These Pearls Have Been A Long Time Comin' (But They Ain't A Long Time Gone)

Well, this has been a long time coming. And no even longer due to some unexpected recent events. First off, OK, OK, I admit it, I neglected the OG of this blog a bit. It has been a month since the last episode of All Pearls, No Swine, and I used the time I had this summer to work on a bunch of long-gestating projects - rejiggered soundtrakcs, the ever-expanding Bluegrass Chartbusters and Alternate Albums like the recently posted reworked Tales Of Mystery And Imagination - without necessarily thinking of, or spending time, on All Pearls, No Swine. For years, literally, this was the ol' faithful of this blog. Knowing I had this rich stock of volumes ready, whenever I wasn't sure what to post or didn't have another projct ready, I'd just post an All Pearls, No Swine. But now that the stock is used up for a while, I have to remind me to compile and get these things on the road. 

The good news: I had fun compiling this last volume, which came together realitively easily and quickly, hopefully a good omen for the immediate future of this series. Now that some bigger and more time-consuming projects have ended, I should find more time to post these in shorter intervals, for old-school blog visitors who kind-of got into One Buck Records via these comps. But, you know, circumstances also somewhat conspired to make the three and a half of you waiting for a new dose of All Pearls, No Swine even longer. This write-up was supposed to go up wednesday last week, but then Catherine Ringer died and I did the Rita Mitsouko tribute. So I pushed it back to Saturday, but then Duncan Sheik died and the spot was taken by a tribute to him, and then I wrapped up the Ringer and birthday business and now we finally have arrived at All Pearls No Swine Vol. 43. A Long Time Comin', Not A Long Time Gone. 

The M.O. is pretty much the same as always: some rock, some funky stuff, some folk, one or two country rock tracks, and one or two slightly psychedelic adventures. By now, you know what you'll get with these. Again, no big names on this one, with the biggest name possibly the not-too-long-ago anthologized Arrogance, with early single "A Foreshadowing" which is a good song but I didn't like it in my chronological anthology, as it would have slowed things way down too early in the disc, so it got relegated to All Pearls, No Swine duty, which is - all in all - a fine place to be. 

Looking back on the list of artists, and seeing that we have hit an anniversary-ish volume 25 of 70s-set All Pearls, No Swine, it gets harder to see how many APNS alumni are around, but Doug Firebaugh is here with another of his miniatures that nowadays we would call Americana, and so is Germany's finest finger-picker of the 70s, Werner Lämmerhirt, this time with a fine cover of "If I Were A Carpenter". I love Lämmerhirt's smoky voice, too bad he wasn't a songwriter and didn't really make a name for himself, it's always nice to hear him. 

We have the patented mix of rock, folk, some country rock. as with the last 70s-set volume, I was in the mood for some groovers, so we have a bunch of those, including Game's "Stop, Look, Listen", Zazu's "Country Eyes", Cameron's "I've Been Down" and The Cates Gang's "We All Got To Help Each Other". Folk lovers will probably dig Ryan Trevor's "By The Water", Bureman & O'Rourke's "Ol' Bill", John Southern's "On The Isle Of You" or Lackey & Sweeney's "Good To Cry". Oh, and for the secret glam fan in you, there's ex-Spider from Mars Woody Woodmansey with his follow-up band U-Boat glamming and rocking it up in album opener "Oh La la".

If you're an All Pearls, No Swine veteran, you'll recognize my usual tricks. If I make some room for psyhedelia, it's usually towards the end of the album. So this volume ends with the triple whopper of the aforementioned Arrogance track, Ethel-Ann Powell's "The Elephant Patch" and Fred's "A Love Song", which certainly shows his love for distorted guitars (and distorted lovers?). 

So, either way, lots of good, unknown stuff from the 70s that bears the one and only OBG level of approval. Quality-tested, as usual, as well as volume EQ'd and the rest. So, it was a log time coming, now let's hope you have a good time with All Pearls, No Swine Vol. 43. 

P.S.: Nothing to do with APNS, but I've seen that the giftbag in the birthday thread contained only one album, the Sinners soundtrack, which obviously wasn't the plan. It seems the last upload in a common folder somhow erased the others. Anyway, I upped Manassas and Dennis Wilson's Bambu in their respective threads for those interested...

'Kay, If You Won't, I Will: Happy Birthday, One Buck Records!

Yes, it is that time of year again. Yesterday was the third anniversary of this blog. I didn't expect anyone to know that, so I'll sing my own 'Happy Birthday' to me and my blog. Ah, three years, that's already longer than some bigger and better different blogs have lasted, and man, I don't know if it's the whole getting older thing, but those years have just flown by. I have the theory that three years is about the point in time, where a certain fatigue creeps in, but I'm happy to report that my 'getting a little bored' period was, like, two weeks this summer. If that is all of the mid-life crisis that the blog business can offer for right now, I think we're in good shape. I am on pace to have slighly less offerings for 2026 than the two preceding years, but some slowing down is to be expected. 

Speaking of expectations, so what can you guys expect from the next year here at One Buck Records? Well, more of the same, and some of, uh, the different. I gotta workshop that one. So, flagship series All Pearls No Swine and Bluegrass Chartbusters will continue, and - as I have mentioned before - there are a number of rejiggered soundtracks awaiting release. I will continue to dig up lost treasures from the 70s, Americana or otherwise, and generally speaking albums or artists that deserve to be heard more or relistened to again. Alternate albums will come out when inspiration, time and the wish to work on that all came together at the right time, although some stuff is in the pipeline (any Gillian Welch fans out there?). 

I'm also thinking of adding some new stuff, like finally unveiling the reason of the blog's name and start posting stuff about the real One Buck Records. I liked the flashback on Poco I did this spring, running through their career chronologically, so I'm thinking of doing the same with Gene Clark. Which means some reposting of the existing alts I did, but also tons of new stuff. When I say, we'll deep dive, we'll fuckin' deep dive! There's an Australian country rock special that I wanted to do for, literally, years, so maybe this year is the good year for it. Plus, you know, whatever else catches my attention at any time. Oh, squirrel!

I'm not only singing my own birthday songs, I am also - same as it ever as - the one bearing gifts. Call it three out of three. Three alt albums from three different years of One Buck Records activity. Already got those? Good for you! New music coming soon, same as it ever was. Missed those? Dig in! You're welcome, same as it ever was. 

