Johnny Cash – Unearthed: Disc 2: Trouble In Mind

As promised, we’re going to go into the second disc’s worth of “outtakes and alternative versions” from Johnny Cash’s “American Recordings” era, called Unearthed:

When speaking on Cash’s second American album, Unchained, I remarked that Johnny Cash with a band, with his voice still as strong as ever, was a uniquely powerful sound for the aging troubador. This album (or part of an album, I suppose) focuses mainly on that era during the recording of Unchained, but with a slightly different feel than what would become Cash’s second American album.

Whereas American Recordings, the first American album by American Johnny Cash, was a bit on the dark and conemplative side, Unchained was a lot of full-band fun, with occasional bits of introspection. The outtakes to this album reflect that, but the songs selected for Trouble In Mind are mainly light-hearted and some just seem random. Like with the previous disc, Who’s Gonna Cry, we’re treated to a much more laid-back environment, with studio banter being left in, and some interesting guest performers who stopped by the studio to record some stuff.

All in all, it kind of reminds me of my experience growing up with a great guitarist for a father. He was in a lot of bands, and I expressed an interest in hanging out at practices, since I wasn’t old enough at the time to go to the gigs. A lot of times, “practice” would just become rattling off all kinds of songs, whatever everybody knew or could make up easily.  The whole process of a bunch of knowledgable, older guys getting together and just playing a bunch of songs seems to really be all over this particular disc.

First off, however, we get something rather unique in a song called “Pocahontas”. The song was written by Neil Young and is, in fact, the first Young song ever covered by Cash, though the two have worked together before (on exactly one song, in 1994, a 10 minute version of the terrible Christmas song “The Little Drummer Boy”). “Pocahontas” may seem like a weird choice for Cash, considering the song is really surreal and seemingly out-of-character for the Man In Black, but therein lies the beauty. For one, it’s a really good song, and the instrumentation is top notch. It even has those roaring low cello notes that would become quite the feature in Cash’s final album. For two, with the song being way out of Cash’s lyrical comfort zone, already one gets the feeling that this recording simply doesn’t care if you think Cash should be singing these songs, he just is. Later in the album, Cash decided to do a second Neil Young song, this time one of his most famous: “Heart Of Gold”.

The second song is a little more like it, and is called “I’m A Drifter”. The song is a manly song of drifting from town to town, which makes it kind of odd that it was written by Dolly Parton. Sure enough, the song is only manly because it’s Cash singing it, and he almost never minds singing songs that were originally written by women, almost to a fault.

Another interesting choice in song would be a rockabilly song by Roy Orbison called “Down The Line”. The song is done up in true rockabilly fashion, with some swingin’ drums and that infamous up-and-down bass-line, and perhaps the weird thing about the song is that it’s kind of an arrogant “love her and leave her” kind of song with antiquated verbiage throughout:

Well you can’t be my lovin’ baby
You ain’t got the style
I’m gonna get some real gone love
That’ll drive a cool cat wild

Again, not the kind of song you’d expect to hear by Johnny Cash, but it’s really fun and I’m glad he recorded it.

As if the album wasn’t weird enough already, now we have something that I’m still puzzling over. The song is “As Long As The Grass Shall Grow”, which is a Peter La Farge song written for Cash for his 1964 album Bitter Tears: Ballads Of The American Indian, or so you would think. Actually, the song has been entirely re-written except for the chorus. The original song, as you know (or will know when I write this album up), is about the U.S. breaking their peace treaty with the Senecas as one of the many instances of genocide on the Indians that our nation was built on. The song is tragic and thought-provoking, but in an even more thought-provoking move, Cash re-wrote the song to be about him and June Carter and how they met and how they’d be together forever. The bitter ballad of the American Indian is now a love song, and a really good one at that. I don’t know what to make of the idea of it all, but I do enjoy the song, and it’s one of the very last times June Carter would sing on a Johnny Cash recording (though she came out with a last album in 2003 that featured Cash, so it’s not the last time they sang together or anything).

At some point, the King Of Rockabilly and one of Cash’s best friends and long-time collaborators (going all the way back to his Sun days), Carl Perkins, stopped by the studio to throw out a couple of tracks and teach Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (who were Cash’s backing band for Unchained) how to play Rockabilly. The two songs that Perkins plays with Cash are just magical, first off is “Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby”, which is a Perkins near-original about having stacks of women throwing themselves at you (a problem many of us have dealt with). Second is an excellent Chuck Berry song that goes by the name of “Brown Eyed Handsome Man”.

We then get a song that’s kind of “hokey” for Cash, called “T For Texas”, by Jimmie Rodgers. The story behind this song being included is that it’s a favorite of Rick Rubens and he spent a considerable amount of time begging Cash to sing that one, whereas Cash wasn’t too fond of the song. Ruben finally got his way, however, and the version really isn’t bad at all, I am just kind of with Johnny on this one.

A song that got stuck in my head like crazy the other day had me reeling and agonizing over who sang it. I thought it might have been Warren Zevon, or someone else, but it turned out to be Johnny Cash singing Steve Earle’s “The Devil’s Right Hand” with no accompaniment but a lone, bouncy electric guitar. The song is so catchy that it was able to get in my head without me first knowing it was a song Johnny Cash sang, and that is some powerful catchiness (great lyrics, too).

The last 4 tracks are just alternate versions of songs that appeared on the first American album and another version of “I’m A Drifter”. The final song is a real treat, though, as it’s Johnny Cash with a huge orchestra playing Leonard Cohen’s “Bird On The Wire”. There is some banter before the song that is pretty hilarious too, but that’s just icing on the cake of it being a really majestic performance of a wonderful song.

So yes, Trouble In Mind contains some of the high points of the collection, and the highest point of Cash’s powers within his American recordings. Like with the period after Unchained, we’ll soon hear the declining Cash singing despite his health, and the songs are all the better for it. Until then!

King Crimson – Red

Today’s been a hectic day for me, as I am in the process of moving back to Austin after a relatively unsuccessful “break” here in my hometown. It’ll be nice to get back to business, but the whole packing and loading trucks thing has caused undue delay in today’s album writing. I will say, at least, that I knew what I was going to write about at least since yesterday. I really wanted to give King Crimson another shot, and in keeping with my seemingly chaotic treatment of their chronology, am going to talk about their “final” album before first breaking up in 1974. So here we go, here’s King Crimson’s aptly-named Red:

I have been listening to King Crimson for a while now, and I really only feel like I barely know them. I don’t know, maybe because there’s just so much to know (one could easier learn French than recall all of the personnel shifts this band went through), and also because the music is still a little bit over my head. Even though the Red album is centered around the band being a “trio” (plus 1 or 5 other musicians at various points), some of this stuff is so confusing that I have to listen to it about 5 times through just to get this far into the writeup.

Last we left the band (chronologically), they had just put out one of their best works, Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, featuring some brilliant musicianship, thanks in no small part to the fantastic lineup they had going for them in the aftermath of pretty much everyone in the band but Robert Fripp circa the Islands album being eaten by bears.

Alas, the lineup of guitarist/fearless leader Robert Fripp, bassist/vocalist John Wetton, drummer extraordinaire Bill Bruford, stay-at-home lyricist Richard Palmer-James, and red-shirt cadets Jamie Muir and David Cross (no relation to the comedian) would start to dwindle after the Larks’ Tongues experience. First, Jamie Muir would have some kind of mental problem and wind up leaving the band unexpectedly to a nearby bear-filled forest, and after an album weirdly called Starless And Bible Black, violinist David Cross apparently got voted off the team for reasons Wikipedia seem hesitant to go into. I’d say it was probably to save the young man’s life from all these wild animals running rampant.

When the time came to make a new album, the remaining three members weren’t exactly in the best shape. Fripp had gone all spiritual and was under the impression that the world was about to end (what he might have been actually seeing was the decline of Prog Rock around 1978), and was at odds with Bruford and Wetton, who were rocking out too hard on stage, a cardinal sin in the Prog world, seemingly.

