lcrelyea
rebeccapatrick
ce.
Tommy Wilson
stephenkillion
amsettineri
Peter Cavanaugh
AndrewMasochism isn’t the word, but I love getting emotional watching the human interest stories on ESPN. The small town that battles funding issues and somehow wills its high school to a state championship, the blind boy that gets to take a few snaps on senior night out in Oklahoma. I wouldn’t say the floodgates open, but my eyes will get watery.
And I hadn’t really thought about it until after watching the ESPYs this year. The first award that really got me concerned a football coach who pulled his town together after a tornado came through and ravaged everything. I was sold after the first act. Thing is, last year, that same coach was shot and killed by a former player. I guess, then, the ESPY was given to this coach’s legacy. I don’t know. Later on in the show, NBA coach George Karl was given the Jimmy V Award. Not to make light of cancer and death, but the award is a weird event. It’s effectively saying, “hey, as the recipient this year, I’ve got cancer and you can probably expect me to die in a few years.” Yet again, however, I found myself being swooped up in the highlight reel and leaving my critical eye far far away. It’s like McDonald’s food, you know? There is some truth there (there are a few grams of protein, etc), but it is designed to make you cry (taste good).
Oh man, this all to say that I’m getting stoked on ballads right now. I remember when “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs came out, and er’body was bummed because it was not punk rawk. It was straight-to-mixtape-cheesy or something. It was Weezer going “green album.” Well, I’m here arguing for the ballad now. And I should probably start by talking about “Patience” by Guns ‘n’ Roses, but for the sake of going over the top, it has to be “November Rain.” It’s perfect. It is unnecessarily long. It is accompanied by a mini-”film” which seemed to saturate the mid nineties. It has a string section. Bad boy deluxe, Axl Rose puts himself behind the piano. Slash plays a solo in front of an abandoned church. Etc, etc. I’m limiting my thoughts and observations of this song to surface qualities, things anyone can make because that is what’s best about the ballad. I’m sure some real work could be had in talking about this, but a good ballad is perfectly accessible. Anyone can project his or her relationship struggles, life struggles onto it.
And now, some Hoosier pride (though maybe Boilermaker is more appropriate considering Axl and Izzy hail from up north):
Filed under: Inspirational Anthems,Night Drive Tunes,Rainy Day Songs,Songs for Contemplation,Songs of Triumph | Tags: Jimmy Cliff, Reggae, The Harder They Come, Many Rivers to Cross
At some point during, I believe, the funeral scene in High Fidelity, John Cusack addresses the camera to list the songs he hopes will be played at his funeral. He requests “Angel” by Aretha Franklin, “You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me” by Gladys Knight, and “Many Rivers to Cross” by Jimmy Cliff.
I’ve known of the existence and relative cultural significance of the soundtrack to the movie The Harder They Come, and of the three tracks by the film’s star, Jimmy Cliff, since probably that first Greatest All Time issue that Rolling Stone put out in November 2003 (the album is ranked 119 in the greatest 500 of all time). Yet I’d never listened to the album until just last week, when I spotted it in the soundtrack section of my local library’s CD collection. I had recently heard Willie Nelson’s version of the title track off his album Countryman and loved it, so I was anxious to hear how Jimmy Cliff performed it.
I must admit that, like probably most of us out there, my only exposure to reggae has been Bob Marley. He’s good, though I wouldn’t say he’s as good as all the stoners and black people think he is. Either way, listening to him never convinced me that I had to explore reggae music more. It just wasn’t my thing.
What surprised me about Jimmy Cliff, when I got in my car and put in the disc, was his voice. He has a very smooth and clean voice, the kind of pipes that wouldn’t be out of place on a polished Motown record. And once I’d gotten through the title track, which was good and reggae and pleasant, I remembered the quote from High Fidelity and flipped to “Many Rivers to Cross.”
More gospel than reggae, the song is incredibly beautiful. It is an anthem of self-reliance, self-awareness, and acceptance of the difficult roads which we walk from the beginning of this life to the next.
I’ve been playing it constantly; with each listen I appreciate something new. It’s not a layered kind of song with intricate lyrics or remarkable musical moments, but it is deeply sincere, and Cliff sings with complete conviction.
The use of the organ anchors the song in melancholy, while the lyrics pull the song just above the surface of sadness. While Cliff sings of being lost and lonely, with no idea of where to go next, he has kept his pride and thus his will to survive. The harmonized support of his back up singers is like the support of those who have seen the narrator’s many struggles and few triumphs but continue to sing his praises. The drumming is spare but deep, and emphasizes the narrator’s ability to rise up and continue on.
