Caroline Now! Or, A Better Bye Bye To Bri...

When I reposted my two Beach Boy alt albums last week to commemorate Brian Wilson's passing, it wasn't a particularly great solution, mainly because those two albums - great as they are, and they are plenty great - didn't feature Brian a lot. But, as said in that write-up, I browsed through the virtual Brian Wilson and Beach Boys archives on my computer and didn't find anything that was in 'ready to post' shape. Call it a sign of the times. Because what I didn't do was browse my physical music collection for something fitting to post, otherwise I would have happened upon Caroline Now! The Songs of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys right away. Now, the fact that I didn't think of that album right away, tells you that it isn't in heavy rotation, and truth be told, I had a bit forgotten about it. But if the goal is to clebrate Wilson and his songwriting, it is a particularly fitting choice and listening back to it is also better than I remember. 

Caroline Now! is the antithesis to the 'stars go and cut a classic, well-known number by an artist' modus of a lot of tribute albums that results often in well-meaning karaoke.. And I say that as someone who likes well-done well-meaning karaoke from time to time. The concept of Caroline Now! was to focus not on the usual big songs, but rather the more unknown songs of Brian Wilson, done by some very modestly known musicians. The biggest name on here is probably Alex Chilton, who has been One Buck Record-ed before, or depending on your preferences St. Etienne or The High Llamas, all affirmed and obvious Beach Boy fans. Anothe really obvious fan of the Boys' music if obviously Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake, who contributes a lovely reading of "Only With You". This project actually grew out of sessions that involved Blake and Chilton in Scotland under the direction of musical directors David Scott (of The Pearlfishers) and Duglas T. Stewart (of BMX Bandits),  and then grew to include indie artists from around the world contributing a song to the planned compilation, until it grew to 24 tracks. It then came out on a tiny German record label.  

So, while I played with the idea of tightening the album up a bit, I finally didn't because different folks might find songs I'm not too fond of to their liking, and since this is out of print for about 24 years I figure those who want to hear it, should hear it in its entirety. I did, however, reseuence the whole album, because that was one of my peeves with it. It had about five of my least-liked songs on this thing in the first ten tracks, so for me it never built much momentum. There's a reason why I had pretty much forgotten about this album. So, my resequencing hopefully help with that, it definitely doesn't hurt.

Personal highlights include the radio Sweethearts' country-rock take on "Honkin' Down The Highway", Spanish trio Souvenir's 60's girl group-ish French-language take on "Girl I Can Tell" (as "Ne Dis Pas"), The Pearlfishers' "Go Away Boy" and Kle's "fabulous "Rainbow Eyes", which was part of Wilson's unreleasd Sweet Insanity album. If you like 80s and 9s cult bands Belle And Sebastian, The Vaselines, The Apstels, or Orange Juice - you'll find key members doing tracks here. The producers even recruited some contemporaries: 60's pop band The Free Design reunited after thirty years for this project and their lovely take on "Endless Harmony" (which for me personally blows the original out of the water), Alex Chilton is here - as mentioned - and the album ends with L.A. gadfly/producer/manager/svengali/charlatan/hipster Kim Fowley and his take on "Almost Summer". 

So, this is a much better and more fitting to sweet, crazy ol'  Brian Wilson, the gentle giant of songwriters. Just listen...and remember...it's almost summer...and an endless harmony...

Spend a wam spring evening on the backporch...with Sierra And Chase

It's springtime...almost summer. actually here today you'd say it's the dog days of August with a frankly too damn hot 35+ degrees. If we were futher south, we ould hear the crickets sing. Or, you know, we ca bring the crickets to you, together with some sweet, failiar melodies in some sweet vocal harmony. Springtime could also men hanging out on the front  or back porch, having someone pull out an acoustic guitar and just jam on some ol' songs you like. And if the person who picks up the guitar is an Eagleson, all the better. The imagined debut album of Sierra Eagleson did surprisingly strong numbers in January - and deservedly so - and the eagle-sonned eagle-eyed among you might have seen the name Chase Eagleson already in my re-imagined Kurt Cobain musical extravaganza, when I needed an Elvis impersonator (don't ask...or read about it in the write-up) and Chase's fantastic version of "Can't Help Falling In Love" fit like a glove. Yes, in the Eagleson family, talent runs deep as both siblings have their own career doing moody acoustic cover verions of popular songs, both old and new. Chase is also a bit of a handsome devil, so that's almost unfair.

