Discography Year Two - Week 51

We're finishing out the penultimate week in the second year of our Discography music series.  I suspect this will probably be it for the Discography discussion and it's been a great two year run.  Last weekend I was just telling Jack how blessed I feel to have captured so much of GB on the blog, and sometimes I go back and reread his posts. This has been so much fun, and I can't thank all of you enough for participating.   I hope we have a great send-off next week.

Dave Wallace

Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer

For someone who essentially is an art-rocker and a cult artist, it's hard to remember how big a hit So was for Peter Gabriel.  He had a handful of hits off of it, none bigger than lead single, Sledgehammer.  With a groundbreaking video to accompany it, the song was pretty much everywhere.  And with good reason, it's an awesome slice of faux soul music.

Dave Kelley

So I had originally planned to choose an Aretha Franklin song this week in honor of her passing.  I was going to select her cover of "The Weight" featuring amazing work from Duane Allman and The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section.  However, I went down in the YouTube rabbit hole listening to some of Duane's other session work and found.....

"Loan Me a Dime" by Box Scaggs

This was recorded in 1969 and is just jaw dropping fucking amazing IMHO.  Great vocals, blistering guitar work from Duane, and the most excellent Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section which included Patterson Hood's dad on bass.  Give this one a full listen.

Cindy Morgan

I have a crazy lady FB friend who lives in Connecticut and routinely gets in the faces of people wearing MAGA hats or with Trump stickers on their cars. After this week's Cohen/Manafort announcements she parked her car outside the house of a Trump signed property in her hometown and played Queen/Bowie "Under Pressure." I applaud her devotion the resistance. But it always strikes me as odd that people choose this song to try to capture that feeling of "we have to get it done, we're under pressure" and especially when it's used in sporting venues. The lyrics of the song are so NOT that, but I think we forget that this is really a song about the people that have been left on the margins of society: the homeless, the needy, the down-trodden and how we as a society need to to better. Maybe that's what crazy resistance lady wanted to convey--that this really is our last chance to love and do better. . .but I think I'm giving her too much credit. Plus: we need to be reminded of those artists we have lost. Plus plus: there is a new Queen movie coming out. Group trip?

"Can't we give ourselves one more chance
Why can't we give love that one more chance
Why can't we give love give love give love give love
Give love give love give love give love give love
'Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the (People on streets) edge of the night
And loves (People on streets) dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoDh_gHDvkk

Phil Seiler

Regular contributor Alice Neiley posted a fun little meme to our blog host's wall on the book of face about rock and roll crayon colors. The original meme is pretty standard stuff (Yellow  = Yellow Submarine, Purple = Purple Haze, etc... (And why were brown, black, and purple each used twice?)) Anyway, it prompted me to mine my music library for my version which was certainly different (I also added some colors.). Alice did the same and in checking out her great selections, I fell down some rabbit holes of YouTube. She used "Pale Sun" for pale which I assumed is the beautiful Cowboy Junkies song but pale sun lead to all kinds of other results including a shoe gaze band i did not know of the same name and my selection this week:

Matthew and the Atlas

Pale Sun Rose

I don't know what struck me about this song when I first heard it but it connected to me on some, primordial level. In fact, I am amazed at how much I want to hear it again and again despite not loving his voice very much. Anyway, just a song of longing and the sea for a summer morn as the earth spins toward autumn.

Gary Scudder

Daughter, Youth

Here's another band that I discovered simply because of my odd fascination with the British series Skins.  Daughter is a British indie band, which was initially just Elena Tonra.  Eventually she was joined by guitarist Ignor Haefeli from Switzerland and drummer Remi Aguilella from France to form a true band.  It's sort of an EU wet dream, which hopefully won't be Brexited out of existence.  I think Youth is my favorite song of theirs, and it has popped up several times in movies and TV series (which, knowing my generally contrarian nature, should make me dislike it).  Anyway, it seemed like an appropriate song to kick off another school year.

