Who Watches The Watchmen? ( ...and who listens to them?)

About three years ago - and more or less by circumstance - I did an interesting experiment. More or less simultaneously I entered not once but twice that most perilious of adventures - a sequel to Alan Moore's comic book classic Watchmen. Unlike some other lauded revisionist superhero comics of the era (here's looking at you, The Dark Knight Returns) Watchmen has held up exceptionally well. Moore's mastery of form and storytelling, as well as a knack for giving these somewhat abstract characters complicated inner lives is so complete, that usually once per year I reread bits of Watchmen, not the entire thing letter to letter, but passages I like or get sucked into. 

For years the idea of doing a sequel to Moore's lauded (and loaded) requiem for the supehero seemed an impossible task. Who would be courageous or foolish enough to try and match Moore's masterwork? The first shots were of course fired by DC, corporate greed and all that. They story of how they screwed Moore out of ownership of Watchmen is well-known, and after about two decades they decided that now it was time to do something about that old yet valuable IP. So was born a Watchmen project that included a half-dozen Before Watchmen prequel series, only to then culminate in a huge maxiseries called Doomsday Clock. Which is what I read, along with the TV sequel series called Watchmen by - oh my - one of the guys who fucked up Lost. 

Results were mixed, but not necessarily in the way I expected. Doomsday Clock had its strong points, starting with artist Gary Frank whose detailled, semi-realist pencil work I have always loved and whose work here is boss all the way through. It also has its  moments: I had fun with the new Marionette and Mime characters in the early chapters (which unfortunately build to vey little in the end), and individual characters and scenes, like Moth Man and his fate, were surprisingly moving. But there's no denying that Doomsday Clock also was kind of a slog to read. I read the trade paperback, so I could just plow on, but I imagine how frustrating it must've been to read this slow-moving series in monthly installments (not to mention that in between schedule-shifting and pushing back of issues, the series which was supposed to run its 12 issues in less than a year took two to complete!). In Watchmen, Moore designed every chapter around a character, but every chapter moved the bigger mystery further. Each chapter was both a satisfying, complete read in itself, and an important part of the puzzle. This elegance of design is something that author Geoff Johns can not imitate.

It's not for lack of trying. The imitation, that is. Doomsday Clock slavishly imitates some of Moore's storytelling devices. These installments are, like Moore's original series, 32 pages long, for no other reason than to mimic the original, much like Moore's and Dave Gibboons' famous nine-panel grids. As said, the plotting isn't up to par, though, confused and confusing, losing sights of some of its early seeming lead characters and finally ends up as everyone thought it would: a rather underwhelming confrontation between Superman and Doctor Manhattan. Doomsday Clock is beautifully drawn and presented, but a complete muddle of a story, and finally a sign of what's wrong with DC's revival of the Watchmen brand: It's pure IP management, treating the original with reverence, but itself becoming a musuem piece with nothing much to say, or add to the original, really. Par of the course, in a way, uperheroes and less than super heroes forever trapped in ember. 

Watchmen, the series, was something else, though. Damon Lindelof went about this without the staid reverence of Doomsday Clock, telling its own stand-alone story in the universe of the Watchmen. This can, especially at the beginning, seem odd. The series wastes no time establishing racial conflict as the story ctalyst, set against the backdrop of the Watchmen universe some thirty years later. It's a storytelling device that lands with astounding predictive power, considering the George Floyd protests and the subsequent Black Lives Matter-movement were just months away from the broadcast of the series. Some of the aspects of this - a white supremacist group taking Rohrschach and his at times borderline fascist behavior as their idol and patron saint - are intelligent extensions of the original text. Which really summarizes the series as a whole. Lindeloff called it a 'remix' set in the Watchmen universe, and he's right, but most of the extra material he brings in is well thought out and makes sense. But more importantly: it all feels vital.

If there is a big difference in sense and sensibility between Doomsday Clock and the Watchmen TV show, it's because one feels slavishly retro and static, while the other is constantly interesting and moving. One can argue that not all of it lands - I found some of the stuff involving a certain Asian character a little too much 'out there' - but man, is Lindelof taking big swings with this one, and there are way more hits than misses. But the difference to Doomsday Clock is right there: Where the comic book, as comic books and their publishers are wont to do, basically takes a veryl ong tour to maintain the status quo, Lindeloff rattles a bunch of foundations of the Watchmen universe to find new uestions and new answers. I'll leave it at that to not spoil, because if you haven't seen the Watchmen tv series, be sure to do so, it is without exagerration one of the best tv shows of the last years. Beware that you should have at least working knowledge of the Watchmen comic (not Zack Snyder's half-impressive half-ridiculous film) because Lindeloff bases his series on that. Otherwise the squid rain machine will leave you puzzled (...or even more puzzled!). 

All of this is a very longwinded way to get to the One Buck Record of the day, but there is some music coming, I promise! Because one part of the Watchmen tv series' vitality is its propulsive soundtrack courtesy of Mr. Nine Inch Nails Trent Reznor and partner in crime Atticus Ross. These two have collaborated on a number of soundtracks - from The Social Network to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - and as usual, this is a fully electronic affair. It's also really good stuff! But stuff that wasn't originally presented very well. Reznor and Ross issued the soundtrack as three records, but there seemed to be no real guiding principle or thought put into the tracklist and sequencing. Some of the tracks didn't feature in the series, none of them were chronologically arranged and really it felt like 'here's some cool music from the show' rather than a designed soundtrack. 

Enter the One Buck Guy. I wanted to give the score by Mrs. Reznor & Ross its due, while also highlighting some of the at times great needle drops the series provides. So, mixed in with the score you will find artists as diverse as Orville Peck, Devo, Howard Jones, Desmond Dekker, Irma Thomas, Sturgill Simpson, Hall & Oates, Zambian rock band WITCH, Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton, Spooky Tooth, and, uh, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I also kept and mixed in some of the little sound bites and series dialogue issued on the soundtracks for maximum immersion in the show. The other big thing is that I present this music as a number of suites, one for every episode of the show. Some are longer, some are shorter, some have a number of needle drops, some just one (and the opening track "Summer, No Ice" none). The music is presented as chronologically as possible, and also imitates the show's use of musical themes and leitmotive, so some bits will come up several times, such as the theme of series protagonist Angela Abar a.k.a.Sister Midnight. 