So, today's three out of three are:

Manassas' Do You Remember The Americans?, the re-imagined second album by that short-lived outfit. One of my first alt albums, and one that I think still holds up really well. It also beats the tar out of Down The Road, but that wasn't really a super-hard task. More info is of course right here.

My spin on Dennis Wilson's never-issued sophomore album Bambu, more coherent than any official archival release. Just a grand ol' time with Denny, the last, unfortunately, before things got really dark really fast. As usual, more info right here. 

And the totally re-mixed/re-imagined soundtrack album for Sinners. I listened to that a couple of days ago, and I was like 'damn, boy, you did good on that one'. I had a ton to say about the film and the album, so if you got some time to waste, you can read all that stuff over here. 

And that's it, folks. regular programming will take up in short order, same as it ever was. If you are along for year four, gimme a 'hell, yeah'! 

What's that? I don't think I heard ya properly...

Le Dernier Encore De Catherine Ringer

Okay, fine, it's dead musician week here at One Buck Records. I hope one or two of you enjoyed the Rita Mitsouko post from last week, because I'm not quite done with Madame Catherine Ringer, to everyone's surprise, including my own. When my wife told me Ringer had died a week ago she was unhappy, because no one seemed to talk about it, as if it was no big deal. But that's mainly because the tributes on social media etc. were slowly starting to pour in. Turns out it was a reasonably big deal, they just needed some time. Wednesday evening at least France 2, one of the state channels, was ready. First, they went with regular programming, which happened to be the anniversary 600th episode of somewhat legendary music show Taratata. Taratata is known for two things: artists playng music live, and cover songs, udually done in improbable duets. Usually, an artist would play one of their songs they'd come to promote, then team up with someone to cover a classic. Catherine Ringer showed up quickly in a 'flashback'. 

But after that show, there was a special edition of Tarata 'cobbled together' (that's actually how it was credited) by the show's producer and presenter Nagui in about a day, collecting pretty much every Catherine Ringer solo appearance of the last 18 years.i had finished up the Rita Mitsouko post while listening with one ear and occasionally throwing an eye on the Taratata anniversary show. During the Catherine Ringer special my ears perked up for some of the special duets, first when fellow enfants terribles Shaka Ponk (in which Ringer no doubt saw a bit of her own and Fred Chichin's subversive spirit) raised some hell with her in tow on a cover of AC/DC's "Whole Lotta Rosie", then when she teamed up with Christine of Christine And The Queens for a take on Led Zep's "Stairway To Heaven". I searched and found both of these covers, then decided to augment these with two other duets. All of these will make up Le Dernier Encore, an EP of Catherine ringer plus duet partners. 

The first track is the aforementioned Shaka Ponk collaboration, then we hear Ringer trying to sing the Arab language to support Rachid Tahab on "Ya Rayah". Then we're off to known francophile Iggy Pop, who duets on a torch song reading of "I've Got A Spell On You", though my favorite is Pop's banter. First he invites her to duet with him in his best French, but uses the reserved-for-young-women 'Mademoiselle' (to which Catherine protests:'Madame! Madame!'), then after the song he says "let's get out of here, babe" in such a tender way. Oh, and then we end the EP with that aforementioned duet on "Stairway To Heaven". 

So, four more songs, before this blog and I let go of Catherine Ringer. Etes vous prêt pour le dernier encore? 

Maybe He Was A Genius? No, Probably Just A Very Good Songwriter And Pop Craftsman...

Ah, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Another day in the office, another death in the office. I don't want this blog to turn into obituary central, but pretty much ever since it's beginning I planned to post something from Duncan Sheik. And now I kind of have to do it, like, right now, because Sheik just died. C'mon, people, I'm getting as sick of writing obits as maybe you get of reading them. I don't have a huge emotional link to Mr. Sheik, I just admired his sleek, smart pop music. I'll just say that 56 is no age to die on people, but oh well, who's asking me. Earlier this month I had the worst first day of the worst new school year ever, when I learned before my first course that a colleague in the department had died the week before. Nice guy, not a particularly close friend, or anything, more like a friendly work acquaintance, but his death shook me a lot. Forty fuckin' years old, healthy lifestyle, keels over and dies of a fuckin' heart attack. Leaves a wife and kids of six and three years old. As I said above, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. If you felt that ol' OBG was a little morose in some of his recent write-ups, then you're right on the money, and though I hadn't kept taps on Sheik - who enjoyed a successful career on Broadway in the last two decades - this isn't gonna brighten my mood. Not one bit. As noted philosopher Billie Joe Armstrong said, wake me up when September ends. 

So, Duncan Sheik. His five minutes of stardom in 1997, when "Barely Breathing" ruled the airwaves, at least for a while, and the ensuing short career as a teen heartthrob completely passed me by, much as Sheik did completely in my corner of the world. But the name sounded enough of a bell almost a decade later, when I fished his 2002 album Daylight out of a bargain bin. What a great catch that was. Daylight is a top notch album for about two thirds before it peters out a bit at the end. But before Sheik adds little pop pearl to little pop pearl as if forging a necklace of pop perfection. Unsurprisingly, All Of These Things - The Music Of Duncan Sheik draws heavily upon Daylight, with a third of its 18-track line-up coming from that album, and I could have still easily added at least one other song. 

Sheik called Daylight "the Trojan Horse of pop", where the pop sheen and catchy melodies hide some unexpectedly deep or subversive - for a mainstream pop record - lyrics, but it was also a bit of a last hurray and goodbye to the world of pop. Sheik had tasted life as a pop star, decided he didn't really like it, and once his contract with Atlantic was up after Daylight, he more or less willingly walked away from pop stardom. Having other people on stage sing his songs was perfectly fine, so around the time of the release of Daylight, he had started to work on musical theater, and would spend the next two decades plus writing for Broadway, winning Grammies and Tonies along the way, not that he much  - cared about that. From time to time he would issue another album for the faithful, without caring about sales or promotion. He was happy plying his trade as a relatively anonymous contributor, with his pop career further and further retreating in the back mirror. 

And yet, that pop career - short as it was - was full of wonderful moments. And eighteen of these are collected in All Of These Things - The Music Of Duncan Sheik, which will either introduce you to this fabulous artist, or bring back happy memories otherwise. 

