M. Ward

M. Ward - Hold Time (in stores Feb. 17, streamed from NPR) Much as Zooey Dechanel totally does it for me, I didn't really fall all over myself for She & Him (lala), her duo act with M. Ward, like others did. But M. Ward, y'all... his records scratch that singular itch for something vintage that's not vintage. One of the songs on here (I don't see song titles on the NPR player) is the improbable but delicious mix of his olde time radio tone with Gary Glitter/David Essex plastic. The guy knows how to put together some music. Judging from this listen, it's no Transfiguration of Vincent (lala), and by that I mean it misses reaching that atmospheric layer where Vincent is hummed by the constellations, high on the lotus flowers that sprout on the highest clouds below them, by the same slim margin as do all his other records. It comes close, but if there is still air, it's not outer space.

it sounds like this sometimes

fIREHOSE - If'n (lala) - I was looking for myself in old KLSU staff pictures on Facebook , and fIREHOSE was the sound of the station back then.
Swearing at Motorists - This Flag Signals Goodbye (lala) - Love these guys.
"Anything You Want" is 1:26 of near rock perfection, and could maybe be reduced further to that 15-20 seconds in there and then looped forever

Anything You Want - Swearing A...

Magnolia Electric Co. - Fading Trails (lala) - Love these guys too. Even if that's totally not why they do it.
Barton Carroll - The Lost One (lala) recommended by the lala, and now by me. He sounds like Alex Chilton one second, some other guy I can't place the next, and like the appropriate gradients between. Exposed influences, idiosyncratic phrasing, sympathetically under-produced, unexpected swirling violin, frank and slightly creepy sexuality - I like this from"Those Days are Gone, and My Heart is Breaking"

There is no limit to the steps I could retrace
I got a job making eggs at my friend's place
There's no disgrace in making an honest living

Thanks, Barton Carroll.

get thee behind me Satan

The Louvin Brothers - Satan is Real (lala) and Charley Louvin - Steps to Heaven (lala) for article research. Now, I prefer last year's vintage-country-nerd-oriented Charley Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs (lala) but there was a time when I would have straight-up knocked you into a table of knick-knacks to get at a copy of Satan is Real were we to both spot it at the garage sale. Just sayin'. I might still, so watch your step. The presence of Satan is perhaps no realer than in a record collector showdown.
Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger (lala) I've listened to this album a zillion times over the years, but the line

Well, it's the same damn tune, it's the man in the moon.
It's the way that I feel about you

in "Hands on the Wheel" stopped me in my tracks. So precise yet still abstract. I love the way country music does that.
Billy Joe Shaver - Everybody's Brother (lala) You should make it out to see Billy Joe Shaver if he blows through town if just to see him up there on stage in a work shirt, flapping his long arms like the wings of the Lord's personal buzzard and for the genius gospel boogie "Get Thee Behind Me Satan"

Get Thee Behind Me Satan - Bil...

or the even less subtle "If You Don't Love Jesus (Go to Hell)"

If You Don't Love Jesus - Bill...

Being the very grinning heathen toward which Shaver's and Louvin's warnings are directed, I have a "thanks anyway for lookin' out for me" feeling toward the sentiments in the songs, but am open to the notion that maybe one day I'll get snatched up by that buzzard's talon and taken high enough so that I can see the same light these humble servants see.

[The Record Crate] In Search of "Jam"

I am generally not a big fan of “jam band music,” not because out of some tiresome problem with hippies but because, in my experience, it rarely delivers on its meager promise. I want the band to jam, and they just never seem to do it. Instead you get limp improvisations around limper songs, cycling endlessly through the trappings of a forced demographic defining themselves on a nostalgia they likely didn’t directly experience. Not that there is anything wrong with that -- every music fan aligns themselves with some music they deem “real” -- but the jam band thing hits me as particularly forced. Fortunately North Mississippi All-Stars is an exception.

NMAS is a jam band by association mostly; really they are a meeting of the progeny of roots music champion Bruce Dickinson and the late Mississippi blues powerhouse R.L. Burnside in some lost, backwoods Delta nexus, channeling the power of everything from cotton field work chants to Sun Records, taking the chains off the blues and rock ’n’ roll, letting that dog run like it wants to. Last time I saw them, they managed to make something as horribly egregious as a washboard solo become a thing of feral transcendent joy. In sum, North Mississippi All-Stars is a band that jams, a feat you can bear witness to on Thursday at The Varsity.

Our other large performing arts theater is being put to good use this week. The Manship Theatre is hosting two-night run of Three Redneck Tenors, a Joe 12-pack spoof of the ubiquitous opera singer showcases of the last decade.

Folk music legend Richie Havens will take the Manship stage on Sunday night. Havens emerged out of the same fertile Greenwich Village scene as did Bob Dylan in the mid-1960s and rose up the ranks to be the opening act at Woodstock. More of an interpreter than a songwriter, it was his version of “Motherless Child” from Woodstock that launched him to international fame. His distinctive voice and guitar style, heard in everything from jingles to the Tibet Freedom Concert, have made Havens one of our country’s most treasured musical talents. He will be at the Manship on Sunday.

