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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 5, 2020 17:54:40 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#88 - Zephaniah OHora - Way Down in My Soul
This is why I love Spotify and Pandora. OHora's 2017 album "This Highway" came up on my Discovery list at some point last year and I gave it a listen. I gave it a few listens. Because it's pretty good. This is the opening track so it is likely the only track that will hit the list, but it's a fine country song and OHora has an amazing vocal style.
Give it a listen. You'll probably be happy you did.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 6, 2020 12:03:06 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#87 - Jamey Johnson - In Color
This is not a song I should like. I'm generally not a sucker for hokey sentimentalism. And Jamey Johnson always kind of annoyed me. Not really by anything he did, but because of how the music press exalted him as the savior of country music. Certainly not his fault, but it grated. The fact that he was unable to sustain any kind of output didn't help. Again, not his fault. A guy is going to produce what he's going to produce, and I should be the last person to piss and moan about not actually creating. But there you are.
But this song really does hit all the feels. It takes me back to sitting with my Dad or Mom and going over the old family pictures and hearing about hunting and fishing trips with Grandpa and Grandma Schneider or what it was like for Grandma and Grandpa Sharratt to pack up a family and move half-way across country in hopes it would help keep Uncle Tim alive. Listening to Dad's chuckle as he told stories about Great-Uncles Judd and Bob and the stories they told about World War II.
So, yeah. I can be a sap. And sometimes you look back at those pictures and you see yourself sitting on a rock outcrop with your wife and you still have hair (it was the 80s and she had a LOT of hair) and it wasn't that far removed from riding down Overland with your buddies and maybe hokey sentimentalism isn't that bad once in a damn while.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2020 23:42:27 GMT -5
Started listening to a new music themed podcast called the 27 Club hosted by Jake Brennan. Each season will feature discussion and offer an in depth narrative of a musician who died at age 27. Season one, which is 3 episodes in, features Jimi Hendrix. Season two will feature Jim Morrison. I've listened to the first two episodes (episode 3 just dropped today), and it took me a little bit to get into it, but once I did I have enjoyed it quite a bit. Each episode runs about 35 minutes (with some ads). It is exploring the last year of Jimi' life, leading up to his tragic death, rather than a generic biography of Hendrix. It tries to examine some of the factors that lead to his tragic death. IT jumps around a little bit, diving into some stories in depth while skimming through some others, and the language is definitely NSFW. It doesn't shy away from Jimi's drug use or sexual encounters (but perhaps uses those lurid topics to draw some people in), which is another reason to be aware of where you are if you are listening to it.
Brennan also does another podcast called Disgraceland which focus on rock and roll themed true crime. I haven't listened to it, but heard ads for it and was intrigued, but hadn't taken the plunge, but then I heard the ad for this one, which just started last month and decided to give it a go. Both podcasts are through the I Heart Radio platform and are available free (hence the ads I guess). I am a big fan of Hendrix's music, and I know the broad strokes of his biography, but I have never delved that deeply into his life story, so I am discovering a lot of new as I listen. Might be of interest to anyone here who is also a Hendrix fan.
Of course, now I want to dig out and reread Charles Soule's 27 (First and Second Set) from Image (both great reads form Soule before he broke into mainstream big 2 comics and novels) essentially a horror story about the mystery and mystique of the 27 club.
-M
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 7, 2020 12:22:34 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#86 - Don Gibson - Sea of Heartbreak
A number two country hit in 1961 this song just runs through my family. I remember listening to Don Gibson with Dad. And while he and Gibson didn't look much alike if you look at the cover of either "Don Gibson Anthology" or "Girls, Guitars and Gibson" you can see the same attitude. I was still fairly young when Dad stopped smoking, but I still think of him with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. And, as I recall, the first album that my middle son purchased with an iTunes card for his iPod was a Don Gibson greatest hits album. Hell...I've spent half my life like a lost ship.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 11, 2020 13:13:43 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#85 - Webb Pierce - I Ain't Never
Most people don't realize (because who is left who'd remember) that Webb Pierce was one of the biggest country stars of the 1950s. He replaced Hank Williams when Hank was fired from the Opry and he was absolutely the biggest country star of the 50s after Williams died. Yeah we're talking pure country not rockabilly or proto-rock & roll.
I'm not sure what exactly precipitated this song ending up here. It just did. And that's okay. It's a good bit of honky tonk and was Pierce's last super big hits before his chart success waned in the 60s and beyond.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 12, 2020 15:39:43 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#84 - Townes Van Zandt - Tecumseh Valley
This will not be the last song by Townes to appear on this list. I listened to a lot of his music last year for a number of reasons, not least of which is that he's one of the best songwriters of the last half of the 20th Century and that he's one of the starting points for alt-country/americana music.