Now, while this may sound slightly similar to a story reported on yesterday, the decline of King Crimson was actually not necessarily a bad thing, because Red is a fantastic album. Instead of two albums’ worth of half-nonsense, the entire album is contained within 5 tracks, all of which contain some of the best elements of the Crimson sound up to that point, without so much of that pesky avant-garde filler that would sometimes take up entire albums (see: Lizard). This could be said to be influenced somewhat by Fripp’s lack of asserting control over the whole thing, leaving a lot of the production work to Bruford and Wetton, who just shrugged and proceeded made the thing rock.

It starts out with an aptly-named instrumental called “Red”, which uses a “whole-tone scale”, a scale so secret that I dare not try and describe it to you. Basically, it sounds a little bit like a standard song, if that song was right around the corner waiting to kill you. Yeah, the song has this crazy dissonance to it that kind of gives it a creepy effect, but various changes in the structure put things back in the proper “rock” category, and then of course there’s a section for cellos, possibly included to signal the approach of wild bears.

“Fallen Angel” brings up the end of the album’s first half, and is the first song on the album to feature lyrics. These lyrics are pretty dire, about the death of the singer’s little brother who tried to follow in the singer’s footsteps (or motorcycle tracks, as apparently the “Angel” is meant to mean the “Hell’s Angels”). Moreso than the death of an idiot, what might bring a tear to your eye about this song is that it’s the final one to include the poor acoustic guitar, as Fripp would eventually burn all of his acoustic guitars and only use electric ones from there on out. What’s next, burning all the mellotrons too?

The album’s centerpiece is another song that sounds like it wants to murder you, this one going by the name of “One More Red Nightmare”. Still, this song is immensly fun, with a very strong vocal performance from Wetton, and some of the catchier drum sounds to come out of Bruford in this period, at least in my ears.

The next song is “Providence”, named after the Rhode Island town in which the song was performed (mostly via improvisation) live. This song features David Cross’ violin opening the thing before it starts to go off into this “little bits of instruments coming in and playing random noise” series of tangents that could sound like a brilliant piece of musical art, but most days of the week winds up sounding a bit like a “shreds video“. Really though, I do like the song, especially when the beat comes in and the whole thing sort of comes together.

Then finally, we get a song “Starless”, which might confuse some people since it contains the lyric “Starless and Bible black”, which is the name of the previous album, which has a song with the same title. I’m still not quite clear on this one myself, apparently they wrote the song for the previous album, but scrapped it in favor of a 9 minute instrumental that’s still pretty good, and then decided to put the song on their next album in its full form? Either way, this song is my favorite vocal melody of all 3 songs on this album that contain vocals, and the inclusion of some of the Islands players give this song a very “original King Crimson” sound, which is always a good sound to have.

Of course, this extremely strong set of songs wasn’t enough to hold the band together. If anything, this album’s greatness was just a coincidence. Fripp wound up disbanding the King Crimson before this album was even released, and famously remarked that the band was “completely over for ever and ever.” It turns out that “for ever and ever” is more like a few years, as the band would bounce back with an all new sound and cast in the 80′s, but we’ll have to get into that another day. Until then!

The Beatles – The Beatles

Well since we’re nearing the end of the year and all these silly album writeups, it’s about time we finished the latter half of The Beatles’ discography with one of their most famous albums, which is self-titled but for reasons that should be fairly understandable, is also called “The White Album”:

Ok that’s really confusing since I’m typing this against a white backround…

The Beatles was an album that arrived after the puzzlingly “best album of all time” Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the clearly better (well to me anyway) Magical Mystery Tour. While those two albums were born out of an era of The Beatles’ career where they had ceased touring and were only making “studio albums”, the difficult sessions they started after leaving for a trip to India, during which their manager died, was the beginning of the end of the group in general. In fact, drummer Ringo quit the group for a couple of weeks, and some reports state that the other members quit at various points too.

Still, the band carried on, and eventually recorded and released their only double album, which after 15 months of waiting from the fans (about 13 months more than usual given the speed at which most artists were coming out with albums in those days), sailed straight to #1 and remained there even after they released another album. I guess it’s not so bad to have an album at #1 and #2, if anyone would be familiar with having the gold AND silver medals, it would be The Beatles, owning 4 of the top 10 spots on Rolling Stones’ 500 Best Examples Of How Bad We Are At Making Lists.

This album, in fact, is supposedly the 10th best album ever made. I strongly contest that on the grounds that it would only be a good album in my book if half the songs were thrown away or, I don’t know, slapped onto Yellow Submarine to make that album somehow worse.

See, I love about half of this album with all my music-loving heart. It’s got some legendary songs on it, and some really interesting experiments at work, but for every “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, there’s a “The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill”.

Unlike when I attempted to deflate Sgt. Peppers some time back (which I still stand by, I still love the album but still don’t consider it anywhere near “best”), I actually took the time to read extensively about this particularly white album, and I tried to look at it based on its place in The Beatles’ career, in the world of pop music at large (which might as well had been called Variations On Beatles Music at large), and how I felt about it simply based on what I hear with my ears versus what I read with my eyes. My conclusion about this album is very genuine: about half of it would have made it the 10th best Beatles album.

The album just goes off into so many random directions. The weird thing is, each member, despite not really being that interested in working with each other (though quite interested in complaining about “not being included” as they frequently weren’t), has their own part to play in this album’s irritating bits. Even George Harrison, who is usually the most sensible guy of the group (or at least the least-prone-to-make-silly-clarinet-songs-like-McCartney of the group) wrote an especially irritating number called “Piggies” which is about as subtle as car crash. Still, on this very album, ol’ George composed “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, and “Long, Long, Long”, and “Savoy Truffle”, the last of which, perhaps, is a bit iffy but is actually a favorite of mine (not just because They Might Be Giants covered it, either).

Another oddity is a bit of a flip on the usual formula: McCartney wrote a song I really like, and Lennon wrote one I kind of slap my head about. Beatle Paul actually has a few good hits on this one, but his general style (“Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da”, “Birthday”) doesn’t sit well with me, and those are here too. The good ones are “Helter Skelter”, which despite being used as the soundtrack to some mass murders, is a really interesting and invigorating tune, considering the time period and the dude writing the thing. Sure, it’s noisy and wrong, but it feels so right.

Still, in the same album he also wrote and recorded “Rocky Raccoon”, and the less said about that, the better.

Let’s not forget that the “White Album” introduced a young fella named Yoko Ono to the mix. On top of having a vocal presence on the album for a line or two, her bat-shit insanity and total lack of musical responsibility caused something like “Revolution 9″ to happen. Based on a previous song on the album, “Revolution 1″ by Lennon, which is actually really good, “Revolution 9″ is a lot of noise and repetition and more noise, for 8 1/2 minutes straight. Now, this whole “avant-garde” thing is not something I’m strictly opposed to, you may have noticed me speaking highly of it in yesterday’s writeup, but “Revolution 9″ is non-music. Music is tone and time, it’s really hard to mess that up. You take a tone, and repeat, and that could technically be considered a song, though a really terrible one. “Revolution 9″ can’t be called a terrible song, only a terrible assortment of sounds arranged, with no real care, against the swelling sense of importance of whomever thought it would be a great idea to include this waste of time on an album that was already far too long.

The thing is, one must look hard and sternly at one’s self when it comes to deciding whether to knock an album like this that gets universally good ratings and was a huge seller for years. When I think about whether an album that sings about the U.S.S.R., then birthdays, then weird fictional characters, then doing it in the middle of the road, then making random noises at you for many minutes, and then ending with Ringo slurpingly whispering “good-night” to you against the cheesiest Wall Of Strings I’ve ever heard is a good album or bad album, I have to look at the intentions of who put this stuff together. Sure, knocking an album for being all over the place would probably make me the pretentious one here, but I am almost certain that no band of people came together and decided unanimously that this was the work they wanted to put out there for the world. I’m thoroughly convinced that the “White Album”, despite having a lot of moments I consider to be the group’s(?) strongest, is an album that was born out of compromises and conciliatory shrugging. A drugged-out band (oh yeah I forgot to mention they were on a lot of drugs. Lennon was doing heroin!) without a manager, being forced to come to a democratic consensus on what to do with their time, and this is what came of it.

