilson - the unparalled expression of longing, the party-ready womanizing guy evident in groovers like "Under The Moonlight" ("The young girls go into a rage") or 'School Girl", even the self-mocking sense of humor ("He's A Bum"). Dennis was all that, and all that is on Bambu, and now finally in a version that deserves to be played and replayed. He is singing to an unknown female (presumably) in the opener that he is her "constant companion", but really, music was his constant companion in those few, feverish years when inspiration flowed abundantly and beauty followed. Now, let that music flow again...

Albert Strikes Back! or The Revenge Of ReImaginos

Ha! And here you thought I was done with Imaginos, but no, I'm not! And neither is Albert Bouchard. When last we saw Bouchard in my write-up for the rejiggered version of Blue Öyster Cult's Imaginos, he was suing the band and manager Sandy Pearlman for, essentially, stealing his work from underneath him, without sufficient recognition or recompensation. The whole thing was his baby, and Pearlman's, whose supposed betrayal Bouchard took especially bad. But time heals all wounds, or so they say, and time did chip away at the grudges that separated Bouchard from his ex-band and his ex-manager. In the 2010s Bouchard began to join BÖC at some gigs for a couple of songs (and for a fynny cameo - more cowbell! - in BÖC's video for "That Was Me". And finally, he made peace with Pearlman, though - again, somewhat cliché but are you going to do -  that only came about when Pearlman suffered a stroke in early 2016 that left him with diminished mental and physical abilities. Bouchard visited Pearlman in the hospital, and to cheer him up promised to bring out the original Imaginos tapes he had worked on with Pearlman in the early 2016., in a remixed or remastered form. 

It's unclear whether Pearlman was even together enough to really understand what Bouchard was teling him, and he died a couple of months later. But Bouchard had promised to go back to the Imaginos project and fully intended to do so. The original tapes from the early 80s had disintegrated to the point that they weren't particularly salvageable. So Bouchard went to the next best idea: re-recording the whole shebang. Thus ReImaginos was born.  

ReImaginos is trimming away a lot of the excesses of the original early 80s production, ReImaginos is at least partly close to an unplugged record with less cluttered and dense production. partly no doubt to get rid of the bombastic sounds of its time, but also to accomodate an older singer with an older voice (more on that in a moment). Some of these songs are almost totally transformed. "The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria" is almost unrecognizable, when it starts on what sounds like a conga beat. One of the heaviest, if not the heaviest number, on the original, it now choogles rather than thrashes along, which has the advantage of making out the lyrics much easier than on the shouty, almost hair-metal original (that had guest vocals by Joey Cerisano). 

"Astronomy" is another song that benefits from its more acoustic arrangement, and overall these changes give ReImaginos a good reason for existing other than Albert's revenge and dream project come true. They really bring something to the table that the 'originals' (if we can call them that, given how things went down) don't, so this is not just an exercise in nostalgia. Bouchard at the time was outraged that on top of the overdubbing, reworking and lack or recognition of his work, the finished BÖC album deleted two of his songs from the Imaginos cycle, the acoustic "Gil Blanco Country" - dating back to the earliest recordings of the band as Soft White Underbelly/The Stalk-Forrest Group - and the truly odd "The Girl That Love Made Blind", with its second part invocations of the protagonist's "Christmas Of My Life" and the sing-along "Christmas! Christmas!" chants which make it sound like, well, a Christmas song. Difficult to align that with agent of evil Imaginos' mission of manipulating manlind, so you can see why it was left off the album in 1987. I include it here to not dash Albert's belated triumph, but it remains a weird ass song and an odd fit into the album. He also added a new original song, the o.k. but rather unremarkable "Black Telescope". 

All's well that ends well, right?! Well, not quite. There is a catch to this belated fulfillment of a dream. If Columbia executives shelved the album indefinitely because of Albert Bouchard's weak lead vocals some 40+ years ago...well, let's just say that what was already a serviceable rather than particular great voice at the best of times hasn't aged like fine vine. Bouchard's vocals are fragile and weedy, clearly the weak spot of this endeavor. On one hand it is touching, even a little bit moving, to see an old man return to the obsessions (and follies?) of his youth, on the other it's obvious that age and/or bad habits have done a number on poor Al's pipes. So you have to take the slightly wobbly performance for what it is. The wise decision to go with a softer, more acoustic sound is also explained by the limitations of Bouchard's voice, which simply could not work in a hard rock environment. 

Bouchard of course could not resrist overegging the pudding, mainly because he dreamt of issuing three double albums making up the Imaginos saga in the early 80s, so when ReImaginos became a surprisingly good seller, he got the money and cache to do the other two parts, that started to look more and more like an undiscriminate sausage factory for BÖC covers. But again, that is another story. 

