More Autumn and a question

More albums for the Fall
1) Tom Petty-Damn The Torpedoes
2) Let's Active-Cypress/Afoot (both albums in other words)
3) R. E. M. -Fables Of The Reconstruction


Here's the question: What is the difference really between the Monkees "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone" and Let's Active "Every Word Means No?"

Favorite Autumn Albums

In the Fall I get really melancholy and listen to a lot of mid-eighties stuff. Not all of it is mid-eighties but several are. Here is a list of my favorite albums that I really like a lot and still break out every Autumn.

1). R. E. M.-Life's Rich Pageant
2) R. E. M.-Reckoning
3) XTC-Lemons & Oranges
4) The Velvet Underground-Loaded
5) The Talking Heads-Speaking In Tongues
6) The Pretenders-Learning To Crawl
7) Guadalcanal Diary-Jamboree
8) The Smiths-The Queen Is Dead
9) British Sea Power-The Decline of British Sea Power
10) Dire Straits-Brothers In Arms
11) Yes-Close To The Edge
12) The Wrens-The Meadowlands
13) Midlake-The Trials Of Van Ocupanther
14) The Thrills-So Much For The City
15) Uncle Tupelo-Still Feel Gone
16) Built To Spill-Keep It Like A Secret
17) The Replacements-Let It Be
18) Luna-Lunapark
19) Yo La Tengo-Painful
20) Neil Young-American Stars 'n' Bars
21) O Positive-Only Breathing/Cloud Factory
22) The Beatles-Revolver
23) King Crimson-Discipline
24) The New Pornographers-Mass Romantic
25) Richard Shindell-Courier

New Prog Rock for Old Dogs

One of the cool albums I got for my birthday was Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion. For old timers like me who, when young, ate up Prog Rock like nobody's business. For the last few years I have been able to find updated sounds of Prog Rock through the likes of Built To Spill, The Halo Benders, The Decembrists, and others. Imagine again my happiness to add to the list, the tight, yet dreamy, dope-smokin' sounds of Animal Collective. This is a great song cycle of actually fairly short songs (maybe 6 minutes on average). It reminds me a lot of Yes via their Fragile period. Animal Collective is not real heavy on guitar, but the bass is pretty up-front in that Chris Squire Rickenbacker style jazz playing. It has that nice ringy low tone. There are plenty of polyrythms here too. The other thing that's pretty cool about any of the new Prog Rock sounds of the aforementioned bands including Animal Collective is the indie feel to it. The production standards have the classic indie/punk feel of the DIY attitude. For instance, Animal Collective has that great fuzzy guitar sound I've come to adore in indie rock over the last 20+ years. Lastly, it is imperative to have great album art inner/outer cover and everywhere else (they do). Grab it up, smoke it up, play it up and enjoy yourself.

The Great Booker T.

Booker T. this year has done what Bettye LaVette did a couple of years ago. He hired the best Southern rock band around known as the Drive-By Truckers, added Neil Young and cut a hard driving rock & roll, R & B album called Potato Hole. Best part is of course the signature Southern rock sound of three lead guitars. I first read about this album earlier in the year when Playboy profiled Booker T. and this new album. It is great stuff. The album is on ANTI records which is home to Bettye LaVette and Neko Case. Good company there.

A potato hole refers to a hole in the earthen floor of a cabin where food was kept when Booker T was growing up. The album has the new sounds of today's Southern rock but also that ancient feel, a deep and unyielding beat that must go back thousands of years. Primal but tempered. Modern yet it interprets the past. There is plenty of Hammond B-3, but don't expect any Green Onion organ fills here. Booker T. and his assembled group do a couple of cool covers. One is Outkast's Hey Ya. The second is a nice instrumental (the whole album is of course instrumental) version of Drive-By Trucker's Space City. Cool stuff, good modern R & B. Strongly recommend this to anyone dabbling in blues and R & B in general.

Chuck Berry

I live in Columbia, MO home of the University of Missouri. A downtown club here called The Blue Note hosts a set of (mostly) free concerts. Well, August 26, promised Chuck Berry. Of course it is always great to see a living legend. Especially since I am in the habit of blowing these guys off and then they die! Well, Chuck was very much alive, his voice was great but man his guitar playing was a lot like the Cheech and Chong sketch that features Blind Melon Chitlin'. It was like he was up there playing air guitar and then someone foists a guitar in his hands. It was so out of tune that if you walked in to an alley where the sound was distorted it would put the guitar back in tune. I thought surely this guy can hire a guitar tech. Seeing that beautiful Gibson hollow-body being violated like a couple of alley cats hard at it damn near ruined the experience for me. I did get to see him walk through The Blue Note and say hello to him. His handlers whisked him away pretty quickly. As far as I could tell, no one was peed on.

New stuff that's not new.

A few real neat things I picked up. Mary Lee's Corvette-Blood On The Tracks spectacular reworking of Dylan's album; Kinky Friedman-Last of the Texas Jewboys, the Frank Zappa of Austin, TX country music; Marty Robbins-Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs, the 1959 cowboy classic; Asylum Street Spankers-My Favorite Album, Scroat Belly meets Squirrel Nut Zippers.

More about Son Volt

I am listening to Son Volt's new album American Central Dust. The more I listen, the more I am struck how good of a songwriter that Jay Farrar has become. I think he has always used powerful metaphors, way back with Uncle Tupelo even. But these gentle and tender tunes on American Central Dust are just soooo good. The opening track of Dynamite has this great chorus lyric of our love is like celebrating Fourth of July with Dynamite. I really like that a lot. Cocaine and Ashes is his reflecting on a story he heard about Keith Richards smoking the ashes of his cremated father and mixing them with cocaine. I could go on-and-on about this record's great songs...and I might. The album closes with my favorite tune with its cool guitar fills called Jukebox of Steel.



I would not want him to, but Jay Farrar is good enough now to head to Nashville. He could write a commercial tune. And I am certain his tunes would be better than the drek that is passing for songs on country radio now. Hell, maybe he could just pen some Laurel Canyon stuff. He's that good. If Jeff Tweedy has heard this album, his heart is pierced with searing jealousy.