Discography Year Two - Week 50

By the time the nano overlords release this week's Discography posting I will be somewhere in Miami with the esteemed Jack Schultz: my bets are either spread piecemeal among the bellies of several thankful alligators or trapped, ankle-deep in blood Dexter-like, in some abandoned metal container.  Doubtless, I will have earned either fate, but by then I will have had epic fun with JS and I won't care one way or another.

Me explaining my fears to Jack as we enter the swamp.

Dave Wallace

U2 - Bad 

Not sure how I've made it this far in the blog without including a U2 song.  It's interesting how they've become almost a "love 'em or hate 'em" band, but I'm definitely in the "love 'em" category.  They have an incredibly deep catalogue with a ton of terrific songs.  Bad is one of my favorites.

So the death of Aretha Franklin compels me to add a bonus song for this week:

Aretha Franklin - Old Landmark 

I'd already submitted my blog song for the week, but the passing of Aretha Franklin compels me to send something else along remembering the Queen of Soul.  Clearly the greatest female soul singer ever, and likely the greatest soul singer, regardless of gender, Franklin was a force of nature, and her run of essential songs and albums from the 60's is extraordinary.   While I love all of her classic soul material, Franklin, like many of her contemporaries, started singing in the church, and she was an incredible gospel singer.  One of my favorite Franklin albums is Amazing Grace, a gospel album that she recorded at the peak of her artistic and commercial success.  The whole thing is great, and Old Landmark rocks as hard as anything that you'll ever hear.

Phil Seiler

Aretha Franklin

Misty

Some idiot angry baseball head on twitter wrote the obituary for Aretha for National Review and in it declared her second best as a vocalist to Kelly Clarkson so I happily return to my comfortable position that conservative opinions about everything are trash. RIP Aretha.

Dave Kelley

Amanda Shires. "Eve's Daughter"

I totally agree with all of DW's comments about the new Amanda Shires release.  A really damn fine record.  I could have selected several songs off it but will go with this one.  Some fine guitar work from Mr. Shires.

Gary Scudder

Patty Griffin, Florida

I've been thinking about talking about this song for some time now, so it's not just a celebration of my long-overdue trip to visit the esteemed Jack Schultz in Miami. I've become a huge Patty Griffin fan, and I curse the times I know she passed through Burlington before I knew who she was. One of the things I appreciate most about her song-writing is her beautiful use of imagery. The song is about two young women escaping to Florida.  She gives the night an identity so real its almost tangible: "The night wants to kiss you deep/ and be on his way/ pretend he don't know you the very next day." The song is off the album Impossible Dream, which is highly recommended.

Necropants

I mean, seriously, what does one even sway about necropants? They're the star attraction at the Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft in Holmavik, although, sadly/happily/thankfully, they're just a copy.  According to Thorunn, our inside source at the museum, the brave soul who volunteered in their re-creation, lost a lot of leg hair in the process.  He didn't lose any skin, however, and when you're talking about necropants it means that you're way ahead of the game.

Unfortunately they didn't have my size, which I definitely need to get serious about this diet.

Hotel Laugarholl

I've slowly been catching up on posts from my amazing trip with my son to Iceland a year and a half ago.  What a trip it was, and, truthfully, it may have been my all-time favorite overseas adventure.  Not only is Iceland extraordinary, but, as I've discussed in the past, it very rare that you get an entire uninterrupted week with your adult child. Gary and I were waiting for the road to clear so that we could travel a little further; essentially, waiting for the designation to change from Closed to Dangerous. As part of the planned adventure our friend at the Museum of Witchcraft and Sorcery, Thorunn, told us about a hotel where we could go for a swim, and since it was on the way we figured that's where we would start the day. Getting there proved to be quite the adventure because as it turns out they were working on the road, or were working on the road during the summer, because the road was terrible, and I'm not quite certain that we weren't actually off the road for a while (and I wasn't driving my Subaru).  We finally arrived at the Hotel Laugarholl, which was, naturally enough, closed for the season, but the hotpot and the spring-fed pool was open year-round.  And that included the changing room.  The Icelanders took the logical approach of simply saying, "Look, be careful and don't drown your fool selves," which we appreciated.  It's neat to think that any time in the winter you could just decide to head over to the closed hotel to grab a swim or a soak.  It was so desolate, and staggeringly beautiful, and we were the only souls for miles.  It was only a small sliver of the best day that the Boy and I have spent together since he was a kid.