It’s the kind of song that would be a wonderful crutch during a personal crisis, yet it needs no crisis to convey its message. Play it in the sunshiney day, with the windows down and the wind in your hair, or play it at night, lying in bed afraid and awake. It will move you no matter what.
Filed under: Dance like no one is watching,Inspirational Anthems,Night Drive Tunes,Rainy Day Songs,Songs for Contemplation,Songs of Triumph,Songs to listen to with the windows down,Songs to start your day,Sunny Dispositions,Time to Party Tunes,sing like no one is listening,songs that make you feel cool in uncool moments | Tags: mixtape
These songs are taken from albums that have been in pretty heavy rotation on my iPod and turntable over the last couple months. It’s been a highly uninspiring and unmotivated time and music always helps in the midst of that. Summer’s almost here so grab a beer, put the screens on instead of the storm windows, and turn this up to right where the neighbors can slightly hear it.
- New Young Pony Club – Chaos
- Bombay Bicycle Club – Magnet
- Dum Dum Girls – Yours Alone
- Bad Veins – Falling Tide
- The Walkmen – The Rat
- Doves – Sky Starts Falling
- Band Of Horses – Islands On The Coast
- The Black keys – Sinister Kid
- Phantogram – Futuristic Casket
- Metric – Stadium
- Open Hand – Cool
- Matt & Kim – Lessons Learned
- Lars & The Hands Of Light – Three to the Floor
- Broken Social Scene – Chase Scene
- Gorillaz – On Melancholy Hill
- Stars – Ageless Beauty
Filed under: Dance like no one is watching,Night Drive Tunes,Songs to listen to with the windows down
So I have decided to change two of my top 10 songs at the moment. I have kept the same bands but two songs will replace the ones previously mentioned. First I would like to substitute javelin – snoop for javelin – vibrations, both are great songs but the snoop rap sample just does it for me. Also I would like to add Memory Tapes – Stop Talking as a compliment to their Bicycle song. Both are amazing songs and the break down in ‘stop talking’ could totally start a dance party (truthfully I keep coming back to this entire album at least once a day, it is def a grower). I would also like to mention Mount Kimbie’s song Maybes as it is totally an honorable mention to the list. I have included Snoop and Maybes below, enjoy!!! (holy streaming Batman)
Filed under: Night Drive Tunes
A lot of my memories of Muncie are stunted, blurred or pushed deep away from retrievable compartments. There are, however, still a collection that surface now and again to remind me that my time there could – while not necessarily be deemed a success – mean something.
Nick Cave came on by accident tonight. Just one song following the other.
Every town has those haunted spots. Zero-gravity hill, the haunted bridge, the house up past Center Street where that blue light is supposed to hover. There was something just outside of Muncie, maybe it was kind of pedestrian, a graveyard, but we decided to drive out to it. It was north, I remember that much. Halloween, and I think I was in the back seat, there were two other people in the car. Nick Cave was getting a lot of play from us around that time, putting on his Murder Ballads just made sense. I could say a lot about this album, nothing journalistic merely memories tied to it, but I’m only thinking about that specific point on the road. We’re encased in this black jello with two cream headlights leading our way. It’s one of those roads that receives enough traffic that you hesitate to call it a country road, but it is void of advertisements and billboards. There was probably a dip, the car lurched forward and “The Curse of Millhaven” began.
Filed under: Night Drive Tunes,Songs for Contemplation,Songs to listen to with the windows down | Tags: Akron/Family, Anathallo, Andrew Bird, Annuals, Beach house, Blackbird, brother, Califone, Criminal Records, Lost Ring Finger, Nico, Returning, Running, The Orchids, Zebra
1. “Brother”- Annuals
2. “Zebra” – Beach House
3. ”Running, Returning” -Akron/Family
4. “Blackbird”- Andrew Bird
5. “The Orchids”- Califone
6. “Lost Ring Finger”- Anathallo
__
I wish that I could remember the specifics for you, the names and dates we learned about the bridge in physics class. It was somewhere in the midwest, that much I can recall, way back when our parents were young. It was built over the course of a decade, and crumbled in the course of a day. The architect built a beautiful red limb spanning the river. It was inanimate- so they assumed.
Until the day it came to life. The commuters hit their brakes, then sprang from their cars, running to the solid ground as the concrete began to wave beneath them. They watched their vehicles fall through the cracks of asphault to be devoured by the river.
What the architect forgot was resonance. The effect that the hymn of the wind would have on the bridge that caused it to dance, twirl, tumble, and collapse.
