Is This A Mixtape? Yes! Is It Weird? Yes! Is It Yes? Yes!

If you've been around a while, you know two things about the One Buck Guy and prog rock: I'm not a huge fan of the genre, but I like Yes. But I like a lot of the bits and pieces from Yes that a - shall we say more classic - fan would probably frown upon. Hell, the One Buck Record of the day even proudly contains what is unofficially the worst Yes song of all time. Classic Rock ranked all (the) released tracks from Yes, and Tormato-era b-side "Abilene" came in 207 ot of 207! And yet here it is! Suck it, Classic Rock, I like what I like. and once you don't have to worry about the admittedly ridiculous opening (a synth made to sound like a horse neighing, predating Neil Young's synth horse experiments on Trans by a couple of years), the song is pretty neat. Sue me! 

This is just one example of what to expect - and not to - here. This albums is called a Mixtape, but isn't tagged as such, because it isn't one long megamix like the ones that are, even though that was the original idea. No, Mixtape here is meant to show you that this is someone's mix, a personal selection of songs. Oh, also: You have to take the word Mix really seriously. This was made during the 'OBG goes wild on Audacity'-era (some might say the 'OBG, WTF?'-era, but let's not dwell on that...), so it really is a mixtape in the literal sens, mixing and matching moments from Yes that I like. Often it's complete songs, but sometimes it might just be an extract  from a longer piece, or I edited out something I felt was superfluous, like the false ending to "Into The Lens (I Am A Camera)", the aforementioned fake-horse-bullshit on "Abilene" or even the occasional gratuitous keyboard solo. 

Before you recoil in horror, know that a lot of the music is intact, including my two favorite long-form pieces from Yes, "Homeorld (The Ladder)" and "Roundabout". But there is also a track called "A Moment - Alternate View", which is a remnant of the original idea, before plans changed. When I still wanted to do a one-hour megamix of my favorite Yes moments, I had prepared little bits from longer pieces that were supposed to serve as bridges in between the songs. But then, halfway through I realized that my original plan was counter-productive to my 'personal best' approach. If I want to hear one of my faves right away, it has to be indexed, so out went the continuous megamix idea, but I already had a couple of these 'linking bits' ready, so I decided to throw them on anyway. 

Seeing that this is a truly personal mix, in every word of the sense, you get - for better or worse - some exclusive edits. I've always liked Yes' take on Simon & Garfunkel's "America" for example, but the album version took forever to get to the vocals/song section, while the single edit threw out one of my favorite parts: the little country licks Steve Howe played - and for a classically trained Brit he sure loved to play a country lick or two - so I edited a third version that splits the difference between the two mentioned. 

The so-called 'Chop Shop Mix' of "White Car" is a whole 'nother story. I had always liked the original one-and-a-half minute doodle off Drama, but it really was just a doodle, an intro and a short verse. So I tried to make it into more of a song, using the original song, the tracking sessions version and a live version from the Drama tour to create this version. I always felt that that song deserved more than to be an excuse for Geoff Downes to doodle on his keyboards, for Horn to mess around with a vocoder and for both to tease the audience with a couple of notes from "Video Killed The Radio Star". Whether this new mix of more of an epic song or whetehr it works for you remains to be seen, but hey, lemme know, eh. 

So yeah, this is what YESterdays is, and I hope you enjoy it. The whole adventure spread into a two-disc thing at the time, but I'll just send out this as a test balloon, and can bring out the sequel if anyone is actually interested. and despite being essentially a Part 1 or Volume 1, this album is - as all of my alts and other albums are - sequenced to tell a story, so it has a short prelude in the classical-sounding "Vevey's Theme" and ends with an epilogue of sorts, Chris Squire's amazing solo bass version of "Amazing Grace". 

So, time go back in time and enjoy some YESterdays...yes?  

All Pearls, No Swine - Same As It Ever Was...

 

All Pearls, No Swine is back, and for the first time with live compiling, or almost! I compiled this a couple of weeks ago and, uh, that's it. No particular organizing principle, no nothing – which means, it's the same as it ever was. Only one principle, same as it ever was: quality control. Good stuff from mostly unknown, or little-known properties, same as it ever was. A mix of some rock, some folk, some country-leaning stuff, same as it ever was.

Thirty nine volumes in we still have time and opportunity to discover some folks here, but by this stage the number of alumni starts to rise. Veterans Podito, Doug Firebaugh and big brother Alex Taylor have already shown up several times, all coming up with quality contributions once more. We've met Toad once before, and they're back with a real corker: Almost twelve minutes of "Life Goes On" - which, with a title and song length like that, is obviously the compilation closer. Loose Boots are back with another little country rock gem, "Only Lonely Roads", while German folk outsider Sibylle Baier comes up with another narcoleptic folk beauty, “Colour Green”.

We also say hello to a couple of newcomers like Sum Pear, Amigo, Blaze Foley, Mac Davis, Gold and the intreaguingly titled Don Speer And The Hudson Profit Expedition. We also get some prog with the likes of Chetarca and then-Yugoslavian combo Smak,while Tom Eslick and Victoria bring different types of folk, the latter by covering Warren Zevon's little-known early pearl “Tule's Blues”. And finally, as possibly the best-known name in the bunch, there's Tommy Bolin, upping the rock factor with an punchy demo of “Wild Dogs”.

So, twenty fine tracks of music worthy of being (re)discovered music of the 1970s. Same as it ever was! So, have a good start into the weekend with this, a lovely soundtrack to your saturday morning or afternoon...

Two Halves Of Seven Equal ? - Or Poco's Weird Math Problem

Uh-oh. That's no doubt what the remaining members of Poco must've thought when band leader and main songwriter Richie Furay handed in his resignation just before the release of Crazy Eyes. Gone was Furay's recognizable voice, his stage presence, and most importantly, the songs. To be fair, the band had come a long way since Furay had utterly dominated the songwriting on the band's first two bands. Paul Cotton brought a strong songwriting presence immediately, and had three songs apiece on From The Inside and A Good Feelin' To Know and two - the same as Furay - (not counting a coer each) on Crazy Eyes. But Schmit had been content to contribute the occasional ballad, and now had to step up his production, while Rusty Young's real coming out as a songwriter would have to wait for another album.