So, if you're ready for another, unexpected tour through human history alongside Imaginos, follow old man Albert for a surprisingly attractrive trip down memory lane...

Public Service Announcement. Or: Ol' OBG Rants...

Hmmm, so I thought about whether I should post this or not, to not come of as whining but then again, fuck it, might as well get this off my chest. And I threw some boobs & beer in there to get everyone's attention...

So , since I posted the third volume of the We've Got You Covered: Lowell George & Little Feat two days ago, about eighty people have downloaded that comp. 

You know how many of those eighty have said 'Hi' or 'Thanks', or, anything really? Yup, that's right, it's a big fat zero. 

Normally I don't mind, though there really haven't been many 'Hi's or 'Thanks' going around here lately, or really much of anything in the comments section. Well, I get it, I've seen bigger blogs with way more traffic than mine that struggle to get to a handful of comments, so this is nothing extraordinary.

The goal of this blog was and is to share this music that I find interesting or exciting in one way or the other. Making people jump through hoops to get it by having a minimum of comments or what not was never in the cards for me. It doesn't work, and I'd rather have some sort of natural conversation - or as natural as possible on that here internet - than some folks forcing themselves to write something to satisfy a random and ultimately useless quota. 

But that is also not why I'm writing this public service note. No one had anything to say about the Lowell George tribute comp, yet there is a comment, two in fact. And let's be clear: I'm not going after that specific user, anonymous and unknown as he might be. It's more of a general thing. 

The comment states that Volume 2 of the series doesn't work. Which is totally normal, I set an article link to Volume 1, so I upped the music link. No direct link to volume 2, so I didn't reup right away, thinking someone would ask for a link if interested. 

Except there is no question being asked. "Link doesn't work" or "Link is dead again" (a comment on a Gene Clark post a couple of weeks ago that rubbed me the wrong way) aren't questions, they are statements, kinda like computer error messages. They state a fact, sure, but they don't incite or entice me to do anything about it. 

You know what would? If that unknown visitor would add a little 'could you re-up, please?' to that statement of fact and then - gasp - even sign his or her post with a nickname (you still can stay an anonymous user in terms of Google, folks). That would be, you know, a little nicer. 

I don't ask for people to sing hosiannas in my honor, I mostly do this stuff for myself, and share it because I think it might bring enjoyment to other people. But if I can't have a ton of comments, at least a little bit of courtesy would be nice. Don't say "doesn't work!". Ask to make it work, nicely. 

It's written right on the front page: "If you find a dead link, just ask for a re-up in the thread and I'll post a new one as quickly as possible". Any major dude around here will tell you that if you ask nicely for a link, you'll have it, normally a couple hours tops after asking. 

Any "link is dead" kind of post will fall on deaf ears, though. If someone's got a problem with that very simple and I believe quite reasonable demand, that anonymous someone can take his or her behind and their non-existent business elsewhere. 

[rant mode off]

Oof, there, a little better. Regular programming will restart tomorrow as scheduled. 

See you then. 

P.S.: Don't be a stranger...

Can you ever have enough Lowell & Little Feat music around? No, no, I don't think you can...

All our series that I'm juggling here on One Buck Records continue to choogle along, so it's time for a return trip via the Lafayette Railroad into the country of swampy grooves, funky rock and heartfelt ballads - that's right, it's time to return to Lowell George country. We've Got You Covered: Lowell George & Little Feat Volume 3 does, what the other two volumes did: presenting you a fine selection of cover versions celebrating the songwriting of Mr. Little Feat himself - named after his small feet, natch - and his compadres. 

Artists trying out their hands on Lowell & Feat tunes include collaborators like Linda Ronstadt and Robert Palmer, both alumni from the first volume, as well as admirers close and far. Some of these you would expect, like Brothers Of a Feather a.k.a. Chris & Rich Robinson from the Blaack Crowes, whose modern Southern rock definitely has some overlap with George's music. But I bet you didn't have John Farnham on your bingo card of folks doing Little Feat covers, though somewhat fittingly he takes one of George's most AOR tunes, "Perfect Imperfections" (when I first heard it, I thought it was Barrère or Payne singing, as that vocal has no grit at all). The Brothers Landreth strike twice, first Joey with a lovely cover of "Long Distance Love", and then with his brother David on a smokin' cover of "Two Trains". 

