2017 Records that I thought were great.

2017 Was a pretty decent year for records. I liked several. In no particular order

1) For Sale: Live at Maxwell's 1986-The Replacements. Probably the only decent live set they recorded. It just makes you yearn to see someone you never got a chance to see.

2) Sweet as Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes From the Horn of Africa-Various artists. The great sampling of Somali pop has become indispensable.  

3) Masseduction-St. Vincent. Boy howdy, Annie Clark returned with a pop grinder and a world tour. This takes multiple listens, but listen you must.

4) Colors-Beck. 'Pure pop for now people' to quote the album name of a Nick Lowe record. This humble slice of fun sure got a lot of hate from Beck fans, but I sure love it. 

5) Anything Could Happen-Bash & Pop. Tommy Stinson of Replacements fame makes a stone cold power pop record. 

6) Idiots Out Wondering Around-House of Large Sizes. This is a vinyl re-issue of a set of live recordings by my favorite local(ized) band. Missouri and Iowa anyway.

7) Motel Mirrors-self-titled. EP of a nice man and woman duo in the roots rock Sun Records vein.

8) Scum Fuck Flower Boy-Tyler, The Creator. Powerful alternative rap by a a rapper who is introspective, profane, fun, and has mad powerful rhymes.

9) The Nashville Sound-Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit. Wow, just wow! I didn't know you could make a better album that his solo "Southeastern," but this was epic roots rock with a full throated band both input and influence. Such a great record.

Back to posting....

It has been quite awhile since I have posted. Almost 4 years. That's too long. So I'll try and do better next time. I have lots of albums I could talk about. I might talk about my foray into vinyl. AND how much fun it's been to collect modern music on vinyl. More on that later.

I am obsessed with it Top Records for 2013

Took me a bit, but here is my 'Top 14 Records' of 2013. No particular order except for the first 3 slots...

1) Jason Isbell - Southeastern (Record of the year; Best Americana/Singer Songwriter)

2) Neko Case - The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The That I Fight, The More That I Love You (Best Alt Pop)

3) Daft Punk - Random Access Memories (Best Pop)

4) The Foals - Holy Fire

5) Pokey LaFarge - eponymous (Best Early Country/Blues/Folk/Old Timey interpretations)

6) Queens of The Stone Age - Like Clockwork (Best Hard Rock)

7) Haim - Days Are Gone (runner-up Best Pop)

8) Robbie Fulks - Gone Away Backwards (Best Traditional Country/Folk)

9) Son Volt - Honky Tonk (Best Country & Western)

10) Electric Peanut Butter Company - Trans Atlantic Psycho Classics Vol. 2 (Most Interesting)

11) Bob Dylan - Bootleg Vol. 10 - Another Self Portrait (Best Reissue)

12) Big Star - Nothing Can Hurt Me [Documentary Soundtrack] (Best Rock & Roll, runner-up Best Reissue)

13) Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell - Old Yellow Moon

14) Son of Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, & Chanteys

Reflections on KDHX: It's in my DNA

1. So today I was in St. Louis and it made me more homesick than usual because I was listening to KDHX. And although I am proud of them for what they achieved, that is to say their move to Larry Weir Building at Grand Center, it is bittersweet.
   
   I spent many, many hours at the Magnolia studio. My musical taste is a complete creature of the sub-genre of public rad...io, that is called "Community Radio." I started as a volunteer at KDHX in 1992 or 1993. I can't remember really. The first pledge drive I worked was probably Fall of 1993 and we raised what back then was an astronomical sum of 30,000. The board and the management was freaking out. Back then the Corporation for Public Broadcasting matched the money that came in dollar for dollar.
   
   After a couple of years of volunteering, rather than get on the air I opted for The Double Helix Board of Directors. I served two terms on the Board of Directors and held every office except VP of TV and President. I was Secretary, Treasurer, VP of Radio, & First Vice President. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The way the board worked then was you turned over by 7 of the 14 members every year. So it was difficult sometimes to get things done. It was a labor of love with many, many individuals trying to implement their own agendas. Being on the board was often like being in an abusive relationship where you worshiped the abuser. A board meeting would start at 7:00 p.m. I think on the first Wednesday of every month at the Boatmen's Bank building at the corner of Euclid and Delmar. It would often run until 11:00 at night in which afterwards several of us would retire to Dressle's Pub and shut it down.
   
