4th of July.


Big Sur vs. Country Air

Beatles version.



Cool Cool Water (Sunflower version) vs. I Love To Say Da Da

New Records: Newbury Comics

I've got more choices for music stores in the Bay Area than I had in New England, but I still miss Newbury Comics!

These days I generally wait until I've acquired a decent stack of freebies I don't care to own anymore, then I trade 'em in for credit.

"Love's Full Glory" alone makes the disc worth owning. It's one of the most beautiful songs ever. It knocked me dead the first time I heard it, and it still does that to me know. It's actually a better song than a good chunk of what Paul has written.

Older stuff worth tracking down:

... Twilight Singers - She Loves You ...

"Older stuff"? Wow, another golden oldie from 2004 ...

Those were the days... 

If an album is going to be stylistically monochrome (i.e. all acoustic folk, all power-trio rock or blues, etc.), what's going to keep me interested beyond great songwriting are varied vocal approaches, shifts in dynamics, changes in rhythm and tempo even if they're very subtle, etc.

Take Slayer's Reign In Blood for example. It's speed metal through and through, but not all of the songs are taken at breakneck pace, the rhythms aren't all exactly the same, the vocal approach is mostly the same throughout, but the musical changes that take place make up for it, plus that screaming guitar crescendo at the end which crashes into the sound of thunder and rain...

But then there's a record like Diana Krall's The Look Of Love which is also stylistically monochrome, very cohesive, yet boring as all hell because every song is at the same tempo, not much in the way of varied dynamics to speak of, and it becomes one 50-minute drone of string-laden bossa nova and ballads spit out with computer-like accuracy. The songs are top-notch, the musicianship is unparalleled, but it's tough swallowing 12 same-sounding slow cuts all at once.

I think Satchel's EDC is a cohesive, unified album that has a lot of stylistic diversity -- grungy type songs, piano-based ballads, elctro-rock instrumentals, rock & soul, tenor and falsetto vocals -- yet it all hangs together really well. Part of that I attribute to the bad-ass Reservoir Dogs dialogue stuck between some songs, and because the diversity doesn't go too overboard. It's not like they're mixing up arias, death metal and bluegrass, nothing too out there.

But ultimately I agree with andy that great songwriting and performances are going to be a big factor in whether an album hangs well. Too many duds, and you're gonna wanna skip through it or stop it altogether.

Good to see you back!

And you won't hear me questioning 55 degrees (or 59 in my case) in January. Oh, how I don't miss the northeast...

Alito hearings again.

Me too, again.

Harmolodic: Thanks man! I'll look into those

No problem -- and if you're particularly into piano, grab that disc by the Bad Plus immediately! They are hands down the most exciting new jazz piano trio out there.

Great recent stuff worth looking into:

A Band Of Bees - Free The Bees
Doves - Some Cities
John Mayer Trio - Try!
The Bad Plus - Suspicious Activity?
Stevie Wonder - A Time 2 Love
Queens Of The Stone Age - Lullabies To Paralyze
Paul McCartney - Chaos And Creation In The Backyard
Rolling Stones - A Bigger Bang
Wayne Shorter Quartet - Beyond The Sound Barrier
Greg Osby - Channel Three
Miles Davis - The Cellar Door Sessions 1970


Older stuff worth tracking down:

Cactus - Restrictions
Savoy Brown - Hellbound Train
Johnny Winter - Second Winter
Ornette Coleman - Science Fiction
Isley Brothers - It's Your Thing (3-disc box)
James Brown - Sex Machine
Chicago At Carnegie Hall, Vol. I-IV
Jefferson Airplane - Volunteers
Lou Reed - Berlin
Twilight Singers - She Loves You
Chambers Brothers - Time Has Come Today


If you really want, I can just send you an excel file of my whole darn collection and you can just go by that! 

Hey Harmolodic .....how do like the cellar door set ?

Hey Zen,

It's makin' me smile!

I've only made it through about half the set so far, but so far so very good. The sound is excellent, at the very least an improvement over the old Japanese CD of Live-Evil I have. I really enjoy this particular period of Miles' music, so I had a bias already.

Miles Davis Cellar Door Sessions, disc 2

I can't explain my favorite line--no idea why it does it to me--but "he said, you can't repeat the past? Whaddaya mean you can't? Of course you can..." immediately struck me as just great. One of many greats on that disc.