Now that's a heartthrob for ya...

Godspeed, Duncan. Hopefully Sheik's Buddhist's faith brought him some peace in the knowledge that he will return in another life. His religious beliefs, though never brought out particularly openly, permeats the sentiments of facing mortality in the comp's closer "Hymn", so I'll leave you with a couple of those lines.

And she asks me

how many sunrises 

will we watch from start to finish 

how many will we witness?

And my answers

are only ever surmises

maybe a handful of times

...before the next life.

R.I.P. (and happy return?) Duncan Scott Sheik, 1969-2026

The French Connection, Special Bulletin Edition: Et Maintenant, Le Dernier Vestige De Rita Mitsouko N'Est Plus Non Plus...

Cancer did it again. The evil, no-good, very bad S.O.B got Catherine, too. Having seen her life partner and bandmate Fred Chichin die suddenly of what the French call un cancer foudroyant, a rapidly evolving, ultra-agressive cancer, in 2007, now Catherine Ringer has suffered the same fate yesterday. Les Rita Mitsouko died with Fred in 2007, but now the last trace of this unpredictable, one-of-a-kind band is gone, by the same cruel fate that took her soul mate 19 years ago. Poetic? Or just more proof that we haven't made huge inroads in fighting that evil, no good, very bad S.O.B.? I let you decide. 

Come to think of it, Catherine Ringer was, as far as I recall, the last concert I went too...five years or so ago. Ah, tempus fugit. Her stage presence and rock'n'roll give-no-fucks spirit, even at an anvanced age of 63, finally turned me around on Les Rita Mitsouko, a band I admittedly didn't get for a long time. Too shrill, too bizarre, too....French, maybe? My wife has been a fan since her teens, but that group kind of always got on my nerves, though my opinion started to change when I got her the band's last album Varieté for a birthday. It was an acoustic-based album, a much more gentle and melodic adventure than the shrill New Wave and post-punk stuff from the 80s. 

Catherine Ringer in that very concert. The dude in the hat on the far left is her youngest son, Raoul.

Anyway, after coming away from that concert with a new appreciation for Madame Ringer, I compiled a little album of Rita Mitsouko (and a then-recent Ringer live track of a band song) stuff that first saw light of day over at Farq's place. And now, to honor Ringer and Les Rita Mitsouko? I'll pull this out of mothballs. And oyt's a weird sense of deja vu taht exctly three weeks ago I was writing a eulogy for Dolly Parton. What the hell is this, dead musician tuesday? 

Les Rita Mitsouko (they added the 'les', so people would stop thinking it was Catherine Ringer's name, instead of the band's) were obviously made for the 80s and the second wave of New Wave. They were misfits, they were vaudeville performers, they were deeply they're own thing. Theatrical, provocative, and for a couple of years, on the forefront of the new and exciting rock and pop that was sprouting from the alte 70s on. They passed by a couple of different styles over the years, leaning into synth pop, art pop, even experimenting with jungle and drum'n'bass rhythms in the 90s. And through it all, they were always Catherine and Fred, she the former porn actress with an extroverted voice and a 'don't mess with me' attitude, he the pencil-moustached silent pole of the band. They were an odd couple, and they were perfect for, and with, each other. 

Now, I mentioned that I didn't 'get' Les Rita Mitsouko until a couple of years ago, and even then, some of their more thatrical and shrill work is still not for me. I can admire parts of it from a distance, but I'd rather not listen to it, particuarly, which is fine. You will see in the accompanying comp that I was really picky in what I like about and from the band. It doesn't necessarily have all the best-known hits from the band, and those that are here are not in the versions that hit the airwaves in the 80s. For "C'est Comme Ca" I used a live version of Catherine Ringer and her band that comes closest to the barnstormer it was in concert. I used edited remixes for both "Andy' and "Marcia Baila", their breakthrough hit in 1985 and a tribute to Catherine Ringer's dance teacher Martia Moretti, who - like the two persons that would pay tribute to her would in the future - died of a quick acting cancer in 1983. Yup, there's thread here, though not a good one. 

A whooping seven songs come from Variéty, their last album, that started to turn me around on the band, and since I already have the French version at home, I decided to use the English-language versions of the songs for this comp. In other cases, I just kept the bits I liked, like the instrumental intro of "Elevator" or bits of an improvisation piece, or jam, called, well, "Jam". I took the bits I liked and used them as short breaks in betwen songs. And I coul not decide wheteher I like the original version of "Don't Forget The Nite" or the Tony Visconti remix better so I decided to keep both. So, enjoy Do The Mitsouko! for what it is, a deeply personal selection of favorites from Les Rita Mitsouko. 

C'est la mort qui t'a assassiné, Marcia

C'est la mort qui t'a assassiné, Fred.

C'est la mort qui t'a assassiné, Catherine. 

C'est la mort qui nous assassinera tous, mes amis.

Mais aussi...

Même si, même si tout disparaîssait,

Je serais près de toi...

R.I.P. Catherine Ringer, 1957-2026

Tales Of Mystery And Imagination Re-Imagined

 

Sometimes I stumble onto One Buck Records projects under if not weird, then random circumstances. Having already so much music to go through, during my trips to the library I often don't know what, if anything, to take in the music section. So last year, I just decided to randomly flip through the 'A' section and see what I find. And I found the Alan Parsons Project, a band I was vaguely familiar with and had compiled a sort of personalized (but really rather random) 'best-of' a couple of years ago. So I stumbled onto the three Alan Parsons Project albums I Robot, The Turn Of A Friendly Card and their debut, their somewhat classic adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's poems and short stories. When I was a kid renting cassete tapes (!) from the local library, the weird, austere cover had always had a strange fascination on me, but never enough to actually take the cassette. And I doubt I would have liked it. So, listening through Tales Of Mystery And Imagination last years there were some parts I liked, some stuff that was ok, and a couple of moments that I was not a fan of. So I copied these CDs onto the computer with a very vague notion of 'maybe some time in the future I should do something with those'. 