“10th Best Album Ever” my eye.

Anyway, things would unfortunately get worse for The Beatles before ending in a fizzle. We already heard about Abbey Road, brilliant thing that it is, which was made when the situation was worse but everyone at least got a little wiser about it. Still, before the year’s out, we’re going to have to see what happens when The Beatles meet Phil Spector. Until then!

David Bowie – Aladdin Sane

I really wanted to represent David Bowie somewhere on this weblog at some point, because the guy is just so damn cool. Unfortunately, I’m a bit of a newcomer to his sound, and I don’t actually have (though I have heard) his Ziggy Stardust album. I do, however, have his so-called “sequel” album to that, Aladdin Sane, so I guess we’d better talk about it then:

Really, I probably should have picked a more popular Bowie album to heap praises upon, but I haven’t heard anything from the man I haven’t liked yet, and this album is no exception. It’s the direct follow-up to Ziggy Stardust, and has been treated as a “sequel” by people who like to use the word “sequel” when it comes to albums. The actual writing of the songs that weren’t already written by The Rolling Stones were written while Bowie was on tour promoting his hugely popular previous album.

Having just started reading about this album, it seems that critics can’t seem to make anything of it. Some think it’s half terrible, and others think it’s half brilliant. Personally, I don’t know enough about David Bowie to hate any of this album. I think the songs themselves are really great, and who knows maybe there’s some “derivative” work here, I’m too busy enjoying the whole thing to care. So, as opposed to being “fair” or “critical” of this album, which really isn’t my style anyway, I’ll tell you what I like about it.

The album caught my attention immediately when I blasted “Watch That Man”, because I had to check my Winamp, thinking “Oh sorry that’s The Rolling Stones”. Turns out I’m wrong! It’s a guitar and piano blues-rock fest much in the style of something the Stones would have done (indeed Bowie was something at least one of the Stones has done ooooooh that’s freaky). Indeed, the voice is unmistakably Bowie, unmistakably buried underneath the mix, and I was quite confused by this, so I checked Wikipedia and it turns out they agree with me on both counts. Well, Bowie or Stones, I love this kind of music, I don’t care who’s making it.

I will say, however, that the second track is where the album really comes alive for me. The title track  had me thinking one thing and one thing alone: “Holy crap what a piano solo!” As it turns out, this is the most cliché thing I could have possibly thought to myself about this song, as Bowie reportedly has never gone a week without being asked about the piano solo on this particular song. It has to be heard to be believed, folks. Basically, it’s the most messed up, musically complex to the point of seeming random piece of piano work I’ve ever heard, and I’m a Gentle Giant fan, kids. It sounds basically like a cat chasing a helicopter around the keyboard. The rest of the song is awesome too, but really this is one of those stand-out piano tracks. Just… try to refrain from asking Bowie himself about it, he’s probably sick of that now.

Similarly, “Time” is a track that heavily leans on piano, recalling a kind of rag-time era sound, only more bizarre and manic. As if that wasn’t enough, there are dual guitars, which is always fun. This song isn’t the only use of old-timey sounds either, “Drive-In Saturday” recalls a kind of doo-wop sound if it were done in the year 2000 (the future) with the sounds of lasers and flying cars like what we have. It’s also about people learning how to have sex from pornography, which is pretty cool I guess!

Speaking of The Rolling Stones and piano and lasers, those are about the only 3 words I can legally use to describe Bowie’s cover of “Let’s Spend The Night Together”, but at the risk of legal prosecution, I will also say that this cover is way better than the original at least by virtue of being way faster and Bowie-tastic.

One song that really resonated well with me is the final track, “Lady Grinning Soul”. When I think about what the words “avant-garde” mean to me, I often come up with the wrong definition, but the music I picture is a lot like this tune. It’s an ultra-smooth minor-key tune with echoey vocals, excellent instrumentation bringing in horns and really fancy piano (seriously this may be one of my favorite “piano” albums ever) against an acoustic guitar and delicate bass-line. The melody is to die for, and though people say things like “James Bond” when they mention the melody, I don’t really hear it, but I’m not a big Bond fan I guess.

Oh, and before I forget, there is another song that also struck quite a chord with me, the Bo-Diddley-beat-driven “Panic In Detroit” (have I ever mentioned how much I love the Diddley beat?) The song has a great vocal melody (albeit pushed way in the background again), and a great use of the legendary bomp-bomp-bomp … bomp-bomp beat, but the real star of the show is the amazing guitar solo that eats its way into the song in the last minute. It’s not that it’s a technically proficient guitar solo (it’s basically noise), but that noise is just beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful noise, the song that appears right after that, “Cracked Actor”, is kind of a mess. I do enjoy the song, but yeah guitar feedback kind of crowds the foreground at various points, and harmonica (which can easily be mistaken for more guitar feedback) fills things up as well. I like the song, all right, it’s just one that you may have to turn down for Grandma, is all I’m saying, especially since it’s all about prostitutes, and your Grandma would probably not want to be reminded of her past.

Anyway, that’s all but a couple of songs, but those songs are good too. Again, I’m finding it really hard to say anything overtly negative about this album. About the worst that anyone can come up with is that it’s not Ziggy Stardust and really, there are many worse albums by many worse artists that hold that same distinction.

So, until next time!

Weird Al Yankovic – The Food Album

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! On this fine day, Americans from all over the world gather together to celebrate the magic of food. Though we traditionally like to carve up turkey and make stuffing (finally, a food named after the verb that goes along with it), and craaaaaanberry sauce, thanks to The Food Network and the American Dream (and those terrible vegetarians like uhh, Weird Al), we can pretty much eat anything we want on Thanksgiving, provided of course we eat too much of it.

So, in the spirit of the true meaning of Thanksgiving, which is food and the promise of genocide, I might as well talk about Weird Al and his Food Album:

Of course, I originally had not planned on talking about this album, because it’s a compilation, but I evntually figured something out. Basically, hardly any Weird Al albums are actually albums, per se, because of the nature of his work. The music wasn’t written to contain any kind of cohesion or agreement, because he didn’t write the music. Thus, a collection of singles about a single topic, despite being recorded all over the 80′s and 90′s, is as close to a proper album as anything else. Heck, the word “album” is right there in the title so I have no problem.

As Weird Al’s food-based parodies tend to be some of his most famous, this album is quite good despite its ho-hum rating from Allmusic, which cites that it has too many songs about food on it (thanks, Allmusic). Also, as I mentioned in my last writeup of Weird Al, it’s the first CD I ever owned, as I only had cassettes before that (and now I feel old).

The first song is one of Weird Al’s best and most cited (thanks to its amazing video), the Michael Jackson parody “Fat”. Really, I could tell you what this parody of “Bad” is all about, but I think Wikipedia description is better than anything I could do:

“About a man’s obesity that is blown out of proportion.”

Either way, it’s certainly one of those songs that really sort of makes me unable to really appreciate the original anymore because it’s not hilarious. Such is the way with most Weird Al parodies, really.

The second song is a parody of one of the most annoying songs I’ve ever heard, “La Bamba”, which is now about a food item very close to a certain America’s Favorite Cat, “Lasagna”. The song is presumably based on the understanding that, if you visit an Italian person’s home and have dinner with them, you will wind up eating everything in their house. This is presented in “La Bamba”s typical over-the-top Flamenco-ness, which oddly translates really well into Italian, mainly thanks to Al’s extraordinary accordion chops. What Al does extraordinarily well is over-the-top Italian accents, as that is the main joke of the song. Still, I quite enjoy this one, especially for the accordion solo half way through.

“Addicted To Spuds” is based on Robert Palmer’s “Addicted To Love”, which was a big song in the 80′s or something. I actually quite like this song, either version, which kind of goes against my rampant 80′s-hatin’. Again, Wikipedia’s summary of the song is better than anything I could come up with:

“About a man’s fondness for potatoes prepared in an assortment of ways.”