So while the odds for a quality album seemed slim, the now quartet acquits itself pretty nicely. While Young contributes only one song, his "Rocky Mountain Breakdown" is the best of his country reels, and has a cameo of founder Jim Messina on mandolin. The biggest surprise are Tim Schmit's songs, especially "Skatin'"  and "Just Call My Name", which see Poco experimenting - for the first and only time, really - with a harder edged guitar rock sound. While Paul Cotton had been drafted into the band specifically to beef up the rock guitar in Poco's country rock, Schmit had mainly been known for delicate ballads, but does a pretty good job on these, while Cotton's opener "Driving Wheel" is another of his storytelling epics and quite impressive, while expansive closer "You've Got Your Reasons" also does quite nicely. "Faith In The Families" was a stage favorite and maybe thus chosen to represent the album on their Greatest Hits collection. 

So most of the album's songs were fine, and yet there was something off about Seven, something that made me rarely put the album on and often pull it out of the CD player before the album was done. And yet it took me only a cool 20+ years to figure it out. Sure, having it on CD with no side breaks, and having listened to it about three times in that time span didn't help, but still: For a dude who - since this lil' blog adventure started - spends a lot of time thinking about sequencing, it's kind of tough to realize that Poco did the old 'one rock/quick side, one ballad/slow side' and that's caused such a weird, and not entirely satisfactory, listening experience. It's kind of a chicken-and-egg thing: Did I not listen a lot to the album because it's running so weirdly, or did I not realize why it's running so weirdly because I barely listened to it. It's the latter, of course, but still: consider the One Buck Guy miffed that he missed this little detail. Then again, since the start of this blog adventure I'm much more sensitive to these things than before, so beforehand I jad just shrugged it off, and the album with it. 

To be fair, this two different sides deal is a weird gambit for a band like Poco, whose music lives between these poles, but is never that rocking, nor that slow, comfortably living in a midtempo world that carries hallmarks of both sides. So it was always a weird idea that Poco would try to attach two identities to two album sides. It's just not a good fit. What happened with the original configuration of the album left me baffled, on numerous levels. On one hand, possibly to fulfill the 'rock side' part of the concept, there were Schmit's heavy rock numbers, So it was not only strange to have two heavy rock tunes from Schmit, but it was even weirder that they ,  each other back to back. But the conception also explains why - after the reasonably promising first half - the album sort of drifts away together with the listener's attention when ballads and midtempo numbers are all cluttered together in the second half. 

This can of course be corrected in a rather simple manner: Resequence the album so that the ill-fitting two side concept is dissolved. Alternate the rock and slower songs, as well as the Cotton and Schmit vocals, and you have a version of Seven that is a much better listen. Which is - you might've guessed - exactly what our One Buck Record of the day is. A sronger version of a pretty good, if not quite top-tier, Poco album. there's a lot of worse ways to spend half an hour. 

Hey, You Wanna Take a Ride In Kris Delmhorst's Cars?

 

Aaaaaand here's the last part of our impromptu Cars appreciation week here at One Buck Records, appropriately titled Cars. That is of course because it's a tribute from former-Brooklynite-adopted-Bostonian Kris Delmhorst to one of the city's premier bands. To do the songs of Ocasek & Co. justice, modern-day folkie Delmhorst has invited a ton nof musical friends to pump new life into these songs, folks like fellow Bostonian (and then-labelmate) Mark Erelli on Lap Steel and backing vocals or classically trained bass player and producer Zack Hickman, mainly known for collaborating with Josh Ritter. As a special bonus, she also gets original Car Greg Hawkes to play some Ukulele on the album! 

As a matter of fact, it's the musical coloring that Delmhorst and her assembled crew do, that makes the difference. The songs are great, obviously, but Delmhorst and collaborators add all the bells and whisteles – sometimes literally – that make Cars thoroughly enjoyable: From Penny Whistle to Clarinet to Banjo to Mandolin to Laura Cortese's very present fiddle, there's a ton of interesting stuff going on here musically, that saves this from being a nicely meant but underwhelming tribute. “You Might Think“ is paced by a fiddlepart that I love, while “Shake It Up” gets a New Orleans Brass Band—style arrangement and “Magic” transforms from a giddy pop song into a delicate ballad. 

On “Why Can't I Have You” Delmhorst brings the speed way down and the moodiness way up. “Tonight She Comes” with accordion and fiddle sounds like a folk song, though the lively group vocals betray its original perfect pop side, while “You Wear Those Eyes” gets a slightly jazzy makeover. Drive is probably the most conventional covr here, and while the song stays beautiful, Delmhorst doesn't do much of note with it. But sometimes a faithful cover is a-okay also, I guess.

Cars is a very fine album that gives a new spin and shine to these Cars warhorses, and Delmhorst's love for the band and the originals celearly shines through. The band gets a 'thank you for the summer of '84' credit, when Heartbreak City blew up and presumably led young Kris to the Cars. Consequently, she covers all five of that album's singles. Anyhow, full speed ahead for some nice reimaginings of some of the band's biggest and best...

...The Time That Two Future Cars Took A Turn Down Folk Rock Avenue...

Welcome back to Cars appreciation week! Oh, you didn't know it was Cars appreciation week around here? Neither did I, until just about now. But mentioning the long and winding path to the seeming overnight success of the Cars made me think that Ric Ocasek's and Benjamin Orr's  unexpected detour into folk/soft rock is worth a detour. So we jump in the car, next destination: Milkwood. 

So how exactly did Ocasek and Orr end up singing three-harmony soft folk songs? Blame Jim "Jas" Goodkind, who searched for band members to form a blues rock group (well, it was the early 70s...) and ended up with one Richard Otcasek, armed with an acoustic guitar and a couple of songs. So the two forgot about the whole blues rock deal and played as an acoustic duo, before Otcasek proposed bringing in his old friedn from high school, Benjamin Orzechowski. Milkwood built a bit of a following in Boston and the area, then signed with Paramount Records to record 1973's How's The Weather?, our One Buck Record of the day. 

Hey, what is Waylon Jennings doing there on the right? Oh, hold on, it's Benjamin Ortchowski, soon to lose the beard and then a ton of letters of his name...

And of course there is more to Milkwood than that, because Ocasek and Orr met Greg Hawkes while working on How's The Weather?, adding sax and taking care of the horn arrangements. So while Milkwood doesn't sound anything like The Cars, it's interesting that three fifths of the band were assembled here to work on an album that Milkwood had high hopes in, but sank like a stone. When How's The Weather? flopped, the band was done within weeks of that failure, with Orr and Ocasek moving on to other short-lived bands, until...well, you know. 