The road to the Hotel Laugarholl, and this was by far the best part. Like I said, for a while I think we were actually off the road, or were on the abandoned road, or the road under construction. It was a little unnerving considering that it was early January and we were operating with around six hours of daylight.  Guess we could have soaked in the hotpot all night.

The entrance to the Hotel Laugarholl, closed up tight for the winter, with only the slightest feel of The Shining.

The view of the hotel.  You can see the pool, open year-round, and the desolate rocky hills in the distance.

The sign to the spring that fed the hotpot and the pool, with an appropriately unpronounceable Icelandic name.

The Gvendarlaug thermal spring that fed the hotpot and the pool.

Gary climbing into the hotpot, which was deliciously hot.  The only problem was climbing across the frozen tundra to get to that delicious warmth.

That little bump in the far end of the pool is Gary.  I love this picture.  It really gives us a sense of how we had the universe to ourselves, but seems quite busy and crowded by what we did later in the day, but that's another story.

Wow

I don't know why this picture amuses me so much, but it does.  On our trip to Iceland a year and a half ago my son and I flew on Wow Air, which had recently started flying out of Montreal. It's not like I hadn't flown on discount airlines before, but Wow was, well, especially discount. They were fine, really, although not really as expensive as they advertise (also typical, no one could be if they wanted to stay in business).  The biggest price jump related to their draconian baggage policy.  For every suitcase it was something like $85 a piece, which ran the price up pretty quickly. So, I guess the answer is to bring almost nothing, which was difficult with a CPAP machine and travelling in the middle of winter.  Like a lot of discount airlines you have to pay for everything on the flight; so no lovely meal alone the way.  I had the Yum Yum Noodles because who doesn't want to pay for ramen noodles on an international flight (and also because they remind me of graduate school, which I always romantically refer to as Ramen Noodle Years). Oh, and I also like ramen noodles.

Mmmmm, Yum Yum Noodles . . .

Air

In one of my favorite section from Cynthia Freeland's book Portraits & Persons she discusses the philosophical concept of "air."

   "What was captured in the image of my grandmother, that continuing contact that my mother and I responded to, has been given the helpful and non-technical label of the 'air' by philosopher Roland Barthes. His book about photography, Camera Lucida, is both a broad reflection on the medium and a moving personal essay which he was prompted to write in reflections on loss after his beloved mother's death.  Barthes mused over the ways in which photographs preserve the past, bringing us into the direct presence of people who are long dead.  Sadly, their deaths seems to be foretold in these images.  Barthes seeks the truth of the person he had loved as companion for so long in the pages of a photograph album. Suddenly he discovers her, 'the real her', in an image taken of her as a young girl.  He feels that he had finally found his mother authenticated in that image, which he calls the Winter Garden photograph. It captures what Barthes describes as her 'air'. A person's 'air' is unanalyzable, he says.  Clearly this is not the same as whatever is recorded of the outward appearance that shows someone's legal identity, as in a passport photo.  The air has more to do, Barthes says with 'the expression, the look."
   If pressed to describe my grandmother's 'air' as shown in that special photo of her, I would say that it had to do with the way in which she combined a witty and observant twinkle with a slight ducking of the head.  She seemed to be on the verge of giving way to a broad wink of humor to accompany a penetrating observation, but to be cutting it off out of politeness or decorum. Barthes says more to explain what he has in mind by his label the 'air':

The air is not a schematic, intellectual datum, the way a silhouette is.  Nor is the air a simple analogy - however extended - as in 'likeness.' No, the air is that exorbitant thing which induces from body to soul - animula, little individual soul, good in one person, bad in another.