There is a particular line that says “I used to hate them, now they’re all that I eat”, and I can relate to that, because I used to hate potatoes when I was a kid, and I think everyone goes through that phase at some point. Mind you, I’m no addict, I can quit any time!

One of my favorite songs on the collection is “I Love Rocky Road“, a parody of The Arrows’ song “I Love Rock N’ Roll” as covered by Joan Jett. As with many songs from Al’s first album (and one to come in this collection), this one features much original and less “authentic” reproduction of the original music and much more accordion and “manualism” provided by the legendary “Musical Mike” Kiefer. “Manualism” is, of course, just a fancy way of saying “making farty noises with your hands”, and this wouldn’t be the last time he would work with Al.

Another really great one is “Spam”, from the song “Stand” by R.E.M. I’ve never heard the original, so I don’t really know what’s been changed, but as far as songs about certain “ham and pork” products go, this one is tops. In particular, there are some subtle lyrical jokes that always crack me up, like the lines:

The tab is there to open the can
The can is there to hold in the Spam

Which is just kind of awesome.

The “other” Michael Jackson parody is next, this time we’ve got “Eat It“, which also features an awesome music video. The song itself is a brilliant parody, utilizing wordplay masterfully in mocking the “tough guy” attitude of “Beat It” with the words of a parent scolding a fussy eater of a child. Having heard both versions, I actually quite like the speedy guitar solo in Weird Al’s version, which is played by American Rick Derringer (who, in my mind, insists on having “American” incorporated into his name), as opposed to Jackson’s version featuring Eddie Van Halen. Not to say anything negative about Van Halen, he is in fact the only good thing about the band Van Halen. On a personal note, I have stolen the “amplifier exploding” gag for a song I wrote, as I have no shame.

The next song is one man’s obsession with the stuff in the middle of an Oreo, “The White Stuff”. A pretty cool take on “The Right Stuff” by New Kids On The Block, there is a certain line I always mixed up in this song, which cracked me up originally because I thought he was singing:

I love the filling most
I rub it on my roast
Mix it in with my coffee
And spread it on my toes

He is, in fact, saying “toast”, which is ok but I would have thought a more “Weird Al” move would have taken love of sandwich cookie filling to that kind of level. Interestingly, the song actually never saw the light of day as a single because the record companies held it back for being too outdated (the original having already been out for 4 years). It’s no wonder Weird Al has been so quick to embrace the digital age and its instant-release capabilities.

We then get the other song from Weird Al’s debut album, “My Bologna”, a play on the creepy classic “My Sharona”. Again, the instrumentation is much more accordion-centric, with more “manualism” from Musical Mike. In that sense, the song is actually tonally really enjoyable, I don’t know what it is about accordions in rock music, but this one’s great, at least until the middle eight which is puncuated by a loud belch.

The song “Taco Grande” is one of those that displays Al’s uncanny rapping ability. Of course, the “rap” is more of that sort of Latin pop style used for the original song, “Rico Suave”. The whole thing takes place in a Mexican restaurant with an actual Mexican (Cheech Marin!) providing a hilarious and probably authentic run-down of the menu.

Finally, we get Survivor’s “Eye Of The Tiger” played off as “Theme from Rocky XIII (The Rye or the Kaiser)”. It’s about a disgraced ex-boxer, now “fat and weak”, who runs the neighborhood deli. The song is perhaps the least “funny” out of everything on the collection, as it seems more bent on recreating the original to be about something else rather than making the song all that funny, but maybe I’m just picking on it. An interesting point about this song is that it seemed to predict the plot of the newest Rocky Balboa film, as the character is working in a deli in the beginning of the movie.

Phew! So that’s a lot of words for a 10 song album, but I do rather enjoy listening to this one from time to time. Sure, it’s more fun to watch the videos, but The Food Album showcases some really good stuff from our favorite musical parodist. Happy T-day, everyone! Enjoy the leftovers!

Puscifer – V Is For Vagina

The other day, an unexpected message came in over the wire. I was invited by a friend to attend a Puscifer show in Dallas, as Neil Hamburger was opening and this friend knew I’d want to see Neil again. So, whereas many of my friends would have loved to go to this event, I got to enjoy it on a whim for free.

Speaking of free, on the way out of the show, I was given a free copy of Puscifer’s debut CD, V Is For Vagina, so I figured what the hell:

First off, if you haven’t heard of this band before, congratulations, you somehow know less about popular music than I do. By definition, Puscifer is Maynard James Keenan’s solo project. As the lead singer of Tool, Keenan is passive-aggressively resentful of his fans. I can only imagine that he might have tried to start A Perfect Circle (his one-time “other band”) to try and get away from the crazy black-clad obsessed fans who attest that he totally gets them, man. Either way, A Perfect Circle didn’t lose him any fans (I have yet to run into someone who will love one and not also love the other), so I am thinking he figured this Puscifer thing would get him as far away from those fans as possible. Really, I would say it worked, because I saw a few empty seats at the venue I went to, most people in the center section where I sat stayed seated, and oh yeah the sound of the music was different than Tool.

I say “different”, but the old saying is true: you can take the Maynard out of the Tool, but you can never take the Tool out of the Maynard (probably why he’s so grumpy all the time). I went into the show fully expecting something stupid and gross that would at least make a passing shot at humor. Indeed, all of those elements were there, and in fact it was a really fun show for reasons I’ll get into in a minute, but the actual sound is “Tool meets hip hop”.

This summary of the sound really mostly applies to the album. As I listen to it, I am hearing these stale, programmed/processed drums, sludgy bassy instruments, and Maynard singing an octave lower than he should. At the actual show, he not only had a fine drummer who was throwing out some “sick beats”, as they call it, but Tim Alexander (the drummer for Primus for their more successful years) pounding on other, larger drums on the other side of the stage. That, and he was singing in his normal register, which worked a lot better for the songs, and had lots more instrumental assistance. That was a really great sound, and should have really gone on the album that way.

As a side note, I should mention that Maynard figured out a very clever way to get around that whole “having to face the audience” issue that he wrestles with every time he has to look out over that sea of black Tool t-shirts: he stands behind a flat-panel television that is level with his head, and then sings into a microphone with a camera behind the television facing him which is connected to said television, thus his face is being shown on the TV he’s standing behind as he sings. It was an awesome effect, actually, and his backup singing lady did the same thing. I don’t know, I liked it, and it was better than just turning your back on the audience (Johnny Cash he ain’t).

So yeah, the album that I was handed at the end of the concert was a bit of a disappointment after such a good show. Interestingly, I could not tell what Maynard was singing about at the show, and the album is even worse about that. When he’s not singing in an all-too-low register, he’s singing at an all-too-low volume, barely whispering the words out, and sometimes effects are mixed in that make things even more confusing. I would probably search for the lyrics online to make some comment on the themes therein, but really it’s mainly a lot of singing about guns and a lot of singing about sex.

Seriously, the gun thing was a huge part of the show, and I’m not knowledgeable enough about Maynard to know if he’s just being ironic about rap’s obsession with firearms or if he’s genuinely enthusiastic about them. In fact, the “Guns and sex” thing is pretty well wrapped up in the main hook line from “Dozo”: “Show you the difference between my gun and my pistol”. That line is repeated about 800 times.

Of course, since this still the Tool guy we’re talking about, themes of religion and the supernatural are visited, albeit in weirder ways than usual. The song “Indigo Children” is one of the catchiest tracks on the album, and has to do with a believe in the New Age movement about psychic kids. I’d say it’s fascinating, but actually there are about maybe 12 words in the whole song.

The song “Sour Grapes” is a bit of a puzzle. Basically, in the middle of the usual slow-going echoey minor-chord stuff that covers the entire album and the entirety of Maynard’s career, is a goofy impression of a Southern black preacher, talking about being saved and the holy mother and Jesus against a chorus of “Hallelujah” being sung in the background. Of course, one should probably dismiss this one as being intentionally ironic har har he’s really talking about penises or something, but really, the entire song is 7 minutes and roughly 18 stanzas of gospel preaching, word for word. If this wasn’t the Tool guy I would be completely convinced that, except for the stupid voice, there is actually no joke here. Of course, it could be that, like in many, many moments during the show, it is comedy but really poorly executed by a guy who isn’t that good at telling jokes. I don’t know, the song is about as catchy as a Gregorian chant so I’m not going to revisit it any time soon to give an alternative view.