But enough about the band, what about the music? Well, it'spretty neat. Nothing earth-shaking, very much in the vein of America, with Ocasek's decidedly odd humour and slightly askew point of view only shining through in very brief moments. Ocasek is at least very well cosplaying the part of the sensitive folkie, with song titles including "Dream Trader", "Winter Song" and - don't laugh - "Timetrain Wonderwheel". This is all very pleasant, if not exactly what you'd expect three future Cars to come up with. But it's definitely more than just youthful ephemera. It will probably not climb up your personal best albums ever list, but it's a really nice early 70s folk-rock (with soft rock touches) album, if you are in for that kind of thing. 

Aah, the letters are still there, but the future Mr. Orr is much more recognizable like that...and check out the snazzy 'stache on Slick Ric...

Today's offering is a whole package, including artwork, photos and a Boston Globe article with enlightenig comments by Jim Goodkind that functions as virtual liner notes for this album. So, enjoy your trip into Milkwood, then we will be back with a last little Cars-related surprise in the next few days...

Gentlemen, Please Start Your Engines...

Now that a hitcher has passed by on these pages a couple of days ago, the next step seems obvious. Quick question: What does a hitcher nned to do what he does? Why, cars of course! And so Cars is what we're going to deliver! The Cars' self-titled album is of course an unassailable classic, one of the best, most-fully formed debut albums of all time. Oh, and it has posible the best three song run to open a record. Quickly, name me an opening trio that rivals "Good Times Roll", "My Best Friend's Gir" and "Just What I Needed" - it might exists, but it sure isn't easy to find. But the crazy thing is that the album has't just shot all its powder on that opening salvo, but keeps the energy and hooks coming. It's an album that runs essentially like a greatest hits album. 

As a matter of fact, the music of that debut was so confident and refined in its own inimitable style - which would of coure be almost instantly imitated - that one could wonder how that band could bring out such an album without a false note without...you know...working towards it. But of course nothing is ever developed right out of thin air. The funniest thing when thinking about the Cars is of course that the nucleus of the band - vocalists Raic Ocasek and Ben Orr, nés Richard Otcasek and Benjamin Orzechowski - was doing a folk-ish country rock-ish music before, something that has left absolutely no traces in The Cars' oeuvre. But the weird sidestory of Milkwood is a story for another day. When Ocasek and Orr hooked up first with Greg Hawkes in Richard and the Rabbits, then with Elliot Easton in Capt'n Swing and finally with all of the above and drummer David Robinson as the Cars.

Uuuuh. Let The Good Geek Times Roll...

On today's One Buck Record you can hear how fully formed the band is so early in the game, mainly because they spent a lot of time on developing and putting these songs in shape, while also throwing off a ton of promising contenders that didn't make the cut. This album gathers demos for eight of the nine album tracks - late addition and kickass opener "Good Times Roll" seemingly wasn't demoed, but developed on the spot in the studio. And then there's eight tracks, some of them demoed really early, in spring 1977, that got put aside. Two of these, "Ta Ta Wayo Wayo" and "Leave Or Stay" were rescued and finally recorded for the band's lackluster swan song in a 'back to the roots' move that often precede a band's imminent break up. Reconnecting through the shared past and all that. But I digress. 

Listening to Test Drive should be interesting for a number of reasons: First of all, and again: the songs are really good. Even the outtakes are all of really high quality. There's also the chance to listen to a couple of these songs, such as "Moving In Stereo" and "All Mixed Up", in their original version with Ric Ocasek's vocals, before he gave almost half of them to Ben Orr to sing. 

Aaaaah. Let the good times roll...

Test Drive is both comforting and a discovery - you know most of these songs, but maybe not quite like this. So, strap yourself into the front seat, let the engine roar, and, uh, the good times roll...

Don't Give This Guy A Ride! (...This Album, However...)

As a kid I liked all kinds of movies. My dad installed a love for Westerns, and like most kids I liked action films and comedies, everything that moved and entertained. But the first genre I discovered for myself, because no other family member would have a taste for it, was horror movies. For a long time, with a single TV in the house, occasions were rare, and had to be seized. Several factors had to combine: I would have to watch a movie with my dad, while my mom would go to bed and read if the film didn't interest her. Then I would wait until my dad would inevitable fall asleep and snore happily away at one point, at which I could either wait for the late night horror film or quietly switch channels to get to my bounty. I distinctly remember watching The Thing on low volume, with my dad's snoring the background noise to Kurt Russell squaring off with the shapeshifting beastie - still the best horror movie of all times, folks. 

Another horror classic from my younger days is, obviously, The Hitcher. Man, that movie was a shock to the system. A variation on the slasher films of the time, the film's seeming realism that slowly gives way to something else - not quite supernatural, then definitely something leaving all senses of reality behind, which made this probably more disturbing than the clearly fantastic Nightmare On Elm Street series. The Hitcher, more than a slasher, is truly a nightmare movie. When Jim Halsey's nightmare (ha!) starts as he stops to let the mysterious John Ryder in his car, he says "my mother told me never to do this" with a geeky smile that will soon disappear, you understand that The Hitcher is essentially a scary but instructive story that the brothers Grimm couldn't have imagined better. And even though there is no Freddy Krueger here, the film has more of a nightmare feel to it than the increasingly operatic grand guignol spectacles involving the burnt-to-a-crisp undead child murderer.

Some critics didn't get it, obviously, and not only those that have prejudices against horror-themed films. It's true that at some point people will inevitably go 'eh...but Ryder can't possibly be here at this moment in time', because as Halsey's nightmare continues, it truly takes on the hallmarks of a drzam...or a nightmare, where space and time are not functioning as in the real world, getting bent out of shape, making sudden jumps in location or illogical chronology ,ot a bug, but a feature. If you're wondering why things are not adding up, you're watching this film wrong. As director Robert Harmon, who weirdly disappeared fropm the face of the earth after this film - said "You either get it, or you don't". As a film that shows how something that looks realistic, if admittedly improbable, slowly morphs into something entirely impossible, with the viewer losing all sense of real-life logic. The film logic, that The Hitcher and John Ryder impose on people trump the suspension of disbelief. 

You know what's really helping a film that emulates a dream and its logic? Why, a score that gives you tghe feeling that the real world and its restrictions are slowly melting away for example. And it so happens that Mark Isj=ham's score is exactly that kind of music. Entirely synthetic, the score was Isham's attempt to use and master then new cutting edge technology to his bag of tricks, adding the Prophet 2000 keyboard to his arsenal of old school synths like the ARP 2600 he had worked with for years. The brought in two drummers, but then proceeded to only use sampled drum sounds. And while all this sounds like the score to The Hitcher would sound awfully of its time, that's not really true. If anything the music sounds out of time, seemingly existing just on that fine line between reality and dream. 