Monday night, the Manship will host four international masters of the guitar: French fingerstyle virtuoso Pierre Bensusan, classical guitarist Benjamin Verdery, Argentina’s Cecilia Zabala and American “guitar poet” Brian Gore. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: Masterful guitar music is what the intimate Manship stage is designed for, and this event on Tuesday night should only underscore my claim.

And, should you hunger for spectacular guitar jams not sated by the above, Texas outlaw country guitar slinger Eric Taylor will be at the Red Dragon on Thursday night and Mississippi blues swinger Lil Dave Thompson will be up at Teddy’s Juke Joint on Saturday night.

Thursday, Jan. 15

North Mississippi All-Stars at The Varsity

Eric Taylor at the Red Dragon

The Vettes, Oh Juliet, and Norico at Chelsea’s

I, Octopus and Panthalassa at North Gate Tavern

Friday, Jan. 16

Struggle Bear at Spanish Moon

The Captain Legendary Band at Chelsea’s

Rebecca Rubion at North Gate Tavern

Marcus Elizondo and Michael Juan Nunez & American Electric at Boudreaux & Thibodeaux’s

Dave Matthews Tribute Band at The Varsity

Three Redneck Tenors at Manship Theatre

Saturday, Jan. 17

CombiChrist, Black Light Burns, and Retard-o-Bot at the Spanish Moon

Jason Hilbun & the Homewreckers and Polly Pry at Chelsea’s

Supervillian at North Gate Tavern

The Lance Younger Band at Boudreaux & Thibodeaux’s

Three Redneck Tenors at Manship Theatre

Lil Dave Thompson at Teddy’s Juke Joint

Sunday, Jan. 18

Richie Havens at Manship Theatre

Monday, Jan. 19

Caspar & the House of David at Chelsea’s

Tuesday, Jan. 20

International Guitar Night at Manship Theatre

Link to original

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Denver...

Wilderness - (k)no(w)here (lala) - I sorta like it in a 80's alt-goth-pop revisitation, but I have a hard time believing they really want to vocals to sound that way.
Frog Eyes - The Bloody Hand (lala) Carey Mercer is a guy that I believe whose exaggerated strained vocals sound exactly the way he wants them to sound, and I am inclined to agree with his assessment. Frog Eyes register as awesome on song titles alone "Our Lordship has Devised a New Billing System" and "Silence But For The Gentle Tinkling Of The Flowing Creek" are but two glowing examples.
Blind Pilot - 3 Rounds and a Sound (lala) - Wavers between "nice enough" and "lovely" committing to neither category. This would sound great in your college girlfriend's apartment, but then, what wouldn't?

skipping and skipping and skipping

If you are gonna go John Denver, you gotta get Rocky Mountain High (lala). It might be a case of wanting something to work conceptually, but there is a sweetness that only John Denver has, and its one that Will Oldham and the Phosphorescent guy from last week and a slew of even more obvious folk-mystic types strive for and fall short. John Denver is the wide-eyed innocence I remember of the early 70's, having been a little kid at the time, largely unaware of Nixon and Vietnam. John Denver is innocence forced. I think of being stoked over the Bicentennial, The Six Million Dollar Man and Star Wars. It would be interesting (to me anyway) to map the memory of the time over the actual tumultuous history with John Denver's choral celebrations of nature as the translation layer between them. When I look at that cover, I picture John Denver skipping a rock on that stream and it keeps skipping and skipping until it disappears around the bend, and he turns to you (you are suddenly aware that you are standing ankle deep in the same water) and grins "Come on! Let's follow it!" and you go sloshing through the water after him and it. Maybe I should have proposed this record for a 33 1/3 book.

to bodly go where no rhinestone cowboy has gone before

Ever since hearing my daughter sing a mixed up version of "Country Roads" she got from a Japanese animated film, I've had half a mind to plumb the depths of John Denver's catalog to see if there are any lost classics. Then the mere mention of him in a friend's blog set the wheels in motion.

When I was a kid, John Denver was an unstoppable force, he was everywhere - on the radio, on TV, in the movies, on "The Muppet Show" - everywhere. He is the first concept I had of a music star. I recognize that in these times, in the Klingon sense, there is no honor in John Denver, but then neither is there in Star Trek references and I'm weirdly (and likely as temporarily) excited about that too.

Farewell Andromeda (lala) has a delightfully cosmic cowboy title and cover to begin this journey, and while I have to admit that it twinkling and twanging in the background is rather pleasant, it's not yet leading me to proclaim him the Gram-Parsons-you're-afraid-to-love-in-public I want him to be. Oh well, I suspect there will be a load of compromisin' on the road to this horizon.

Here is the lost Christmas classic you can trot out for next year's round of discussions on that particular topic

Please Daddy - John Denver

Here is the scene from Miyazaki's Whisper of the Heart with "Country Roads"


and the trailer for the new Star Trek movie


I'm just sayin', isn't the point of the transporter the fact that the NCC class ships couldn't land and take off in the Earth's atmosphere? Don't look at me like that. YOU KNOW YOU WERE THINKING THE SAME THING!

If the Enterprise has a mission in the Andromeda system, it will all make sense. Science Officer John Denver, report to the bridge!

The reverbed yodelling on "Whiskey Basin Blues" though... That's what space travel really sounds like.

Whiskey Basin Blues - John Den...