   Back then I was young and broke. KDHX was like a fraternity & family to me. If you didn't have any money you could always find shit to do at the station. And if you wanted to drink there were people who would take you out and help you get fucked up even if you didn't have any money. KDHX was a surrogate parent to me when I was by myself in the great City of St. Louis. She should count herself very lucky to have a Community Station of this status. It is well known and probably as prosperous WWOZ in New Orleans.
   
   KDHX Double Helix is a not-for-profit entity not tied to a university or controlled like an NPR affiliate. It is strictly volunteer run except for a handful of paid staff. It depends solely on membership donations and local business underwriters in order to function. I have not read the mission statement in a long time and it has changed, but there used to be a line in it that I am paraphrasing which said it was to be used to train and give access to those people in the community who would not normally be able to participate in the media and to give the disenfranchised access to and training in media. I think they have been very successful in that. I am pleased. The group of folks who have shepherded the station since 1998 have done something that 20 years ago would not have possibly entered my or anyone's perceptual field.
   
   Roy St. John taught me how to run the board and got me my community broadcaster FCC license. Although he only called me in on Saturday Nights to run the reel-to-reel satellite download of Mountain Stage. I did get the pleasure of being with him on many morning shows. And if he took a holiday, he would let me and Marilyn Andrew do the morning show which was great fun. I also got the pleasure of being kind of a sidekick to Mark "Sunny Boy" Mason when he had his 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. Saturday Morning time slot.
   
   The DJs that have influenced and honed my taste in music have a thankless unpaid job. So I wanted to thank a few of them.
   
   Fred Gumaer, taught me about country and western music. Mark Mason & Al Boudx taught me about New Orleans Jazz, Cajun and Creole music of Louisiana. Darren Snow& Doug Morgan have literally sold me thousands of dollars of worth of records from contemporary rock & roll. Marjie Baker Kennedy gave me an appreciation of A Capella.
   Clinton Harding, the Great Larry Weir, and Ed Becker influenced me with their mixture of Americana, Folk, Progressive Country & Singer/songwriter material that is my primary listening focus today. The Great Keith Dudding, along with Terry & Namoi and Walter & Willie Volz gave me a life long love of Bluegrass, Newgrass, and Prog Grass. I learned about ska and reggae at KDHX. I learned about sacred Indian Music, Native American Music, Eastern European Music, Folk Music from the British Isles. I mean just everything.
   
   What I learned the most though was what I was supposed to learn and that was about community and how to serve it. The Double Helix Corporation taught me about commitment, personal sacrifice, volunteerism, egalitarianism, and love of community. You have done a find job KDHX, here's to your future.
   
   Congratulations on your move!

It's Only Rock & Roll, what Lou Reed meant to me.

I didn't want to write a blog entry that would turn into a biography and I don't per se, want to overly eulogize one of my music heros. I think most of my fellow fans or anyone familiar with contemporary American Music of the last 50 or 60 years know about his life already and are mourning in multiple ways. I'm going to sit down and listen to the whole of my VU catalog. It's certainly my favorite (maybe) of his pop songwriting.

That's right, to be very honest with you, with all this talk in The NY Times or Rolling Stone articles about his "dark vision" kind of leaves me a little cold. Yes, there were some very dark themes-whole albums of dark themes. But I want to remind people of what a great, great pop songwriter Lou Reed was. For a man who was partially rapping and narrating over tunes, he could, at times write achingly beautiful melodies about being a young person in love; those pre-Beatles understanding of Rock And Roll. Not that The Beatles didn't write about puppy love or hand holding; but ultimately they are British and as much as they wanted to be American and distill American music you have to live where Lou Reed lived in order to pick up those great Eastern U.S. styles in order to do what Lou Reed did. Philly Soul, Doo-wop, Harlem Radio DJ voices, Alan Fried, American Bandstand, New York folk scene and Atlantic Records all floated through Lou Reed's ear holes I am sure. At least I like to think so.

What I wanted to write about is how much Lou Reed influenced my life and my love of popular and contemporary music. Especially my great love for a well-crafted pop song and music that helped me get through it all while I was growing up (and way into middle age). Lou Reed helped me become a man in a lot of ways. He let me know it was okay to be sensitive, but don't go indulging in that shit all the time. Life's hard and it's okay to be angry. It's okay to medicate yourself. He was a music Jesus that who impaled himself on the 'angry young man' demeanor and made himself the personal sacrifice on the altar of all our demons so we wouldn't have to. His dark messages never, ever glorify the act of the sin, but merely a narrative that takes you down a path and says "you decide".