 Anyway, the answer to the old question of 'What's better than an Eagleson?' is of course 'Two Eaglesons', especially if they are singing in harmony together. Beautiful stuff, as you will hear on the album of the day. The two have duetted dozens of time, but for this album I only chose songs that I really liked - covering "Hey Ya!" as a slow, downbeat, acoustic number inches a bit too close to novelty for my taste - and I also included one solo number each, Chase covering Radiohead's "Falke Plastic Trees" and Sierra Peter Gabriel's classic "Solsbury Hill" (also recorded with some birds and other beasts contributing...). Chase is indeed a bit of a Radiohead-head, also covering "High and Dry" with Sierra. On that song, as on others, Chase sings on top and Sierra takes the low harmony, to often stunning effect. 

Chase and Sierra are alternating lead vocals here in a deliberate sequencing decision. Their cover of "Landslide" has some beautiful Banjo picking, It's part of the opening trio of classic 70s hits that the Eaglesons have probably heard in the music collection of their parents, the others are Gary Wriht's "Dream Weaver" and James Taylor's "Carolina In My Mind", which opens the album. Not with an acoustic strum, but some bird chirping, as they recorded that one in a nature park of some sort, so you have the natural choir of bird voices in the background of the song. And then, to show that they (and me) are not only classic rock-retro-minded, I programmed Gorillaz' "On Memory Hill" and the aforementioned "Fake Plastic Trees" afterwards. Later a cover of indie-folkster Gregory Alan Isakov also shows up, flanked by some other 70s gold like "Your Song". And the album ends on a familiar note - at least if you have listened to Brush Fire - as Sierra goes back to her moody cover of Springsteen's "Dancing In The Dark", here as a duet medley with Chase singing "I'm On Fire". 

If you were mean-spirited - which I'm sure most of my readers aren't - you could call this high quality karaoke. But I think that would do these covers a grave injustice. Chase and Sierra find notes and nuances in these songs that maybe wasn't there in the first place. When even an old, mildly hoary warhorse like "Your Song" cn be turned into a winner, we're onto something here. So, sit down on the back porch with Chae and Sierra and their guitars, let the bird and beasts around you add their ten cents and and spend a lovely evening listening to these siblings picking and harmonising... 

So long Brian, say hello to the Boys...

A little under two hours after I had put out Le Trip yesterday, the news came down that Brian Wilson died. Damn. I mean, he had a longer and richer career than someone seeing him holed up as a fat, psychotic wreck in the early and mid-70s would have thought, including a frankly astonishing flurry of projects in his third act. Not all of these projects were great or even all that useful - did we need Brian reimagining Gershwin or covering his favorite Disney tunes? - but the fact that he stayed active in the music business after all these years was certainly something not many bet on in the mid-70s or one decade later when he was under the indluence of uor favorite charlatan and mine, Dr. Eugene Landy. Now he's gone, and all the Wilson brothers are gone, while Mike Love can still goof around stages with his fake Boys. Why the hell are all the talented Beach Boys gone and the scrubs remain? 