The Americana front os well represented with Jamey Johnson covering the inevitable "Willin'" and One Buck Records hero Neal Casal running through "Sailin' Shoes" for eight minutes - which was a reason to put it here instead of one of the Casalties comps. Taj Mahal gets the groove on with the rarely covered "Feet Don't Fail Me Now" and Souled American bring a woozy, fuzzy alt country vibe to "Six Feet Of Snow", and then after 65 minutes of first-class Loell & Little Feat covers, Lionel Wendling takes us home on the aforementioned "Lafayette Railroad". 

So, good stuff here, as usual. Hope you agree, and get some of the ol' Lowell & Feat magic for a groovy start to your week...   

A Career, Nope, A Century Of Evil: Imaginos Re-Imagined

Some alternate albums I've planned on doing for along while, some I more or less stumble into. It can be the fault of Amazon's algorhythms, or, you know, pure dumb luck. While looking through my Blue Öyster Cult collection in preparing another possible item for One Buck Records - a rarities comp - I stumbled, on an existing comp called Rarities (natch!) on Stephen King's spoken opening for Imaginos, the album that ended Blue Öyster Cult's run with a major record label in the late 80s. 

"Imaginos, performed by Blue Oyster Cult. A bedtime story for the children of the damned" begins Mr. King's foreword (taken from the text on the back cover of the record), and then very briefly lays out the narrative concept for the album to follow. Excpt that intro never made it onto the album, instead it was attached to the single edit of the lone single "Astronomy", which makes no sense whatsoever. It thus dutifully became a rarity and accidentally a starting point to this re-imagined version of Imaginos, simply out of the idea that I should do something with this intro. So I did. A couple of you probably know the relatively complicated backstory to the album, but in case you don't, here's a short(ish) rundown of how things went down. 

Imaginos followed two expensive but artistically and commercially disappointing albums - The Revölution By Night and the much reviled Club Ninja, though the former isn't really much better - that showed the Cult drifting and floating, not sure whether they should hitch their bandwagon to the burgeoning hair metal movement or be a tougher-edged Foreigner. So the hard rock sound, almost heavy metal sound of Imaginos felt like a return to the glory days for many a BÖC fan. Yet the album is also in many ways not even a Blue Öyster Cult album. The labyrinthine credits already tell as much: Imaginos was a solo project by ex-BÖC drummer Albert Bouchard, who had created these songs with a ton of sidemen, and producer Sandy Pearlman. Pearlman was of course a pivotal figure in the story of BÖC, managing the band (and giving them their arty, hippie-esque stage names that everyone hated except Donald Roeser, henceforth known as Buck Dharma), writing the lyrics for a major part of their early albums and heavily influencing the aesthetics and style of the band. 

Pearlman had created a related series of poems and writings in the mid-60s called The Soft Doctrines Of Imaginos, a H.P. Lovecraft-influenced tale of aliens called The Invisible Ones using a superpoered humanoid undercover agent named Imaginos to manipulate world events to test humankind's resistance against the lure of evil. These writings were cannibalized by the band for a ton of songs on the trilogy of albums that opens their discography, but Pearlman and Albert Bouchard had always hoped to record an entire album dedicated to the story of Imaginos. The band had written all Imaginos songs throughout the 70s (and demoed a couple of them), and after being fired by the band in the early 80s, Bouchard got to tried to turn these demos into his first solo album, recording 12 songs in 1982 with im on guitar and lead vocals. The BÖC members guested on recordings and Bouchard filled out the ranks with a small army of guest musicians including Robby Krieger and Joe Satriani. Persistent complaints of Columbia Records about the quality of Bouchard's lead vocals had him try out other singers on some songs - that actually made it onto the finished album - but finally, in 1984, due to the perceived lack of commercial prospcts and Bouchard's wobbly leads the project was shelved indefinitely. 

What else was shelved indefinitely two years later? Why, it's Blue Öyster Cult. So Pearlman convinced Columbia execs that the only way to have a BÖC product in the foreseeable future  was to revive Imaginos as a band project. He got some monye to remix the album and overdub lead vocals by Eric Bloom and Donald Roeser onto the record, while Albert Bouchard is almost entirely erased, save for some shared lead vocals on "Blue Öyster Cult" (the song!). Bouchard felt that his work was stolen from underneath him, while BÖC, at that time strictly a touring band, half-heartedly inserted three of the Imaginos track into their set lists, but it idn't matter: Imaginos failed to sell after receiving no promotion by Columbia Records whatsoever. Shortly thereafter, Bouchard sued Pearlman and BÖC, settling out of court. And this is were the story could end, but Albert Bouchard would take his revenge and have the last word on Imaginos. But that is a,nother story for another day. 