So yeah, go and see Puscifer if you’ve got the means and time (or if you get invited by someone awesome to attend for free), and get this album for free, otherwise I don’t really recommend listening to this one. If you’re a Tool fan, this album seems to be engineered to make you hate it, and if you’re not a Tool fan, well what are you doing reading this blog entry anyway.

I will say that you should definitely purchase any and all Neil Hamburger material you can get your hands on. Though the crowd didn’t hate him all that much (not even when he came out and interrupted the band during a song to tell one more joke), the boos at this show were definitely fuel to his comedy fire. If you want to hear him at his crowd-controlling best, check out the album Hot February Night to hear him tell amazing(ly bad) jokes to 10,000′s of impatient and humorless Tenacious D fans. Until then!

Bloc Party – Silent Alarm

Ok, so I’ve been putting off this album for way too long, it’s time I just man up and write about Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm album:

Here’s the thing about Bloc Party: I’m conflicted. On the one hand, this band was suggested to me by someone I’m quite fond of, based on our similar tastes otherwise (English moody music, basically). Upon listening to the album, my reactions would predictably come in this order:

1. Excitement
2. Oh yeah, the singer sounds like that
3. Acceptance
4. Boredom
5. Next album

For this reason, there are few instances of me hearing the second half of this album. Still, I consider this album “Good”, or at least as good as indie music gets, because it does enough things right to belie its stamps, which include such titles as “indie rock”, “post-punk revival”, “alternative dance” (seriously?), and, last and certainly the non-trendy least, “alternative rock”.

Interestingly, despite it all, this is one of those few bands to which the phrase “alternative rock” actually hits a mark. The mid-90′s and that generation of here-sayers use to call everything “alternative”, thus removing all meaning from the word, and indeed the word “indie” has the exact same connotation nowadays. Bloc Party’s mission statement seems to be, however, to actually provide an “alternative” to rock bands (or dances?) in constantly changing their style or doing things a bit differently and thus it’s all good.

Thing is, despite being “alternative” and “different”, there’s something about Bloc Party that reminds me of something. Actually, the entire Silent Alarms album reminds me of a lot of things, so it’s not so much that one hears “original” sounds out of this band, but instead a collection of sounds that vary within the album’s parts. The first part is kind of that “alternative rock” colored of course by staples of the indie sound, but lovingly kept from being too predictable by the band’s ability to actually put melodies together without making the whole thing a jumbled mess (sometimes).

The first song displays this sound in earnest, and also introduces Bloc Party’s single best element: their drummer Matt Tong. Basically, you get one of those droning guitar notes coming in, which is followed by a high note on the bass being plucked quickly, and then suddenly, this massive quick-shot drum part comes in, and it’s surprisingly rocking! Then… the vocals come in.

One of my points of contention about Bloc Party, and it’s really hard to get around, is the vocalist/guitarist Kele Okereke. His lyrics aren’t so bad, but basically his vocals range from this kind of male cheerleader command to low kind of mumbling in the album’s middle parts. It’s kind of a shame, because he can clearly sing melodically, it’s just not something that, in the album’s strongest instrumental tracks, he feels is that necessary.

Still, nothing can take anything away from the album’s best song, “Helicopter”. Starting with two guitars pummeling away in this kind of dry-toned riffing, harmonizing with each other and being kind of awesome, despite my allergic reactions to all-down-stroke guitar playing (I call it “Green Day Fever”). The drums, again, are what really make this track, I would call them reminiscent of Mitch Mitchell, who at various points has been my favorite drummer, and indeed he even refers to (whether intentional or not) the infamous drum fill to Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire” in the song’s final measure. I’m all about that!

Things go along like this for a while, as I struggle to reconcile the vocals and amazing drumming into a solid opinion about the band. The guitarist and bassist don’t really do anything for me that isn’t painfully planned out, and hell, even if I respected the guitarist’s playing, I’d still have to get over the fact that he looks like this:

Yeesh. Anyway, after the see-saw guitaring of the otherwise so-so fifth song “Banquet”, the album suddenly starts to plummet. It starts with the backwards-tracked sounding jazz chords of “Blue Lights” with the vocals suddenly a slurry mumble. Then, we’re treated to a beat that is solid, yes, but never changes. Yes, I guess we’re into the alternative dance now, and this is the point where the drums (no matter how repetitively catchy) are only augmented by hand-claps from here on out, at least until the final part of the album, which is nearly as good as the first part of the album, if you can stand that middle section.

It starts with the “dreamy” reverb-and-arpeggio-laden tune “So Here We Are”, which has no real points of interesting except that the drums are nice and trippy, with snare hits going on everywhere, and the army of shimmery guitars effectively drown out the lead singer, and if it were possible for me to high five a guitar, I would do so for that.

Then we get a straight-forward rocking beat with a lovely distorted bass line and endlessly-delayed guitars in “Luno”. The singing isn’t such a problem in this one, as the monotone verses and chanty chorus are both catchy enough. I really have no problems with this song!

We are then treated to a trend in albums that I haven’t been quite able to trace among “alternative” albums, yet I can’t help but note their appearance: the twin 4 minute album closers. It’s like the band wrote two “Wall Of Sound” style songs with layered boring bits culminating into songs so thick you want to top a bagel with them, and then couldn’t decide which one to end the album with. Then, in a brilliant realization that “more is more”, they decide to stack both songs together at the end of the album, like a tar-pit at the end of a roller coaster.

So yeah, this album isn’t bad, honestly, I think I just have personal issues with it due to my own tricky tastes. Interestingly, the band has recently (as in, 3 weeks ago) announced that they were probably breaking up, because the drummer has become frustrated with the band’s direction and tired of their sound. I like to think that this scientifically proves that I’m right about the juxtaposition of talent here. With that, I am going to retire to my bed for blissful, smug sleep.

Johnny Cash – Unearthed: Disc 1: Who’s Gonna Cry?

We last left Johnny Cash on 2 notes, in one, we have the aging legend, at the end of his life, putting out an amazing album that drew from so many sources that one hesitates to even call it “Country”, and in another, we have Cash, just over the age of 40, recording an album that would not see the light of day until people would eventually realize that Johnny Cash works best with the least amount of resources save for his voice, a beautiful black Martin guitar, and a wealth of songs that go back to the time before albums and recordings.

Well, with the help of Rick Rubin, one of the last things Johnny Cash did was plan out the release of a 5-disc album that effectively combines those two notes to strike a very pleasant chord indeed:

The point of Unearthed is simple (so we’ll be done here quickly, right?): Take the best of the outtakes to the (then) 4 American albums, put them in some cohesive order, throw in another album of hymns, and a “best of”, and a book of stuff and you’ve got it. Slap a $75 price tag on it and give the completists something to drool over.

Of course, once you actually read that book of stuff, you find out that not only is each disc in Unearthed actually plotted out like an actual album, but there is a rhyme and reason for every single track on it. Rick Rubin, Johnny Cash (whether by his own words or vicariously through the testimony of an annoying journalist), and a few others give their thoughts and reflections on what, upon first listen, just seems like someone going through a grocery list of material. For the only time that I can think of, the liner notes are actually an integral part to the entire album. See, this isn’t so much a collection of “outtakes”, not any more than the actual American Recordings albums a collection of outtakes. The only reason they were taken out is because they didn’t fit in with the cohesion of the numbered albums in quite the way Johnny would have liked (sometimes they did and were shelved anyway because they kind of got lost in the pile, that’s how many songs there are).

It would be foolish of me to try and tackle every one of the album’s 79 tracks with a writeup, especially when the words out of the mouths of giants are to be better heeded. I’m listening to the album as I write, and I really just want to kind of go over the feel of the various parts of the collection, and perhaps shed some trivial light on the actual songs. Why not, I’m here all night!