Anyhoo, be that as it may, especially since some guys the Boys drafted in when Brian was...uh...indisposed did a hell of a job. No, I'm not thinking of Bruce Johnston, who is almost as awful as Mike'n'Al, but of the Durban Beach Boys Ricky Fataar and Blondie Chaplin. You can probably see where this is going, folks. Is this a shameless attempt to lead to the two Durban-Beach Boy era albums I re-imagined? Yes, yes it is. Thing is, I quickly went through the archives yesterday evening and don't have anything purely or mainly Brian ready for publication, that isn't someone else's work. So I'm going back to my re-imaginings of Carl & The Passions - 'So Tough', on these pages known as All This Is That, and of Holland, which has become the double album epic Sail On Sailor. (You van find out more about thes eprojects in their original write-ups, should you be so inclined). There is some Brian in there - the arrangement for "Marcella" can only come from one man - and some of his dream-like music for the extremely odd Mount Vernon And Fairway-Suite has been saved as "The Pied Piper (A Dream Voyage)". 

No, these aren't specifically Brian albums, but they are fine albums, full of inventive, fresh music that should have given them more attention in the early 70s, before Endless Summer and their own 15 Big Ones turned them irrevocably into an oldies act. Why not listening to these while you say goodbye to the last Wilson brothers? In the band, Brian always was the brain, and Carl was the soul, while Dennis was, uh, the libido and the muscle, probably. Now all Wilson brothers have sailed from us, but their fantastic music remains. 

Sail on sailors, sail on...

R.I.P. Brian Douglas Wilson, 1942 - 2025

The French Connection: Salut, Les Copains...Voulez-Vous Faire Un Trip?

So, time to slowly ramp up all my long dormant, but still ongoing series. So, let's see what's what music-wise in my adopted homeland. The title of our One Buck Record of the day is of course a reference to The Trip, this site's one-off trip into garage rock. As I will be the first to tell you, I'm absolutely no authority on that particular subset of music, and the sheer volume of it - there must now be hundreds of comps out there I'd gather - is truly daunting, so I'll leave that to the experts. Truth be told, I had some of these fun tracks lying around and wanted to post something a little different, and that was that. Now, there might've been French garage rockers - and two or three do sow up on Le Trip, notably Les Guitares Du Dimanche - but overall, this isn't necessarily even rock, just some cool ass music from the 60s coming out of la France. 

I also didn't shy away from using the big guns, if there was a good song coming with 'em: La belle Bardot, getting two spots, one in her classic duet with Srege Gainsbourg? Check. The French Elvis, good ol' Johnny Halliday with "Les Coups", an adaptation of ,Stevie Wonder's "Uptight"? Check. French idol Michel Polnareff, who is still touring these days at the tender age of 80, with his classic "La Poupée Qui Fait Non"? Check. Speaking of, here's a relatively little-known fact to win a trivia quiz with your rock'n'roll friends: Who is playing guitar on Michel Polnareff's "La Poupée Qui Dit Non"? Why, it's Jimmy Page! And who's playing bass? Oh look, it's John Paul Jones. Yup, half of Led Zeppelin is playing on it! La classe! Moving on, Claude Nougaro has a bad case of (Peggy Lee''s) "Fever" and neegs to go see the "Docteur". 

And who could forget the famous Ye-Ye Girls, even though that term hardly captures the sometimes brilliant work they did. This is of course especially true for Françoise Hardy, about whom I have already written extensively. I still had to include her moody "Tous Les Graçons Et Le Filles" and "C'est e Temps de L'Amour", both stone-cold classics that no collection of great French tunes from the 60s should be without out. Rarely has anyone made melancholy as catchy as Mrs. Hardy here. I also love Jaqueline Taieb's "7 H Du Mat", which as the album opener gives a bit the tone of the compilation: a little irreverent, a little sexy, a little bit of rockn'roll rebellion. Unlike The Trip, Le Trip also has a bunch of jazzy undertones. Staying with the ladies, special mention also goes to another actress-cum-singer, Jeanne Moreau whose "Le Tourbillon" should be a much better known classic, Also pretty cool are Michèle Lagrange and "Si Ma Chanson Pouvait" and Suzanne Gabriello's "Votez, Hein, Bon!", which is really close to being a novelty song, but falls just on the right side of the line. 