Some time in the future then turned into a couple of weeks ago, by a weird turn of events. There is this big book/music/films/crafts store around here that often buys up remaining stock of DVDs and Blu-Rays from what I think are defunct labels and throws them out for five bucks a piece, not a bad deal to fill in holes in my film library at home. So with copies of "Death Wish" and "Smokey And The Bandit" (hooo, boy, here's a film I haven't seen in more than 35 years or so. One of my dad's favorite who had to watch it every time it came on TV) I picked up a film I had never seen, "Two Evil Eyes", a horror film in two halves made by genre vets Dario Argento and George Romero. Based on, wouldn't you know it, short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, that I subsequently read over the summer. 

The two movie adaptations really only have the slightest things in common with their literary origins - Argento's The Black Cat moreso than Romero's The Facts In The Case Of Mr. Waldemar - but the movie is pretty good. It's arguably the last of Argento's extravagant period, before the diminishing budget and bad ideas in the 90s dulled his star considerably. Romero's tale is more workmanlike - also very on brand - but still pretty good. Anyway, having watched the movie - which is okay, by the way - and the bonus material where Argento especially details his love for Edgar Allen Poe's short stories, I was like 'waitaminute, Poe stories and motifs, that rings a bell', dug out the Alan Parsons Project album and before you knew it was deeply immersed in one of my patented Alternate Albums projects. 

First of all, for all you purists out there - as much as Alan Parsons Project purists can exist, I reckon - this is based on the 1987 reworking of the album. Meaning: A 100% more Orson Welles, but also more synths, more gated drums and reverb, a church organ, and a couple of other nooks and crannies that are different from the original 1976 version. Then again, purists obviously will not want to stay because once more the One Buck Guy was cut loose in Audacity, cutting and strutting, and gluing and undoing and generally speaking really reworking this sucker. 

So, what were my problems with the 'original' (I know, I know) version? A couple of moments of musical ennuis which could be tightened up, for one thing, notably in the big "The Fall Of The House Of Usher" suite that originally eats up almost all of side b. That sneaky Alan Parsons doesn't credit De Bussy in his note-for-note recreation of the unfinished "La Chute De La Maison Usher"-segment, but more importantly, that thing is just entirely too long and its (faux) classical air doesn't necessarily jibe well with the more bombastic art/prog rock sound elsewhere, so I cut that section way down, together with other bits and bops of the suite, to turn the 15+ minute suite into a single song suite that runs a little more than nine minutes. 

One other major issue? Some of the vocals! Alan Parsons himself recited parts of Poe's poem "The Raven" for the song of the same name and then ran that through a vocoder, proudly noting it as the first instance of a vocoder used in rock music. Yeah, okay, Al, but what about the first good use of a vocoder in rock music? Because this unintelligible and frankly irritating stuff isn't it. But of course, you can always do worse, like hiring Arthur Brown to do the lead vocals on "The Tell-Tale Heart". The man might have his fans, but his theatrical, ridiculously overwrought delivery is just awful to my ears, so that definitely had to go. I started by cutting out all the bits I didn't like, but that didn't seem promising, ending up with a 28 minute 'mini album' with little flow. So back to the drawing board for ol' OBG. Next stop: checking out the outtakes, demos and other assorted extras that the band had brought out for its expanded editions of the album. And that is were I found a couple of winners for this version of the album. 

Not a winner: The wacky alternate cover of the album

Needing to replace most of "The Raven", I found the demo version of the song with Eric Woolfson lead vocals perfectly suitable, even if Parsons (or Woolfson?) play a goddamn country lick in it. There was also a "Raven" outtake with extended jam section, of which I especially liked the latter part. Parsons' little jazzy, atmospheric keyboard noodlings were thus fused to the second part of the original "The Raven" track to create "The Raven Revisited".  It's always interesting that the other non-title member of the Project, Eric Woolfson, had so little faith in his vocals that they were replaced by a ton of guest singers on the finished albums, when I find his leads perfectly acceptable. Thus, his lead vocals-version of "The Tell-Tale Heart" replaces that horrid Arthur Brown original. 

The band also worked on a song tentatively titled "Edgar", which was about the author rather than  his works, but I deleted the third verse with its slightly ridiculous allusion to "Dracula drinking you dry" which sounded a bit too much like the "Monster Mash" or its likes to me. Since that third verse also had the only reference to its title character I changed the title to the recurring line "Someone At The Window". And finally, from a rough track of "The Cask Of Amontillado" with only piano and backing vocals I extracted a track that sounds nothing so much like a lost outtake by Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, a wonderful ray of sunshine beaming through these dark proceedings... 

And this is it, folks, Edgar Allan Poe's Tales Of Mystery And Imagination, as told by the One Buck Guy. Some mystery and quite a bit of imagination to this one, folks, which I'll now let you discover...

 

Remember, Remember, The Eleventh Of September

Two days ago, the whole 9/11 memorial thing started here in earnest with a telefilm called World Trade Center I had never heard of, and a documentary on that fateful day that I had already watched, but still stuck glued to with my wife. Somehow, the crazy unrealness of the pictures, reminding you of the feeling of crazy unrealness when all of this went down, catches us sort of unaware every time, despite now having seen the towers go down and that insane dust cloud - which looks like some kind of sci-fi monster, as it winds its way around the highrises of downtown Manhattan - a number of times. Even twnety-five years, it still seems not quite real. 

The wife and I were both too close and too far away from events. we were both studying at the University of Kansas in lovely Lawrence, Kansas. I remember the beginning of the morning ell. I stumbled out of my bedroom because there was a lot of noise in the appartment. My flatmate had put his radio on high volume, and was on the way of leaving, just telling me that something had happened in New York, some sort of attack. And off he went. My flatmate was from Pakistan, and I believe going to join his friends and fellowcountrymen to lay low together somewhere. A thing to know about Lawrence, Kansas: It is easily the most cosmopolitan, international and idiosyncratic plce in all of the state of Kansas. Or as our buddy George - weed-smoking, tax-evading, barstool-philosophizing George - would say, "an island of sanity in an ocean of madness". his is probably the only place in Kansas were a 6"1 Asian drag ueen (probably 6"2 in hgh heels) could walk in full makeup, wig, dress and, yes, high heels through town without being bothered. I alwys thought. 'that lady/gentleman' goes ten miles out of city limits in any direction and we'll find him/her beaten to a bloody pulp in some street corner'. But not in Lawrence. 