The great intelligence and eye for detail extends to the musical choices of the show. Just one example: In the mid-seson episode "Little Fear Of Lightning" cop Wade Templeman a.k.a. Looking Glass (a really great Tim Blake Nelson) goes into a redneck roadside bar to hook up with a lady (but not all is what it seems) and as a soundtrack for that bar scene, any ol' country tune would have worked. But the powers that be chose Sturgill Simpson's "Turtles All The Way Down" (very recently featured in a bluegrass version on my Americana compilation) with its line about "reptile aliens made of light", which perfectly captures Tillman's defining feature, post traumatic stress syndrome after the giant Alien Squid attack he witnessed and thus his panicked fear of other alien attacks. 

If you have seen Watchmen the tv series, these nine suites will hopefully transport you back into the series. And if you haven't, they will hopefully inspire you to check that series out. And you are winning either way, because there is some very fine music in here, both from Reznor & Ross and from the illustruous group dropping in. 

So, who watches the Watchmen? Hopefully you, soon. And who listens to the Watchmen? Hopefully, you too, soon. 

Mom! Tim and his friends are picking on Neil (Young) again!

Something funny interesting happened on my journey to assemble cover versions for the recently started We've Got You Covered series on David Bowie: Finding a bluegrass cover of "Under Pressure" I stumbled on the (in)famous Pickin' On series, that has graced Walmart and truck stop check out racks for the better part of thirty years. I vaguely remember seeing a volume or two of those more than twenty years ago, and I dismissively figured them for exactly what they were: A cheap way to produce content for undiscerning music listeners ho'd grab that on their way to pay for their snacks or groceries. What I didn't know was that the series and its endeavors have evolved since their tentative start in 1993. 

Not only has that series grown to encompass hundreds of volumes on all kinds of artists, from Aerosmith to Modest Mouse. But they also upped their game in the early 2000s. The surprise success of 2003 Metallica cover album Fade To Bluegrass by Kenyuckian bluegrass vets Iron Horse led the series to reinvent itself: Instead of giving anonymous studio cracks some instrumental bluegrass versions of known hits to play, they got real bands to do these albums and would now propose fully sung and played albums on current and less current stars from the rock, pop and country world. This isn't a PR blurb, though, so let's cut straight to the chase: I got immersed in the whole Pickin' On deal and came out with a couple of prospective albums, the first of which is our One Buck Record of the day. 

Does this look like a person to pick on? Surprisingly...yes!

The idea to cover Neil Young in a bluegrass idiom is not particularly far-fetched. After all, when Uncle Neil isn't going eletric with Crazy Horse (or, in the last decade, Promise Of The Real), he is most often armed with an acoustic guitar and a set of down-home songs that live between folk and country. So the through line to buegrass is way more obvious than for some of the more surprising acts in the Pickin' On series. Unsurprisingly, the set list covers a healthy number of songs from Harvest (and don't forget to check out Harvest Time, by far the most popular album on this blog) and generally focuses on the early albums of Young's career. 

This album is drawn from two albums from the Pickin On' series. All vocal tracks are by Tim May from an album called A Bluegrass Tribute To Neil Young, while the instrumental tracks are done by a bunch of studio cracks led by multiinstrumentalist David West from, well, Pickin' On Neil Young or the much better alternative title Gettin' High On Neil Young. 

May I?

Tim May has been flatpicking in  Nashville for a quarter century, has toured with Patty Loveless and recorded with Charlie Daniels, and has played in groups Crucial Smith and Plaidgrass, while also maintaining some duos and session work in the capital of country music.West has led bluegrass group The Dead Strings for about a decade and is nowadays mainly producing and doing session work. 

So, what about the music, you say? Well, it's lovely. The songs are, if safe choices, well-chosen and well-played (the only slightly left-field choice is probably On The Beach's "For The Turnstiles"), as far as the instrumentals go, I'm especially fond of opener "Till The Morning Comes" (actually the closing reprise on the original album), on which West plays relatively unsual instruments like a dulcimer and a tabla, which give the song quite a distinctive and atractive sound. 

Go West, Young Man...

Even if the place of origin for the album might be a little iffy for the self-respecting music fan, the music within is not, so go and spend some time with Tim and his friends while they pick on Neil Young...who is helpless, helpless, helpless...(alright, alright, I'll see myself out...)

Edit: The Harvest Time download link has now been updated. [Frankenstein voice: It's aliiiiiiiiive!]

...To Son: It's Shooter! (...and OBG helps with a little the aim...)

The eagle-eyed among you have seen that the title to tuesday's post was a bit odd, but that was of course to set up part two of Jennings week here at One Buck Records. After daddy Waylon (the only one who'll walk the line) here's son Shooter, carrying the coutry rock outlaw torch into the 21st Century. Or so I thought. I picked up The Wolf for a couple of bucks mainly on the strength of the cover art. Seriously, that is a bad ass cover right there, indicating that there is some bad ass music within. Take a look at the back cover picture (below): four rowdy-looking dudes, ready to cause a ruckus. Men, lock away your daughters (and wives?!) when these bad motherfuckers come to town. And cover your ears, for there is surely some bad ass  countryfied rock'n'roll in here. 

Or so I thought. And it starts out that way, with opener "This Ol' Wheel", where Shooter raps over a countryrock beat like he is a more authentic Kid Rock. Things slow down a little for the breezy "Tangled Up Roses", then there's a really cool cover of "Walk Of Life" which happens to be my favorite Dire Straits song. So far, so good. But then the album ran in trouble. Other than "Slow Train", a lovely and lively number featuring The Oak Ridge Boys, the next four numbers were all slow numbers, bringing the groove of the album to a grinding halt. And after another slightly more lively section, the album goes out on another stretch of slow-ish or too poppish numbers. In other words, The Wolf needed some help. 