I like that one a lot too. It's both profound and absurd, and it made me chuckle out loud when I first heard it.

And on Time Out Of Mind, my favorite line is "don't know if I saw you, if I'd kiss you or kill you, probably wouldn't matter to you anyhow." Great example of indifference as the ultimate firehose.

I hear MUCH more than that in the 66 recordings.
I hear almost the entirety of American music up to that point. Country, blues, pure rock, pop, it's all there. I hear gentility, beauty, wonder along with fury. I think the Hard Rain album is MUCH more angry and F.U. than 66.
He simply never had such a symbiotic releationship with another musician after Robbie. Although Scarlet Rivera comes close.
Anyway, both periods are 5 stars all the way.

I hear most of that in '66 too, except not as much country and it's not as congealed as '75, if that makes sense. And you're right, Hard Rain is definitely more FU than '66, but that record was taken from the '76 tour. It was mostly the same people and still Rolling Thunder by name, but it just wasn't the same as '75. I seem to remember something about Sara showing up in '76 and that it changed Dylan's mood completely. Anyway, I prefer the Bootleg Series Vol. 5 to Hard Rain. It's definitely my most-listened-to and enjoyed live Dylan document.

And yes, both periods ('66 and '75) are 5 stars, agreed.

Did any of you see The Bob Dylan Show in 2005? I'm curious about your thoughts...
[SNIP]
Any comments on the recent Dylan, say from Love And Theft on?

I saw Dylan last March at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland with Merle Haggard. He came out of the gate sounding ready and roaring, but he seemed to get tired a few songs into the set. Nonetheless, it was a good show, "Drifter's Escape" kicked butt, and the Love and Theft material sounded excellent. I really enjoy his last two studio records. If his next one is even half as good as those, we'll all have reason to celebrate.

Let me just say for the record that:

a) I think Bob was a tad better with Rolling Thunder than '66, and

b) I've had my head examined on numerous occasions, and the consensus in the medical community is that I am a normal, well-adjusted, intelligent human being with a few minor flaws like just about every other such person.

 


Seriously though, it's a matter of personal taste. The whole 'up yours' attitude of '66 is cool and yadda yadda, but it gets old real fast. I feel like, when listening to that stuff, that it was as far as the music could ever go. By the time of Rolling Thunder, he had stumbled onto something different, and every time I hear those recordings '75, I hear the sound of possibilities. Not just in the instrumentation or the storytelling of the lyrics or festive atmosphere, but in Bob's voice too. That typical anger and irony he had before sounds tempered with joy, fear and uncertainty all at the same time. Going from "Isis" to "Sara" will do that, I suppose. It was the sound of youthful energy colliding with added experience and facing adult problems and refusing to crash and burn. It should sound more depressing than it does, but fortunately it doesn't. Street-Legal would take care of that.

Except, of course, that Crazy Horse didn't release two completely ground-breaking albums that's a totally different animal than their compadre's music.

Oh yeah, agree with you there. The Band obviously connected on a far wider level apart from Bob than Crazy Horse did apart from Neil.

Personally though, my favorite live setting for Bob has been either Rolling Thunder or just Bob by himself. I remember Heylin seemed to like the Heartbreakers quite a bit, though I don't think I've heard a really good recording from that era to judge for myself. Were they that great as a backing band for Bob?

Right now I'm listening to the Sam Alito hearings.

But the last music I was listening to was "Truth Is The Light" by the Wood Brothers.

Finally got around to re-registering here...

I had Behind the Shades Revisited, and ate it right up. Maybe that explains why it disappeared after I moved.  Anyway, I didn't particularly take issue with Heylin's attitude towards the Band, probably because I've always thought they were a tad overrated. Kind of like the Crazy Horse to Bob's Neil Young -- they served his purposes just fine, like no one else could, but the pedestal could be put to better use elsewhere. If Before The Flood didn't sell well enough, personally I'd attribute it to that awful keyboard sound that ruins an otherwise very good live document.

Overall I thought the book was meticulously researched, enjoyable to read, brimming with all sorts of information, precisely the kind of thing I'd want to read. I didn't agree with Heylin's take on everything, but for the most part, I'd say it's a model of what a great, exhaustive, nearly definitive rock bio should be. Like Shakey (which also has its share of flaws, but hey, what doesn't).