As for oddities, we have author Boris Vian, best known for L'écume du jour, who was also an accomplashished jazz musician and speak-sings hisway through "Je Suis Snob", while Jean Bernard De Libreville's "La Juxtaposition 210" is almost avant garde. The aforementioned Guitares Du Dimanche should probably pay some royalties to the Kinks for "Sur Une Nappe De Restaurant", which sounds a lot like "All Day And All Of The Night", and goes to show that even in France garage rock was well and alive in the 60s... 

There are also two lucky charms that aren't French in the pack: Both Luckies Alba and Jones are Belgian, but hey, who's counting right? There be dragons! Or mussels...from Brussles! Jones' "Plus En Plus Fort", is an adaptation of "(Do The) Mashed Potatoes", joining othet beat grouops like The Kingsmen, The Rattles or The Undertakers in covering that tune. 

So, listen to this and transport yourself back into the 60s to the Côte D'Azur with a portable radio or into a hip Parisian jazz club...alors, tout le monde, êtes-vous prêt à faire Le Trip?  

Stealin' Some Queen Songs...And Turnin' 'Em Into A Pretty Cool Album...

If you remember where we left things with Queen and ... Just Another Miracle, the auto-assignment seemed simple: gather up the outtakes and b-sides from the The Miracle era, sequence them et voilà...an album that never was to go with  the alt Miracle and wrap up the OBG work on that boxset. Which is what I did in assembling a first version of the album. But, as it so happens, something happened then that gave the whole project a whole different direction. My assembled album was missing something. On a Cd of outtakes I had this demo version of "Stealin'", a version I have always preferred to the finished one that made it out as a b-side. The finished "Stealin'" has all the hallmarks of The Miracle-era Queen: It sounds hyperprocessed, with glossy keyboard additions that don't seem to add anything, instead choking whatever spontaneity the track once had. Compare that to the demo version, with its overddubbed vocals of Freddie playfully ("So do I"), and funnily answering himself ("So do I!"). That track, while a fully finished demo/run through, is all spontaneity. So I set out to find it, to add that second version as a 'Reprise' version at the end, a trick some of you are now very familiar with when I can't make the hard choice between two versions of a song. 

But to my surprise I found the uncut, eleven minute+ tape of that run through version of "Stealin'", instead of the four and a half minute excerpt of the main song part that I had. Color me intrigued. Turns out that they were doing extended riffs with instruments dropping in and out ad Mercury improvising lyrics. I really liked the loose nature of what was essentially a jam session, with Roger Taylor especially relishing to bash away on the skins (check out his drum rols towards the end of "Stealin' Part III). So, instead of simply having a second version of "Stelin'" I scratched that idea and rebuilt the album entirely around the various parts of "Stealin'". 

The whole eleven minute plus mix was too long and had too many slow spots with the band waiting around to see what to do next. The two most song-like parts were thus turned into "Heart Keeper (Stealin' Part II)" and "Money ("Stealin' Part III)".  Interestingly, during two of the 'waiting parts' Brin May played some Blues licks which I edited together for the (very short) "Stealin' Blues". The album was then sequenced around these four song parts, with "Stealin'" obviously the album opener and "Money (Stealin' Part III)" as the album closer wth Part II showing up towards the middle. Brian May's ballad "You Know You Belong To me" (a solo demo brought to the Miracle sessions) was a logical side A closer, while "Hang On In There", a b-side that could (and probably should) have replaced some of the weaker songs on The Miracle made for a great side b opener. .

There is no way to ignore the somewhat fragmentary nature of this album. A number of songs are rather short, either by design as b-side or demo or because I had to edit what was worth keeping out of longer, but messier songs. I had to do some editing to "I Guess We're Falling Out", because this was clearlly a run through rather than a fully finished take, and Freddie yelled out some instructions before the jam session at the end. Now, I love that little jam session - coming after one of the most classic sounding Queen numbers - but wanted to keep it as a finished studio track as possible, so anything that soundedlike not being part of the song had to go.  I also amused myself by following up Brian's "Water (another solo demo) with Freddie's "No Water", which is the improvised second part of the "A New Life Is Born" intro to "Beakthrough" featured on the original album. Anyway, think of the sequence of short songs in a variety of styles after the opening trio as a tribute to Sheer Heart Attack, which was more or less like that. 