The first three discs are the “outtakes”, and are each named after a line from a song within. The first disc is titled “Who’s Gonna Cry”, which is from “The Caretaker”, and is, of course, followed by “when old John dies?” That particular song’s inclusion is an interesting sentiment and we’ll get to it in due time. The album itself is entirely taken from those first sessions that would become the first American Recordings album. As such, with an exception or two, we have just Johnny Cash and a guitar.

As I may have mentioned before, the way albums with just Johnny Cash and a guitar go, there’s something just warm and family-like about the whole thing. Like the way one would look up to an older relative, Johnny’s playing and singing isn’t the strongest thing in the world, but the ineffable presence of the Man In Black is what keeps the album moving gracefully. In this case, the album itself isn’t quite as graceful because the tracks were intentionally left as unpolished as possible. This actually further adds to the charm on some of the songs for me, but may give the album a bit of a haphazard feel to others. Either way, Cash carries it by the weight of the songs involved, and the selection is spell-binding.

First off we have a re-treatment of “Long Black Veil”, with an interesting turnaround for the lyrics. The chorus is placed differently, and the “Scaffold” line is placed second, ahead of the line that reveals that the lady who “Walks these hills in a long black veil” is the “best friend’s wife” that Cash was in the arms of instead of committing the crime spoken of in the first line. At first I figured he just forgot the order of the lines in the song, but no reference is made to that in the album’s book, so instead I think it’s just a turnaround Cash wanted to make. An admission Cash does make about this song is that it’s dark and thus he wanted to include it, since that was kind of the theme to American Recordings as he puts it, “You don’t get darker than Long Black Veil!”

Re-visiting the love theme, but leaving behind the murder for now (well he does mention death once but nevermind), we move along to “Flesh And Blood”. First appearing in 1970 as an instrumental on a soundtrack, it came out as a single in the same year and unfortunately never really saw an album release until this one (the original with lyrics can be found on The Legend boxset). The song is a reflection of Cash on the beauty of nature and how “Mother Nature’s quite a lady, but you’re the one I need”. It was written for June Carter shortly after they were married, and it’s one of those songs that will make most people go “Aww”, but I personally can’t stand the word “flesh” so it took me a while to get to liking this song.

“Just The Other Side Of Nowhere” is a Kris Kristofferson song, who is a long-time friend of Cash’s, and tends to project a more vagabond kind of image, seemingly, but I don’t know much about Kristofferson so I can’t say too much about him. The song is touching though, about a character who has been chewed up and spit out of the big city and the chorus just tells it all:

I’ve got a mind to watch the headlights shinin’
On that old white line between my heart and home
Sick of spending Sundays wishing they were Mondays
Sittin’ in the park alone
Give my best to anyone who’s left who’s ever done me
Any lovin’ way but wrong
And tell that the pride of Just The Other Side Of Nowhere’s going home

A brilliant song, right up there with the strikingly similar hit “Sunday  Morning Coming Down”, but without the “getting stoned” references.

The next song was extraordinarily hard to take for along time for me. It’s the single, stand-out number of this album that made me choose today to talk about this album, and I don’t even feel totally comfortable going into it in depth. It’s a song by Billy Joe Shaver, of whom Cash remarks is his “favorite writer”, and it’s called “If I Give My Soul”. The song is about an alcoholic musician praying to God about the wife and son he lost because of drinking and music, and ponders an interesting question regarding his Salvation:

If I give my soul
Will He clean these clothes I’m wearing?
If I give my soul
Will He put new boots on my feet?
If I bow my head
And beg God for His forgiveness
Will He breathe new life within me
And bring her back to me?

Indeed, what are the material changes in a person’s look and demeanor if they give their souls? The lines that really strike a chord with me are ones that are swapped out in the chorus like “Will He stop my hands from shaking?”, “Will my son love me again?”, and the kicker, “If I give my soul, and she knows I really mean it, if I make my peace with Jesus, will they take me back again?” The singer seems to not be looking for salvation from God as much as wanting to be accepted back into his family, and that’s a situation that flies far too close to my head for me to keep a dry eye through this song if it catches me by surprise. That’s about as much as I want to get into it, really. It’s a brilliant song either way, it makes no sense that Rick Rubin knocks it in the book for being “theatrical”, when it’s the most “real” song I’ve ever heard.

Either way, after that emotional mess, it’s time to liven things up a bit with a good old-fashioned breakup song! “Understand Your Man” is kind of an odd duck in Cash’s repetoire. Basically, it takes the tune of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”, which is already one of the most covered songs of all time, and becomes a song that’s like “Don’t Think Twice” but takes away all of the implicitly sarcastic consolations and just lays it all out on the line. Interestingly, this half-original song came out on a Columbian album called I Walk The Line wherein Cash re-recorded a lot of his old Sun hits, so it’s a half-original song stuck into a stack of non-original originals. Yeah, don’t think twice about that, why don’t you? As a final note about this song, Cash would later do his own cover of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” on Orange Blossom Special not even one year later, which probably further confused fans at the time. Don’t do drugs, kids.

I know that Johnny said that there’s nothing darker than “Long Black Veil”, but I’d like to nominate “The Banks Of The Ohio” as a strong contender for the title. The song is about a man (called “Willy” in the song) who walks with his lover down along the banks of the Ohio river, and he proposes to her, and she shyly turns away and doesn’t say anything, which I guess is rejection? Anyway, he does the natural thing and sticks a knife in her chest and then drags her by her hair down to the river and drowns her. The final lines of the song are kind of a “What have I done?!” moment, but the whole thing is a murder ballad in the strictest sense of the word. The real kicker for me is that, for one, this is not the first time Cash has recorded this song, the first time was in 1963 and, for two, it was for The Carter Family because the song was written by Mother Maybelle Carter, Johnny’s future mother-in-law. I guess the irony should be that a sweet old lady like Mother Maybelle is the least likely person to have written a murder ballad like that, but then again she was instrumental in the creation of Country music, which definitely contains its fair share of murder ballads, so it actually does make a lot of sense. It’s a fun song when you get used to it.

Well, if murder isn’t your thing, how about rampant mysogyny? That’s my style, for sure! You may enjoy “Two Timin’ Woman”, which is one of the early songs that Cash wrote for Sun, though it wouldn’t be released until half a decade after he left Sun, so the song was kind of lost to the ages. Like many of the love-lost songs that Cash wrote for Sun (and there were many, believe me), this one is about a woman who is basically Satan and can’t seem to be faithful to the singer for even half an hour. This particular line has a great resolution though:

‘Cause if I ever find her, gonna chain her to the floor
And tell her “Now sit there, Honey, you ain’t leavin’ no more
I’m gonna tame ya, Mama, ’til you’re eatin’ from my hand
It’s not that I don’t love you, Honey, it’s just to make you understand”

I firmly believe only Johnny Cash and Bill Haley could get away with that one. Of course, I love it.

“The Caretaker” is a re-visit to a song Cash wrote long ago, originally for Don Law on an album they were working on together, but it wound up released on 1959′s Songs Of Our Soil (which I just realized, have I not talked about that album yet? I could have sworn I did! Weird!) The song was originally written when Cash was about 27 years old, so lines like “Who’s gonna cry when old John dies?” didn’t really resonate that well, but fit quite well with the album’s undeniable theme of death. Now, the song puts old Johnny in the role of a cemetary caretaker, and where there was once a lyrical commentary on people and their strange priorities, now there’s just Johnny, singing about his own death as the “world rushes by outside”. Still, the song isn’t as dark as all that, and a faint chuckle can be heard by Cash after finishing the song, as if the statement carries more of a comical tone than a dour one (who would have thought of Cash as much of an existentialist?)