Naturally, readers are curious to see the Winter Garden photograph, but Barthes does not publish it because he thinks it will only have resonance for him, the person who knew and loved his mother in a special way.  I am not sure he was right about this. Surely there is something in grate portraits from history that holds our attention just because we do seem to see in them a person's very essence, their 'air'."

And this bring me to a photograph that my nephew Garrett took of me seven years ago when I was living in Abu Dhabi and he and his mother came to visit.

I wonder if this photo captures my "air."  Sure, it's a fitting metaphor, and I'm sitting in the desert clearly pontificating on something.  He and I had gotten up freakishly early so that we could go out into the desert so that he could take pictures of the sun rising. I posted it on FB yesterday and it drew lots of comments and likes, which I attribute more to Garrett's talent as a photographer than my merits as a model.  Still, does it capture my "air"?  When I see it I'm struck by how content I seem, and, truthfully, I was very happy at that point of time in my life.

More Album Art

I've recovered a goodly number of Iceland photos, and the rest I'm not meant to have (and that's how you get around needing a grief counselor). Here's a picture that I definitely need to run off for my son.  During our week in Iceland we had stopped by the causeway (the one that we drove over the first time in the dark without any understanding of how amazing it was) on our way south from Holmavik to the Snaefellesnes Peninsula.  I've always referred to this one as the cover of Gary's first album.

Clearly, it would be Alt-Country.  Or maybe the opening credits of one of those incredibly dark Scandinavian crime dramas that I'm addicted to on NetFlix.
 

Manfredi Album Art

Michael Manfredi is a very unique individual, and not simply because he's the only student who ever went with me on three student trips: Zanzibar, India/Sri Lanka, Jordan. He's one of those students who you know you'll end up staying close to after they've left the school (MM graduated a couple months back).  He was swapping emails with Steve Wehmeyer and me this morning and wanted to show us some of his artwork (which I've shared on this blog before).  On our trip to Zanzibar he had purchased an album at the Dhow Countries Music Academy, and was finally getting around to burn it onto his phone. Since there was no album art that made the transference he decided to create his own, which is celebrated below. I'm not really certain about my royalties, but they had better be substantial.

Oh, and Michael has determined that he and I are going to take a camel ride from the Wadi Rum all the way to Petra.  He's already done research on it, and I think it only (only? riding a camel is painful, but that's another blog post) takes around four or five days.  Our guide would cook for us, and we'd sleep under the stars in the desert.  If I can work out powering my CPAP it sounds utterly epic!

Holmavik: A Still Small Voice

It's very rare that I take good pictures, but on our trip to Iceland it seemed almost impossible to not take good pictures.  I think it was simply because the days were so short and the sun was perpetually so low in the sky, which meant that the light was extraordinary. Here's a picture I snapped of Holmavik as Gary and I took off for an absolutely amazing day, maybe my favorite of all time.  Holmavik is the town that houses the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft. It's hard to imagine it ever being bustling, but apparently it is in the summer. There was a quiet there that I don't think has ever left me.

Looking back at it now for some reason one of my favorite passages from the Quran keeps running through my head: "And remember thy Lord in thy soul, humbly and in awe, being not of loud voice, in the morning and the evening . . ."

The Very Narrow Road to the Very Deep North

I've made the point before that Iceland is the most consistently, stunningly beautiful place I've ever visited. Of course, I don't know if any of the hundreds of pictures I took truly capture the beauty of the place, which is OK.  As we've discussed in the past, as much as you want to share the amazing things you saw on a trip, there's also something special about owning it yourself.

This is one of my favorite pictures, which I snapped on one of our last days. What does one even say about a vista like this?