Now, what is going on on this OBG-imagined version of Imaginos? For one thing, a new, 100% original opening track, built around the King intro which was mostly playing over the beginning of "Astronomy", so I looped that melody to create a little overture, most elegantly dubbed the "Astroverture". A minor point of discussion and discord at the release of Imaginos was that the album's songs didn't follow the storyline, which was already hard to follow as is, so a sleeve note - essentially a big cop-out - stated that all the depicted events happen simultaneously. Uh-huh. Sure, Jen. So the first idea for the album, other than the new opening track, was to sequence the whole shebang chronologically in terms of the story being told and see what that would give us. And it worked...well, almost. There were two problems of clusters of songs being too similar. The two heaviest tracks on the album ("I Am The One You Warned Me Of" and the hilariously titled "The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Van Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria" - oof, I just got a year older typing all that) were back-to-back, which was not ideal, and on what would have been side a three of the poppiest songs were stuck together, including two with similar shouted backing vocals ("Imaginos!", "Del Rio's Song!"), exposing the soft white underbelly of that section. 

Happily, a minor tweak was enough to make the album work, contrary to the original album's seemingly arbitrary sequencing that seems to have been randomly drawn out of a hat, by an evil monkey of course. Merely switching two tracks, "Imaginos" (originally track 3) and "I Am The One You Warned Me Of" (originally track seven) solved both problematic sections. And the rest, as they say, is history...the hidden history of mankind, as manipulated by Imaginos. Technically, I also worked on the flow by eliminating all the dead space between tracks and creating a couple of transitions between tracks when the occasion arose. 

So, Imaginos, as imaginosed imagined by ol' One Buck Guy. Curtain raise, and enter Mr. King, please... 

Time Creeps Up On Us...And On All Pearls No Swine, As Well

Tempus Fugit, friends. We're still a number of volumes away from being in real time with this series, but until now most volumes had been years old, the first volumes starting out as a hobby during Covid times. Which often meant that when relistening to these compilations, I was sometimes surprised (not always pleasantly) at some of my sequencing choices or mix of music on these. This volume was compiled last year, as time catches up to All Pearls, No Swine, so these newer volumes feel less like they can surprise myself. But they steer the course that was charted more than two years ago - I totally forgot to celebrate this site's second birthday at the beginning of the month. This volume, as the earlier ones set in the 2000's, are a little different from their 70s and 80s siblings, in that I'm not really bringing up hugely obscure stuff, but stuff that has fallen through the cracks, or, occasionally, are fun variations on stuff that people may know. And considering that the 2000s had the last gasp of rock music as any kind of culturally significant role, the cracks between me and the contemporary music scene are obviously becoming bigger the closer this series creeps to the modern day. 

As usual, there's a ton of different stuff, and this time even a bona fide hit! Santana's All-Star comeback Supernatural was fussy and frankly boring in long stretches, but "Smooth" was everywhere on the radio for months. But the second single "Maria Maria", was funkier and much better, Surprisinly, on this live track, the vocalists, known as The Project G&B, are fantstically on pitch, despite hopping around on stage, which I thought warranted inclusion as a hidden gem. Also - and somewhat surprisingly - in the groove department: The comp's opener "You Are The Best Thing" by Ray Lamontagne. I had followed Lamontagne throughout his first two albums, yet I remember what a pleasant surprise it was, when I first heard that song, with Lamontagne channeling his iner Otis Redding. I mean, his sad and moody ballads are great, if you are in the mood for that kind of thing, but what a welcome change of pace. The album Gossip In The Grain that I picked up afterwards showed that "You Are The Best Thing" was a true outlier, but still, what a song. 

Eclectic is the word of the day here: Besides rap/latin rock and neo-soul we also have power pop thanks to The Dexters and "Recover", alt country from The Handsome Family covering Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down", neo-synth pop from Julian Casablancas, lead singer of The Strokes, from his surprisingy good solo debut 4 Chord Of The Apocalypse and more 80s references in the form of chunky synth riffs from perennial One Buck Records favorites Midlake on the single b-side "Mornings Will Be Kind", representing their fabulous fusion of folk and 80s synth sounds that they did so well on The Trials Of Van Occupanther. Speaking of favorites: Neal Casal shows up here, too, supporting Ryan Adams on guitar and harmonies for a beautiful duo performance of "Let It Ride", the best song off Adams' Cold Roses.   