One was a re-sequencing that would spread out the slower numbers more evenly and try to get a better, sustainable flow. I also decided to ditch a couple of numbers, then looked for replacements. I checked Missed The Boat: Demos And Rarities for some more bad ass tunes that could take their place. The demos for The Wolf numbers didn't match their album equivalents, but I found two outakes from around the time frame of the album, then decided to turn these into the new opening numbers of side one and two of The Wolf. The first, "A Rejected Television Theme Song", sees Shooter and the boys be more of the bad motherfuckers I imagined when buying the album. And "A Classic Television Theme Song" is exactly that, and one you'll be very familiar with. 

The rest was figuring every number's place, while I also wanted to leave the sections that worked relatively intact. Thus, "Tangled Up Roses", "Walk Of Life" and "Slow Train" stayed more or less in place, and the second half trio of "Higher", "Blood From A Stone" and "Last Time I Let You Down" got shuffled a bit, but stayed more or less in place. The new opening let me push ""This Ol' Wheel" to the beginning of the second side to lively it up. And while I'm not a huge fan of mariachi instrumentation, I'll let that slide for "Old Friend", 'cause the song is nice, it was just misplaced on the original album, and as the new album closer I can let it ride out on that mariachi groove. 

So, uh, that was probably once more a lot more info on my whole alternate album machinations than you needed or wanted, but there you go. The end result is, I think, a real improvement on the original album.  So, fire up The Wolf and see what kind of ruckus Shooter Jennings & The Three Fifty Sevens can comeup with...

From Father...: It's Good Ol' Waylon

Folks around here know that I am a fiend of all things country rock of the 70s, as well as the Alt Country movement of the 90s onwards that most recently was featured on the Americana disc I compiled. But of course I also like some of the genre forefathers, like rockabilly-turned-outlaw country star Waylon Jennings. Out of the famous Outlaw movement I have a clear favorite, and it's ol' Waylon. Willie is fine, has some very fine songs, but he also has a voice that can become a bit grating at times. Waylon's mighty, booming baritone, however? I'll take that all day every day. Well, maybe not quite as often, but you catch my drift. 

The One Buck record of the day is a live recording from 1984, recorded for the Silver Eagle radio program (though I added out the Silver Eagle commercial break announcements and such). It's a pretty good set list and a pretty good performance, especially considering that by 1984 Waylon was entering his purple phase as a performer. I am fond of Waylon's last album from his classic era I've Always Been Crazy, which my dad had on vinyl, together with Waylon & Willie from the same year, Willie's classic Red Headed Stranger and the Wanted! The Outlaws album from a couple of years earlier. For years my Outlaw country was a comp I made out of those albums, and I still have that and listen to it from time to time. 

The set list has a number of my favorites, not only classics like the Willie-and-Waylon warhorses "Good Hearted Woman" and "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys", but also Crazy's "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit Has Done Got Out Of Hand", a story-song about his run-ins with the law in the mid-to late 70s: "Someone called us outlaws in some old magazine / New York sent a posse down like I ain't never seen..."

And speaking of outlaws: It also has my very first brush with Waylon Jennings, the "Theme From The Dukes Of Hazzard", which was a show that I first saw years after it came out when the magic of private television brought us kids all the low-brow tv shows the state-owned channels wouldn't touch: The A-Team, Knight Rider and The Dukes of Hazzard, among others. Other highlights here: the classics "I Ain't Living Long Like This" and "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way". The band is steadily ticking along behind ol' Waylon and gives these songs the raw, muscular sound that originally separated Waylon from the (Nashville) pack and started the whole Outlaw thing in the first place.

So, 15 fine tracks from the finest of the old school country outlaws...so, folks, are you ready for some country with the only daddy that'll walk the line..?

A trip through the golden years of Mr. David Bowie...

So, time to wrap up my "What I did during my summer holidays", here meaning summer holidays 2023, which was mainly spent fidgeting around with bits and pieces of David Bowie, almost literally. I did the first three David Bowie mixtapes, which worked for some, and didn't for others, and I pieced together lots of bits and pieces to make the alternate album/imagined sequel 2. Downtown. So, this is the fourth and last of the mixtapes, entitled Golden Years because I specifically wanted to make a mixtape that covers his commercial heydays of the early to mid-80s. 

Bowie's pop star work from 1982 to 1987 is often considered a huge misstep, with Bowie selling out to sell records again and going for the lowest common denominator. Which, to be fair, is true. Let's Dance, from hiring Nile Rodgers as producer and musical director to the song material and arrangements chosen was specifically designed to bring Bowie in the charts again, and it did so, and then some. Tonight was a lazy follow-up with minimal songwriting from Bowie, and Never Let Me Down, which I will still stan for and did an alternate album of, was let down my awful production and some weak songs, though it's better than general opinion has it. But, yeah, it's a difficult period to love unconditionally, only bested by the folowing Tin Machine-era for least loved Bowie. 

But not all was bad, and maybe Golden Years will remind you of that. Or not, but it'll valiantly try. As usual, the idea was to not use the original hit versions, but use lesser known versions of the songs, so you'll get, among other things, live versions of "Heroes", "Fame" and "China Girl", the TOKiMONSTA remix of "Golden Years", the dub mix of "Absolute Beginners", the vocal dance mix of "Tonight" and another snatch of the Moonage Daydream version of "Modern Love", all of course in longer or shorter snippets, as per usual. And there are a couple of other little surprises, which I will let you discover for yourself, if you feel so inclined. 

Golden Years lets the blond-dyed David Bowie of the 80's (and a bit of the 70s and 90s) back in your life, if only for a short while (literally, as this is the shortest of the four mixes). So, let him in, and see if you can't swing a little bit with the thin white duke platin-blonde popster...

More Black, More Market, more Placebo for your buck...

And here's part twoof the two-part Placebo project covering their Black Market Music period. Black Market Blood is a six-track EP that assembles the rest of the worthwhile material from the sessions: The two tracks I axed from the original album get reinstated. They were counterproductive in the newly assembled version of the album, but fulfill a definitive need here.  Since almost everything else is slow or midtempo, "Days Before You Came" and "Taste Of Men"are needed here for variety. I still couldn't stomach the stupid, clanging 'hey, we also like Nine Inch Nails' industrial passage of the latter, so that had to go. Yup, house rules here at One Buck Records are sometimes harsh that way. 