That’s the most specific thing I can recall for you, that feeling. When I hear these songs, that bridge comes to mind. That feeling when the earth takes on a life of its own, and we all stand to the side, asphyxiated.
-Laura Celeste
Filed under: Inspirational Anthems,Night Drive Tunes,Rainy Day Songs,Songs for Contemplation,Songs of Triumph,Songs to listen to with the windows down | Tags: (Breach), Bringing Down the Horse, Jakob Dylan, Rebel Sweetheart, Red Letter Days, The Wallflowers
I happen to be a member of an elite and essentially secret society. These two adjectives qualify because there are so few of us out there. I am a Diehard Fan of The Wallflowers.
Bringing Down the Horse was among the first records I ever owned, back before I knew anything about what it meant to really love music. I picked up Red Letter Days and Rebel, Sweetheart when they came out, their fourth and fifth albums, respectively, but didn’t get their third album, the classic (Breach) until just a few days ago (though naturally, I’d been listening to a burned copy for years). And within two weeks I will finally complete my collection with their all but forgotten first album, 1992′s Virgin Records release (all the others are on Interscope) The Wallflowers.
Allmusic.com has given all but their debut album at least four (out of five) stars (the debut got three). What I admire about The Wallflowers is best summed up by Stephen Thomas Erlewine in his review of the band’s last album Rebel, Sweetheart: ”[T]hey’re a straight-ahead rock band in a time that doesn’t value straight-ahead rock bands.” The Wallflowers set a tone on their first record that they have followed ever since; and this consistency is in no way a sign of artistic stagnation. As Erlewine goes on to say, this “makes them different from other rock bands of their time in yet another way: they’re reliable.”
In my opinion, the highlight of their catalogue is their third album as a band, their second album for Interscope, (Breach), produced by Andrew Slater and Michael Penn (the only other place I’ve heard of them was when Michael Penn did The Beatles’ “Two of Us” with Aimee Mann for the I Am Sam soundtrack). It’s a gritty album, the most straight-ahead rock album they’ve made, essentially ignoring the alt- tendencies of Bringing Down the Horse, and not yet aware of the beat machine possibilities that Tobias Miller brought to his production of Red Letter Days. The music aside, this set of songs is the most lyrically compelling Jakob Dylan has set before us, at least in the context of this band (his 2008 solo effort Seeing Things might be able to compare in strength of songwriting). Highlights include the Is-he-talking-about-Bob? song “Hand Me Down,” the stunning acoustic “Mourning Train” (with a moody, booming bass drum), and the rollicking, somehow wonderfully off-setting “Sleepwalker,” with its killer line: “It’s where I’m from that let’s them think I’m a whore / I’m an educated virgin.”
But the songs on the album that truly make the case for J. Dylan’s genius are “I’ve Been Delivered,” and “Up From Under.” With music incredibly matched to the mood of the songs (the whorling organ on the former, the string-backed acoustic guitar of the latter), these songs evoke a Mood at once apocalyptic and hopeful. “I’ve Been Delivered” pairs images of burning fields and beaches with cold Decembers and the ominous bells of curfew, which may ring before the narrator is through. Its imagery is evocative, not quite surrealist, but in no way literal. The key verse, especially its final lines, thrills me every time I hear it:
“now I’m ten miles / in the deep / and the mighty blue sea / looking back towards a long white beach / burning up into yellow flames / and I just wave back / like a little boy up on pony / in a show / ’cause I can’t fix / something this complex / anymore than I can build a rose”
Those last two lines have helped me keep my perspective during personal shitstorms.
Why is “Up From Under” so good? Find it and listen to it. I’ll just say, to use a line from the song, that those days before I heard it “were like ice cream falling down / on the shoes of my world.”
The Wallflowers are also rather adept at making faithful, killer covers: “The Weight” (Band) which I downloaded a live version of many years ago, “Heroes” (Bowie) from Godzilla, “Into the Mystic” (V. Morrison) from American Wedding, “I Started a Joke” (Bee Gees) from Zoolander, and “I’m Looking Through You” (Beatles) from I Am Sam. I think they’d do a great version of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (CSN) but I haven’t written them yet to say so.
They’re just a band that is simple, honest, and loves straight-ahead rock. What’s not to be enamored with?