The score to The Hitcher is one of the finest examples of a synth soundtrack from the high time of that particular type of soundtrack. Action-driven, incidental numbers like "Cars And Helicopters" are rare, most cuts here are incredibly atmospheric and just there to set a mood. And frankly, if you're coming for moodsetting - and you definitely shoud - you will not be disappointed here. I kept the soundtrack as is, as a bonus tracks there is an 'ambient suite' version of The Hitcher theme, which was of course more impressive before I knew that a simple push of the Paulstretch function in Audacity could create the ambient soundscapes of extremely slowed down tracks. Still, if you got nothing better to do, or listen to, it will give you atmospheric background music in spades. 

So, The Hitcher. If you can catch it somewhere, go and (re)watch the movie. And, of course, listen to this fantastic piece of business by Mark Isham. 

Let's Look At Those Crazy Eyes Once More...Yup, It's Still Poco's Masterpiece

Often great art can come out of great uncertainty. Sometimes een out of great distress. And while these terms would be overselling the quagmire that Poco found itself in in 1973, it's still amazing that a group that had several major defections over the years that the group did their hands down best album while their founder and leader with an iron fist was quietly quitting on the band he had held in his grip for so long. When A Good Feelin' To Know the album did way worse than everyone thought and the title song - that everyone, and Furay first - thought would be a hit didn't even chart, Furay was done with Poco, at least in his mind. David Geffen oer at Asylum had bothered him for months now, telling him that Poco was never going to happen, and to come over to his label to team up with Chris Hillman and JD Souther and "do another Crosby, Stills and Nash". (Narrator: They did not). 

There was only one problem: Good old fashioned paperwork. When Furay was sent to Epic Records in the first sports-team style 'trade' in music biz history for Graham Nash going to Atlantic to form the just mentioned Crosby, Stills & Nash, he had signed for a certain number of albums, which was not yet fulfilled. So while Furay was gone spiritually, he still had obligations to fulfill and decided to stick with Poco for one last album before doing the supergroup thing Geffen had sold him on. During recording he didn't tell anyone in the group, only announcing that he was leaving while Crazy Eyes was prepped for release. By the time the record hit stores, Furay was gone. But in his wake he left Poco's masterpiece.

He was of course ably helped by the other members of the group, who no doubt felt Furay slipping away, or at least loosening his grip on the band's songwriting and decision-making that had already sent co-founder Jim Messina on his way. The first thing one realizes when listening to Crazy Eyes is how diminshed Furay's contributions are. He has three lead vocals, but only two credited songs. Common logic would dictate that that's because he was doing minimum service and keeping all his good songs for the future Asylum Records project. But unlike his future group mate Hillman - who admitted to doing all that for the Byrds reunion that brought him to Geffen in the first place - that is not true. For one thing, original closing number "Let's Dance Tonight" is one of his best Poco songs ever. The title song is an astonoshing accomplishment, a mini-symphony whose gradual construction is a joy to behold. And that song, a eulogy for Gram Parsons before the spiralling country rock star actually died probably led him to want to cover Parsons' "Brass Buttons". 

But yeah, the other guys really stepped up. Timothy Schmit had already upped his efforts on the previous album, but his "Here We Go Again" was a new high, and rightfully chosen as the album's lead single, even if once more success inexplicably eluded them. Paul Cotton has strong showings with pure country opener "Blue Water" and "A Right Along", plus a wonderful version of J.J. Cale's "Magnolia" that would become a band standard for the rest of its existence with Cotton in the band. Another thing that is marvelous is Jack Richardson's production work - from the echo on Furay's forlorn vocal on "Brass Buttons" to the way it highlights George Grantham's drum fills to the way "Crazy Eyes" builds from just some distant drums, revealing layer of layer of instruments during its gradual build up. Just marvelous stuff, after the arguably underproduced From The Inside and the overproduced A Good Feelin' To Know. Here Richardson and the band - with a huge assist by Bob Ezrin on the title cut - find just the right balance. 

But back to Furay for a second. While he did hold back a song like "Fallin' In Love" for the debut of the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, he did contribute a new song, "Believe Me" that would finally show up on that album, but could've been on Crazy Eyes. The released SHF Band version is fine, but the looser, more expansive Poco version is fantastic. And he finally went on to record "Nothing's Still The Same", written in late 1969, yet somehow it didn't make either Poco or DeLIVErin', despite being one of his best compositions. One Buck Records vets will remember that Crazy Eyes has been featured here before, and no history will not be erased. I think the original write-up has its moments, but the little chronological Poco alt album series I am currently doing allowed me to take a deeper dive into some aspects of the album I didn't at the time, and both together give you a ton of insight into the original album and its One Buck Record incarnation.

You might have guessed, or, you remember, that the Crazy Eyes on these pages is a reworked alt album that adds four songs that were cut for it but not used, including the above mentioned Furay-tracks, Cotton's superior remake of an Illinois Speed Press song ("Get In The Wind") and a sprightly Rusty Young instrumental. There's lots of nerdy sequencing discussion in the old write-up, if that's your thing, so I'm not going to repeat all of this stuff here. Let me just say it once more. This is the way to listen to that album, as each reinstated number brings something to the table and the album is much more varied and runs way better in this imagined double vinyl album version. Seriously, this is the version of Crazy Eyes to have and hold, and treasure, and listen to repeatedly. It's a really good album in its original form, but I dare say without false modesty that my work pushes it into great album territory. 

It might've been Furay's last dance with the band he founded, and his untimely exit always has overshadowed its musical merits somewhat. But what could have been a lame duck uninspired contract filler album - at least as far as Furay was concerned - turned into something else entirely, especially in this expanded version: a new country rock masterpiece - nothing more, nothing less. 

Breaking News: One Buck Guy Gets Feisty, Listens To Modern Music, For Once...

 

...and I don't really plan to make a habit of it. But stranger things have happened I guess. Still, this obviously isn't music that would bother the charts or the, uh, airwaves (streamwaves?). If you are following this blog for a while, you must've surely heard me mention les soldes, the twice-a-year stock-clearing sales promotion that inevitably has the few stores who still have music sections throw out their unwanted stock. Most of it is crap (well, probably), but the fact that they throw out albums for a couple of bucks gives me the opportunity to take a flyer on something that looks interesting enough. If I were a younger, hipper guy I could of course whip out my smart phone in the store and pull up the artist whose album I have in hand. But that would be spoiling the fun, wouldn't it? Instead I try from scanning the covert art and song titles whether this could be something interesting. And that is how I fell on our One Buck Record of the day, SYML's The Day My Father Died. 