There's country rock from Aussie Dan Brodie, countrified noise-rock by Lift To Experience and weirdo Josh T. Pearson, jangle-pop from Marc Carroll, folk rock from the inimitable Mark Kozelek, here under the moniker Sun Kill Moon, with the beautifully flowing "Pancho Villa", guitar rock from alt country adjacent Steve Wynn and the poppiest emorock you'll ever hear thanks to Dashboard Confessional, here ably assisted by Eva Briegel from Juli on "Stolen". And that is still not all! The late, great Jason Molina shows up with his band project Magnolia Electric Co. (formerly known as Songs:Ohia) and the magnificent "O! Grace". KT Tunstall's beautiful version of Beck's "The Golden Age" found a place on my reworked alt version of Drastic Fantastic, but it was put here first. 

And finally we have a bunch of veterans showing up: Susan Taylor, now better known as Taylor Pie, with "Cypress Lake", John Howard with the beautiful reminiscence of "A 1970s Song" and old folkie Ian Tamblyn with "Apple Blossoms/Dafffodils". Seriously, when I say there is something for everyone, I mean it!

So, smorgasboard of goodies of all types, shapes and colors. Have at it, folks!

 

Hey, Remember This Damn (Good) Country Band?...A Return Trip To Whiskeytown

When I posted my slightly reworked version of Ryan Adams' best solo record Gold in *check notes* December 2024?! it was supposed to be only the startingpoint of a larger Adams project, with phase two being a look back on his years as Whiskeytown's band leader. I started on that comp, then got stuck and then...well...other things took precedence, and Whiskeytown were on the backburner. Until now. But now Whiskeytown is, uh, in town, and here to stay. Like many Alt Country/Americana acts I liked (see Hazeldine or Casal, Neal) Whiwkeytown never quite made it outside of a small cult circle. But they were one of the best and most memorable alt country groups when they were on, and a real big pain in the ass when they weren't. 

On one of their very first punblished songs, off their debut EP Angels, Adams and Whiskeytown delivered their credo and origin story: "So I started this dzmn country band...'cause punk rock was too hard to sing". A nice bit of self-mythologizing, and not entirely truthful as a reason, as ex-punk Adams fell under the spell of the greats like Hank Williams and, of course, Gram Parsons. And of course Adams always liked to piss off people for no particular reason, other than to amuse himself, so a couple of years later he declared that he hated country music. Adams always was behaving like an asshole, with the whole 'Me Too' accusations and subsequent vanishing from the public spotlight in 2019 only the logical end phase of being an asshole one too many time to one (or several) too many persons. But he was of course also a fabulous singer-songriter and (in)famously prolific on top of that. 

Whiskeytown, the original band, only existed for about to years, the second iteration another year after that, and the the band - at that time only being Adams and Cary plus assorted sidemen, starry friends of Adamd and members for hire - staggered on for another two and a half years before calling it quits in 2000 to give way to Adams' solo career. But in those years in between, from late 1994 to late 1997, Whiskeytown could be just about the best damn alt country band in the country, when they felt like it. They had the talent - mostly residing in Adams - , they had the songs, and in their best moments they had the performances. But like their inoffcial hero Gram Parsons they were sorely lacking in one thing: discipline. Stories of gigs in which they spent minutes tuning and discussing what to play, made up jokey songs on the spot or played like a heavy metal band just to mess with the audience are legend, as is Whiskeytown's penchant for a arts and all approach to composing and recording, that finally was put to the test by Jim Scott when he produced sophomore album Strangers' Almanac and demanded the band actually work on their craft.  

The first three tracks of This Damn Country Band pretty much capture the Whiskeytown universe all by themselves: "Take Your Guns To Town" is an uptempo gallop from the very early days of the band, showing the last vestiges of Adams' punk rock past and the closest Whiskeytown came to be aligned with the so-called cow punk groups. And then it's off to on a trip to "Mining Town", a fabulous little vignette, all atmosphere - greatly helped by Caitlin Cary's backing vocals - and with vocals that describe small town dead end ennui in a way that the Boss wouldn't have done better: "Said you came froma mining town / But they closed the mining down / Said your momma was a drinker / she had a picture of Jesus on her sink and / Baby, I....Baby, I'm coming for you tonight". And then track three, "Yesterday's News", puts the pedal to the metal with barely a hint of twang, but a lot of what sounds like another of Whiskeytown's influences, The Replacements, down to the slightly hoarse vocals and slashing lead guitar. 