The rest of the line-up includes the original album’s hidden track (hey, remember those?), "Black Market Blood", and three B-sides (hey, remember those?). Of those, "Leni", seemingly an ode to a Eastern European prostitute (?!) and "Bubble Gun" are quite good, moody pieces, though I can see how they would have slowed Black Market Music down too much, and maybe that's why they got relegated to b-side duty. And then Black Market Blood closes with an alternate, slowed down version of "Slave Of The Wage", subtitled "End Of The Race" by yours truly in reference to the memorable "it's a race for rats to die" line of the song. That song also amusingly - and improbably - quotes Bob Dylan, of all people: "Sick and tired of Maggie's Farm / she's a bitch with broken arms to wave your worries and cares goodbye". 

All this is good stuff. Not quite as good as Black Market Music, but still plenty good. Stumbling upon Placebo, among others, which caused me to write my little State Of The Onion Adress on modern rock radio, reminded me both to post these two Black Market Music projects and to listen more often to Brian Molko and his crew as well. Here's a placebo you can trust to have the desired effect, so take some more of your pills with Black Market Blood and keep on rockin', folks...

Open wide and say "aaaah"...O.k., you're suffering from a severe case of lack of rock'n'roll, here's a Placebo for you...

 

There’s a couple of ways you can be reminded of a record that you really liked but haven’t played in a good long while. Like, say, pick up a record from the same band at the library and think “Hey, you really should pull out that other record from them that was great the other day”. There’s also a number of ways you can find out, that it’s really been a long fuckin’ time. Like listening to the disc, seeing that it skips, check the damn thing and find some fuckin’ soot on it. Soot. From a house fire. More than a decade ago. Jesus. Besides the fact that I will be swiping of soot from my stuff seemingly for the rest of my life (“Oh, you I haven’t played in 25 years, apparently”), it also tells me that some records I don’t really play nearly often enough.

In the case of this record, Placebo’s Black Market Music, there’s a good reason for that. As most of you will agree, every record has a time in your life, and as your life changes, so do not only your musical tastes, but also the place a record can occupy in it. Who hasn’t listened back to some records, that seemed to be the hippest, or the most urgent, or ones that really talked to you when you were, say, a teenager, or young adult, and when you play them back all these years later, you go “eh...” or “meh...” or “what was all the fuss about again…?!”. I don’t do this for this album, because it is a great album, but I also see why I didn’t feel the urgency to listen to it in over a decade. 

Placebo’s mix of crunchy guitars and post-adolescent angst is young people’s music. I loved that album when it came out, coming up on 25 years ago (Damn!). But I was a young man back then, and so the mix of uncertainty, confusion, anger and despair in Placebo’s music talked to me as it should to someone in their eraly 20s who was, respectively uncertain, confused, angry and very, very desperate. It’s the sound and sentiment of this music that talked to me then, rather than, say the lyrics and song topics. Because, well, most songs circle around using too much drugs and sleeping around with too many dudes in the London underground nightclub scene. Topics I know exactly fuck all about. But there’s a timelessness and quality to these songs that make it almost completely unimportant, what kind of gay debauchery Brian Molko is singing about.

I knew very little about Placebo when I picked up that album. I had heard “Every You, Every Me” on the “Cruel Intentions” soundtrack a year before and really liked that song. And I had read a fabulous review that culminated with a line that went something like “Brian Molko here is our Holden Caulfield and our Edward Scissorhands and that’s all we need right now”, or something to that effect. And the reviewer was right! We did. I did.

And this album still works like gangbusters. I remembered most melodies right away, and some I couldn’t stop humming or singing to myself in the weeks following my rediscovery of thisfabulous record. And it brings back memories of what it was like to be young, and uncertain, and lost, and angry. To want to be loved. So. So. Badly. Take the ballad-double climax of “Narcoleptic” and “Peeping Tom”, where all of the protagonist’s and by proxy the listener’s despair pour out while the music pushes towards the sky - “I’m just a peeping tom/on my own for far too long” intones Molko, and which teenager/young adult hasn’t felt like that, being left out again while seemingly every one else around him/her has found a romantic partner, or at least someone to sleep with for a night.

Molko takes aim at other targets, a little more outside of his wheelhouse, commenting on appropriation of Black music in “Blue American” (“But now ebonics rule our song”) and then full on tackles racism in “Haemoglobin”. He casts himself as an Emmet Till for the 21th Century, singing “I was hanging from a tree/unaccustomed to such violence”, before realizing “Haemoglobin is the key/to a healthy heartbeat”.

But even is the subject matter is a little more specifically gay, he gives it a spin that lets the song out of its specific niche. Take, “Commercial for Levi”, for example, probably my favorite from the album. What a lovely, bouncy, memorable melody, that will also make you overlook the salacious subject matter. As a matter of fact, it’s probably the most misplaced sing-a-long since people sang along about “giving head” with that Top-Of-The-Pops chart topper Lou Reed or sang along loudly and proudly with Zappa’s “Bobby Brown Goes Down” because most of the song’s..uhm...details got lost in translation. So, sing along then, even lines like “You’re the one who’s always choking Trojan/you’re the one whose shower’s always golden/ spunk and bestiality, well, it’s an Assisi lie / it’s ahead of me / you should close your fly”. Molko himself said it well enough: “I love that song because musically it’s like a really sweet lullaby and lyrically it’s quite a filthy number. It puts a smile on your face”. It does. Well, a crooked one, maybe.

And when, to that very same bouncy beat, he pleads: “Don’t die, don’t die/please, don’t die”, you understand that this is a very disturbed young man sending a warning to himself. The multiple warnings about drug dependency and the price of debauchery, whether it’s mindless anonymous sex or a sniff or twelve of cocaine – weave like a thread throughout the album. Molko stated his liking for the album at the time, citing the balance between heavy rockers and more introspective, slower numbers. Nowadays, it’s his least favorite album. As for the listeners, every album is a time capsule for the artist, and I’m not sure Molko liked who he was and the places he was in in 1999 and 2000. The recording also seems to have been a bit of a drag, literally, as they took nine months to finish it, way longer than any other album before or since. So Molko’d rather move on, but we shouldn’t. I picked up a bunch of Placebo records afterwards, but it wasn’t the same. The magic wasn’t there. But for that one moment, in 2000, Placebo’s music was perfect: “It seemed / a place for us to dream”.