Filed under: Night Drive Tunes,Songs for Contemplation,Songs of Triumph,Songs to listen to with the windows down | Tags: Bruce Springsteen, The Boss, The Wild the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle
In 1973, Bruce Springsteen decided that, not only was he going to release one of the most acclaimed debut albums of the era–an album which drew lyrical comparisons to Bob Dylan; which was catapulted along by Vincent Lopez’s inspired drumming and Harold Wheeler’s light-fingered, barroom-joyous piano playing–but that he would also, eight months later, release his sophomore effort, The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle. Arguably The Boss’s best album, and by far one of the best albums in Rock n’ Roll, it continues along the same track as Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. while upping the ante with flawless incorporations of jazz, and even classical, piano.
Vini Lopez is still around, though he would leave the band in 1974, and replacing Wheeler on keys was David Sancious, who actually lived on E Street. The highlight of the album is its three-song (of seven total) second side, where “Incident on 57th Street,” “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” and “New York City Serenade,” blend seamlessly to form one of the most incredible suites of music ever recorded.
“Incident” is a story song like “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts” is a story song, but with a big difference: whereas Dylan sings like he could have come from anywhere, and indeed did all he could to cultivate that image, Springsteen’s song is colored with Jersey-tinted sunglasses. The moment Spanish Johnny drives in from the underworld, the listener is keenly aware of a Setting, evinced equally by the lyrics as by the music. Sancious’s piano is eternally compelling, and Lopez’s drumming seems just barely reined in from the wilds of the swamps of Jersey (to which it will be re-released as soon as we get to “Rosalita”).
After seven minutes of traveling with Spanish Johnny while he tries selling his heart to the heart girls over on Easy Street, the song closes out with Sancious playing what I, a non-music reading person, assume to be descending scales (?); we are then launched, with no chance for tie-straightening, into a manic, wide-grinned recount from Bruce to Rosie about just how much damn fun they’re gonna have if she would only come out tonight. After all, says The Boss, “I just want to be your lover, ain’t no liar / Rosalita, you’re my stone desire.” It’s a character driven song even more so than “Incident,” populated by the likes of Little Dynamite and Little Gun, Jack the Rabbit and Weak Knees Willie, Sloppy Sue and Big Bones Billie. My favorite part is Bruce’s acknowledgement of Rosalita’s parents’ distaste for this young rock n’ roller she seems to love:
Now I know your mama she don’t like me ’cause I play in a rock and roll band
And I know your daddy he don’t dig me but he never did understand
Your papa lowered the boom he locked you in your room
I’m comin’ to lend a hand
I’m comin’ to liberate you, confiscate you, I want to be your man
Someday we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny
Bruce here is on top vocal form. He backs off a little on the vocal velocity to basically shout a whispered plea, but when the tempo kicks back in with the opening of the next verse (“Tell him this is his last chance to get his daughter in a fine romance / because the record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance”) he just lets it loose. I always felt like scream-rock bands could have taken notes from The Boss. When his vocals get loud and scratchy, it’s with pure emotion; it never feels like an affectation.
Eventually, though, the reckless energy of the early night must end. What follows is a solo walk through empty streets, “New York City Serenade,” the kind of song to which you need to devote ten minutes of every night drive you take. It’s almost indescribable. Both inspirational and haunting, it claims my complete attention every time I listen to it. It is epic, a concrete example of the maxim Bruce sings early on in the song; indeed, the entire album is: “Walk tall, or, baby, don’t walk at all.” He’s singing, he’s singing.
Filed under: Night Drive Tunes,Rainy Day Songs,Songs for Contemplation,Songs of Triumph,Songs to listen to with the windows down,Songs to start your day | Tags: Acuff-Rose, Anodyne, Jeff Tweedy, Uncle Tupelo, wilco
Early in the morning–sometimes late at night–I can be found singing “Acuff-Rose” by Uncle Tupelo. Written by Jeff Tweedy, and performed by him extensively during his solo acoustic shows, it is number one on my personal list of Songs Sung Out Loud, Frequently, and Without Shame. The original UT recording has a sweet fiddle playing along, but the song is so damn good and authentic that it truly does sound best played alone by Jeff on his guitar. It’s the kind of song I wish I could play around campfires, at sick childrens’ bedsides, at old folks homes, for presidents, at the ends of movies, on nearly empty subway cars, on road trips, and alone when I need a little pick-me-up.
Acuff-Rose was a music publishing firm out of Nashville formed by Roy Acuff and Fred Rose in 1942. Fred Rose had seen too many country songwriters cheated by agents and promoters with regard to copyright issues. So Acuff-Rose was established, according to Rose, under the principle that “our company would be honest. The writers would always be taken care of. No one would act in a shady way.” Acuff-Rose became the catalogue for some of country music’s greatest songwriters, including Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell. It was honest music promoted by an honest company, and here honored in this song by one of the most earnest musicians around today, Jeff Tweedy.