Considering that Adams and Cary were the two holdouts throughout Whiskeytown's existence, they are considered the heart and soul of Whiskeytown, but I maintain that Whiskeytown were the great band they could be in almost equal measure due to the presence of lead guitar player and Adam's frenemy, Phil Wandscher. Without Wandscher, the band simply wasn't the same, and also somewhat ceased to be band, more of a Ryan Adams plus sidemen (and woman, with Cary) project. There's a reason why Pneumonia, the third and last Whiskeytown album is less present on This Damn Country Band, compared to the other two. Not only because Faithless Street and Stranger's Almanac were stronger records, but because they sound - band turmoil and band member turnover notwithstanding - like albums made by a band, whereas Pneumonia could never shake the impression of being a Ryan Adams solo album in all but name. So, for this comp, I chose Pneumonia songs which are the closest to real Whiskeytown songs, with co-writes and harmony vocals by Cary, with both "Don't Wanna Know Why" and "Easy Hearts" dating back to late 1997, when Whiskeytown had just been reconfigured. 

But back to Wandscher for a second. "16 Days" wouldn't be as great without Wandscher's backing vocals ("the ghost has got me running") answering Adams' lead that in turn mingles with Cary's harmony vocals. And the fact that he was Adams' foil - in guitar playing, but also in real life - gave the band during those years with him a checks-and-balance system. Wandscher was probably the least afraid of calling out Adams on his bullshit, which would end - no doubt aided and abetted by abundant alcohol and drugs - in the occasional fistfight. But musically, Wandscher would also end up being a wall for Adams' ideas to bounce off. Thus, This Damn Country Band is stacked with tracks from the Wandscher years, with a whooping fifteen out of tenty tracks drawn from Faithless Street, Strangers' Almanac and Rural Delivery, the double EP of early material the band had to give to local label Moodfood as a way to sign with (mid-) major Outpost Recordings, backed by the Geffen group. 

One of these wasn't published at the time: The otherwise absolutely fabulous "Lo-Fi Tennessee Mountain Angel" was presumably voted off Faithless Street because of its similarities to the title track, but damn, don't you get goosebumps when Adams and Cary harmonize and sing in unison "you said you wanna play country, but you're in a punk rock band". Besides the four Pneumonia tracks there is one other stray tracks that is Whiskeytown at their finest, though it comes from their later iteration: Recorded for the fabulous Gram Parsons tribute album Return Of The Grievous Angel, their version of "A Song For You" is simply outstanding, in my opinion besting Parsons' already great original. I voluntarily stayed away from the dozens of unreleased Whiskeytown tracks, as that is an entirely different can of worms. But don't worry, we'll get to those.

For now, 20 of the finest tracks from one of the finest bands to come out of the alt country/No Depression boom times of the mid-90s. But now that the long gestating of this comp is over, it'll be the start of a whole ton of Whiskeytown coming your way in the next months. Whether it's alts of their first two albums, a rarities sampler, outtakes presented as EPs or albums, or a mix of all of the above remains to be seen. There is such a boatload of stuff to wade through - and not all of it is great, but yeah, I'm ready for more adventures in Whiskeytown-land, and by proxy, so might you. So, as ever, enjoy the music and stay tuned...

R.E.M. are back...for a day at the beach

Ha, you didn't think we were done with the R.E.M. of the Reveal period, did you? Well, technically, you could've thought that, because I thought I was after I resequenced and reworked the album. But, just out of due diligence, I decided to check the singles' b-sides, just to see I wasn't missing a great song to mix into Rerevealed. And well, there wasn't, but the stuff I found was still too good to just leave on the side, so I immediately thought 'companion EP'. Well, and then I checked the R.E.M.ixes that was issued a year later, and while most of that one isn't great, I found a song here and there I liked, and so the 'companion EP' becomes a companion album, R.E.M.'s A Day At The Beach. 

The title is not only chosen because the songs here have the same sunkissed quality as the ones on Reveal, but here the band's love for the Beach Boys comes out even more openly, mainly because the electronic trickery is downplayed, mostly because the Reveal songs themselves (at least on the first side, more on that later) are demo versions, which in many ways are more pure than the sometimes overly fussy final versions. "Summer Turns To High" in its '32 Chord Song Demo' version really does sound like a Beach Boys song here, And hey, I even saved "Beachball" from the scrap heap to include here! I might have been a bit harsh on it in my write-up for Rerevealed, but context is important. As little as I thought it fit into Reveal, it fits well here in a more open Beach Boys-homage context and sound. Hell, R.E.M. have even done a surf instrumental, "165 Hillcrest", which I use as an opener to establish the right mood. 

A Day At The Beach is actually divided into two sides, like in the old days of vinyl. Side a with the first five tracks is the Beach Side, while side b is the Bar Side. Which means that the purer Beach Boys homage tracks are representing the day at thebeach, while side b is when towards the end of the afternoon you go and get a drink or three in a beach bar with some beats in the background while you do so. So the remixes end up on side b, which concludes in a bookends way with "2JN", a song that also sounds like it comes from the Beach Boys, but not from one of their sun'n'surf albums, but rather from Pet Sounds.  