The cover art looked like it might be a folk record of some kind, and I recognized a couple of guest artists mentioned on the back cover (Elbow's Guy Garvey and Nickelcreek's Sara Watkins, whose solo debut I had picked up during the soldes a decade or so ago), so I figured this might be my jam. And it kind of sort of is, otherwise it wouldn't be up here, natch! SYML is Brian Fennell, an indie musician from the Pacific Northwest. 2023's The Day My Father Died is his second album, inspired by the death of his adoptive father. It has grief , heritage and loss as topics, but it never gets too maudlin. Which, given the fact that Fennell sometimes slips into a falsetto, was a real risk, bringing to mind the memory of Bon Iver. 

You guys remember Bon Iver? Justin Iver, one of the most overrated and overpraised projects of the early 2010s? I have excessively used the term young men's earnest sad sack music in the last months and plan to retire that term soon, but if it fits for something, it's Bon Iver's incredibly overhyped For Emma, Forever Ago, that came with its own picture perfect origin story of Vernon, after a romantic breakup, locking himself in an isolated cabin in the woods and coming up with a quote-unquote masterpiece of romantic despair. Except it sucked. No melodies, no memorable songs, and the awful strained falsetto made for an unpleasant listening experience, completely diametral to what the critics and their reviews promised. But I digress.

 So, SYML - Fennel's nom de plume recalls his Welsh heritage, 'siml' being the local varaint of 'simple' - is no Bon Iver, thank god. These songs have melodies, some of them quite memorable, too. They have structure and they are generally well sung, with the falsetto used sparingly. Not awful caterwauling here, no sir. What we do have here is a sort of modern folk-rock, possible close to what someone like Hozier is doing (I'm no expert in the matter, mind). It also turns out he had a bonafide hit somewhat similar to what he is up to on this album. "Where's My Love?" was featured in Teen Wolf, and then numerous teen-oriented TV series from 2018 onwards and is now certified Platinum, whatever that means in the streaming age. Of course, I was cmpletely oblivious to this man and any successes he might've had when I picked this up. 

So, how do we know this truly is modern music, even with its folk-rock twist? Because my then seven year old loved it, demanding I play the song she liked to sing a long all the 'oweo--o-o-o-o-o' of the title song, the lyrics of which she happily doesn't understand, though she's phonetically singing along "...the day my father died" (gulp!). It's a big song with a big hook, yet was never released as a single. It's also not alone on the album as The Day My Father Died has enough 'oweo's' and other stadium-ready singalong elements, and some light electronics. You know, for the young'uns. On the other hand, his music clearly has its origins in DIY folk - thus the Bon Iver comparison - so people who like classic, guitar-based acoustic music should also give a listen. A song like "Sweet Home" reminds recalls the era of Crosby, Stills & Nash, even if one-man band SYML harmonizes with himself. 

If you noticed the little One Buck Records logo on the cover or the tags, you'll see that this is my personal version of the album. I thought the original never really got out of the starting gates, only picking up steamm occasionally, so I resequenced the album from the ground up. I also thought it was a little long and repetitive, so I deleted two tracks, incidentally two of the features (bye bye Lucius, bye bye Sara!). At a now vinyl era-compatible 47 minutes and with a much improved flow, I think SYML's The Day My Father Died is an album well worth listening to, even if - like me - you have given up on modern music trends a hile ago. The Day My Father Died combines modern and retro elements in what I find is a very attractive manner. Check this out to see if you feel the same way...

Hotdang, Them Bluegrass Chartbusters Are Back In Town Once More...

...and after visiting our All Pearls, No Swine last week, here's the other long running series at One Buck Records, for your fill of fiddles, banjo, guitar, mandolin and dobro, should the sudden need arise. And arise it should, because once more we have a vey fine collection of very fine bluegrass music assembled here, all in between the sweet spot of humming along as if it was the original on the radio, while admiring (hopefully) how the song has been transformed into a bluegrass tune. I don't know who said it, but it's been said that to check out if a song is any good, pay it as a bluegrass tune, and if it works, then that's a good tune. And this test is passed by all twenty tracks on here, as well as the army of bluegrass bands doing them. 

The same beloved series stalwarts are all here, along with another batch of newcomers: AJ Lee with Blue Summitt (pictured below) for example, who will show up again, here taking on Sheryl Crow's "Soak Up The Sun". Roots music vet Tony Trishka shows up with Billy Strings in tow, as they do a mammoth version of "Gentle On My Mind". Both will show up in this series again. There's also a one-off in the bunch: TGO with "Livin' On A Prayer" that handily beats the Pickin On... version. 

Favorite cuts on this volume include the Gras Cats' take on Steve Earle's outlaw classic "Copperhead Road", Love Canon's "Solsbury Hill" and Iron Horse's version of Guns'n'Roses' "Patience". There is also another bluegrass version of an Imagine Dragons song ("Demons") which is pretty great, which means I now know and like more bluegrass covers of that band than songs that they did. 

Artists covered on this volume that i haven't mentioned yet: Lucinda Williams! Cyndi Lauper! Def Leppard! Kiss! Dire Straits! Barenaked Ldie! Hell, even dumb-ass Kid Rock (thankfully, that track is instrumental...)! Double hell, even freakin' Nickelback! These songs might be terrible in their original version for all that I know, but as bluegrass cuts they are very good. 

So, all of this is to say: Throw on that straw hat and them overalls, and throw them feet in the air while y'all get to dance'n'holler to them Buegrass Chartbusters once more...  

Mom, There's Some Beardo Weirdos Here, And It Ain't Even Christmas Yet...

If I were a hundred percent the music snob that my more mainstream music-minded college buddies say I am, this comp would probably look something like this: Gather some of the deep cuts from ZZ Top's first decade as that 'lil' ol' blus band from Texas', maybe top the whole thing of with some choice cuts from their mid-90s to today work, when they renewed the rowdy blus and barroom boogie of their beginnings, and certainly stay away a mile from their charts successes and music of the 80s, when that lil' red ZZ Top Eliminator ran on sequencers, electronic drums and tech effects over everything. 