It’s a wonderful song of adoration, expressing calmly and in equal measures awe and nostalgia for a company that was the storehouse of songs “that everybody knows… children at the playground / to folks at the show / anybody anywhere who’s ever felt alone.”
Filed under: Inspirational Anthems,Night Drive Tunes,Songs for Contemplation,Songs of Triumph
I possess only five mix tapes. They were all made by the same person, because nobody else has ever made me a mix good enough to keep. Now that I’ve been back for a little while, and am in possession of the necessary technologies, I am jonesing to reciprocate with a mix tape melangé by my very own bibliographically-oriented brain.
A good mix should, in my opinion, be concise, varied, terse, demonstrative more of what the mixer believes than what the listener expects, and compact (I’m really strict on the length of a mix; I recommend no more than fourteen tracks because after that it takes a real time investment to listen to the whole thing at once, which I usually like to do; this time investment sounds nice in theory, but is inefficient and burdensome in practice). A mix tape, as I’m sure all you loyal readers know, is not only a snapshot of a person’s aesthetic taste, but also a guide to said person’s world view, illuminating, whether implicitly or explicitly, the mixer’s stance on issues ranging from politics to desirable careers to beliefs on the requitability/existence of true love. It is inherently vain to make a mix, and we should not shy from that, because it is a vanity fused with pure and joyful generosity.
While whittling and arranging the current mix, I’ve encountered a problem I’m sure many mixers are familiar with: conscious but unintentional artist repetition.
Depending on what theme or motif you want to emphasize in your mix, it’s easy to find many songs from the same artist/group that satisfy that theme, for obvious reasons. For this current mix the motif is origin/rebirth. Thus I am finding quite a few tracks on my first draft list by two artists at the base of my music appreciation: Willie Nelson and Lucinda Williams.
Willie and I go way back. I’ve seen him in concert five times, and when I was a child his name was among my first words. Mom says I used to run around the house while “On the Road Again” played, shouting “Nillie Wilson” (close enough). The man is too legendary to be properly discussed here, at least concisely, so I’ll just say this: it is un-American to dislike Willie Nelson.
And but so Lucinda. I did some research and found out that her first album came out in 1979, but that despite critical acclaim and a small cult following, she didn’t really blow up until 1998, with the album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. I was thirteen when it came out, and trying very hard to avoid my musical destiny by listening to a lot of that Rap music all those kids were crazy about. My mom had around this time turned away from the Ray Charles, Rod Stewart, and Linda Rondstadt she’d been slamming and gotten religiously back into country music (she must have been having an origin/rebirth moment as well). Willie’s back catalog began to flood our household music collection, as well as Car Wheels. We’d never heard or heard of Lucinda Williams, but we took that chance. It must have been kismet. It was the album that put me back on track.
It’s an incredible album. Her electric guitars are dirty and loud, her vocals are gritty as the gravel road she drives down, with the occasional smooth patch. The album rocks, sways, and stops twirling in the middle of the night to gaze inwardly at a personal waning moon. “I Lost It” is my favorite of the rockers. I listen and I see Lucinda singing full throated, slightly distraught, but too goddamn stubborn to let it get her down. “Jackson” could inspire a break-up road trip as the best medicine. “Greenville” may be the prettiest country song of all time. She opens picking on the acoustic, her vocals subdued, cool, like a rock under clear water. Then the tambourine drops a small, spaced beat as another voice provides harmony. The bass is perfect. A shaker comes in. Then my favorite drum sound ever, the simple clean snick of the stick against the metal rim of the snare, just as she shifts the lyrics into second gear.
The relevance to the mix thing is now that I want to put these three songs on the mix I also want to put every great song from every great album she’s made since. “Lonely Girls” from her 2001 effort Essence. “Are You Alright?” from 2007′s West, which kind of ups the melancholy that “Greenville” hints at. And of course, “Real Love” from ’08′s Little Honey, a logical extension of “I Lost It,” the extension being that now, well, she’s found it.
Like the Ryan Adams that still gives me the warm feeling of tending the fire at a corn roast, Lucinda’s music is just so purely American I can’t help but to love it. It’s where I started, and it’s what kept me grounded when I was so far away. It’s a baseball game and a hot dog, an apple pie and The Wave. And I hope, of course, that the recipient of this wonderfully under-construction mix will be moved by it just as I am.
-a.s
