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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 7, 2020 18:33:15 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#99 - Guy Clark - Picasso's Mandolin
Speaking of Guy Clark. This one is off the "Boats to Build" album. I'm not sure anyone but Guy Clark would write a country song about Pablo Picasso and his penchant for painting mandolins. Great song, co-written with Radney & Foster with excellent mandolin work by the great Sam Bush.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 8, 2020 12:47:05 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#98 - Joe Ely - Fools Fall in Love
The year was 1980 and for whatever reason it was decided that Joe Ely and his band would open for The Clash on their tour of the UK and Europe. Now Ely was fully capable of ratcheting up the Rock for The Clash's audience, but he went with a pretty normal Ely country-rock set. And, by all accounts, the audience ate it up. Someone had the foresight to record them live in London and the result is one of the best live country albums I've heard.
This track was written by frequent Ely collaborator and friend Butch Hancock. The track had originally appeared on Ely's third album "Down on the Drag" which is generally viewed as a bit of a let-down from stellar debut and sophomore albums. This song was one of two stand-out tracks (along with the Hancock penned "Standin' in a Big Hotel"). But this is the definitive version. It's a gem.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 9, 2020 10:15:48 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#97 - Merle & Willie - Don't Think Twice, it's Alright
In 2015 Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson entered the recording studio for what would be Hagg's last album. It's a gem. And this cut is fabulous. Two of the great songwriter's of the last half of the 20th Century sharing a track written by one of the others.
I'm very lucky I got to see both of them live and luckier I did so with my son. A great send-off for a great musician.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2020 11:12:12 GMT -5
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 9, 2020 14:26:43 GMT -5
To me it depends. For example, Steve Earle has done tribute albums to both Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark. But Steve was a protege of both those gentlemen and if anyone could do a tribute to them with proper reverence it's Steve Earle. Now this did make me wonder where the money from Guy's estate went (including royalties) since Susanna pre-deceased him and his only son died of lymphoma in 2017. I suppose he may have had grandchildren. I have a bit of a harder time with the recent release of the Townes Van Zandt album "Sky Blue." The tracks were recorded in 1973 but were never released until 2019 when Townes had been dead for twenty-two years. On the other hand it's kind of a great album and it definitely is historically interesting as a look at the development of a number of his songs in what was almost unquestionably the greatest period of his career. Which isn't really a great answer, but there we are.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2020 15:53:46 GMT -5
I like that the music is out there for people to experience, but do wonder at the financial exploitation aspects of it. But, for example, there was a lot of great Hendrix music released posthumously that we would be poorer for not having available to listen to, so in the end I an okay with stuff like that being released. I'd have liked to see the artists themselves (or their estates) benefit financially, but then if I boycotted all music that was released because the artist was screwed out of money on it, I wouldn't be able to listen to most of the stuff that was released by those artists when they were alive because record companies have always financially exploited the artists who signed to record with them. For example, lots of great blues artists in the mid-20th century has music released that they were exploited on, receiving a lump sum payment of payments in kind (cars or what have you) and never really saw a dime of the royalties of benefited from the financial success of the records. So the question becomes-where do you draw the line in the sand with what you will support and what you won't. And the tangential question is also-should companies stop releasing the older works of artists once they die since they are no longer around to receive the royalties? If I go out today and buy the album Scary Monsters by Bowie, the man isn't there to benefit from the royalties any more either, so what is the difference between them still releasing his old material and previously unreleased material in terms of who gets the royalties? Further, should people then not buy music second hand (i.e. used records, CDs or what have you) because the artists don't get any royalties from that whether they are alive or dead? It's an interesting question, but it opens up a whole can of worms on the ethics of the music industry an buying recorded music in its various forms. If your main concern is the artist benefiting form the recorded music, then second-hand music and keeping an artist's catalog available after they die become questionable practices. -M
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Post by beccabear67 on Jan 9, 2020 17:34:43 GMT -5
Posthumous albums are to be approached with great caution. One of the few I can recommend, though it's not their best, is Memories by Mimi & Richard Farina, collecting up just enough to fill one LP (with help from a couple Joan Baez tracks) after Richard dies riding back from his first book launch party on a motorcycle.
There are a couple of Hendrix cobbled together albums I've thought worth having (maybe thanks to the involvement of his producer/engineer Eddie Kramer), but a lot of them have been genuinely diminishing of his work being incomplete fragmentary things he never would have wanted released. Kramer worked with Bowie too, maybe his name would get me to check out something not envisioned by the artist...