I was late to The Velvet Underground. I was probably 21 or 22 when I discovered them through the rise of the college music underground in the mid-to-late '80s. In fact the first VU tunes I heard were covers of Pale Blue Eyes and Femme Fatale on REM's wonderful outtakes album Dead Letter Office. My future wife was forcing The Velvet Underground and Nico down my throat...and I fucking loved it. It was dark, but it could be happy and poignant too.  The album that really blew me away after that was Loaded. It was chocked full of standard Rock And Roll and today I still can't figure out why it didn't sell a million records when it came out. Rock And Roll, Sweet Jane, Lonesome Cowboy Bill, were these great tunes with great melodies written primarily by someone weened on '50s Rock And Roll. In any event Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground teed me up for punk and post-punk. I learned by listening to Lou Reed that punk was not the slam-dancing movement of screaming over one chord, it was in fact the continuation of great melody tunes. The New York punk movement of the '70s would most certainly not exist without Lou Reed. Think of all the great pop tunes and melodies written by the likes of Blondie or The Talking Heads. Bands I am sure knew the secret that King Louie imparted to us all...that's it's only rock-n-roll. It's all about heartbreak and soaring love. It's about first kisses and hand holding. It's about first loves and having fun with your friends. It's about first breakups and losing friends. It's about growing up in public (to use a later album title). It's about rebellion. Punk Rock is just another euphemism for Real Rock And Roll And Rebellion. Lou Reed taught me how to listen to Rock And Roll, critically. He taught me what was the good from the crap, by showing me that he too could make some crap...and he did on many occasion. But that is the human side of the urban folk rock he performed and invented. He taught me it was even okay to fail and you are sometimes anyway, so get used to it.

The eponymously titled album The Velvet Underground was a beautifully understated masterpiece. With such heartbreakers as Pale Blue Eyes or Candy Says or low key rockers like What Goes On and That's The Story of My Life shows me over and over again what a great songwriter Reed was. And he's the leader of a band than no one would seriously revisit for 20 years after they were made. Again, these were the musical feet that brought me the spirit of Rock And Roll for the new generation, my own generation of Generation X.

Incidentally, as an aside, I was amused by and like every one of the Lou Reed tunes that are titled "[insert girl's name here] Says." When I was young and kept "poem" journals I too would borrow this tack of taking girlfriend's names or whatever female I was obsessed with at the time and titling it "[insert girl's name here] Says". It was all very dramatic and Lou again helped me work through my love issues.

There are countless albums of his that I adore; tunes that I love, songs that helped me make it through. Up until a couple of months ago Lou was helping get over some grief. I lost my cat and best buddy Frank in June 2013. The day that we put him down (and I had no idea at the beginning of the day that we'd have to do it) we had had such a great day together. I knew Frank was very sick, but we got up together. He was sleeping on me which he hadn't done for awhile. He was hungry for his favorite treats, he was getting all around the house to position himself for his favorite form of affection of head kisses, he had good meals where he ate his favorite food and drank lots of water. He got to get in some lap cuddling and being held. At the end of the day though he lost the use of his hind legs through a blood clot that caused him to have a saddle thrombosis due to his lung cancer. All I could think of the next day after I put him down was Lou Reed's poignant song Perfect Day. "Such a perfect day, I'm glad I got to spend it with you." Listening to that song and Satellite of Love got me through a rough time and healed me up enough to do my job and get around to do my day-to-day activities.

So I think many of us are indebted to Lou. I think he did that for a lot of people. I know when I heard the radio program Fresh Air with Terry Gross interview with Lou's long time publicist William Bennett, I was moved by the description that "Billy B." gave about Lou where I paraphrase "Lou really believed in doing good and right things and it pained him that he would sometimes not do them." Who doesn't relate to that? I think Lou would be happy to know that he actually helped people, took care of them, and inspired countless people who were not simply artists but also the every day regular folks who just dug great Rock And Roll.