Placebo always liked to open their records by making some noise, usually programming a couple of pedal-to-the-metal numbers. Unfortunately, most often it was a lot of sound and fury signifying little, and that was also true in the case of Black Market Music. So the first two tracks got axed from this new, improved and resequenced version of the album. What's left is ten tracks, forty minutes, all killer, no filler rock' n' roll. Just what the doctor ordered, baby. So, open wide, and take your Placebo.

If you experience other side effects, like a strong sense of deja vu, that's because this piece originally appeared on False Memory Loss Foam Island a couple of years ago. It's also part one of a two-part project, so be back in a day or two for more Black Market Placebo. 

Every road on One Buck Records leads into Americana...

 

...or so it seems, but you already knew that. From the country rock of the late 60s and early 70s to the alt.country from the early to mid-90s, to the various genre permutations until today, Americana is the one genre that is a contant throughout a ton of music that I like. But, as I said, you might have noticed, whether by listening to the All Pearls, No Swine series, or some of the One-Album Wonders, or hell, even by commercial giants like the Dixie Chicks who maintained a healthy, authentic link to the genre's past. So, it was obvious that at some point I would not only dip into the genre, but full on dive back into the Americana pool. If you have been around for a good long while, you might remember that there was already a full-on Americana sampler around here, back when I made a Blue Rose album sampler. Americana Vol. 1 has no borders or barriers,but also no particular theme, other than being a ton of cool Americana songs that I like a lot. 

There is some aural connect here, in sound and sensibility, maybe because this compilation focuses on modern Americana from the last 30 years or so. The oldest track on here should be Gillian Welch's demo for her classic "Orphan Girl", immediately covered by Emmylou Harris, which is like being knighted in the country rock scene. There's a bunch of groups from the birth of alt.country in the 90s - Whiskeytown, Old 97's and the previously featured Son Volt. Since we already mentioned the queen of Americana, there's other female genre royalty. Patty Griffin's moving "Wild Dog" is as good as anything on 1.000 Kisses - which means it's plenty good. And Alison Krauss with trusty band Union Station in tow as well as Neko Cse are reliable awesome as well.

This collection also collects (some) of the cream of the crop of the last decades in Americana, including one of its most emblematic figures and undoubtedly its best lyricist, Mr. Jason Isbell. "Last Of My Kind", featured here, is a moving, elegiac portrait of a young man from the country, lost in the big city...and the century. "Tried to go to college but I didn't belong, every thing I said was either funny or wrong / laughed at my boots, laughed at my jeans, laughed when they gave me amphetamines" and then juxtaposes this brilliantly with the down home wisdom from back on the farm, that doesn't hold up anymore: "Daddy said the river would always lead me home / but the river can't take me back in time, dand dady's dad and gone / and the family farm's a parking lot, a Walton's Five And Dime", "Mom says God won't give you too muc to bear / might be true in Arkansas but I'm a long long way from there". Isbell's storytelling and the precise way he chronicles the challenges of being a Southern man in a modern, changing society date back to his time in Drive-By-Truckers ("Outfit"), but he has only gotten better since. 

Another cultish figure who has grown more prominent in recent years is Sturgill Simpson and his decidedly retro, old school style  that is sometimes compared to the Outlaw country of the 70s. His signature cosmic cowboy anthem "Turtles All The Way Down" is featured here in a bluegrass version. Other talent rising in the last decade or so that ar featured here: Colter Wall, Lucero, Ben Nichols, Brad Armstrong, Charles Wesley Godwin and John Moreland with a terrific acoustic cover of "Thunder Road". Speaking of cool covers: Darius Rucker, formerly the lead singer of biggest/luckiest bar band in the world, Hootie and the Blowfish, was always a rootsy guy, but embraced full on country/Americana as a solo artist and covers Bob Dylan's never-fnished "Wagon Wheel" from the Bob Dylan & Billy The Kid soundtrack sessions.

So, lots of good stuff here, all coming with the OBG seal of approval. If you want to spend some quality time with some quality Americana music, this is the place to be, folks. Y'all have a good one with this one... 

All Pearls, No Swine...Steady As They Go, Sir...

Back to All Pearls No Swine, shall we? The last episode was, I thought, a really nicely rounded mix of everything I like in my Seventies pearls, and held really well together. Today's episode is a little more mellow, overall, a little like Vol. 12. But when is it ever not time for some sweet, soothing music from the Seventies? Maybe the titles will give you a clue: "Honey Dew", "Moody Manitoba Morning", "East Texas Wind", "Slow Fade", "Osprey" - that all doesn't sound too violent, does it? Nope, that sounds rather mellow-ish, which this volume of All Pearls, No Swine is, highlighting the acoustic, folk and country side of things. 

Something not presaged by the opening, which is one of the hardest cuts that graced the 70s-set episodes of APNS, a piece of fuzzy gagare rock fire from Pecos, 7 AM, "I've Been Convinced". But the very next track, the ultra-lovely "Change It All" by the soon-to-be-featured Richard Goldman gives a better indication of what's to come. Folkies like Atlantis Lemuria, Dan Young, Keith Streid and Hunt & Dunk dominate proceedings. And David Bowie's one-time protegé/paramour Dana Gillespie is also in folky mode, with "Never Knew" a dramatic ballad. 

It's never wrong to illustrate a write-up with good ol' Dana...AmIRight or AmIRight? 

Listening back to this comp, I realize that the middle stretch is a little slower than I would prefer nowadays, with an uptempo song missing around the middle. "All Along The Watchtower" by Germany's best fingerpicker of the 70s, Werner Lämmerhirt, is a really good cover, but is mid-tempo, as is surrounding minor country rock gem "East Texas Wind" by Comfort Station. Christian rockers Hope with "Deliverance" (jeez, guys, a little obvious there, huh?) make things a little more lively just afterwards with a song that morphs into a rock'n'gospel song. And Richard Torrance and Eureka go a little up tempo with their cover of Lindsey Buckingham's minor classic "Don't Let Me Down Again" (from the Buckingham Nicks album). 