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Post by beccabear67 on Jan 9, 2020 21:58:06 GMT -5
Oh yeah, I do know all releases of previously unreleased Gene Clark music has involved and benefited his two sons, and Pete Ham of Badfinger's daughter has likewise benefited and been involved in release of his demos. I think Gram Parsons' daughter is another (though not sure about all releases).
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2020 22:06:40 GMT -5
Posthumous albums are to be approached with great caution. One of the few I can recommend, though it's not their best, is Memories by Mimi & Richard Farina, collecting up just enough to fill one LP (with help from a couple Joan Baez tracks) after Richard dies riding back from his first book launch party on a motorcycle. There are a couple of Hendrix cobbled together albums I've thought worth having (maybe thanks to the involvement of his producer/engineer Eddie Kramer), but a lot of them have been genuinely diminishing of his work being incomplete fragmentary things he never would have wanted released. Kramer worked with Bowie too, maybe his name would get me to check out something not envisioned by the artist... I am of the mind that any version of a song is worth a listen, but then my views of songs are strongly influenced by Robert Fripp of King Crimson, who said (and I am paraphrasing here) the recorded song on the album is but a snapshot of where the song is at that moment and never a finished product. Music should continually evolve as the musician playing it evolves, and a static song is nothing but a corpse of a former piece of living music. So recordings of songs at various stages, whether fragmentary or not, are simply snapshots of where the musician and the song were at that time. So, as far as the posthumous Hendrix stuff goes, I like it as a snapshot of where Jimi was headed, even though he never arrived there due to his untimely death. But then I like hearing various versions of the song by artists at different stages of their career, I like hearing unproduced demos of songs that were later recorded, or outtakes from a recording session that weren't used, live versions that differ from recorded versions (especially from bands that improvise live like King Crimson or that have the jam band mentality like some incarnations of Ben Harper's bands live or DMB, or Robert Randolph and the Family Band, or Hendrix himself, or...) I often find the recorded version that was released on the album or as a single winds up being the least interesting version of the song (and in many cases is more the producer's vision of what the song should be rather than the artist's themselves). -M
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Post by berkley on Jan 9, 2020 22:32:49 GMT -5
I love the stripped-down sound of demos and often prefer them to the finished, fully-produced album versions - though I'm sure in many cases the artists would be horrified, after all the work they put into getting the final recorded version just the way they wanted it. Even if I still prefer the album version, I almost always find the demo interesting as an alternate take or early sketch.
So I'm all for releases of that kind of material, posthumous or not. I love the bonus tracks on these "deluxe" re-releases of old records, I'm a total sucker for that stuff.
What I do NOT like is when producers add musicians after the artist's death or without their approval, as I believe was the case in some of those posthumous Hendrix cds. Totally against that.
Here's an example of a Muffs demo that I just heard for the first time a few weeks ago, that I immediately liked better than the album version I'd been long familiar with (except for one little thing she does a couple times near the end with her vocals):
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Post by beccabear67 on Jan 10, 2020 0:06:04 GMT -5
Speaking of the amazing Fripp, one of the most interesting collections of demos I've ever heard are The Brondesbury Tapes by Giles, Giles & Fripp with Ian MacDonald and Judy Dyble! There are some amazing gems of the cutting room floor as it were... and now I'm thinking of other things like the Mugwumps album Warner Brothers put out when the Mamas & Papas were huge (Mugwumps had Cass Elliot, Denny Doherty, Zal Yanovsky and James Hendricks (folk singer/guitarist) with help from Jerry Yester and John Sebastian... or how about two albums of The Great Society Columbia released with Grace Slick on vocals and recorder, and Darby Slick on guitar, including the original version of White Rabbit and Somebody To Love? Perhaps the grand-daddy of them all though are the songs Buddy Holly recorded in New York City in his apartment. They added backing later by The Fireballs at the Petty studio, some people don't like that idea, but having heard the raw tapes I think they did an amazing job (unlike the two Threetles songs for Beatles Anthology which rate a meh, and an eep, and I'm a Jeff Lynne admirer).
Omnivore has put out some great Muffs packages, and also some previously unreleased Gene Clark with 'Sings For You', and also some of his demos with The Rose Garden are on their eponymous set. It's been an avalanche of Gene Clark in recent years, and Chris Bell (of Big Star) also!