Jason Isbell Southeastern

Jason Isbell's Southeastern is as fine of singer/songwriter album that's come out in a long while. This self-deprecating recovery album is poignant without being preachy. He carries his writing exactly like a man telling a matter-of-fact, no frills experience.  And he does this with great aplomb as those have who have gone before him. Isbell's mostly stripped down songs draw easy comparisons to a southern Springsteen and as a friend pointed out to me not too long ago when recommending the album, Whiskeytown and Ryan Adams. Isbell started out with a not so brief tenure with the great Drive-by Truckers. I knew the major core of songwriters early on in DBT and with the advent of Decoration Day and The Dirty South with songs like Outfit on Decoration Day; The Day John Henry Day and Goddamn Lonely Love on The Dirty South; I knew a distinct writing voice had arisen in this classic Southern Rock Band. When Isbell struck out on his own and heard the first inkling of how good his solo career was going to be with Dress Blues on his fine album Sirens of The Ditch I was purely sold and knew the next generation of talented poets was safely in Isbell's hands.

The opening 3/4 time song Cover Me Up starts the heartbreak of chasing away your lover with your lack of sobriety and the hope somehow that you can keep it up and maybe she'll stay around. He easily determines she won't, if he doesn't straighten up. This becomes the theme of the album, regret without sounding maudlin or hairshirt-tugging grief. It's hard to pull off and I think that is the genius of the album. The next song on deck is the breezy southern rocker Stockholm which if listened to too closely let's you know what's ahead on the first line of "I've heard songs make a Georgia man cry." Live Oak, with its a cappella opening and continued lamentation sounds if it could have been discovered as a long lost folk song or 'murder ballad' from a Lomax field recording. With its backcountry loss or confusion on the lyric "there's a man who walks beside her, he is who I used to be, and I wonder if she sees him and confuses him with me." Powerful stuff about train robbin' and killin'.

Songs That She Sang in the Shower  is probably the most earnest 'lost love' song on the album to me. Also written in 3/4 time, he explains the loss and duties of sobriety with these lyrics

"In a room by myself, looks like I'm here with the guy that I judge worse than anyone else. So I pace, and I pray, and I repeat the mantras that might keep me clean for the day".

"And the songs that she sang in the shower are stuck in my mind like 'Yesterday's Wine', like 'Yesterday's Wine' and experience tells me that I'll hear them again without thinking of them, without thinking of them".

The alt-country rave up Super 8 gives us much needed break with a nice southern fried rocker. All the trappings of endless touring, drinking, and jail, you can imagine this little ditty being played at someplace like the Golden Spike in Kirksville, MO. Rednecks with longnecks should love this priceless boot scootin' boogie tune. 

The outro of this excellent album is Relatively Easy, thematically pretty tough song. Completely hidden by the uptempo music supported with lyrics like,

"are you having a long day, everyone you meet rubs you the wrong way, dirty city streets smell like an ashtray morning bells are ringing in your ear."

"I lost a good friend, at Christmastime when folks go off the deep end, his woman took the kids and he took Klonopin, enough to kill a man twice his size. Not for me to understand. Remember him when he was still a proud man, a vandal's smile, a baseball in his right hand, nothing but the blue sky in his eyes.

"I should say, I keep your picture with me everyday. The evenings now are relatively easy. And here with you there's always something to look forward to. My lonely heart beats relatively easy. 

I regret not buying this album on vinyl because the songs are perfectly sequenced, rolling perfectly into each other. This is a testament, I am assuming, to Dave Cobb's fine work at the helm as producer. It's very much like a 47 minute video covering the human condition that singer/songwriters of worth and rank have done so well for so long. I am very happy that such a fine young torchbearer has come to state the difference between youth and maturity, most adeptly I might add. He has come along to tell us about ourselves while he tells us about himself. This deeply personal testament to licking your demons and proving that you don't have to be a drunk or an addict to write great songs also proves it helps to have something in your past like that to draw upon. 

Southeastern should be on everybody's top 10 at the end of the year. Right now it's my 'Number 1' and I don't think anything's going to knock it off.

Tim's Top Ten of Twenty Twelve

Of all the music I bought in 2012, I bought exactly ten 2012 releases. So here is my 'Top 10' in order:

1) Dr. John - Locked Down (This is my album of the year)

2) Bob Dylan - Tempest

3) Dwight Yoakum - Three Pears (Best Country & Western/Roots Rock)

4) Calexico - Algiers

5) Kelly Hogan - I Like To Keep Myself In Pain

6) The Ace Records Blues Story - eponymous, various artists (Best label reissue and best R & B record.)

7) Pokey LaFarge & The South City Three - Live In Holland

8) St. Vincent - Stranger Mercy (Best alternative rock album reissue with a DVD) Original album released in 2011)

9) Sonny Landreth - Elemental Journey (Best instrumental)

10) The Alabama Shakes - Boys & Girls