But, you know, I'm not as much of a hipster as it seems, and it just so happens I forgot my hipster card today, together with my streaming service subscription and my social media accounts. So obviously I'm gonna run straight into the opposite drection of what an acceptable ZZ Top compilation would look like! That ol' OBG and that lil' ol' blues band from Texas - a match made in machine heaven. 

As for the weird-looking title, what can I tell you...that's how the comp is in my collection, so that's probably how it will be in yours. The first Greatest Hits is the original Greatest Hits of ZZ Top, though I did add "Stages", their best pop tune. A couple of years later, my dad bought the double disc anthology Rancho Texicana, of which I took most of the tracks I didn't have and that weren't on the first volume to make a Greatest Hits Vol. 2. Which of course means that this will be comp number three, and thus Greatest HIIIts...And Missus. Hopefully not too many misses. because this album is definitely not doing what you think it might be doing, picking up the best of the rest. Hell, to be fair the Greatest Hits moniker is somewhat of a lie, done so that my Greatest Hits series can continue. 

This isn't really a Greatest Hits comp - even taking the skeezey-looking Vol. 3 into account - because what I wanted to do with this is probably quite different from what a lot of other people want from their ZZ Top. As said above, I wasn't around when the 'little'ol blues band from Texas' started to make a name for itself in the early 70s, neither for their unexpected and improbable, if short-lived stint as weirdly admirable hipsters following the success of 1983's Eliminator. But those ZZ Top, who chain drummer Frank Beard to a sequencer and load up the keyboards and Fairlights, those are my ZZTop, for better or worse. ZZ Top? More like ZZ Pop, am I right? So, in order to compile this album, I actually had to dig for something that any ZZ Top fan would tell you should stay buried. Like, six feet under buried.

After the breakthrough of Eliminator and the relative success of carbon copy Afterburner, the record company and the band decided, that if folks were interested in checking out more ZZ Top, they should be able to do that in the CD format. Except that the first five ZZ Top albums, plus 1981's eperimental El Loco had never made it onto a digital disc. Ready to give the fans what they thought they would want, and following the little-known doctrine 'Fix if it ain't broke 'til it's broke', the band added new electronic drum effects and treated guitar, so the old blues albums would sound more like thne-contemporary ZZ Top. This was obviously an affront for old fans of the band, who recoiled in horror when The Sixpack came out in 1987, and those old albums didn't sound anything like they did originally. 

Old school fans were aghast and despite its ubiquity in the late 80s and early 90s, The Sixpack was easily one of the most hated big archival releases of a major band. But, as I said: That sound is my ZZ Top sound, and so I went on the hunt for The Sixpack, which got deleted in the early 200s, though it took another ten years or so until finally all the songs off the old albums came out in their original form in the early 2010s. Happily, a blog concentrating on 80s music, and I mean really 80s sounding music, had a copy of that box set, which is the foundation of most of Greatest HIIIts...And Missus. So, if you're a ZZ Top or blues-rock purist, stranger, you might want to bypass this. 

If, like me, however, the synth-tech, almost New Wave-sound of early-to late 1980s ZZ Top is your thing, as it is mine, then by all means stick around. In order to not make the title a complete lie, I included their three biggest hits, a.k.a. the three big Eliminator singles, in later live versions. And I added a couple of more old-school sounding tracks, after the band slowly stripped away the excesses of the mid-80s in the early 1990s: 1994's "Breakaway" and "I Gotsta Get Paid" from 2012s La Futura, the last album made with Dusty Hill, and also their last studio album to date, which it will probably stay. By this time, Gibbons' voice has definitely gotten a good bit (okay, fine, a lot) more husky and rough, but still, one of the highlights of their very mixed 21st Century output. 

A couple of times on these pages you've heard about a single disc comp growing completely out of proportions and becoming a two-disc proposition, but this is one of the rare cases where I actually deleted some tracks for a better overall flow and listenability. This has so far in One Buck Records history only happened with the first compilation of Aerosmith's Geffen era material. Like Aerosmith, ZZ Top have their own style and groove, and if you're down with those, you can have a fabulous time, but like the Glimmer Twins & bandmates, it's a relatively limited sound. They have a little more variety than notorious three riff band AC/DC (even if it's really good three riffs), but there still is a sameyness here that could get a little tiresome as the original comp crept easily over the 70 minute mark. So I deleted four tracks and completely reworked the sequencing into what I think is now a really neat and pretty hot 64 minute affair. That's probably about as much ZZ Top as one can take in one listen.

So, Greatest HIIIts...And Missus maybe isn't what you'd expect from the band, but is possibly still worth a listen to what is now a double anachronism. You might not have wanted these songs in these versions in the first place, but now a comp like this is the only place to listen to them. So, if you're courageous, leave your hipster cards also at the door, and rejoin 70s ZZ Top in their glammed up 80s suits...

I Went To Sea Today, So You'll Also Get To Go To Sea Again...

I didn't necessarily think I'd repost this again today, but, you know, life. I am currently on holidays, enjoying a couple of days by the sea. Which means that from time to time by the ocean, I began to sing or hum one of my beloved Gordon Lightfoot shanties, mostly "Christian Island" or parts of the "Seven Island Suite". And, well, guess where I went today? Why, around the seven islands, of course! Not Gordo's seven islands, of course. Of the coast here - which carries the interesting - and fitting! - name Pink Granite Coast, because the stone is, well, granite of a pinkish color. It's a really localized thing, only 8 km of shoreline form the Pink Granite Coast. And in front og that coast, there is a small archipelago called les sept isles, the seven islands, which are a protected nature reserve mostly made from inhabitable rock, inhabited by a dozen different species of birds - including hundreds of gannets and dozens of puffins - and a family of seals. 

So, obviously I hummed and partially sang "Seven Island Suite" for the rest of the day, which was spent on the beach. And one side effect is obviously, that getting to our holiday home, I had to put on some Gordon Lightfoot. And now that I'm close to the sea, so will you, if you hav'nt checked out my little compilation of Lightfoot's seafaring songs, Shanties. As before, ten fine tracks including classics like "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald", "High And Dry" and the aforementioned tracks. 

So, set sail again with Mr. Lightfoot. And of course there will be new music coming your way this weekend. Now, bring me that horizon...

The Warehouse Is Empty, But All Pearls, No Swine Still Shine In The Sun...