Cash then throws out another Billy Joe Shaver cover in the form of “Old Chunk Of Coal”, which is a little more of a hymn in Shaver’s traditional style than anything. It’s just the singer’s insistence that, despite his rough edges, he’ll be a diamond someday. I quite like it, because people nowadays seem to think they need to be convinced that they’re already perfect (stupid self-esteem movement) and the truth is, we’re all chunks of coal that need a lot of work, and work is what we have to do. Well played, Cash. This song is absolutely perfect for him.

Next we get a strange one, but fitting, as it’s a prison song. “I’m Going To Memphis” is a song you might remember as kind of an ol’ Blues song (like, “Blues that predates guitars” Blues) from Ride This Train. The song is still as fun as ever, and its inclusion may not be that important, except to say that it’s a Cash original that was a hit and was good enough to be brought back for another round, as that’s kind of the way this album goes.

“Breaking Bread” is a song that Cash did for Little House On The Prairie, and has very little to say about it. I too am struggling with the words.

“Waiting For A Train” is another of those fun songs about vagrancy that was written by Jimmie Rodgers and first appeared on Cash’s working-man’s album, Blood, Sweat, And Tears. I do like the song a lot because it puts the singer in one of those adventuresome positions, where you don’t know where he came from or where he’s going, but you’re caught in that moment of him trying (and failing) to catch a free ride on a train. Of course, for Cash this was somewhat autobiographical, at least on his father’s part, so it says a little something about Cash’s character, even if it’s fiction.

“Casey’s Last Ride” is another Kristofferson song that desperately needed a re-working, because it’s a great song, but the original version that appears on Cash’s late-Columbian 1985 album Rainbow sounds like one of those terrible 80′s rock songs that would grace some kind of sunset-on-the-beach scene in some terrible 80′s movie with the wailing guitar, plastic piano, and everything else that was wrong with Cash’s sound in the 80′s. This version is just an acoustic guitar, and feels more like the ballad it should be.

“No Earthly Good” is a song I already went over in my writeup for Personal File. This version is also just Cash and a guitar, and I think the lyrics fit together better with this final re-working.

The next song is a bit of an oddity, as it tells the Biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and how those three gay young men were saved from the flames of a vengeful king with help of a “Fourth Man In The Fire”. The oddity is that the song is actually a boogie, very similar in structure to something like “One Piece At A Time” or “A Boy Named Sue”, only it’s a biblical story, and it wasn’t even written by Cash, it was written by an unlikely character called Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith, who sounds by his name like he’d be writing rockabilly songs about chasing women (he’s also still alive, apparently, and is 88 years old). Either way, the only real thing of note about this song is that Cash had to recite a verse from the Book of Daniel as an intro, and every time he had to do a new take in the music, he had to re-take the intro to. Why? Because apparently Rick Rubin had no idea how to cut things and splice them back together, so you can visibly hear Cash lose patience in his recitation, and even the song seems kind of like they just used the best take of several and then moved on. It kind of disrupts the peaceful mood of the album, but it’s OK, we’re almost at the end.

“Dark As A Dungeon” is the final of many attempts to record this song and “get it right”, as Cash put it. It’s actually a Merle Travis song from years ago, and Cash has put it on an album, a live album, and has messed with it in a few ways, but the version that’s on Unearthed is not only his favorite version, but mine as well. The song itself is a cautionary tale to people who are tempted to work in coal mines for a living, a temptation which, in a slightly different way, has actually been presented to me at one point, and I took his advice to heart and ran away from that. I think what Cash or Merle are getting at with this song is that you shouldn’t waste your life away seeking out material wealth, as it will turn your blood as black as the coal. I’ve seen this happen in others, and that’s why I’m here writing a blog instead of working in some terrible oil field. I can tell you, I am actually having fun here.

A rare treat follows this song, a “Book Review”, which was just something that was put on tape while the engineers were moving microphones around. Basically it’s just a conversation between Cash and Rubin about Lebanese author Khalil Gibran’s book The Prophet, which Cash was being asked to narrate for a recording. This recording never happened, but Mr. Tramp Shining himself, Richard Harris, was kind enough to do a musical version of the book in 1974, so I think the world should be content with that. It’s an interesting little bit of conversation for those who want to hear Cash having an enthusiastic conversation about literature, you really get a sense of the fact that he was an extraordinarily well-read man.

Finally, we get an alternate version of the Tom Waits song that Cash did for American Recordings, “Down There By The Train”. There are almost no discernable interests that I can remember about the two, and this late in the game, I shall not seek them out. There are a few “alternate takes” on this album with not much to say about them that wasn’t said about the original songs.

With that, the first disc of Unearthed comes to a close, and I’m getting close to that myself. In my enthusiasm to tell the story of every track, I kind of let over 3300 words slip out, so I think I should close the book on this one for today, and pick up on the second disc next week. In fact, I might as well spread this album out over the next month by talking about each disc on Monday until the end of the year (when I plan to talk about one or two more Johnny Cash albums anyway).

Still, I do want to mention that the reason I wanted to talk about this album today was because it was one of the last albums I ever listened to with my dad, back when I only had the album in .mp3 format and I got to hang out with my dad on my birthday last year. We listened to this first disc and had stories to tell about the songs, and particularly the “If I Give My Soul” song told him the same story it told me, and was very moving. On the day he died, November 23rd of last year, I bought this collection and have listened to it dozens of times since. It means a lot to me for the two times in my life it (especially this first part) has come in very handy.

We’ll pick up on the album later, until then, thanks for reading.

Albert Collins – Cold Snap

It’s been a very bluesy winter so far, I’ve noticed, but that doesn’t matter. Today I am going to talk about the last of the Albert Collins albums I have thus far heard:

I notice sometimes, while listening to the Blues, just how much it parallels comedy. I mean, some of it is comedy, like a couple of tracks from this album, but essentially the Blues and comedy are two things that make light of a bad situation, and evoke a real feeling of joy where once there was tension. It’s not a perfect analogy, but let’s take the first song on this set as an example, the song “Cash Talkin’ (The Workingman’s Blues)”:

Well I walked down to my bank, just to see what I could see
I asked the man behind the desk, I say “Ah, is there any money for me?”
Now he didn’t know just what to say
I say, “I need that money in a terrible way!”
Now he didn’t say “yeah” but he didn’t say “no”
He just shook my hand and showed me the door

Oh Lord, the blues is killin’ me

Now, the situation is already funny, at least to me, because he’s just walking into random banks and asking for money. Thing is, being poor does suck, and this song will tell you that, but even if you are poor like Albert Collins’ character here (and I am), the upbeat, funky blues song with Albert’s trademark chilled Telecaster sound is going to make you feel good about it. Good comedy and good Blues should serve the purpose of making you feel better about some very real problems.

The problems, of course, are not something like existential angst or an inability to cope with people (see: most other kinds of music), but the Blues have a very limited agenda. Mainly it’s songs about being poor or low-down in some other way, and of course, relationship problems, like in the somewhat cliché “Lights Are On But Nobody’s Home”:

When I have to go to work
I gotta go to work downtown
If I get home a little late baby
You say I’m out messing around

Now you’re still accusing me baby
Accusing me of doing wrong
I can see your lights on baby
But I can’t see, I can’t see nobody home

Still, the words don’t really matter for about 50% of what this song is trying to convey. Thanks to the organ-heavy slow-jam vibe of the whole thing, it’s the guitars, the horns, even the rhythm section that’s really telling the story. This happens to be one of my favorite songs by Albert, mainly because it’s a more earnest message that’s being put across, that love doesn’t dissolve just because one person is accusing the other of doing wrong, it’s just a thing that has to be dealt with, usually by calling the woman crazy, which I’m all for.

Again, like comedy, the subject of relationships dictated by the chaos that exists behind every woman’s imagination can still be made into something good. Now, the line between joke and song is blurred quite a lot for tracks like “I Ain’t Drunk” (special video note: jeeze that keyboardist is having too much fun).

Basically, it’s a song based on the popular phrase “I ain’t drunk, I’m just drinking”, which I’m pretty sure predates this song somewhat, but I couldn’t find substantial evidence of that on the internet. Either way, the song is kind of great because, within the song’s later part, Collins slurs his singing more and argues with the backup singers, whose sole singing parts are “But you’re so high” (“high” being another term for “drunk” in this instance). It’s an awesome song, and you can probably tell the crowds really dug it.

