I, for one, love early Chet Baker vocals, and every single track on the original version of this debut is gorgeous. Really and truly gorgeous.
Side one:
“But Not for Me”
“Time After Time”
“My Funny Valentine”
“I Fall in Love Too Easily”
Side two:
“There Will Never Be Another You”
“I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)”
“The Thrill is Gone”
“Look for the Silver Lining”
Gorgeous.
It’s honestly really hard to just pick ONE early LP from Costello to recommend. A greatest hits culled from his first 9 albums would give you one of the greatest collections of modern, literate, angular rock n’ roll songs the world has ever known.
But on an album-by-album basis, ol’ Declan does manage to throw a few duds onto just about everything. But that’s fine. It just makes it harder to pick an as-released release.
So his debut is the obvious choice. Alison is obviously just a staggering accomplishment for a young songwriter, and with the now-canonized inclusion of Watching the Detectives, you can double that compliment. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes is no slouch either.
I’m Not Angry is perhaps the album’s legit sleeper, and not only are the performance and arrangement stellar, but the lyric is rock n’ roll perfection for being both so poetic, and so dumbly macho, simultaneously:
You’re upstairs with the boyfriend while I’m left here to listen
I hear you calling his name, I hear the stutter of ignition
Of all the albums considered to be part of Wonder’s “classic period” (which I think you can safely define as post-Motown, pre-80s), this one is probably my favorite.
Obviously Superstition is one of the baddest tunes ever, and You Are The Sunshine Of My Love is one of the sweetest, and the whole collection is just rich, and soulful, and funky, and bluesy, and organic, and ambitious, and legendary for all the right reasons.
There are just SO many great moments on here. The opening of Maybe Your Baby. The vocals sweeps in the back half of You and I atop that gospel piano. Those horns on Tuesday heartbreak. The folksong simplicity of the final track.
Here’s a great little factoid about this album worth knowin’ if you don’t know it:
The original pressings had Braille lettering on it, spelling Stevie Wonder’s name, and the album title. It also had a short message:
“Here is my music. It is all I have to tell you how I feel. Know that your love keeps my love strong.”
Townes Van Zandt wrote songs that were so painfully beautiful it hurts to listen to them.
His great songs—of which there are SO many—present a body of work that is so real, so powerful, so poetic, and so gorgeous, he simply has to be ranked as one of the most gifted troubadours history has ever produced.
Townes’ songs could also be funny, silly, lighthearted, obscene, ribald, rakish, and mundane. In short, his songs were the equal of the people whose stories he told.
Townes was a mythology of his own devising, but one which has antecedents going back thousands of years. He is a Texan Li Po, a hippy Dylan Thomas, a hobo Bacchus.
Here, on this album, he is simply a man, with a guitar, in a small Houston room, surrounded by friends and fans, playing a collection of songs that are delivered in so down-to-earthedly straightforward a fashion it’s almost easy to miss their full import.
One after another, the effect of these songs on your spirit intensifies in ways you don’t even notice. So much so, that by the time you’ve listened to the last song trail away, you’ll wonder why you’re exhausted.
You’ll be exhausted because Townes will have crawled into your soul and felt every emotion for you, and then held himself up to you like a truth mirror.
By too many accounts to discount, these live, intimate, solo acoustic recordings definitively recreate what it was actually like to hear Townes Van Zandt do what he did best—which was to a) sing great songs and pick great guitar, and b) walk right into your spirit house, sit down on your chair, and commence to breaking and repairing and breaking your heart.
So, yes, of COURSE the reason to include this is to hear Linda Ronstadt sing Different Drum. It’s just an exquisite song, with a great backstory. A quasi-feminist anthem written by a male quasi-legit musician, taken over completely by a quasi-feminist artist, and delivered like a great big cannon salvo from the heart of quasi-hip Laurel Canyon aimed quasi-squarely at the quasi-prepared ears of quasi-mainstream American.
Put another way, it’s West Coast folk-rock perfection, carried on the wings of one of history’s great voices.
“I ain’t sayin’ you ain’t pretty
All I’m sayin’s I’m not ready
for any person, place, or thing
to try and pull the reins in on me”
There’s no question the 60s gave us some pretty awful music, and there’s no question the various musicians in and/or associated with this band have given us some pretty awful music.
On the other hand, it’s exceedingly difficult to dispute the raw excellence of Somebody To Love, or the total grooviness of White Rabbit.
It also must be noted that, for a short while at least, Grace Slick possessed one of the great rock n’ roll voices. That long, held “love” towards the end of Somebody to Love is one of the great vocal notes of all time.