Aaaaaaaaaand this is where I finally run out of stock in terms of All Pearls, No Swine. This volume was compiled sometime last year, as I slowly tried to regrow the wealth of APNS volumes I had when I started this lil' blog adventure. Then again, that was *checks notes* 30 months ago, so even if I was saving up on APNS in the last months, posting about one and a half (statistically speaking) per month, the stock is finally at zero. Fear not, the archives are still full of stuff, but I have to compile and knock this stuff in shape again. Off to work, lazy ol' OBG!

Meanwhile, enjoy All Pearls No Swine Vol. 38, in which we visit the 90s for a third time. And boy, is this volume 90s. As with the other volumes, the 90s - one of the decades I lived through as an active music listener - is less about the musical archaeology that defines the 70s-set volumes, where I dig through tons of obscure and little known stuff to find the pearls. The 90s sets are a mix of some obscurities, chart entries that were and are maybe underappreciated and the occasional 'bubbling under' alternative rock track. In the case of this compilation, there are a lot of the latter ones. It's almost like a hipster hitparade kind of thing. We got James, Mazzy Star, The Mabuses, Compulsion and The Sundays, among others. Not to mention the mighty La's with the classic "There She Goes", for my money still the best jingle-jangle revival song of all times. 

Of the 'underappreciated chart entries' we could cite Martika, who followed up her breakthrough debut album with something more serious, which obviously meant collaborating with Prince, who used her lyrics to craft "Love Thy Will Be Done". Still a wonderful song and single, that was even a US top ten hit at the time but seems almost forgotten today, much like its singer. Dubbed the hispanic Madonna, when her self-titled debut with number one hit "Toy Soldiers" exploded in 1988, she walked away from the music industry in 1992 even before all the singles from follow-up Martika's Kitchen had been issued, citing a burnout and the pressures of fame. "Sailing On The Seven Seas" came out pretty much around the same time as "Love...Thy Will Be Done", and even became a Top 3 hit in the UK and a top ten hit in a number of European countries, while bubbling under in the US. Lead singer Andy McCluskey was leading a whole new group under the old Orchestral Manoeuvers In The Dark moniker, which didn't please everybody at the time, but it's a wonderful dance-rock stomper that deserves to be rediscovered.  

Another throughline for this volume: Great cover versions! Who doesn't love great cover versions? Here we got three: Sinead O'Connor's outstanding take on "Ode To Billie Joe", Mary Lou Lord's acoustic reinvention of Van Halen's "Jump" and The Afghan Wigs' groovy take on TLC's "Creep". 

On the vet watch in this volume: Alice Cooper, who sings the anthemic "Stolen Prayer" with its author Chris Cornell. Glenn Frey with the quite lovely "Brave New World", John York with the wonderful comp closer "Lady On The Highway" and Tom Waits with the ultra atmospheric and weirdly reassuring "Hold On". There's also the reformed Flying Burrito Brothers, by now in - I'm not joking - its 48th (!!!)  incarnation, trying to be hip with the alt country crowd by covering Son Volt's "Windfall" a mere two years after the original came out. [I'm not sure how many noticed, but I originally announced this song for APNS Vol. 34, the last 90s-set volume, in that volume's write-up and to my surprise find that there is a "Windfall" on that collection, but it's the Son Volt original. Huh. I mean great song, good for that volume - whose write up is now changed - but that's a weird mix up, as I originally only had the Burritos "Wiindfall" in my APNS 9Os folder]

So, you know, the usual: smorgasboard of diverse stuff, all good. Same as it ever was. As All Pearls, No Swine slide into an unknown future, enjoy this throwback to the 90s...

Let's Look At Poco's Inside...From The Outside

Part two of our Poco alt album project, with the direct follow-up - in terms of studio albums - to Poco's second album, recently reworked as You Better Think Twice. In the meantime, the second big shakeup of Poco - and it would it not be the last one - happened in between. In 1968 Poco (then Pogo) was the brainchild of Richie Furay and Jim Messina, who worked as a producer on the last Buffalo Springfield album Last Time Around. But by 1970 things had changed quite a bit. Richie Furay's worsening jealousy of all the more successful bands that had bypassed Poco and his tightening grip on Poco in terms of dominating the songwriting and decision-making had left Jim Messina really fed up, with the worsening tensions between the co-founders leading to them abandoning a planned follow-up album in the summer of 1970, instead focusing on culling a live album from their concets that would become the classic DeLIVEring. 

But Messina had made up his mind to leave the band, tired of the relentless touring as well as the terse discussions with Furay. He wanted to retire from road life and performing and go back into producing, a plan that was almost immediately scuttled when the work with his first client Kenny Loggins took an unexpected turn. But that's another story. Messina's exit from Poco was an uncommonly graceful one. Messina himself handpicked his successor, Paul Cotton of The Illinois Speed Press, and stayed on for a couple of weeks - with Poco as a six piece - to go on the road and teach Cotton the songs. He also had another graceful surprise for Furay in store, that we will get to later. 

As a newly reconstructed five-piece Poco finally went to work on their third studio album, with Cotton bringing, as planned, a harder-edged rock sound to the band, especially on the charging "Railway Song". Furay still dominated the songwriting, with six of the 11 original tracks rom his pen, including should-have-been classics "You Are The One" and "Just For Me and You". But Poco immediately became more democratic, with new arrival Cotton getting three songs and Timothy Schmit finally landing a song on an album, which even got the honor of becoming the title song. So, everything looked good for From The Inside...and yet, it wouldn't be Poco if it were easy. 

From The Inside was recorded in the Trans Maximus Inc. studios in memphis with Steve Cropper in the producer's chair, and the band was (in)famously unhappy with the recording and production. The control room wasn't immediately reachable from the studio recording space and the studio didn't have enough multitracks for the taste of the band. It's true that the sound of From The Inside is a bit unusual, a drier, more rustic sound than what the band was used to. If you really want to hear, say George Grantham's drumming, From The Inside is the album for you. But it's also true that this slightly swampier sound probably wasn't a good fit for the band, though only the odd rhythm and vocals of "Do You Feel It Too?" stick out as egregious. 

Unusual production or not, From The Inside is indeed a bit of a breakthrough, finally achieving and finessing the country-rock sound they were after on their first two albums, and came close to on DeLIVEring. This album, however, is not From The Inside. Call it an alternate look at the period. From The Outside In. It sort of picks up the (missing) pieces of the period, collecting a bunch of stray tracks from the period: Studio versions of "C'Mon" and "A Man Like Me" that were orphans from the abandoned third studio album, replaced by DeLIVEring, as well as a remix of Schmit's "From The Inside" and the aforementioned parting gift from Jim Messina, who does a lead vocal cameo on From The Outside In. As a surprise for  Furay and his wife for the baby shower of their first daughter, Messina and the band played "Lullaby In September". It's a little maudlin, but a beautiful goodbye gift of the gracious Messina. 