And yet, and yet, for two or three days in Spetember 2001, dozens if not more international students - especially those from middle-eastern countries - laid low and stayed out of sight, for fear of some entirely unwarrated redneck retribution. Anyway, so there I was, left n the appartment, with only my flatmate's crappy radio-alarm clock as a source of information (I had a Tv, but only with a DVD player attached to it). So I sat all morning on my flatmate's bed, in front of that horrible-sounding pievce of crap radio, trying to make sense of somehthing that didn't make sense. I'm probably not the only one who had that thought, but I was thinking of Orson Welles' famous/infamous The War Of The Worlds radio play that have people believe that a Mrtian invasion was imminent. Could this stuff be real? It didn't help, that the radio reporting was as chaotic as almost everything else that day. They didn't know how many planes had been kidnapped, and how many planes were still in the air. I don't remember hearing te news of the towers fall, but that's because the rest of the morning is kind of a blur. I remember how I felt, but not what I heard or how much of it computed. 

It was probably around lunch time that I finally took my bike to drive on campus. They had put up televisions in the majority of university buildings, but by that time they had decided to stop sowing newscasts on them, as they felt it would only upset people and make a volatile situation even more volatile. That is also why neither me nor the wife had seen the towers go down, or any of the other events. I only for the first time saw the images a year later, when the first anniversary came up, and documentaries and memorial specials would fill up the screens the second week of September. I don't know why, maybe because it felt too ghoulish, but I had never looked up the moving pictures of the day's events. I read a ton of internet nd newspaper coverage on it, but other thn still pictures, I hadn't seen much of 9/11. So wwhen I saw the pictures for the first time a year later, I was floored. If things had seemed unreal in front of that crappy alarm-clock radio, they didn't look more real in moving pictures. Quite the opposite, the moving picturs somehow looked even less real than the confused radio reports I heard on the day itself. Even now, 25 years later, these pictures look like they got beamed in from an alternative dimension, if not for the recognizable early-2000s clothing and what not. 

I didn't think I'd write something about 9/11, but this stuff wants out, onto a page, so there it is. And so it makes sense to propose to you today the re-issue of my reworked version of Springsteen's The Rising. Until earier this year I had never really listened to the lyrics of that title song in detail, but then I heard a bootlegged version of a concert evrsion with a gospel choir, which was quite impressive, and for the first time in twenty years or so I took the booklet to The Rising and really looked at the lyrics. Somehow, I had fallen in the same Bruce trap that all those people misunderstanding "Born In The U.S.A." had fallen into. I had never really put the dots on the i's on that one, so when I reread it and realized that the titular rising is the dying protagonist's soul rising to heaven, I was like, 'dammit Bruce, you and your catchy choruses, you got me on that one'. 

I also realized that at least to my mind, a trilogy of The Rising's songs talk about the same unknown firefighter. "Into The Fire", "You're Missing" and "The Rising" seem to me about the same man, perishing in the fire. His wido comforts herself with his courage and cnviction in "Into The Fire", then lists all the things hat have changed or stay the same in his absence in his absence, then we go back to the oment he perishes in "The Rising". Whether you share or agree with that interpretation is bside the point, I think, the songwriting and observations on the best parts of The Rising - which are all left on my edited version of the album - are impressive, and anyone who still poo-poos Springsteen as a songwriter or storyteller, I really don' know what to tell you. 'Fuck off', probably. 

So, have a drink for the ones we lost, 25 years ago, in the time beteween, just now. And come on up for the Rising, come on up for the Rising tonight...

Bing! Bang! Boom! Bluegrass! Chartbusters!

Bluegrass fiends, you have not been forgotten. I'm surprised to find that it's been almost a month since our last volume, but of course our Bluegrass Chartbusters series will continue unabated, and here's Vol. 14, another volume that has been reworked a numbe rof times and probably doesn't resemble its original incarnation in the slightest. This can of course only be positive, because I found tons of cool stuff that I wanted to bring to you first, and this volume doesn't disappoint! After sitting out the volume, The Brothers Comatose are back with a vengeance...and a great cover of "Mercedes Benz" to boot! Della Mae are back with an equally wonderful version of "No Rain", a song that, as further reserach for the series has shown, is very propular among bluegrass bands. Dierks Bentley, normally not a Bluegrass player, sings U2"s "Pride (In The Name Of Love)", and boy has he brought some back up, enlisting both the Punch Brothers and genre legened Dl McCoury. 

As for newcomers, here's the first appearance of Holler Choir with "Heart-Shaped Box". I was ready to call them a one-off, but the latest expansion wave has brought some more Holler Choir tracks, so these guys will be back. The same is true for We Banjo 3, a now defunct Irish group who - in order to do justice to Tom Petty's "Wildflowers" - recruited Kiana June and Steve Ferrone for backup. I'm not the hugest Old Crow Medicine Show fan, but they're debuting here in a backup function - lots of collabs on this one, as you might have noticed - as they are supporting Molly Tuttle and her beautiful take on Uncle Neil's "Helpless". 

Also making their first series appearance is Duluth's own Trapled By Turtles, an Americana group that play all kinds of country-inspired music, and only very rarely dabbles in Bluegrass, but often enough to record their fine cover of "Where Is My Mind?", which means that - somehat improbably - The Pixies are now joining the list of artists being covered. Other artists covered for the first time: Scotland's own Franz Ferdinand via Cornbread Red's "Take Me Out" and Howard Jones via Love Canon's "Things Will Only Get Better". 

What else do we have here: Vets Iron Horse covering not one, not to, but three classics ("Sweet Child O' Mine", "Proud Mary" and "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"!  David Lee Roth covering himself, again, gicing Jamie's Cryin'" a bluegrass makeover with the help of The John Jorgenson Bluegrass Band. And more! So, 20 fine handpicked tracks, showing once again the genre's elasticity in bringing these pop, rock, folk and reggae songs to life...