Of the outtakes "Face It Alone" was chosen as the single to promote the The Miracle box set, so it has a much more polished sound (and possibly some autotune?) than the others, but that's the nature of the beast. Roger Taylor gets, like Brian May, two compositions and lead vocals, which sounds about right for a Queen album: Both were used as b-sides. Synth rocker "Hijack My Heart" (with some heavy shredding by Brian) is an interesting diversion, while "Dog With A Bone", with shared lead vocals by Freddie, is one of his slightly knuckleheaded rockers. The b-side "My Life Has Been Saved", co-written by Freddie and John, was later reworked for Made in Heaven. 

Anyway, that's a lot of info on the why and how of an alt album. Suffice it to say that I think this is a really nice companion piece to ...Just Another Miracle, and I hope you'll agree. Now go and steal some really good Queen music...

Meet Friends Of Bob For His Final Salute...

The post of the latest volume of All Pears No Swine this week, including Marlon Williams' fab cover of Bob Carpenter's "Silent Passage" reminded me of some unfinished business. Both when I posted his fabulous and unfortunately only album and then an imagines follow-up I maintained that there was more Carpenter-related material in the vaults for the (too few) converted. Well, here it is, I'm cleaning out my closet. And what I found in it, is a couple of Bob Capenter's very good friends. The reason they all got together was of course a sad one: By the mid-90s Carpenter had more or less wrapped up with the music business and was preparing to become a monk (!), when a cancer diagnosis hit.

I'll be honest with you, I don't recognize a single name on the list of performers here, these are literally his friends, not some more or less well-known admirers of his work rallied to the cause. But that doesn't change the fact that the music in here is very good, both because of the quality of composition courtesy of Mr. Carpenter, but also because musical director Ken Daiglish has assembled a really nice band and group of lead vocalists, including horns and strings sections. If eclectic folk-rock is your gig, then meet Bob's friends. The set list is interesting, as it shies away from his (relatively) known songs like "Gypsy Boy" or "Silent Passage", instead there are several unreleased or rare numbers. Of the lead vocalists, I feel like I should mention Laura Hogan, who makes "Dance The Night Away" sound like a long lost Linda Ronstadt song. Another Highlight is "One More Time" with its acapella opening, before thebband comes in for the chorus. Don Le Roux and the band  bring some Dr. John-style Soutthern fried R'n'B on "Free Delivery Man". And for the suitable epic finale, all ride out on the "Morning Train", which here takes on the quality of a modern gospel. 

The artwork all came with the tracks, which Bob's friends are still distributing via a Facebook page (move over, Boomers!). I just added a couple of bonus tracks, Again, for such a little-known cult figure like Bob Carpenter, there weren't eactly dozens of covers from high profile artists to choose from. Marlon Williams shows up again, with a different version of "Silent Passage", which was actually the first version I heard of him doing that song. It's a live track cut in a moving tramway, with Williams accompanied by then girlfriend & musical partner Aldous Harding. Her beuatiful backing vocals and Williams' fragility make this version as good as the studio version. Ramblin' Wayn is a grizzled old musician doing covers on You Tube, I edited his two Carpenter covers into a medley. If you  listen closely, he sounds a lot like American Recordings Johnny Cash, circa Volumes 3 and 4. And then there is electro-folk (is that a gere?) group C.A.T., a bunch of fellow Canucks covering "Wings". 

There is a breadth of styles on display here on Bob's Benefit that show how eclectic Carpenter could be, instead of being just asddled with a'another guy with an acustic guitar' label, and its also a credit to the band assembked here who pull off a beautiful concert for a wonderful artist. 

So, one more time, one last time, immerse yourself in the music of Bob Carpenter. 