A really interesting song on this album is the lengthy jam “Too Many Dirty Dishes”, which is constructed exactly like “Snowed In” from the album Frosbite of 6 years previous. It’s another slow, pensive jam wherein Collins questions his wife’s activities while he’s out, observing that, indeed, there are too many dirty dishes for just the two people:

Too many dirty dishes in the sink for just us two
You got me wondering baby… Who’s making dirty dishes with you?

I kind of absolutely love that line.

The interesting thing about the song goes beyond that. He never actually accuses his wife of cheating on him or anything, so it’s not a dramatic song or anything, and in fact there’s a lengthy portion of the 7 minute song that is Albert talking to his guitar:

“Look at all these dirty dishes”
(empathetic guitar notes)

It actually sounds more like she’s having a party while he’s away, because apparently the dishes are stacked “outta sight”, and in fact he starts to “clean” the dishes, making scraping and popping noises with the guitar strings while he complains. Then he sings:

I’ve done your dirty dishes
How much am I supposed to take?
When I left I had corn flakes for breakfasts
Now there’s a bone from a T-bone steak

Which is followed up with a screachy, energetic guitar solo before the song fades out. That’s one thing I love about the greatest Blues guitarists, the guitar becomes a character in the song, almost like a sidekick to the singer’s message. Take note of that if you ever want to be a blues stringer.

Despite the presence of 2 lengthy slow jams on the album, there is a bit of variety to the sound on Cold Snap, “Snatchin’ It Back”, for instance, is more of a funk/soul number, kind of like his later work, perhaps more James Brown than anything. Fortunately, the guitar voice never changes, thus every track has Albert Collins all over, from the funky blues of “Cash Talkin’” to the swingin’ instrumental at the end, mysteriously called “Fake I.D.”. What does a fake ID have to do with swing music? Either way, it’s always a thrill to hear Collins swing, as his solos become so convoluted and odd that it would probably just frustrate guitarists who attempted to replicate it, and that’s why there will never be another guitarist quite like Albert Collins.

Sunny Day Real Estate – Diary

This writeup is more or less dedicated to my brother, who is an enthusiastic fan of this band, and who had a birthday today. He also loaned me this album so I could listen to it, which I was planning on doing anyway, so there’s also that.

Ah, Sunny Day Real Estate, at last we meet. I have heard about this band for nearly half my life, and judging the connections between this band and one of the most reviled genres in music (“Emo”), I knew that these guys would either be amazing or the most vile thing to ever pass through my headphones.

Turns out… they’re pretty ok!

Thing is, it’s been impossible for me to avoid eventually listening to this band, and when the scope of their influence stretches from Dashboard Confessional to Death Cab For Cutie, you can be assured I was not looking forward to the experience. Interestingly, even before those jokers were huge and before “Emo” meant anything other than “The world’s greatest comedian“, I knew about Sunny Day Real Estate, because I’m an enthusiastic fan of Poor Old Lu.

The connection between Sunny Day Real Estate and Poor Old Lu is, at best, a tangential one. Before Poor Old Lu or Sunny Day were around, the boys that made up Lu and Sunny Day’s 2nd (and enduring) lead singer Jeremy Enigk were in one of those high school bands that every musician goes through at some point, and they played exactly one show, I imagine probably in front of about 3 people and 2 dogs, before going their separate ways. Poor Old Lu went on to be the best “alternative” act in the Christian music thing, and Jeremy went on to carve out a fine career helping to invent a genre that is Hell-bent on digging my brain an early grave. Oh, and Jeremy came back to sing a song on a Poor Old Lu EP, so there’s also that.

The association with Jeremy Enigk is something Poor Old Lu would be saddled with forever, and if they weren’t one of my favorite bands, I would simply laugh about it. I’ve read interviews where the inevitable question of “SAY I HEARD YOU GUYS WORKED WITH JEREMY ENIGK ONCE WHAT WAS THAT LIKE” arises like if one were to grow up with the name Michael Bolton and get the daily “Is that your real name?” question. If you were to somehow wind up on the Wikipedia page about Jeremy Enigk, you would see, under “Guest Vocal Appearances”, that he is credited for “Poor Old Lu – “Answering Machine Message” on Sin (1994)”. That is not a song. Seriously! It was literally an answering machine message tucked way into the darkness of the end of that album as an Easter egg, and it’s Jeremy, as a child, calling the band’s future bassist in an attempt to get his mom’s necklace back due to some misunderstanding. This is not worth mentioning, yet I have already mentioned it twice on this blog, so I hope you’re happy, Wikipedia.

Anyway, now I’ve spent over half of this writeup associating Sunny Day Real Estate with their tangential connection with Poor Old Lu instead of talking about them, how mischeivous!

So yes, Diary. This is the band’s first album, made just minutes after being signed to a record label during their second show ever, for all of you “career musicians” out there who have been playing for 10 years without a prospect. To be honest, I should hate this album. It has the (mostly) toneless, reverb-laden electric guitars and indiscernable shouting that only “emo” music can pass off as singing. The drums are there, all right, and the bass is adequately lost in the mix like any pop recording. Indeed, the guitars kind of dominate on this album, and after seeing the credits on the album I came across the producer’s name, Brad Wood, and was immediately like “Oooooh“  (for you folks out there who want to hate along at home, this is the producer who did The Smashing Pumpkins’ Adore album).

So it surprised me as much as anyone that I actually really like this album. Well, ok, I *like* this album, the “really” part is reserved for a handful of songs. Basically, there are two ways in which I like to enjoy this album. The first is to just listen to the opening track, “Seven”, which has recently gotten the Guitar Hero treatment, and then be done with it. It’s a magnificent track with guitar hooks, busy drumming, and those wonderful beat shifts that really get the blood flowing. Jeremy’s voice is great, kind of a lispy, 15 year old Bono if Bono didn’t know how to control his voice (he does, believe it or not). The real strength of Jeremy Enigk’s voice isn’t the ability to control it, it’s the sheer muscle. If there’s a note to hit, he’ll pinch until he gets close enough. Indeed, the effect is stunning on this particular recording, but for the hundreds of emo groups, professional and amateur, that have followed in this band’s wake? Not so much, in fact I wish to commit violent acts against them, if violence were my style.

The second way I can enjoy this album is by listening to the whole thing, front to back, and then kind of zone out until something interesting happens, usually somewhere toward the middle of a song, before it lapses back into kind of a sludgy mess. The sludge doesn’t bother me though, I have checked out the lyrics, and they are just abstract enough to be bereft of any points of contention on any reasonable person’s part. Basically, the lyrics are too esoteric to suck, it’s like how a colorful smattering of fingerpaints isn’t really art, but since there’s no possible way to see a picture in it, you just kind of have to take the artist’s word for it, and it’s also somehow still pleasant to behold. So yeah, Sunny Day are no Rembrant when it comes to songwriting, but there are enough enjoyable points on the album to kind of drift along for an hour and be all the better for it at the end.

I also do appreciate that they whip out a piano in the album’s second half for an interlude so brief I’m not even going to try and type the title out.

The version I was able to borrow for this writeup is the 2009 re-release, which is definitely worth a purchase, because for some reason the band included two songs, appropriately titled “8″ and “9″, and both songs are exponentially better than anything else on the album proper. I think they did that just to mess with everyone.

So yes, this may seem more of a cantankerous acceptance of an album rather than a glowing review, but given the genre, they’re lucky to get even that. If “emo” had died with the breakup of Sunny Day Real Estate over a decade ago, we would really have no problems, but with all the emo bands out there, and not to mention the indie bands that were spawned out of that, there is no reason that I shouldn’t hate these guys, except that I understand that they aren’t the “first” emo band, only one of the more influential. Also, the differences between these guys and a band like, oh say, Jimmy Eat World or Angels & Airwaves are wide enough that I don’t want them to die in a terrible car crash, so there’s also that.