(Almost A) One Album Wonder: Summer's Almost Gone, As Blissfully Told By Al Manfredi

Al Manfredi is one of those glorious also-ran's and never-was's of the music industry, writing and recoring usic almost all of his life, yet never coming close to a career in music or hell, even to get his work published correctly. I initially stumbled onto Al Manfredi and the song "Blue Gold" while hunting little-known songs of the 1970s for the All Pearls, No Swine series, for which "Blue Gold" with its main stream soft rock sheen seemed almost too soft and fuzzy. Still, the song showed up on volume 14 of the series, though it still took me a bit of time to check out more of Al Manfredi. Well, what little more there is. As indicated by the title, Manfredi never managed to even issue a full-length album, the closest he came was to gather a couple of his strongest compositions and privately finance and press a hundred copies of a self-titled six-song EP, not necessarily to sell, but to send to record company people and DJs as a marketing tool. This included the fabulous "Of The Sea" as its opening track, "I Don't Live Today", "Five, Six", the aforementioned "Blue Gold" as side two opener, "Foggy Night" and "Empty Of Your Possession"

Hailing from San Clemente, Manfredi had, as a teenager, started garage band The Nuts & Bolts, shortly after renamed The Lost & Found (who, incidentally are not the same as a Houston-based garage rock band of the same name), who then recorded a one-off single during a one-year stay in Phoenix in late 1966 and early 1967. Back in San Clemente, The Lost & Found started to get...lost. Manfredi's closest band mate Mike Ingram was found hanged under suspicious circumstances, aged 17. Manfredi took a couple of months-long sabbatical in New York to chnage his ideas, then upon returning to California started a new band with old Lost & Found drummer Mike Ryer, only to have Ryer succumb to cancer at only 19 years old. Manfredi quit the band scene altogether and began running the family's music store in Garden Grove, future birthplace of The Offspring. 

But Manfredi kept writing and recording, until he had that EP, or mini-album, ready in 1973. Manfredi's mini-album has the same feel as Brian Wilson's melancholic assertions that summer and its fun, fun, fun can't last forever. It didn't have a real album cover, just a blank white sleeve with a tiny sticker with name and a picture of the artist. The archival release from 2019 added a title, Blue Gold, and a wonderful image of Manfredi with his young son in his arms, standing by the ocean. It was never planned as an album cover shot, but is just wonderful and captures the feeling of the recording incredibly well. 

To try to fill up the original six-track line-up to a full album-length endeavor I used some other songs and demos he recorded (probably, obviously there are no real recording dates or such listed) around the same time, but as the demos especially were kind of rambling, I edited both "Never With You" and "Let It Alone" for better flow and listenability, and better fit amongst its more polished brethren. Now, Blue Gold is still pretty short for an album, clocking in at nine tracks and a little more than thirty minutes, more or less barely getting to the industry standard of fifteen minutes of music per side. But, more importantly, it feels like a real album now. Then again, especially in country music (and in pop music, if you were the Beach Boys) groups and artists would still regularly bring in albums at less than 30 minutes. 

Manfredi's dreams of making it in the music business might have flown away on the ocen breeze, but the man always stuck with music, writing and occasionally homerecording, while the failure to make it as a music man unfortunately might have contributed to Manfredi's uneasy relationship with alcohol, which in turn probably contributed to his relatively early death in 1995. Al's son Alex Manfredi  - the very kid on the cover - grew up to be hip hop producer Exile. 

Blue Gold has touches of AOR (as on "Blue Gold"), as well as slight touches of psychedelia. Acoustic guitars dominate the recording. It's a wonderful, sunburned, blissed-out little record, sounding as unfinished as Manfredi's music career turned out to be, but also fresh and engaging. There might not have been much of Al Manfredi's music that made it out of his mind or his tape recorders, but what little did come out, is worth of rediscovery. So start (re)discovering now...

Summer Sun Has Turned To Rain Over Here...But We Got Sunshine (Reggae) In Our Heads....

 

...and no, by that I don't mean the novelty hit by Danish (of all people) duo Laid Back, but more of our Reggae Chartbusters, obviously. The sun might be temporarily hiding on my part of the globe, but that on't stop us from haring some sweet reggae sounds recalling past favorites. (Actually, today the sun is out after three days of rainy and rainy-ish days, but I'm sticking with my headline, dammit!). Same M.O. as last tim, folks. More or less the same line-u of studio projects and guns-for-hire that Argentine cheapo label Music Brokers could find, but the fun side of this still comes through plenty. I'm, as with volume one, taken with the contributions of Pinky Dread and Natty Bong, and think General Soundbwoy's version of "The Scientist" is another highlight.

As with volume one, I added a couple of outsiders to the Vintage Reggae Café stuff, including Dread Zeppelin's cover of "Kashmir", the Easy Star All-Stars taking on The Beatles and David Bowie and of course UB40, whose token Chartbuster this time around is their cover of "Red Red Wine", which for many years I only associated with this band and not Neil Diamond.

This was the original album cover, but for some reason it didn't want to attach itself to some tracks or play on all Multimedia Players so I made a second version that hopefully works, and you get this bonus cover to look at, uh, the beautiful ocean in the background there. Certainly, don't let anything in the foreground distract ya, eh...

So, more Reggae Chartbusters for the end of the summer (heaven help us, the new school year is just around the corner), so I think I'll pack in the series for the time being and bring them out of mothballs next summer for the last two volumes. Unless, you know, you are hundreds dozens two or three who don't want to wait so long. Let me know, put this on, and enjoy some sunshine reggae, with or without sunshine, wherever you are...

Yes, Yes...I Haven't Forgotten You

When the first part of this lil' project came out in May, I more or less isinuated that that wasn't the end of the story. Because, while I also insinuated - rightfully so, I'd say - that that album tells it's own story, it waasn't the end of the story. Knowing I could not fit all favorites of Yes on a single disc, YEsterdays was always conceived as a two-dis adventure. But as a sort of test balloon I sent out disc one as it's own thing, and now it's time to complete the mess adventure. 

If you remember, the original plan was an uninterrupted megamix with lots of linking sections taken fromlonger works, but halfway through I changed my mind. The linking sections remain, so you"ll have soe bits that don't sound like you might remember them. I also did some associations that seemed obvious to me, like pairing up one of Drama's highlights, "Tempus Fugit" with "Würm" [sic!], the ending section of "Starship Trooper" or ending with the last section of "Machine Messiah" fused to a reprise of "We Can Fly", which brings the YESterdays somewhat full circle - the first real track on volume one after the short prologue of "Vevey's Theme" was "We Can Fly", so circling back to it, albeit briefly, for the finale, seemed a neat idea. 

