Wilco - "Heavy Metal Drummer" (live)
Pete Yorn - "Ez"
Mose Allison - "I Don't Worry About A Thing"
The Fratellis - "Henrietta"
Gary Louris - "Omaha Nights"
Taj Mahal - "Keep Your Hands Off Her"
Magnolia Electric Co. - "Hard To Love A Man"
Conor Oberst - "Moab"
The Thorns - "Runaway Feeling"
I thought this was a pretty great playlist today, especially this stretch from Gary Louris to The Throns that made me think Cosmic American Music is alive and well. Gram Parsons, of course, came up with that term to refer to his own brand of country and folk mixed with gospel and soul. He was specifically referring to the covers of the R&B classics "Do Right Woman" and "The Dark End of the Street" that appeared on the 1969 Flying Burrito Brothers album The Gilded Palace of Sin, but I like the term as a stand-in for Americana. I mean, look closely at these 5 songs: Gary Louris is a granddad of the alt country movement as a founding member of The Jayhawks. (New album, btw, is good, not great.) Taj Mahal is best known for the blues mixed with African beats and this song is from an album released (remarkably) the same year as The Gilded Palace of Sin. So while Parsons and Co. were twang-ing up the soul, he was funk-ing up the blues. The Magnolia Electric Co. song from the great 2005 album What Comes After The Blues is straight out of the tradition of Neil Young and Crazy Horse (I know he's Canadian, roll with it people), slow, plodding, countri-fied. Conor Oberst's new album seems to have stripped away a lot of the artifice of Bright Eyes in a good way and feels a lot like a latter day Flying Burrito Brothers record. His backing band on the record is even called Mystic Valley Band - - sounds cosmic to me. The final song in this set-within-a-set is from a band that I really trashed a while back. But somehow coming on the heels of these other tunes, it was like dessert. The harmonies and the lush acoustic strumming are syrupy sweet, but suddenly I was seeing what the band (Matthew Sweet, et al) was aiming for: an American Traveling Wilburys. All of these songs are not exactly of the same genre, but they are pretty damn close. And I think they are all firmly rooted in the same tradition that probably wouldn't mind being referred to as Cosmic American Music. Thanks, Gram.
Broken Social Scene - "Handjobs For The Holidays"
The Rolling Stones - "Emotional Rescue"
Weezer - "The Other Way"
Sloan - "I've Gotta Try"
And then I got to work.
Today's Stats
Total songs listened to: 14
Total minutes of music (approx.): 49
Song with the most previous plays: "Hard To Love A Man" - 8
How I Rate Today's Playlist (1-10): 8
Miscellaneous factoid about my trip to work today: ipodwidow took the front section of my NY Times, so I didn't have the pleasure of reading about (apologies to Huey Lewis) this new drug until I got to work. Say hello to Salvia divinorum, and then just say "no" - - of course.
4 comments:
I think I prefer your label, but are you going to do with alt.country?
Can you imagine if the government would simply regulate salvia divinorum as opposed to making it illegal? What a concept.
Man, John Cusack could totally play him in the movie.
You missed the greatest of the group, Mose Allison. How hip is that dude. He has been doing it for a long time. Never get tired of the sound, the voice or the piano.
He does look a lot like John Cusack, Rob. I didn't notice before.
And right you are, Anon. Mose is a hip dude. Who should play him in the Mose Allison Story? Sean Connery, perhaps?
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