No matter which was you slice it, this album deserves its place in rock n’ roll history, and as such, you can’t much claim to understand the full scope of what rock n’ roll can offer, w/out understanding this album as well.
Highly recommended on vinyl, by the way!
It’s tempting to name this my favorite Van Morrison album, because I love it’s great songs SO much; and familiarity be damned: Moondance is an amazing song. As is And It Stoned Me. As are Crazy Love and Caravan. As is Into the Mystic. And Brand New Day.
Geez, maybe it IS my favorite Van Morrison album.
I had the great pleasure and honor of writing, recording, and performing with Ralph Carney for many years. Those were remarkable and often magical times for me. I was surely one of the luckiest musicians in the world, to stand beside Ralph Carney on stage for so many performances.
Regrettably, I’m afraid it all happened at a time when I was still too young, too inexperienced, too immature, to really comprehend the full measure of his singular genius.
I knew he was extraordinary. Anyone who heard him knew that.
But I was trying to build a career for myself then, and too busy making too many of the mortifying mistakes one often makes in that process.
I’m much older now, and the temptation towards regret is almost overwhelming—if I could have known then even a fraction of what I know now, I would have preserved every minute I had with him. I would have recorded every sound that emerged from his instruments. I would have made as much music with him as he would have let me.
I believe Ralph Carney was a multi-instrumentalist because he had to be—there was simply too much music in him.
As to myself, I was a fraud then, certainly. There were nights I’d look to my left and I’d see Jim Campilongo, and I’d look to my right and I’d see Ralph Carney, and I’d think to myself, what the hell am I doing here?
I know now, that Ralph was a gift to me, as he was a gift to anyone who had the pleasure and the honor of making music with him—he gave of his genius so generously.
It’s often said that “catching” a yawn from someone is indicative of an empathetic connection. The feeling of making music with Ralph Carney was like the feeling of “catching” a laugh from a giggling toddler—it just felt too good not to smile.
As I have grown into my life, I have learned that the people I admire most are those who are deadly serious about doing those things that are ultimately very fun. I think of Ralph Carney, and I think of ancient Zen poets running laughing through the mountains.
Deep bows to you, Ralph Carney. What else could I possibly do but weep, and say thank you?
For many years, Astral Weeks just wasn’t on my radar. I didn’t even see it there. We were like a rabbit and a squirrel in the back yard. We were just each looking elsewhere.
Then, I knew Astral Weeks existed. But I wasn’t really moved either way. I was there. It was there. Nothing more, nothing less.
Then I forgot about Astral Weeks for a while.
Then I remembered it, and I tried it, and I kind of got into it. But then it didn’t take.
Then I tried again, and I got mad at it. I decided I especially disliked Richard Davis’ much-vaunted bass lines. The album made me mad.
Then, I got it. I got it, and I got into it. All the way into it. I forgave Richard Davis.
Then I crawled back out, and tried to make sense of my feelings.
I think I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not AS great as many make it out to be, but that its great moments, ARE great. The Way Young Lovers Do. Madame George. Slim Slow Slider. Sweet Thing. And so forth. These are pretty remarkable artistic achievements.
Ultimately, it’s a must listen. It’s definitely an album you have to have fully engaged with somehow, in some way, at some time. You’ll have missed something critical otherwise.
It’s December 16th. So I’m recommending what is probably the most important album in my life. This is the one that started it all for me. I was sixteen years old. I had “The Country Blues” by Samuel Charters under my arm as I boarded the city bus to go to the U District in Seattle. There was a Tower Records there, and that’s where I was headed. Because I’d fallen in love with the names and stories in this book, but I didn’t know their music. I knew Muddy Waters. I knew Howlin’ Wolf. I knew Albert King, B.B. King, Albert Collins. I didn’t know Son House, or Lightnin’ Hopkins, or Bukka White, or Mance Lipscomb, or Mississippi John Hurt. I had to know what they sounded like.
I had been playing guitar for a couple years at that point. I wanted to be Joe Strummer. But a strange spell was taking me over. This blues spell. Something was growing inside of me. And it was leading me to Tower Records with “The Country Blues” under my arm. I was determined to find an LP by one of the names in the book.
What I found, was this album. Robert Pete Williams. Son House. Fred McDowell. Skip James. Reverend Gary Davis. They were all there.
I got home. I put the record on. Side One. First song. Mississippi John Hurt. Sliding Delta. For the first time in my life, I knew. Right away. That was it. That. That was what I wanted to do with my life.
And that IS what I did with my life.
Preacher Boy | The National Blues 