And of course  I might have edited some stuff out. I don't recall what or where in detail, but I can see that "Perpetual Change" lost about three minutes, and "Yours Is No Disgrace" about three minutes and a half, presumably of stuff I wasn't in love with. So, as usual: proceed at your on risk and peril. But you might to hear some of Yes' finest - according to ol' OBG, of course - in a new context or with new neighbours. There are a ton of classics present here, along with the aforementioned - "Siberian Khatru", "And You And I", "Turn Of The Century", "Yours Is No Disgrace", and more. I even found place for the proggiest of Trevor Rabin-era megaseller's 90125 proggiest and possibly best track, "Hearts". As usual, flow was importat to me, so again, here's hoping that for ypu this flows as nicely as it does for me.

And, well, that's it. That concludes this blog's adventures in Yes Land for now. So get ready for about an hour twenty of some of the best bits that Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squire and the  rest of the crew have produced. Revel in some YESterdays, and then, as ever, it's off into the future. 

Goodbye, Dolly - From A Faraway Distance, And A Recent Admirer

I honestly can't say I have much of a relationship with Dolly Parton's music, of which I have only heard a song here or there. I of course knew the ridiculous image of Dolly - big hair, big boobs, big voice nd attitude. But I didn't listen much to her music and I didn't know much about her. That chnaged a couple of months ago, when - while zapping aimlessly with the wife in tow, yes, some people still watch TV! - we fell on a music documentary whose subject I don't recall, might have been Bowie. Right after, however, we segued straight into a documentary on Dolly Parton, and I increased my knowledge, not to mention my appreciation of here, manyfold. 

Talk about a self-made millionaire or going from rags to riches. These are often used as metaphors, but rarely have they applied to somebody as well as Dolly Parton. Born in a wooden shack to dirt-poor parents and part of a family counting a dozen children, Dolly's upbringing was clearly the stuff normally reserved for screenplays. The way she managed to hold herself in  male-dominated business in the 60's, the way she looked for more freedom away from Porter Wagoner, all this stuff - just impressive as hell. And that is before you take into account her charity work, and the sense that she just had kind words for everyone, even those that didn't have any for her. That list of 'big somethings' I did in the paragraph above? It's fair to say that 'big heart' needs to be added and underlined a couple of times. In bright, trashy pink, if Dolly had her way. 

The wife and I stayed glued to that documentary, and then - somehow transfixed by the country mood watched half of a concert by the Highwaymen that followed the Parton doc, until at about 1.15 A.M. I told my wife that it would probably wise to pack it in. I had put 'check out more Dolly Parton' on the imaginaryt to do-list, as I was mostly familiar with her as part of the Trio albums with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. And then I never really got around to do that, with so much other music and other things taking precedence. So Dolly's death two days ago, at age 80, doesn't strike me really on a personal level, and i won't pretend that it does. But it's fair to say that our world just got a good bit poorer without Dolly in it. 

The One Buck Album of the day, Coat Of Many Colors, is a classic by Dolly Parton, including the title song that Dolly herself considered her favorite, from among the hundreds and hundreds of songs she wrote. It also came out at an impressively active time for Parton, being her third album of 1971 after The Golden Streets Of Glory and Joshua. This is the 2007 remaster with four bonus tracks. The cover still looks kind of weird (and makes Dolly somewhat look like anboy), but hey, that can't do any harm to the fab content. Just a fine little album to remember this giant of country music by. 

R.I.P. Dolly Rebecca Parton, 1946-2026

That Long Road Out Of Eden Just Got A Whole Lot Shorter, Folks...

What'd they say about Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road? 'Too fat to float'? That's pretty much true of most double albums. If I had to name a double that probably works better as a double, I'd point to London Calling, because the sprawl and diversity is the point and I would have trouble cutting that one down in a sensible way. But other than that? Woof, there's a lot of other double albums, even classics of the genre, that are indeed 'too fat to float' and so it's up to ol' OBG to try to get them to slim down. We started recently by turning Nick Cave's The Lyre Of Orpheus/Abbatoir Blues double whopper into a (hopefully) more delightful single album, My Beautiful World, and now it's time to take the knife to our first real double album.

The Eagles' Long Road Out Of Eden is a prime candidate for this nes weries, because, man, this thing is flabby as fuck, and there's a lot of grease to cut away here. Which in itself was surprising when the album came out in 2007. After all, in the preceding thirteen years after their 1994 reunion, the band had managed a grand total of five new songs, four in 1994 for Hell Freezes Over and a pretty good one-off ("Hole In The World") in 2003, which technically hails already from the first Long Road Out Of Eden sessions. So the fact that not only they'd finally came out with a new studio album, the first after 1979's The Long Run, but on top of that that it was a double album, was somewhat surprising. (Incidentally, and infamously, The Long Run was initially announced as a double album, mainly to give guys like Don Felder a chance at a lead vocal, but they didn't even have enough material for a single good album, hell, I'd argue not even enough for half a single good album. But, as usual, I digress.) Maybe less surprising: they worked, on and off,  over six years on that sucker. Another Long Run. Anyway, with one album they almost quadrupled their output of the last fifteen years of their existence. Impressive!

Except, well, you know. There's quite a bit of stuff on Long Road Out Of Eden that is, you know, not all that good. Not to mention that, much like Henley's and Frey's solo work, songs have a tendency to run long, too long. The result: A rather unreasonable ninety minutes for twenty tracks, and several tracks that drag. So, OBG to the rescue! There is a pretty good classic Eagles album in there, you just have to extract it from amidst all the chaff. Because, let's be honest: One part of Long Road Out Of Eden - arguably the better, more succesful part - was a conscious choice to recreate not only the Eagles sound, but to create songs that reminded you of the band's heydays: "Busy Being Fabulous" is such a song, as is the choice to finally issue J.D. Souther"s "How Long". 

The band had covered that tune in concert throughout 1973 - with Frey, Henley and Randy Meisner all trading lead vocals on verses - but didn't issue a studio version to not steal their buddy's thunder. Having Frey's kids stumble onto their dad playing that song on Dutch TV on Youtube pushed the band to issue it as the first single, making it, like "Busy Being Fabulous", a top thirty hit, which was no small feat for a veteran classic rock band in 2007. But the slow crawl - sometimes literally - through Long Road Out Of Eden also reveals, that the band's two dictators leaders Frey and Henley used the album as a sneaky stealth way to issue what sounds like solo recordings, more or less smuggling in solo EPs into the double album, knowing full well that an album with the Eagles name on it would largely outsell any of their solo records. 

