Discography - Week 48

And we've reached Week 48 of our Discography discussion, which means that there is only a month to go.  Next week is our last Thematic week, where we'll be looking at a song from other noted musicologists and giving it a fresh consideration.  Cyndi and I will have moved on to Sri Lanka, if we can get into Sri Lanka, and if she can get out of the Mumbai airport (although techniquely she could just live in the Mumbai airport for four days and we can meet up with her on the way to Sri Lanka, because at least she has a Sri Lankan visa).  Anyway, I guess the point is that time is flying.

Gary Beatrice

Ike and Tina Turner, Proud Mary

You know, every so often I think you'd like me to write about a song that's nice and easy. Well this ain't the week for that.

Ike and Tina take a classic Credence song and make it their own. It's Ike and his great baritone, the funky horns, and most importantly Tina Turner's vocals. Many have tried to perform Proud Mary the way Ike and Tina did, but nobody has ever come close. Sweet soul music.

Dave Wallace

O'Jays - Backstabbers

In the early to mid-70's, soul music went through a period of startling political consciousness, a response to the dramatic social upheaval going on in the country at that time.  (In his book, Mystery Train, Greil Marcus wrote a great chapter about this period of music, with a focus on There's a Riot Going On by Sly and the Family Stone.  If you have any interest in this topic, I encourage you to check it out.)  One of the most socially conscious groups, as well as one of the greatest musically, were the O'Jays.  Backstabbers is one of their best.  Nominally a rant about unfaithful friends, it arguably has deeper implications for how this country has treated African-Americans throughout its history.

Kathy Seiler

Joe Bonamassa, Blue and Evil 

There is something really visceral about this song. Not sure if it's the music, the lyrics, or the way the guitar is played, but its almost a head-banging kind of blues song. It's got an angrier edge than most blues songs, but that's understandable because Bonamassa is singing about the evil inside of all of us, and how sometimes we feel like we are succumbing to it. I find it interesting that the cure for the blues and the evil is to take a drink (of the fermented kind, of course). Numbs the mind, the soul, and often makes you feel like everything is okay. But then, as the song says, the blue and the evil "gonna make a wreck of me." So you take another drink.

Mike Kelly

Robbie Fulks and Lucinda Williams -- Pretty Little Poison 

As I reflect back on my last couple of posts, I realize I run the risk of being typecasted as a nostalgic downer hearkening back to an imagined past and so I wanted to rectify this with an unapologetic ode to desire.  It's been well-documented on this blog that this genre falls squarely within what Lucinda is good at so it's no surprise that she makes a cameo here.  While much maligned for sad songs about breakups, what's gone understated about country music is the power of the genre to make summer storms worth of good hookup songs.  Here's to spring.   

Dave Kelley

Putting People on the Moon -  Drive By Truckers

So this week's post is sponsored by the emotion "Rage".  I will grant that The Affordable Care Act has been far from a perfect fix on health insurance availability and affordability.  The issues involved are very complex, and there are no easy answers.  Certainly there are many acceptable points of view on how to proceed going forward to make certain that costs are contained and as many people as possible have insurance coverage.  Given his experience and knowledge of the field, Gary Beatrice is my go to person on insurance issues.  If he were in charge of the whole affair, I would be sleeping better.

However, I find the Republican alternative to The Affordable Care Act to be cynical and horrific.  It certainly appears to me that our old, sick, and poor are being sacrificed so that rich people can pay lower taxes and corporations can make higher profits and pay their executives even greater salaries.  I find this to be opposite to the ideals of America and Christianity.  I will shut up and let DBT preach to the choir. 

Gary Scudder

R.E.M., Country Feedback

It's more than a little stunning that we're into Week 48 of a year-long music discussion, in which we've considered hundreds and hundreds of songs, and I think this is the first R.E.M. song.  In the 1980s or 1990s how laughable would that prediction have sounded?  Years ago I posed the question of whether we judge the truly great bands by whether or not they wrote "important" songs; that is, songs which made profound statements about a time and place or that challenged norms or authority, as compared to songs that are just beautiful or which capture an age.  I would argue that Dylan and Springsteen and the Drive-By Truckers and Uncle Tupelo and Lucinda Williams and Neil Young have all written "important" songs and maybe that's why they have more staying power, at least to me.  Michael Stype has said that Country Feedback is his favorite R.E.M. songs and I'd have to agree with him.  Like so many of their songs it suggests more than it definitely declares, but I think it's beautiful, elegiac and transcendent.  I'm including a link to an absolutely extraordinary version that R.E.M. played with Neil Young at one of the latter's Bridge School benefit concerts.  Peter Buck looks insanely happy and Michael Stype looks like he's going to cry.