Icelandic Phallological Museum

As is well documented, I am a complete museum whore (as well as movie whore and a Proust whore and a vanilla milk shake whore, and, well you get the picture).  While I am normally drawn to art museums, I'm not opposed to the more obscure museums.  I've just been celebrating the Witchcraft Museum, and I still make use of the museum book from the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia.  However, not every peculiar museum is worth the trouble.  Gary and I had precious little interest in visiting the Icelandic Phallological Museum (a museum celebrating, well, you know).  I guess it was worth killing an hour on our first night in Reykjavik, and it allowed me get the appropriate tshirts for Cyndi and Craig - as well as shot glasses (which, oddly, I found buried in the bottom of my desk the other day, eighteen months later). Truthfully, it was probably worth it just for the picture below, me and an actual whale penis.

Hint: I'm the one on the right.

Eating at the Witchcraft Museum

How am I so perpetually far behind in posting?  I mean, the point of the blog was to chronicle my travels, so I suppose it would help if I didn't take on challenges such as reading and blogging on Proust or running a music blog.  Still, those projects have been a lot of fun, and are part of who I am so I guess I shouldn't complain. 

I was just talking to my great friend Bill Wixon and he's heading off soon to meet his wife in Iceland. He wanted some information about Iceland and I told him that I had a ton of posts, except that I don't actually have a ton of posts on Iceland.  And I can't seem to track down many of my pictures?  Hmmm, there's another mystery to eat up my time. I know I took a million pictures on my phone.  Now, where did they wander off to?  Oh well, I'll sort it out.  I'll focus on brief posts of the pictures I have tracked down.  When Gary and I were in Holmavik we ended up eating most of our meals in the Witchcraft Museum. Because it was the first week of January it was essentially deserted.  The lovely lady who looked after the Museum, Thorunn (who is my friend on FB), told us that in the summer they have up to three hundred people a day, which is pretty extraordinary.  In the middle of winter it felt like the end of the universe, at least until we went further out to the true edge of the universe. Besides being a very friendly person, Thorunn is also a great cook, so we were happy to eat every meal there. I suspect in the summer there are more places open, but whatever the season I'd definitely suggest eating at the Witchcraft Museum.

My son, goofing, and looking great, per usual, in his Dutch Mill sweatshirt.

My son is extremely bright and perceptive, but taking pictures . . .

Discography Year Two - Week 49

Wow, less than a month is left in this year's Discography year, and I have to somehow fit in around fifteen songs (even considering my reckless crimes against rules and math this week).  It's been a sad year, but also a great year for music and friendship.

This time next week I'll be visiting the esteemed JS in Florida.  As NY was wont to opine on the famous/infamous Tonight's the Night tour: "Pure Miami." This means that I'll be leaving the nano overlords in charge of publishing the Discography.  So, if you could get me something by Wednesday afternoon I'll program the system before I head out Thursday morning.

Dave Wallace

Amanda Shires - Take on the Dark

Amanda Shires just put out a terrific new album, To the Sunset.  I've found Shires's previous albums to be OK, pretty standard alt-country fare.  But, To the Sunset is completely different.  More a rock album than anything, it's tough yet compassionate, insightful yet not brooding.  It also has a far broader musical palette than her previous efforts.  The whole album is excellent but, for me, the highlight is Take on the Dark.

Dave Kelley

Sometimes the best antidote for the blues is spending time with friends, grabbing dinner and drinks, and then seeing a cathartic live show.  IMHO, The Old 97's are as predictably great a live act as any band this side of E Street.  If they roll through your hamlet, I urge you to check them out and enjoy.  They have been a band for twenty-five years now and clearly still love every minute they are on stage.  Plus, they are as tight as you would expect from a band that has played together so long.

Friday some friends and I saw them at a relatively small venue in Cincinnati.  I am always happy for a week or two when I know I will be seeing them.  We grabbed dinner at a little place next to the venue.  Who do we see in the restaurant eating by himself?  Why none other than Rhett Miller the lead singer and primary songwriter in the band.  He could not have been any cooler.  He talked to us for about five minutes and was as pleasant as he could be.  He posed for a picture with my friend Kara (other then being a great musician, Miller is lusted after by most of my female and gay male friends.)  Kara even asked if he could play a favorite song that night.  He said "We really don't play that anymore, but I am working on the set list now.  Let me see what I can do." 