So, there' was a lot of throwing out to do. A ton of tracks that sounded like solo adventures got the boot, mostly Frey's, since he indulged a lot in yawn-inducing ballads. All the songs that sounded like Eagles songs made the line-up, with the exception of "Fast Company", a sort-of redo of "Life In The Fast Lane". The problem with that one: The band did another number that vaguely recalls the funk-rock of "Life", "Fail Grasp At The Big Picture", one of Henley's patented political rants, and of the two I liked the latter better. So long, "Fast Company"! Speaking of Henley's political content: This is of course the biggest change from the classic years: Whatever ecologic or political criticism the band could muster in its prime was couched in metaphor so as to be almost unrecognizable - you have to really stretch to read the 'white settlers edstroying paradise'-scenario of "The Last Resort" as a critique of the way Aspen, Colorado got turned into a snowy Disneyland for rich guys like, ironically, Henley and Frey.

Henley got a lot more direct during his solo years, and it shows on Long Road Out Of Eden. His nature activism shows up on the a capella poem adaptation "No More Walks In The Woods"and he comments on the reliance on media manipulation and American Imperialism in "Fail Grasp" and the title song. The sentiments of both have sadly become way more relevant in the last decade thanks to a certain orange dictatorial authoritarian dictatorial you-know-who. Henley's bitter political rants aren't obvious classic Eagles material, but they're better than the overkill of soppy ballads. 

A classic Eagles album would make room for one solo spot for the two 'good hands' members of the band, which limited the choices for Wals and Schmit, who had two tracks each on the double album - quitely respecting the logic of 'one track per album'. I picked "Do Something" for Schmit, which while also a ballad is much more urgent than the ultra-sappy "What Do I Do With My Heart". For Walsh, a dilemma: He has an original song on the album, but it's an ultra-slow crawl of a song about doing nothing that, well, does nothing, but takes a mind-numbingly long seven minutes to do so. Attempts to edit it down proved unsuccessful, so I picked his cover of "Guilty Of A Crime", which itself is a remake. He recorded it in the mid-90s for a TV series soundtrack, but it's sprightly and (somewhat) rocking, which any version of Long Road Out Of Eden is in short supply of, so it might have gotten the vote for inclusion either way. 

Well, folks, this write-up threatens to get as long and difficult to get through as the original album *shudder*, so I'll try to be quick: Conceived as a classic vinyl-era album, ten tracks sequenced as two distinct sides with their own dynamics; The two singles and most-Eagles sounding tracks frontload side a, while side b opens with the album's epic, the ten-minute title song and its accompanying piece, Frey's short (and Grammy-winning) instrumental "I Dreamed There Was No War". The Walsh track then livens up the solemn proceedings, before we close gently with "Waiting In The Weeds" - sounding totally like a Henley solo track, but again, real quality cuts were limited - and the aforementioned "No More Walks In The Woods", which is lovely, but works much better as a closer than an album opener.   

Given Henley's and Frey's predilections for long, drawn out codas that don't really bring much to the table besides running time - carried over from their solo work - a number of them have been edited down a bit. Also: no soft rock slop! That sleazy saxophone solo at the end of "No More Cloudy Days"? Sayonara, sucker!

So there it is, ol' OBG really slimmed that flabby album down to a core that is infinitely more listenable. The Long Road Out Of Eden might still be long, but it's a lot shorter and more agreeable to listen to.. agree? Disagree? Step on that road to find out...

One Album Wonders: Meet Funky White Boy John Henry Kurtz, Y'All!

I hadn't really been looking much into John Henry Kurtz - and as you can see from the series title, there isn't that much to look at, anyway - but listening to his fantastic cover of "Drift Away" when I prepped All Pearls, No Swine 37, got me thinking 'hey, you should check out what else the man has done'. Turns out he did exactly one album, Reunion on ABC Records inn 1972. If you look  at the album cover, you'd probably say 'oh, big deal, OBG unearthed another country rock album from the early Seventies', but that isn't quite what this is. The old-timey cover with Kurtz in army uniform is essentially a fulfillment of a dream, as he was an ardent collector of Civil War memorabilia since his teenage years, and in his latter years had one of the largest collection of such artefacts in the U.S. But the music isn't just the sort of Americana or country rock that the cover implies. 

There is a clear soul, gospel and r'n'b influence to Kurtz's album; with a brass section arranged by Michael Omartian and r'n' backup choir everywhere. This album - and that you definitely wouldn't tell from the cover - is funky as hell. Play that funky music, white boy! Just listen to the gospelish "Everything Has Got To Be Free" or the brass-driven "Get On The Right Road"; This means that this album kicks more ass then some of the Americana treasures I regularly feature on this blog and in this series specifically. John Henry Kurtz reminds me of another funky white country boy, Mr. Travis Wammack who absolutely should and will feature on this blog in the future. 

Country-soul has existed long before a certain Cecil Ingram Parsons pretentiously dubbed it 'Cosmic American Music'. The real cosmic American music was made elsewhere, by other people, and I love them and their records, but Kurtz's album is somewhat akin to Parsons' idea: A hint of country, but here almost surpassed by the brass-driven soul and gosel elements. It's also a find of curios. Sure, everyone covered Kenny Loggins' "Danny's Song" back then, but the same ca't be said for Shiloh's "Simple Little Downhome Rock'n'Roll Love Song For Rosie". It's not only a mouthful of a title (a little shortened here), it's also one of the first song written and sung by - Mr. Donald Henley. 

After Reunion and two more singles for ABC Records (the one I could find is attached as a bonus track), John Henry Kurtz, uh, drifted away from the music business, though not from showbiz. He became an announcer and voice over artist for television, lending his voice to, among others, NBC Nightly News and Court TV, did some shows on Broadway and some television appearances as an actor. 

Look, this is just a wonderful little album from the Seventies. Almost forgotten today, it doesn't do anything particularly genius and I don't want to or have to sell it like that. Ten quality tracks, finely produced, arranged and played, and well-sung by Mr. Kurtz. Funky, rural music without any pretensions. Sometimes you don't need more than this.