Pack It Up, Pack It In, Let Me Begin...Here Comes The Pearls Pack

...some of our new visitors around here have shown an interest in the early volumes of All Pearls, No Swine, with Vol. 2 and 3 getting a number of hits, and maybe others to follow. So I'll just simplify things for me and you here, silent roamers of pages. To get the backlog of goodies from the All Pearls, No Swine series I'll post the first ten volumes of the series in this 'catching up with the back catalogue' post, instead of having to click my way through several pages each time to get to single post. You can then read up on artists etc. in the individual posts of each volume. So, tons and tons of hidden gems from the 1970s and 1980s to wade through, until you are as exhausted as that pig in the banner up there. 

If you want me to repeat the operation for volumes 11-20, just let me know...

Here's the Pearl Pack, All Pearls No Swine Vol. 1 - 10

All Pearls, No Swine: Boldly into the future, with our backs turned looking down the past

I mentioned in last week's Gene Clark entry for the latest volume of We've Got You Covered that some series take long breaks in between installments because, while I have a general base of things to post, I sometimes get excited and or distracted by a new project which then pushes some stuff to the backburner. That's also what happens to the granddaddy of 'em all, the series that started when this blog did. The debit of All Pearls No Swine has slowed down to one to two in a month, but that doesn't mean that I'm not happy to go back to what will stay a fundamental piece of One Buck Records. Not to mention, that there might not be anything new under the sun, but All Pearls No Swine can still break new ground. 

Originally conceived to present less known hidden gems from (mainly) the 70s and a little bit creeping into the 80s, the series finally pushed into the 90s, then the 2000s, and with today's volume into muisc from the last decade and a half. Or, more precisely, the last decade and change, as I compiled this one in 2023 I believe. But yeah, APNS has caught up to the almost present day. That doesn't mean that somehow this new volume is full of trap, electronica and whatever passes for hip hop these days. Nope, proudly this volume withstands all attempts to be modern or 'with it' (not something the kids would say... I don't know...it's the riz, something like that?!). Either way, I do like Bob Seger in "Old Time Rock'n'Roll" grumbling against disco, declare that trap is crap and continue with artists and songs that might be from current artists (and some not so current ones), but lookinto the past, much like this blog and its owner does.

What he said...

The 2010s are the decade when I finally gave up on the modern music scene. I had followed most of what was current, if not necessarily mainstream, throughout the 2000s, investigated and often bought highly praised (from trustworthy sources) releases and was generally au courant with what was going on, even if the charts were obviously something that hasn't had anything of interest for me for years. But in the mid-2010s my interest slowd down, as did my buying new music. I remember 2013 as being the last time being really invested in (for me) new artists, when I bought Jonathan Wilson's Fanfare and Israel Nash Gripka's Rain Plans, one of the perpetual 'bestsellers' on this blog and a genuinely great album. I was also following whatever Jason Isbell released, but also dropped some old favorites from thorughout the 2000s along the way. When Lucinda Williams' voice and quality control gave out within years of each other, I cut the cord. After one more underwhelming release I dropped Ryan Adams completely etc. And I didn't bother to replace most of them with other artists - I mean Isbell for Adams was a clear upgrade - and turned my eyes more and more towards the past. Why waste time with the mediocre or worse music of today when there is so much great music to discover or rediscover in the past?

Thus, All Pearls, No Swine. Thus, One Buck Records. 

But I digress. 

A logical consequence is, though, that most of the contemporary artists assembled here, have a retro bent to them. This is also true for most of the aforementioned artists are of course part of the line-up: Jason Isbell with the Trump protest song "Hope The High Road", that unfortunately couldn't be more current today, something he no doubt didn't see happening in 2018. Israel Nash's "Woman At The Well" with its echoey vocals and a relatively jaunty arrangement shows the Topanga Canyon spirit waving through Rain Plans. And Jonathan Wilson is featured with a song from Fanfare's follow-up Rare Birds, hat traded that very Topanga Canyon sound for a sharp turn into 8s synth rock. Pastiche it might still be, but it's quality pastiche. The same is true of Farq's faves, the terribly named Garcia Peoples, who do very good mimicry of that very sound, as can be heard on compilation closer "Here We Are". Both Wilson and Gracia Peoples take their mimicry so far as to indulge in rather unusually long running times, so both versions are edited for a better flow. 