Needless to say, the show was amazing, and they did play the song!!!!!  A great version of the song that had the place bouncing.  I am cheating this week and choosing two Old 97's songs.  The first is the song they played by request.  The second is a staple of their live shows.  Both rock in a very garage band sort of way and are extremely cathartic live.  Ladies and gentleman, from Dallas Texas...……

"Four Leaf Clover"  The Old 97's

"Friday Night"   The Old 97's

Phil Seiler

Fantastic Negrito

Plastic Hamburgers

Upper management and senior male anchor harassers notwithstanding, CBS News remains my preferred source of news for their obvious commitment to good story telling and diversity in their shows and anchors. CBS SundayMorning used to be must see TV for me and I still enjoy it when I catch it. However, the Saturday morning broadcast has become my don't miss show. And one main reason is host Anthony Mason's clear love of interesting music. They close every show with a three song set by the artist of the week. They have featured a ton of artists that I either love (Violent Femmes, Wye Oak, Decemberists) or artists that I wanted to learn more about. Last week they introduced me to Fantastic Negrito. I'm been grooving to this album all week. Enjoy the retro jam and let's break out these chains and burn it down.

Gary Scudder

Amy Winehouse, Just Friends, Back to Black, Love Is a Losing Game, Tears Dry On Their Own, Wake Up Alone

OK, so I've gone completely rogue this week, although, strange for me, unintentionally. First off, let me make a prediction: by the time we've finally finished our various seasons of the Discography we'll have championed every song on Winehouse's  brilliant Back to Black album.  Of course, since I'm featuring half of the album this week I guess that's not that audacious of a prediction.  In fact, some of these songs have been celebrated before by Noted Musicologists with a much more expansive musical encyclopedias than me (which adds to my crime); my memory is that GB wrote on Back to Black (as well as I'm No Good) and DK featured Tears Dry On Their Own. Initially, I was going to write on Just Friends, and discuss, clumsily no doubt, what a great affair song it is.  There are affair songs that celebrate desire (Lucinda Williams's Right In Time or even Sara Evans's Four-Thirty, which tops my list of Even Nice Girls Get the Itch set list) or hopelessness (Williams's Those Three Days or Minneapolis - or, well, just about any Lucinda song) or even redemption (Kathleen Edwards's Summerlong), but Winehouse's Just Friends does a great job expressing the terrible "logic" of an affair.  However, as I was listening to the album again yesterday at the gym what struck me was not simply the beauty of this song on this album, but the power of an album, a true album, as compared to a collection of songs.  I've never been much of a fan of greatest hits albums although some of them are actually great albums in their own right, most notably Uncle Tupelo's Discography and NY's Decade (although definitely not the first volume of the Archives).  Part of the reason is my own snobbishness in that greatest hits albums are owned by posers who can't be bothered to put in the time and effort to research and own the original albums. However, the biggest problem is that a greatest hits album, by definition, can't approach the narrative integrity of a great album.  Marvin Gaye's What's Going On and NY's Tonight's the Night are the two best albums of the 1970s (AARTIK) because they contain great songs but hold together organically (of course, as my son insists, I'm only on social media and, for that matter, I only teach for a living, so that I have a platform to champion Tonight's the Night).  Which brings me back to the five songs in the Winehouse album.  Taken together, they form a a beautiful and devastating narrative arc. Even at the end, even when her tears dry on their own, the lover is still filling her with desire and dread. And even if you read the entire sequence as a metaphor and the desired lover is drugs and alcohol, it still hangs together.

Oh, and last night I finally got around to watching the heartbreaking documentary Amy (which led to a late night Twitter discussion between Erik Esckilsen and myself about whether we hated her father or her husband more). I came across her recording of Moon River.  She was 16 when she recorded this (WTF?!).  How is someone that young so self-aware (and at the same time so horribly un-self-aware)? 

