Gary Beatrice Discography #7

 The other day I was talking to someone and had the sobering revelation that school started in a month; it's also rather amazing because I've been teaching for forty years and apparently still don't understand how the calendar works. Yes, the summer is getting away from us. I'm not a summer person by any means, but I think with each passing year I mourn its passing a little bit more. It might be part of a grand metaphor - or maybe my weary bones just aren't looking for another long Vermont winter (which starts in about three weeks). The passing seasons also make me appreciate my friends all the more, and you're certainly all in that crew. I like this month's selections, which definitely have a more old school feel than the last couple months. The Discography is like the Food Shelf in that way, you never know what's going to show up, but you know it's going to be good and necessary.

Lynette Vought

Rene Marie

Surrey with the Fringe On Top

 

   In honor of the Dog Days of summer and the quest for laziness, I offer Rene Marie’s rendition of The Surrey with the Fringe on Top. Compared to the first part of the Gordon MacRae version in O…..klahoma!,  this is more of a seduction and a request, a “Baby, take me for a ride in that excellent surrey of yours, will you?“, instead of a boast and a pitch to get a date.

    In a later part of MacRae’s performance, after Shirley Jones has beaten him about the face and neck for fibbing about the existence of the beautiful carriage and snow-white horses, he slows down and tells her the dream of it. Perhaps this part was Rene Marie’s inspiration. In any case, both of their voices and interpretations are excellent.

   I appreciate the encouragement to slow down. It has been a lovely summer so far, and whenever the business of fall tries to edge into my days, I find myself thinking, please, not yet. Slow is good. Lazy is good. Let’s make it last.

   I hope you all will remember that, until fall rolls around.

Pedro Carmolli

Lissie, When I'm Alone

How do you find and hear good new music today? This is a problem I have.  My daughter has good musical taste and sometimes gives me a clue to something good.  But that happens too rarely.  Radio stations are too specialized and you have to slog through a morass of garbage to hear one thing that sounds okay.  What I am finding "new" musically is through TV shows via broadcast or streaming.  I was watching an episode of Loudermilk through Amazon Prime and heard a character sing.  I was surprised at how good it was and wondered who was actually singing the song.  It turned out that the actress is actually a singer songwriter named Lissie.  I looked her up online and wow is she good.  So  I am recommending her song " When I'm Alone."  To me it is a new song but to the world it is 10 years old.  I have to get used to the idea that great rock and roll music is not dead it is just mostly underground.  I suppose that is where it really should be.

Jack Schultz

Donald Byrd—Here I Am

One of the things I love about Pandora is the exposure it gives me to new (to me) music.  A few months ago, this song popped up on my Miles Davis station.  The horn playing of Byrd is excellent, but what really grabs you is the baritone sax by Pepper Adams, which anchors the entire song.  I like this song and I plan to further explore Donald Byrd in future listening sessions.  I hope you enjoy it.

Dave Kelley

"Impossible Germany"  Wilco.

 

  I saw Wilco touring behind "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" and was relatively underwhelmed.  That was an excellent record, but the band was just not exciting in a live setting.  Not long after the tour ended, Tweedy replaced virtually in the band.  Strong work Jeff!  I saw them years later touring after "Sky Blue Sky" was released.  (Easily my favorite Wilco record.)  They had become a fantastic live band.

 

I am not a musician, but god damn Nels Cline is a beast.  "Impossible Germany" is a great showcase for him.  Brilliant song to boot.

Gary Scudder

Neil Young, White Line

Note: this was originally written for February, but, as so often happens in the Discography, other songs and ideas took over.

With the exception of Bob Dylan, I don't think any singer or band from the rock era has produced as much mythology as Neil Young. Recently, Young has released a fair amount of older material - I'm assuming that he, like the rest of us, is getting stir crazy from the pandemic. One of the "new" albums is Homegrown, the unreleased follow-up to Harvest. Because it was never released, with the exception of a couple songs on Decade, Homegrown has over the years developed a mythic quality. There were two main theories to explain the album never seeing the light of day. The main theory was that Young was so horrified by the success of Harvest and the pressure to produce a similar album, and slide so effortlessly into the middle of the road, that he headed for the ditch (in the liner notes on Decade Young famously wrote, "Heart of Gold put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride, but I saw more interesting people there."); this resulted in what has become known as the Ditch Trilogy of Time Fades Away, Tonight's the Night, and On the Beach, which I still argue is his best work. So, I do think there's something to this theory. Secondly, it is proposed that Homegrown was simply too personal in that it reminded him of his failed relationship with the actress Carrie Snodgress, and it's hard to argue with that, although he released other songs about the same time that referenced her: A Man Needs a Maid and Motion Pictures. There's also a reason that is so obvious that it barely needs discussion: Young is just really weird. He didn't release a CD of Time Fades Away for decades (it often made lists of best albums to never be released as a CD) for reasons of "sound quality," which seems like an odd defense from someone known for maximum distortion, and who once released an album of just feedback. To all of this I'll add one more option: it's simply not that good of an album, although it has some real bright spots. And, after that way too lengthy introduction, I'd like to talk about the song White Line from Homegrown. I first heard the song on Ragged Glory (an underrated album) in a different form that definitely fits the album, but which I don't like nearly as much as this stripped down version which was recorded with Robbie Robertson one afternoon when Young was killing time. I don't think it's a great song, and the original (that is, the later version) didn't even make my infamous list of 110 Neil Young songs better than Heart of Gold, but for some reason it just speaks to me at this particular moment of uncertainty, loss, and pain.