This song is one of his best and it had a rather rambling history. It initially appeared on Townes' first album "For the Sake of the Song" a 1968 album that was horrendously over-produced by Cowboy Jack Elliot. Townes revisited it a year later on "Our Mother the Mountain" again produced by Cowboy Jack, but with a lighter hand.
But really Townes was at his best live and unaccompanied or with just a few friends ("Together at the Bluebird Cafe" with Guy Clark and Steve Earle is brilliant). So I'm attaching the version from "Live at the Old Quarter" because I think it's by far Townes' greatest album and that this is the definitive version of one of his most beautiful and haunting songs.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 14, 2020 13:11:13 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#83 - Wayne "The Train" Hancock - Kansas City Blues
Man I love Wayne Hancock. Hancock's work is unabashedly retro without sounding dated or coming across as a hipster wannabe. This is a great cover of the Ernest Tubb classic with a little extra Bob Wills thrown in. If Hancock had been playing in the late 40s, early 50s he'd have been a star. As it is he's a great link to the great music of the past.
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Post by rberman on Feb 15, 2020 1:00:13 GMT -5
The post about the songwriting artistry of Townes Van Zandt reminded me of the great Loudon Wainwright III, father of Rufus.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 26, 2020 10:42:42 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#82 - Kris Kristofferson - Darby's Castle
Speaking of Kris. This cut from his debut album is not one of the biggest or best known. But it is one of the most poignant. This was originally recorded by Roger Miller (yes he did more than funny songs). But Kristofferson's world-weary voice adds resonance to the story of a man so obsessed with material things he loses what is important. Some of us can relate.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 27, 2020 16:53:11 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#81 - Johnny Paycheck - I'm Only Hell (Momma Ever Raised).
Well...Mom raised a few hell-raisers. Johnny Paycheck is criminally underrated. Some of which is almost certainly due to his legal problems. Billy Sherrill was able to keep Paycheck from straying into the kind of parody work that would haunt David Allan Coe while letting him foster a rougher edge than he had before signing with Epic. Well...until the next album when Paycheck would take a Coe penned song deep into cartoonish parody. But this one hits the sweet spot between the polished sound of of his time at Little Darlin' and full-on outlaw sound which Paycheck really couldn't pull off.
Slide Off Your Satin Sheets was Paycheck's last great album. And notwithstanding the monster hit to come, this was his last great single.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 28, 2020 12:10:38 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#80 - Johnny Cash - For the Good Times
Kris again...well as songwriter.
American VI: Ain't No Grave came out in early 2010 and was one of the last CDs I ever bought. June Carter died during these sessions and Cash was well aware that his time was short due to the complications of Parkinson's disease. It gives the entire album a sense of finality. It ended up being Cash's last album.
This is one of Kristofferson's greatest compositions. And Cash makes it his own, taking a song about the end of a love affair and transforming it into a song about the end of the love of a lifetime and the end of a great life.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 2, 2020 14:02:15 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#79 - Joshua Ray Walker - Working Girl
I'm pretty sure that Joshua Ray Walker's album "Wish You Were Here" was the 2019 album I listened to the most (the new Country Side of Harmonica Sam didn't come out until December).
Walker is a little hard to quantify. The album itself is definitely country. A lot of it is the kind of country that you might have heard coming out of better radios in the 70s. But he also has writing chops beyond his years and hits some serious Americana notes on some of his better songs.
This one, subject wise, puts you in mind of the kind of thing that Jason Isbell excels at. Walker isn't there yet. But he is capable, even on his first album of delivering Gut-Punch music.
If you haven't listened to him, do it. One of the best albums of last year.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 3, 2020 11:46:06 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#78 - Slaid Cleaves - Already Gone
Cleaves is one of the better and more consistent Folk/Americana singer-songwriters. This was the opener off his most recent album 2017's "Ghost on the Car Radio." In a better world Cleaves would be as big as Sturgell Simpson. In a better time, he'd at least be seeing big names come in and cut his songs (as happened with Guy Clark and Townes) because he's a great song-writer.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 4, 2020 12:50:22 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#77 - Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens - Streets of Bakersfield
I'm a huge Dwight Yoakam fan. And getting to have he and Buck together is just pure joy and love. Add in Flaco Jimenez and you get a true Norteño tune for those of us who are lily damn white.
Dwight always wore his influences on his sleeve and his efforts to keep the Bakersfield sound alive have been amazing (his show Greater Bakersfield on Sirius Radio is excellent).
And FLACO JIMENEZ is a damn National Treasure.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 5, 2020 10:56:43 GMT -5
Top songs of 2019
#76 - George Jones - Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes
Ah man...nostalgia overload. This one hit in 1985 and you can argue that it was ill-timed as a number of the performers that are name-checked in the song (Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash) still had decades of great performances left.
And frankly there is still a ton of great music out there (though Sturgeon's Law applies). It's definitely harder to find. And it's decidedly not mainstream. But it's there.
Still this is a good song by Troy Seals and a great interpretation by Jones.
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