The biggest name of this edition also has one of the weirder songs on here: The song itself is a cover of James Taylor's "Fire And Rain", the very opposite of weird, and seemingly made or folkie tim Hardin. But this version comes from Hardin's last studio album, Nine, a record with an electric band, a ton of back-up singers and some overarrangements. It's not what you'd expect from Hardin, and probably not his best work, but I like the odd Las Vegas showtune/cocaine-fueled fever dream atmosphere these choices bring to the tune. Another folkie, Bert Jansch, closes things out with the lovely instrumental "Osprey", though that's really more of a coda. The inofficial closer is Rural's "Ships In A Bottle" which combines about two and a half minutes of a folk-rock tune with a groovy four minute plus run out groove. I had forgotten what a great little tune this is before relistening to it fo this write-up. Thumbs up to the Iowa's premier country-rock band! And the electric guitars that were a bit missing during All Pearls No Swine Vol. 26 make an appearance here! 

Seriously, guys, you didn't have to point out how rural you are with your band name, y'all look plenty like country yokels to me...

So, same as it ever was, a bunch of unknown highlights from mostly unknown artists, and as usual, well worth the time. So, go diving for pearls with me again, my friends...

Not just another Queen album...it's just another Miracle...

One thing inevitably leads to another. That is true for some parts of your life, while others are completely random, but it's very true for this lil' music blog. When I investigated what Highlander material was officially issued by Queen when working on what became the Highlander bonus EP, I stumbled upon the The Miracle box set that Queen had issued last year. As some reviewers have remarked, The Miracle is a curious album to get the box set treatment: It's nobody's favorite Queen album, and it's nowhere near their best, either. It probably ends up in the back third, okay-ish but for fans section of their discography. 

But for every argument why this album didn't scream out for a box set treatment, there are arguments, why it exists. For one thing: wealth of material. Having burned through tours and albums at a frenetic pace throughout the early 80s (that's why the 'Live Aid as a panacea to a possibe separation' as well as the 'live rebirth' arcs were some of the many hard to swallow untruths of the ridiculous Bohemian Rhapsody biopic, there were less than two months between Queen wrapping up their The Works tour and Live Aid!) the group was completely knackered at the end of their Live Magic tour towards the end of 1986. For the first time in a long time, the band was going to take some time off. And instead of scrounging songs together because it was time to do another album, they would just reconvene when they had enough songs to feel well about beginning sessions for a new album. 

When they convened in early 1988, they had material, but they also had something else: knowledge of Freddie Mercury's health issues. While he didn't quite call his HIV-illness by its name, the band members understoodd the gravity of the situation. One indirect outcome was a novelty in Queen history: Instead of fighting for representation, royalties and 'getting their stuff in', all songs on the upcoming albums would be credited to all members of the group, no matter who wrote them. No more infighting over that shit, which had often led to the worst situations in the band, notably during the run-up to Hot Space (which was the real period where the band members were at each others' throats over everything). Anyway, with every member having been occupied with solo and side projects, when they got together for what was to become The Miracle, they were fully reloaded and cut -according to rumors - almost tirty songs, of which ten ended up on the album, and another five as bonus tracks or b-sides. Which means that there are still a dozen or so compositions from the era that were unaccounted for, but heavily bootlegged.   

With the box set, a bit of this material got an official release, together with a disc that runs through a number of early versions of the The Miracle songs, ranging from demos to first or unadultarated takes. These form the basis of today's One Buck Record of the day, ...Just Another Miracle. 

On the box set, these versions were presented as if you were hanging out in the studio with chatter, count in's, false starts, little doodles before and after the tracks etc. That's a fine way for fans to fully emerge themselves into the work of their heroes, but it's a terrible way to listen to this material as an actual album. So I got rid of all of that, making it sound as much like a real, finished album as possible. There were two vocal flubs, where Freddie Mercury either missed or messed up his vocals, so I edited these errors out. What you're left with is, I think, the most listenable version of the work-in-progress presentation of the Miracle songs. 

"Party" and "Kashoggi's Ship", the twin pieces opening The Miracle are here in their original version, rocking much harder and sounding less processed than the album versions. They were admittedly a slightly weird way to open an album, but I always liked these. Like the album as a whole, "Party" and Kashoggi's Ship" drown in electronics on the album, with especially the drums and keyboars sounding programmed to the gills. "The Miracle", a Freddie Mercury-John Deacon co-write is presented here as a demo with 'John's original ending'. To be fair, his jaunty synth coda at the end doesn't work at all, other than a curiosity, and it's no wonder they reworked that, but all that doesn't make it less interesting to hear. 

The original version of "I Want It All" is again much tougher sounding than the version they published. It originally started with some seconds of an impromptu jam/boogie section that didn't go anywhere, so I edited this to start of the song proper and edited arund Mercury originally fucking up his first lines. "The Invisible Man" is the demo version with most of the lead vocals done by writer Roger Taylor. Otherwise, the song is pretty much in place already, the punchy percussion and no key changes further giving away that this is Taylor's baby. 

I decided to add the song intro of the album's version of "Breakthru" to this original take, taken from an abandoned Mercury demo called "When Love Breaks Up", even if this version misses the line linking both bits. But well, the song just felt 'wrong' without it. Again, a minor edit to get rid of a Freddie comment in the song. The first part of the song sounds very familiar, but the second part is quite different. They hadn't yet worked out the breakdown around the two and a half minute mark, where Mercury's sharp "...now!" is missing. So it has a little bit of empty space in the middle, filled - as you would imagine -  with some Mercury ad libbing. Freddie is also clearly adlibbing and having fun towards the end of the song, proclaiming "You know something...if this song would stop right now, this would really be a breakthru, Brian. I mean, if I would drop dead, that would really be a breakthru, honey!".      