Discography Year Two - Week 48

Yikes, it's the 48th week of the second year of our Discography music discussion, which means that there's only a month left.  Somehow I have to fit twelve songs into the next four weeks, which, even with my limited Hoosier understanding of math, seems like a challenge.

I found Jack's song choice very moving (and not simply for the obvious reason) and I've declared it the official song of the 2018 Summer Four Sport Triathlon.

Jack Schultz

In these dystopian times I found this very uplifting. Sarah Harmer singing a Neil Young song with an auditorium full of happy people.   I hope you enjoy.  A good week to all!

Dave Wallace

R.E.M. – Drive

As this song blog prepares to wrap up with Year Two, I've been reviewing my previous songs, and I was shocked to see that I had never featured a song from one of my favorite bands, R.E.M.  Starting with their first album, Murmur, which essentially created indie rock, through at least Monster, everything that they released was fantastic, one of the great runs in rock music history.  And, while there's undeniably an R.E.M. sound, there's an incredible amount of diversity to their music, especially toward the end of that run.  Trying to pick one album, or one song, from this stretch is a ridiculous task but, even by their standards, Automatic for the People was extraordinary.  Full of amazing songs, it also was a stark contrast from its predecessor, Out of Time (another classic), and showed a band firing on all cylinders.  Drive, its opener, let you know what was to follow.

Dave Kelley

"Dani California"   Red Hot Chili Peppers

I really like a lot of the music released by Red Hot Chili Peppers, but this is easily my favorite.  Lyrically I neither know nor care what the song is about.  It is just a fantastic song that they play the hell out of IMHO.

Phil Seiler

The Grays

Friend of Mine

As can probably be discerned by now, I am a big fan of Power Pop and music that never quite reached the public's wider eye. Firmly in the center of that Venn diagram exists the very short lived  band The Grays. Compromised of four members (Jason Falkner, Jon Brion, Buddy Judge, and Dan McCarroll) that seemed dedicated to never actually joining a band, their short career together  makes sense. But they were the right combination of ingredients to burn hot and bright for this one album, Ro Sham Bo.

On this track, Falkner is front and center and he is really the hook that got me into this band. HIs ear for catchy melodies and unusual lyrical phrasing draw me right in. I love how Friend of Mine starts with this great guitar line and then enters the conversational verse supported by an equally interesting guitar hook. And do you get some lovely harmonies in the chorus? Why yes we do! 

I recommend checking out the whole album, as I often do, but "Very Best Years" was the single from the album and it too is brilliant. Jason's solo work is also exceptional.

Gary Scudder

Miles Davis, Miles Runs the Voodoo Down

As much as I love jazz I have to admit to having pretty conventional tastes (as I do with most things): Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans. etc.  Not that these folks didn't push the boundary consistently,but they're certainly artists whose names would be familiar to people who know nothing at all about jazz.  Miles Davis produced so many extraordinary albums and consistently changed the rules of jazz and music and the world (AARTIKMDWTGGOTTC). Nevertheless, I find the later albums a far greater challenge (as I do with Coltrane's later work) which is a testament to my criminally limited education and cruelly stunted brain.  I've often made the point that the true geniuses in music (and all art forms, really) are consistently pushing and changing the rules, not because they want to but because they can't avoid it. It means that the audience has to do more to keep up, which makes the revolutions often unappreciated if not actively hated.  I'm that way with Davis's Bitches Brew.  It's taken me a long time to begin to truly appreciate it, and even now I have to be in the right mood to tackle it (whereas there's never a day when I'm not interested in listening to Kind of Blue or Porgy and Bess).  Miles Runs the Voodoo Down is the first song on the album which hooked me and it's remained my favorite. I'm also going to need some serious voodoo on my side to win the Summer Four Sport Triathlon today (especially since I don't like poker and will go all in on the third hand no matter what is happening).