C'mon, you thought these guys were from the 70s, right...?!

A band I discovered relatively recently and which will soon (hopefully...) be featured is Blackberry Smoke (above), a modern Southern rock band from Atlanta, whose mix of rock'n'roll and country is precisely up my alley, exactly because it sounds like it could have come straight from the 70s. Modern folk ensemble Cawlings' "Hold On" could have come from any decade discussed here, but more likely the 70s as well, whereas the lovely power pop of the already featured Jonathan Kupersmith could have come straight out of the early 80s. Very fine Kiwi singer-songwriter (and occasional actor, he was in Sweet Tooth) Marlon Williams covers  Bob Carpenter's fantastic Silent Passage from the awesome album of the same name. OBG faves Midlake 

Finally, good old fashioned rock'n'roll may be dead charts-wise, but featured here are two young hold outs who can rock with the best of them: The Luka State with "Feel It" and Italian group Maneskin with "Zitti E Bueno", the song that won them the European Song Contest four years ago.  WIth an actually good song, for once! And if you like your rock a little old school, groove to compilation opener "I Will" by indie rock veterans Sebadoh! "Zitti E Bueno" isn't the only non-English language song on here, as I also stumbled onto Australian Aboriginal arist Mitch Tambo, whose version of John Farnham's classic "You're The Voice" is an absolute corker. 

Maneskin certainly have their very own style...

I mentioned in one of the paragraphs above, that there is no shame in replacing an artist you liked by another, which can be applied to Young rebel Set's "Measure Of A Man" which sounds like a dead ringer for a Mumford & Sons song, before the band turned to shitty MOR arena rock for no good reason. And finally a word about singer-songwriter Glen Clark, not the one from Delbert & Glen, but rather anothe Kiwi singer-songwriter, who is also dabbling in visual arts. His song "1665" is ostensibly about the Great Plague of London in the same year, but seems to be eerily prescient of the then just strted Covid outbreak and its circumstances. "We watched the well-to-do escape.."...well, didn't most of us? Most other stuff from Clark hasn't graabbed me, and he isn't a particularly strong vocalist, but check out the genuinely impressive video underneath. 

So, despite the retro proclivities of One Buck Records and its friendly neighbourhood blogs like Jokonky's or Babs' place, good contemporary musicn isn't dead. It's just much more hidden from public view. All Pearls, No Swine brings some of it to light. So enjoy these pearls from the last decade and change...

P.S.: Feel free to go wild on the linked to albums, all music links have been upped...

Wayfaring Strangers...

 ...why do ye not ask and then ye shall receive?The all-seeing eye of the godhood of these lands - commonly referred to by his disciples as the One Buck Guy - has seen ye wander forlorn in threads, looking for answers, yet none were forthcoming (...and no music either). Small flocks of congregation gathered in these barren places, with no plea to  the ear of the lord of these realms to be heard...not even a whisper lost in the wind...I wish a way for this heavenly music to reach me would manifest itself.....

Serously, wayfaring strangers, though. Just ask for a freakin' link. Because OBG is a benevolent deity, links for Sniff'n'The Tears' Art Gallery, HickHop, Ragnarok, Hazeldine, the first Aerosmith comp, the first volume of the Little Feat We've Got You Covered and Françoise Hardy's If You Listen have been re-upped. Anyone needs anything else, say it with me: ask for a link. So sayeth the lord of these realms.  

This Just In: Links for Lindsey Buckingham's Not Funny, Spirit's Sprit of '76, Manassas and the Generation X comp have also been upped...

This Also Just In: So have Buckingham Nicks and Son Volt...

And this just also also in, belatedly: The Best Of Sniff'n'the Tears and aeromsith's G.T.F.O. 2 have also been upped...