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Post by beccabear67 on Jan 10, 2020 0:18:07 GMT -5
I am of the mind that any version of a song is worth a listen, but then my views of songs are strongly influenced by Robert Fripp of King Crimson, who said (and I am paraphrasing here) the recorded song on the album is but a snapshot of where the song is at that moment and never a finished product. Music should continually evolve as the musician playing it evolves, and a static song is nothing but a corpse of a former piece of living music. So recordings of songs at various stages, whether fragmentary or not, are simply snapshots of where the musician and the song were at that time. So, as far as the posthumous Hendrix stuff goes, I like it as a snapshot of where Jimi was headed, even though he never arrived there due to his untimely death. But then I like hearing various versions of the song by artists at different stages of their career, I like hearing unproduced demos of songs that were later recorded, or outtakes from a recording session that weren't used, live versions that differ from recorded versions (especially from bands that improvise live like King Crimson or that have the jam band mentality like some incarnations of Ben Harper's bands live or DMB, or Robert Randolph and the Family Band, or Hendrix himself, or...) I often find the recorded version that was released on the album or as a single winds up being the least interesting version of the song (and in many cases is more the producer's vision of what the song should be rather than the artist's themselves). -M If you are really into an artist of course you will want absolutely everything, alternate takes, whatever... I can get that with The Beatles and up to a point Hendrix... but taking stuff and heavily reworking it with new additions from people today... I find when I have heard a lot of that stuff it is really not right usually. I'd rather they did just release the raw demos. The closer to the time of the original recording any additions were made the better... one exception is they got Jerry Donahue and Gerry Conway in to finish up the second Fotheringay album that was incomplete when Sandy Denny left for a solo career. Also the overdubs added to Sounds Of Silence while Paul Simon was out of the country made it a big breakthrough hit. There is a whole set of albums on the other paw where the unreleased version is superior... Duncan Browne had an album with all kinds of orchestral overdubs added that didn't help, much better minus that, and a Pretty Things album, Emotions, far superior on almost every track without the overdubs. 'All Our Own Work' by Sandy & the Strawbs, also better sans the Joe Boyd directed overdubs, except on the one Sandy Denny original. So there are no hard rules, just there is a risk... taking a ten minute raw jam Hendrix was part of and adding new stuff decades later, almost sampling some of his licks repeatedly ala those hip hop versions of R.L.Burnside... not so good. I would say 90% of someone like Jimi H. and The Beatles was good, inverse to Sturgeon's Law. How many Robert Fripp level guitartist have there been? Do I want four CD sets of The Monkees 'Head' outtakes... would they even want them? Some stuff is just completist collector bait that possibly should be lived without by most ears.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 10, 2020 12:49:45 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#96 - Hayes Carll - None'ya
This one felt like a little bit of a surprise. But then I got to thinking about it and it wasn't that much of a surprise. This is the first track off Carll's 2019 album "What it is." As the first track of a new album from a musician I generally like it makes sense it got a number of listens.
Not that I love Hayes Carll. I generally like his work. On any given album I'll find one or two tracks that I really like and maybe another one that is okay. Not a huge fan, but he's just fine. And I'll always love him for writing "Drunken Poet's Dream" with Ray Wylie Hubbard. On the other hand, I'll never ever be able to forget the shade that Steve Earle spread on Carll when Carll hooked up with Alison Moorer.
Still...decent track that likely won't make a later years list.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 10, 2020 16:14:21 GMT -5
So every mon-wed-fri I read Tom Breihan's " The Number Ones", a chronological review of every US Billboard # 1 hit, graded on a 1 through ten scale. We're up to 1978. It's weird how many of these '70s songs I don't remember, how little of this super-popular music history I didn't know. Anyway, today I learned Donna Summer had her first # 1 hit with a cover of MacArthur Park. (The "Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain" song.) Which was also covered by Waylon Jennings, the Four Tops, Andy Williams, and the Pet Shop Boys. Oh, wait, this is the single edit. The original album cut is... eighteen minutes long. That seems excessive. It kind of blows my mind how all these '70s soft-rock ish hits have vanished from cultural memory. Soul and Funk and Rock and Disco and so-bad-it's-good novelty songs have stuck with us, but a lot of the MOR stuff is just gone. Kiss You All Over is pretty good!
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 10, 2020 16:21:57 GMT -5
It kind of blows my mind how all these '70s soft-rock ish hits have vanished from cultural memory. Soul and Funk and Rock and Disco and so-bad-it's-good novelty songs have stuck with us, but a lot of the MOR stuff is just gone. Kiss You All Over is pretty good! I assume by pretty good you mean godawful.
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