One of the interesting side effects of this double R.E.M. project is the appreciation I gained for "The Lifting". Originally when I resequenced the original album it was to put that song in a later spot because I didn't think it was a great opener, but it is a much better song than I remembered, unnecessary electronica embellishments be damned. And so A Day On The Beach has two versions of "The Lifting", the original version - a little slower, and mostly bereft of all the electronic stuff - and a lovely remix that thankfully goes easy on the dance beats. That's why I only kept a short bit of "I'll Take The Rain" which is almost all atmosphere, before the really heavy (and kind of cliché) dance beats come in right after. 

So, another ten tracks to really wrap up R.E.M.'s summer extravaganza in style. Soak in the sun once more with Michael, Mike and Peter. Surf's up, dudes!

Casalties Keep Piling Up For The Last Time...

The king is gone but he's not forgotten, this is the story of a Johnny Rotten Neal Casal. A small fanbase he might have had, too small one would argue, but loyal they are, so it is mighty fine to see that they will be served with an archival release these days. A compilation of early songs and demos, No One Above You (The Early Years 1991-1998) will be out tomorrow, so I thought it's time to get going and wrap up my archival series on Mr. Casal. Which means it's time to welcome Casalties 3, this volume covering Casal's career from about 2005 to this death in 2019 and the posthumous releases that make up the last four songs here. If you think, 'wow, that's quite a bit of time to cover', especially since Vol. 1 covered three years (1995 to 1998) and Vol. 2 seven (1998 to 2005), you get a clearer view on how Casal's career shifted in its last decade and a half. 

While Casal was playing with Ryan Adams as part of The Cardinals, he stayed active as a solo performer, issuing No Wish To Reminiscence (2006) and just after the break up of the Cardinals in early 2009 Roots & Wings, which was written and recorded while still part of and touring with the group. But in the last decade of his life and music career he preferred dissolving himself in different bands, being part of the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, indie supergroup Hard Working Americans and psych rock outfit Circles Around The Sun, as well as playing with Beachwood Sparks and off-shoots GospelBeacH and Skiffle Players. Add to that a ton of studio work, adding guitars and sometimes harmony vocals to everyone from James Iha to Lucinda Williams to Mark Olson, and Casal clearly kept very busy. Except on his own music. 

I picked up 2010's Sweeten The Distance, his tenth and last solo album, from a bargain bin a year or so after release. I played it, and thought to myself 'really nice', as one would with a Casal album - lovely vocals, solid melodies, impeccable if classic arrangements - but I also thought to myself 'these songs all sound variations on others of his, this album sounds like he is a bit 'written out'. I didn't know how right I was, sadly. The songs on Sweeten The Distance would be the last original songs of Casal published during his lifetime. The fact that his musical friends and companions reworked "Everything Is Moving", written in 2012 or so, and a handful of other tunes from Casal's solo demos is a testament to how beloved Casal was among peers. But the fact that for the last nine years of his life, no more originl music was forthcoming is also telling. Was this a factor in Neal's decision to end his life? I don't want to speculate. But it's sad that such a gifted singer-songwriter had nothing to tell in those last years to a small but faithful audience, and was fine in hiring out his guitar-playing skills to a ton of groups and projects. 

Highlights of this collection include two rather unsual covers: a kick-ass version of Terrence Trent D'Arby's "Wishing Well" that he contributed to an 80s tribute sampler -  taken, like almost the entire first half off odds'n'sodds cllection All Directions - that album's lovely title track and the last song he published in his lifetime, "Property Of Jesus" from an obscure tribute album to Dylan's Christian period (jeeez, the ideas for tributes sometimes...). There is also a beautiful acoustic rendition of his own classic "Too Much To Ask", as well as an acoustic reading of Beachwood Sparks' "Old Manatee" (of which the person who posted it had no recording date or info, so I seqeunced it for flow rather than date). The instrumental "Grimes' Surf Story" he did with his future Circles Around The Sun colleague Adam MacDougall was running a rather unreasonable five and a half minute and featured long sections where you mainly hear the latter, so I edited that down considerably just to get an idea of the track, and to not interrupt the flow of this collection, which - like the first two volumes - is more or less chornological.  

So, this concludes for the time being my posts on Neal Casal, but you never know. There might be more coming from this fabulous artist in the future, if I can dig out more stuff. In the meantime, enjoy Casalties 3 (and maybe No One Above You) and bathe once more in that luxurious, lovely voice and guitar-picking of Neal Casal...