Not much to say about the demo version of the minor "Rain Must Fall", other than I edited out another Mercury vocal flub when he missed his cue. The song isn't much to write home about, and considering that they had much better material in the can, one wonders why this was included. The same is true for "My Baby Does Me" (here still entitled "My Baby Loves Me"), which I never had much use for. Sorry, John Deacon, but your two groove-based Miracle contributions are...not great. When listening to The Miracle my attention always waned towards the end of the album due to the stretch of "Rain", "Scandal" and "My Baby" which I always found a little boring. The victim of circumstances: The album closer "Was It All Worth It?", tucked away at the end after the album's least convincing song sequence. I had forgotten that this is a genuinely great Queen song, and definitely an underrated deep cut of theirs. 

"Was It All Worth It?" was, in light of Freddie's diagnosis, their first stab at 'a last Queen song' "What is there left for me to do in this life? Did I achieve what I set in my sights?" start Mercury's musings on his and his band's rock'n'roll career. It's also a god damn killer with some patented May riffage and high-powered rock'n'roll that revives both the original album and this alt from its three quarter slumber. 

These alternate versions don't make The Miracle miraculously a great album - the essence of the songs stays the same. But the rough mixes and original versions bring a toughness and more natural sound to a number of their songs, while the not-yet-finished bits in "The Miracle" or "Breakthru" are an interesting look at how they would figure out what worked about the songs - and what didn't. Still, a number of quality songs that could have made The Miracle a stronger album stayed in the shadows or entirely on the sidelines. But don't worry, the One Buck Guy is on the case. Be ready for another stab at The Miracle-era Queen in a couple of weeks with an all-new alternate album with stuff you haven't heard before! But, that is a story and listen for another day, while for now you can pass the time with ...Just Another Miracle. 

The Iceman has vanished into the sky

I, like many of my generations, met Val Kilmer as the cocky fighterpilot with a shit-eating grin in a movie full of cocky fighter pilots with shit-eating grins. No matter what else he played, Kilmer was always gonna be Iceman for folks roughly my age. 

Val Kilmer had the Montgomery Cllift dilemma. A self-professed serious actor blessed (or cursed) with movie star looks, he was cast in Blokbuster upon planned Blockbuster instead. Obviously he wasn't a real victim in this, because he gladly took the money and the fame. Had he really wanted to seek out indie roles in serious films, he probably could hav, especially after the Sundance/filmbrat revolution of the early to mid-90s. The one related film was Tony Scott's True Romance, a glossed up take on Tarantino in which Kilmer shows up for about three minutes tops as The Mentor, an imaginary Elvis figure giving advice to Christian Slater's lead character, and is never seen fully, only n reflections, half shadows, silhouette etc. A nice, self-effacing turn from a guy who wasn't about to efface himself, even if it was for serious roles. 

He did had a number of good roles in good to great films. He was really good playing a conflicted cop with Native American heritage in Thunderheart, Doc Holiday in Tombstone and one of De Niro's gangster crew members in Michael Mann's Heat. Those were probably the best years of Kilmer, but he had late career highlights in the modestly distributed and thus little-seen The Salton Sea and an extremely fun turn opposite Robert Downey Jr. in Shane Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. 

A throat cancer diagnosed in 2015 and its subsequent treatments damaged his voca chords irreparably and robbed him of his voice. Kilmer spent the following years asssembling memoirs, the book I'm Your Huckleberry and the autobiographic documentary Val. Fittingly, though, the last memory of him that most of us have, was in a reprisal of his first key role. Top Gun: Maverick was easily one of the best of the lecacyquels that became popular around the time, and Tom Cruise insisted that Kilmer have a short appearance in it. 

It was time to let go. Thank you, Ice, for everything.   

R.I.P. Val Kilmer, 1959 - 2025

Today's download is a little mixtape I made right after seeing Top Gun: Maverick, mixing the film's signature songs with the unreleased score from Hans Zimmer and some dialogue. Top Gun's music, 80s cheese, and all, will always be my wingman. And it can be yours, too...

Into the unknown of garage rock: The legend of The Firefighters

Lawrence Gaylord ("LG") Snyder was born in 1950, grandson of James L. Snyder of the Snyder Railroad Company out of New England. Coming from a rather well-off family young LG got, according to his own recollection, infected by the explosion of amazing new rock sounds, and especially the garage rock of the mid-60s, hat showed him that talent could be secondary to enthusiam when playing rock'n'roll music. Trained on piano by his mother, he switched to guitar, despite the misgivings of his family about such a 'vulgar' instrument. He started writing his own songs at around 15, then recruited his first band among his class mates: Canadian import Eric St. Laurent on lead guitar, Tommy Zordi on bass and Zack Domino on drums. 

They were first known as The Nihilists, a name quickly abandoned, then as the Back Stars, before becoming The Firemen, and then The Firefighters. Snyder had a different name planned for the last iteration of the band, but more on that later. Throughout the last two years of high school the band played the usual hig school balls, homecoming and the occasional house party, their repertoir mostly consisting of sped up, guitar-heavy version -s of the hits of the day, plus an original song or two. After finishing high school - something his rather conservative family insisted on - he decided to try for a career in music instead of following in his father's footsteps and becoming a doctor. 

One of two surviving pictures of The Firefighters

The band had built a primitive rehearsal room in the back half of his family's guest house and were allowed to perform their "awful noise" (LG's father Lawrence Sr.). The band managed to get a publishing contract with local mini label Roof Music, and some studio time to work on material. Musically, there was just one problem: Though an extroverted and entertaining front man, LG Snyder wasn't much of a singer. But since he was footing the bill thanks to his trust fund, his band mates had little choice but to put up with sometimes less than entirely successful vocal performances by their leader. In the DIY spirit of the garage rock movement it's probably fair to say, that they had a point. 

In February 1968 the band cut a tape of eight songs, three originals and five covers, including covers of the recent hits "Nights In White Satin" and "A Whiter Shade Of Pale". Roof Music, however, had by this time started to leave garage bands behind to focus on psychedelic acts, and despite some overtures of the band in that direction, PeteYork at Roof Music didn't feel that The Firefighters' music had a chance of success. So a proposed single with their cover of "Hey Joe", backed by the original "Room To Room With The devil" was scrapped. This, as it turned out, was the beginning of the end for the band. 