The rest of the tracklist is supplied by Live From Columbia Studios, an intimate record showcase for music executives, where the band played the majority of From The Inside songs. To fit in with the rest of the tracks, I got rid of the audience applause, so that From The Outside In works more or less as an alternate version of From The Inside, not to replace the real thing, but as an 'what if' companion piece. These live versions have a spontaneity and sprightliness that their studio counterparts lack and thus function as a different, more immediate look on these songs. By late 1971 Poco were a well-honed live act, and it shows in their playing here. From 1971 onwards they were launching what was easily the best part of their career. One which we will have a further look at in the next volume of our little Poco series, but for now, dive into From The Outside In, to see what the boys were up to in mid-to-late 1970 and early 1971. 

Are You Ready To Take A Dip Into Folly's Pool?

 

Even though the reaction to my Will Beeley Anthology was, I felt, a bit muted, I continue to dive a bit deeper into some of the fabulous little known artists featured on this blog's beloved All Pearls No Swine series. Our candidate for today : Folly's Pool, as featured with the song of the same name (cool, their own theme song. Or : lazy, they naed themselves after one of their tracks. Both work.) on All Pearls No Swine Volume  29. Maybe Beeley's folk-rock wasn't your thing, so how about folk rock via prog rock this time, in the best sense of the term. No endless keyboard noodlings just because, no sidelong instrument wanking just because. Instead a prog rock that has their roots in folk and folk rock, in something older and more solid than 'oh, look, what this Moog can do'. There is a clear link to the more progressive wing of the British folk-rock scene of the early 1970s, but I'm not an expert on that subject, so I let you, more knowledgable reader, if you are out there, make those connections. But really, “Jig In A” makes that link really obvious, even though the band was from Fresno, California!

There is some stuff on here that I would normally be cautious about, like a a ton of flute by band member Danny Jordan. But really, this is lovely stuff, with the flute, like the guitar breaks dosed just right to not overstay their welcome, even on a quasi instrumental like "Kathleen". "From A Memory" has a decidely West Coast feel to it (Fresno strikes back!), while "Before The Gates Of Elessaar" - befiitingly for its epic title and construction brings on some heavy guitars. Every one of the seven tracks here has something to recommend. I am also a fan of the epic tale of "Fallen Pony". But really, there are no duff tracks here, which given the slim track list, is great news for you and me and everyone we know. 

Folly's Pool - the band - dropped this fantastic album in 1977, at a time when prog rock was on its way out, then disappeared for a couple of years before making a new wave/pop record ten years later, then went silent before reuniting at the begining of this century and being surprisingly prolific since then. But Folly's Pool - the album - is a great one-shot of ultra lovely folk-prog-rock, so give this a listen, and I'm pretty sure you'll agree...

Hotdiggity, Them Bluegrass Chartbusters Are Filling Up Them Airwaves Again...

Time for another hoedown with the series that combines the sound of the backwoods with the popular songs of yesteryear. I might have mentioned it in the write-up to the last volume, but this series is in constant reworking, though here I have, let's say stabilizd, the whole thing, with the next ten or so volumes ready to go. Yes you heard that right. What I initially thought would be about three volumes continued to grow and grow beyond all reasonable proportions, and after setting arbitrary limits to how much volumes the series should have I gave up on that. I wanted to top it at ten, then twelve, then fifteen and now gave up on setting a limit. As long as I keep finding worthwhile bluegrass covers of pop tunes, this series will continue, and so it does. 

What makes these volumes grow is of course also that I keep finding new cool covers or bands that fit the series' profile, wich I then try to weed into the existing, up-until-then-finished volumes, so that some artists that I recently found don't just show up on, like volume thirteen or whatever. So existing numbers get dropped off, then push into one of the next volumes, which then pushes other songs out etc. etc. 

A top notch addition to the roster is Love Canon, a group that focuses on covering songs from the 1980s (they bend the dates a little bit, for, say "Solsbury Hill", which will show up on the next volume). These guys have real chops, and, more importantly, don't treat the whole thing as an ironic hardy-fuckin'-har exercise. For these reasons you haven't seen folks like Hayseed Dixie or The Cleverlys show up in this series. No piss takes on the genre, or bluegrass lampooning of the originals. There's certainly a time and place for that, but not now and not here. A band that skirts with the 'funny bluegrass covers' label, but has just enough reverence for the originals and its tongue not so deeply in cheek that it theatens to push through the skin is the previously featured Steve'n'Seagulls, who with this volume are also gaining their access ticket to Bluegrass Chartbusters. Love Canon stick with Peter Gabriel in reworking "Sledgehammer", while Steve'n'Seagulls cover - of course AC/DC and "Moneytalks".

We also welcome some other newcomers that will also sow up on future volumes, such as The Brothers Comatose, joined on this volume by John Craigie for a take on Don Henley's classic "The Boys Of Summer". Now that is a song that is great, but Henley's really 80s sounding version is probably one of my least favorite takes on the song. Hell, I even prefer The Ataris with their punk rock version (and changing the "deadhead sticker on a cadillac" line to "a Black Flag sticker on a cadillac" is pretty genius. But I digress). Alos new to the series in one-offs (for now): Crazy Mule covering Bob Seger's 'on the road' classic "Turn The Page" and Southern Strings' take on the Doobies' "Listen To The Music", where the young female lead singers vocals bring something to the song that I really like. 

Other than that, we got the usual roster of Pickin' On...artists, and other assembled first choice artists (check out Dale Ann Bradley's smokin' double-time take on "I Won't Back Down"). Again, tons of fun to be had, with other artists being covered including, bt not limited to Madness, Cyndi Lauper, Def Leppard, The Dixie Chicks, The Guess Who, Kings Of Leon, The Beatles, and The Who. The songs we all love and remember!, says he in a smarmy TV salesman voice (from back when you could order fishy looking music boxsets on teleshopping channels). 

If you've been on board with this series for a couple of volumes, you'll know what to expect, and if you haven't - well, its never too late, to find your inner good ol' boy with a heart for classic radio. Plus you'll get some rather fetching cover art, if I migt say so, though I forgot where I picked this up. So, get ready to throw down for the hoedown...