PS. here's the trailer for No One Above You

R.E.M. And Their Summer Album...Re-Revealed

Reveal isn't an album that is generally held in particular high esteem. No one hates it, like, say, a good part of the  people who bought Monster, which means that that album lined second hand stores with severeal copies for years. But not too many R.E.M. fans will go to bat for this one as a great record either, more of a nice but otherwise unremarkable addition to the discography. Me? I'm weird, so I'd probably put this in my Top 5 of R.E.M. albums, though probably just sneaking in on the 5 spot (after Automatic, Reckoning, Murmur,and Pageant). 

There are legitimate caveats with this album. After the electronic exploration of Up, Reveal was seen as a return to form and to a recognizable R.E.M. sound, which is true,  but the band's then-penchant for burbling and flirring electronics is still there, and, as the Allmusic review correctly points out, at this time the band "emphasizes sonic construction over the songs". And it's also fair to point out that these aren't all lean numbers, and a couple could've probably stood to have a minute shaved off. As could the album as a whole, which is where this Rerevealed version of the album comes in. To make it a bit leaner and eminently more listenable I kicked off two tracks and resequenced the album from the ground up. And whatever else you think of what I did here, I don't think anyone can deny that this album runs better at ten tracks and 44 minutes than at 12 and 54. 

With that out of the way - caveats shmeats, if you will - this is an album that has a ton of great songs on it. The three singles drawn from the album - "Imitation Of Life, a dead ringer for "The Great Beyond" from their 1999 soundtrack to Man On The Moon, "All The Way To Reno" and "I'll Take The Rain" were some of the lmost accessible, and hook-laden songs in years from the band. Album tracks reveal hidden treasures, led by the barely hidden Beach Boys obsession that drove a lot of these Reveal songs: "Bang A Drum", "Summer Turns To High" and "The Lifting". "The Chorus And The Ring" seems to look way back to their I.R.S. period, even if it's much cleaner in singing, playing and production. 

The original track list showed the issues of haphazard sequencing made worse by some long-ish songs. "Disappear", after its long, moody, electronic intro turns into a pretty good song, but coupled with the dour "Saturn Return" in the middle of the record, there is a ten-minute dead spot from which the album had trouble recovering. "Saturn Return" is one of the two tracks not to return, the other being - maybe surprisingly - "Beachball", which for some might be a highlight of the album, but I have never taken to its breezy bossa nova rhythm, which to me still sounds like somewhat listless cocktail bar music, and a song that is barely there. 

Anyway, as already done once or twice before,  I'm taking an 'all killer no filler' 'addition by substraction' approach to this remodeled version of Reveal. Ten tracks which were the best R.E.M; had to offer at the beginning of the millenium (and for a good bit afterwards, seeing how they followed up Reveal with the clueless, boring Around The Sun), and in these dying days of summer it's an album well worth revisiting. So, revisit the rerevealed R.E.M. boys' trip to the beach...

Bleed once again, once more with feeling...

Huh, I hear you say, am I having deja vu? Didn't we just have this album on these pages just two weeks ago or so? Yes, yes we did, but this isn't that, and anyway, I won't leave you alone with this band until a least a handful of you have drank the kool aid all the way down, folks! Jimy Eat World are grand, Bleed American is grand, and that's why hearing these songs again - all in slightly differet versions - is grand. But really, the main reason I am posting this so quickly after the original is because I stumbled on a fabulous article over at The Quietus about Jimmy Eat World's album trio of Static Prevails, Clarity, and Bleed American, the latter two presented on One Buck Records (and the former presented on the Earlybird Special, all of which you can still download from their original write-ups). Some of the info in the article will be familiar to you if you've rad my write-ups, but a lot isn't and the article does a really good job of placing the band's music in the context of the time

That very article is something you should go and read. 

And then you can listen back to Bleed American, which is discussed in geat length once more, thanks to the Once More With feeling edition of the album, which runs through the exact track list of the original, but replaces every song by a demo, live or alternative version.  Highlights include the demo version of "The Middle" with the drummer going full throttle in a more basic version of the song and an ultra-lovely acoustic take on "If You Don't, Don't". Relistening to thi gain, and thinking of the article above, I just realizd that on "My Sundown" they do sound a little like Dashboard Confessional. But: no e-word, no e-word! Actually, e-word, if you read the article, the label doesn't matter, the songs are still great, the litte differences are interesting, and Jimmy Eat Worls will continue to roam across One Buck Records...some more. But for now, Bleed American, Once More With Feeling. 

Edit: Even if you don't want to have a second go at Bleed American, join us in the comment section to propose a genre-defining three album run by an artist or band!