Zack Domino got his draft notice, then subsequently went to Canada to dodge the draft. At around the same time, St. Laurent returned to Quebec to work in his family's furniture store. With the band down to just Zordi and Snyder, Zordi decided to work fulltime at the family restaurant, and Snyder was left without a band. Dejectedly, he finally followed into the family-endorsed career plan and enrolled at Boston  University to become a doctor. Even after moving to Texas later in his life, "Doc" Snyder always preciously kept the reel-to-reel tape of The Firefighters' demo tape, mostly in a well-tempered garage. It was upon his death in 2018 from a heart attack that his kids found the tape and were amazed what their father had been up to so many years before. In trying to transfer the reels to digital, local music lover Sergei Gleithman was astonished by the results when proposing the transfer in his music shop and called Toby "Rocko" Shamani of Boston-based independent label Jamaica Plain Records. Shamani, a fan of original ska and garage rock decided to issue the record and so in 2019 the mini-album We Are The Firefighters finally saw the light of day, more than sixty years after its recording.

Still in the same space...and sadly no firefighter costumes (they were still The Back Stars at the time, I believe...)

Bratislav Metulskie from garagedoor.ru opines: "These guys were a hidden treasure. Behind the rather extravagant vocal sylings of lead singer LG Snyder, the band could produce a racket of noise when they wanted to, but where also able to rein things in, especially on their surprisingly subtle take on traditional 'I'm Going Back To Old Texas Now'. The finding and remastering of these tapes long lost to time and memory is a major cause for celebration and any garage rock and pysychedelic rock fan should celebrate this release, especially since the sound quality is simply astounding for recordings that are now over 55 years old. Major thumbs up!". Robert Overbarger from Allmusic adds that "while the recordings, much like the band itself, are only a minor addition to the garage band canon, the finding of these tapes is a major event". 

Like most garage bands, The Firefighters mainly traded in covering popular genre songs, including - inevitably - "Hey Joe", a band that seemingly every garage band had in their repertoire (though they miss out on "Hang On Sloopy"!). They also cover The Who's "My Generation" as the opening track here, while "Nights In White Satin" is a pretty straightforward cover. "A Whiter Shade of Pale" gets a swinging, jazz-inspired arragement, set to what sounds almost like a polk rhythm, and including a trumpet solo. Maybe they weren't geniuses, but The Firefighters definitely tried some stuff! This is also true for their slowed down take on "I'm Going To Leave Old Texas Now". 

Snyder in 2016, guitar still in hand...

Of the originals, "Room To Room With The Devil" is pretty much early hard rock, as is "Beside The Snake", which adds some nifty psychedelic touches. And then there's the band's 'theme' song, picking up the band's original, more vulgar name. It took some convincing from Pete York at Roof Music that The Firefuckers as a band name would mean that there was no way to officially distribute their recordings, so Snyder renamed the band and also rewrote their band anthem "We are the Firefuckers" to "We are the Firefighters". For this re-issue, the original, untouched version of the song - also discovered on the tape - has been used. 

So, folks, are you ready for some Firefighters to cause a ruckus and bring you back into the heady days of the late 60s? Then let LG Snyder and his parthers in crime noise take it away...

We've Got You Covered, Ziggy...uh, I mean...David

In the beginning, the We've Got You Covered series existed solely as a vehicle for Gene Clark covers. Then I opened up the series to Little Feat (with a little help of some friendly neighbourhood bloggers), and recently I figured that we definitely need some new blood in the series. And who has not only a huge back catalogue of great songs, but also songs in a variety of styles and songs that could invite artists that cover them to try and do something interesting with them? That's right, it's Ziggy The Thin White Duke Mr. David Jones. Bowie, whether you like him or not,  had one of the most adventurous discographies out there, and the possibilities for over artists are varied. Sure, you can fill whole albums alone with the most popular picks like "Life On Mars?" and "Space Oddity", but obviously in these and the following editions of We've Got You Covered: David Bowie we also hope to dig into some lesser known songs of the Bowie back catalogue. 

Some of the versions in this series are from dedicated tribute samplers, others from b-sides, various artist comps, album deep cuts or live in studio performances. Ian McCullough's and Sharleeen Spiteri's take on "Changes" is exclusive to this comp, as is the "Intro" track by the David Bowie Tour Band (featuring Gail Ann Dorsey who will pop up in later editions). which was the intro to their tribute to Bowie at the Brit Awards in 2016. 

Gail Ann and her perfect haircut

It's interesting how many new wave and new romantics acts declared allegiance with Bowie, possibly as a direct reaction to punk's rejection of him. The often maligned Culture Club deliver a fantastic, moody version of "Starman", while Duran Duran consider the ramifications of "Fame". Frankie Goes To Hollywodd take a trip to "Sufragette City" and Tears For Fears - even if it's the early-90s, Roland Orzabal-only version of the band - chime in with a really nice version of "Ashes To Ashes". 

Sure, there's some traditional-sounding covers here, not least from Bowie's backing band, the Spiders From Mars, but of course the more adventurous versions are what really make these series interesting. The Moonshiners' reggae take on "Modern Love" certainly qualifies, as does the theatrical take on "Life On Mars?" courtesy of the unlikely combination between The Divine Comedy and France's Yann Thiersen. There is also Beck's idiosyncratic re-imagining of "Sound And Vision" (presented here in a special edit) and Iva Davies & Icehouse's absolutely magnificent, slowed-down version of "Heroes", conceived for a ballet performance. Like Tears For Fears, Icehouse in the mid-90s were at that time basically only frontman Iva Davies, plus whichever sidemen he would work with, but they had a special knack for Bowie covers, as we will see a little bit later on.

Mr. Jones and Mr. Davies....perfect haircuts 2

And then, at the end, we let the weirdness take over completely: First there's American wild card group The Gourds (already familiar to long-standing One Buck Heads for their unique take on Snoop Dog's "Gin and Juice"), whose take on "Ziggy stardust" can best be described as, uh, Calypso Bluegrass?! And then we end things with those bona fide weirdos The Flaming Lips and their cosmic take on "Space Oddity". Oddities, indeed. 

To start things off I did include the heavy hitters of Bowie's backlog in this first volume, but future editions will include some lesser known numbers. In the meantime, there's lots of fun to dig into. So dig!