RVOW: Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

So, I suppose this isn't the most random vinyl, but whatever. They're all just great records that I feel like highlighting and spinning for a week and this is no exception. How does it fit in with the classics I've gone through? Emmylou Harris sings backups on it (shrug) good enough?....I didn't even realize it was actually her voice and not a just a younger female going for the same vibe until I read up for this entry. The songwriting is also pretty damn good and many claim that Oberst first claimed his place in the lineage with this record. I think it to be a fair statement. Conner Oberst is a fantastic and prolific songwriter and as good as any of his contemporaries if not right up there with the greats from the past in the genres of folk, rock, garage, psych folk, whatever.... I picked this baby up on Audiophile grade vinyl for 9.99 and it comes with a digital download code from Saddle Creek records. Lovin' it.....keep it greasy......

Have You Dug Don Covay Yet?

Do you dig on The Rising Storm? If you are saying "Who the heck is Don Covay?" then the answer is undoubtedly no. Wait....should I back up? Do you dig classic funk/soul/rhythm and blues/rock and roll? Then peep The Rising Storm out. In their words: "The Rising Storm is an mp3 blog about fine forgotten albums. We focus on lost gems in the genres of garage, country rock, psych folk, psychedelic rock, and other overlooked classics." Need I say more???? Don Covay is a soulful brother whose "Mercy Mercy," which I first found on Aquarium Drunkard (through The Rising Storm) a few months back, was recorded with a young Jimi Hendrix on guitar. The difference between the record discussed in that original post, See Saw, which is a classic soul groover and "The House of  Blue Lights," which more closely resembles a gritty Taj Mahal record of the same era shows the range and roots of this forgotten talent. The mp3s from the older post have expired, but the new one has two downloadable tracks and if you see one of this cat's records in some dingy bin somewhere then buy it. If you don't want it hit me up and I promise to pay you twice what it cost you plus shipping or whateva. Grazie

Blogger Bollocks/Reflections of the Kerouac Kids

Keeping a blog is kind of a bit sometimes. It's like keeping a journal. It seems easy and fun for a minute, but it requires research and effort and time and narcissism. All of which I feel I have plenty of so.....I will continue to keep trying to post as much as possible. This post is a poem from my personal journal dated Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009.

Deeper than attempted before we dove....
Dove into the heart of Jack's skid-row San Frisco
Mad-Night Knife-Sharp San Francis
Upside Down Dive Doven Bars with real hobos-just a little to close to the square-yet down trodden and upended and red-eye listenin' to our juke jingles...

Everyone failed to meet their humanly responsibilities
the morning to come
Josh and I woke up in his bed
Clothed, yes, yet stripped of all dignity and manhood nevertheless
How? Why? Where? Who?
No one could tell all
It would take several phone calls to piece it all together....

Ronnie.

He bought Craig a room and saved Josh from a
Solo cab ride to god knows where
And then he put Josh and I in a cab and sent us off...
Scott said he looked in and saw neither of us
Present before he went to work
One last piece of the puzzle we'll probably never find
Maybe we should stop looking for Jack......

RVOW: Elton John's Tumbleweed Connection

Welcome to the working week...Random Vinyl is back and this week the Newb-Log is spinning a classic, as always, Tumbleweed Connection. If you don't think you like Elton John then shut up and buy this record. Mine was $1.99 at Rasputin in Berkeley during my vacationing in the Bay last month and I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the vinyl was in near perfect condition at this price (sigh of joy/an f-u to LA stores). I stumbled on this LP in a small stack preserved under the Hi-Fi at my lovely girlfriend's house on Christmas day. She had convinced her folks that I loved vinyl and that they should let me peruse the stacks and make a selection to back our lovely dinner (BTW if you have any friend's with Portuguese mothers or G-ma's invite yourself over for dinner, STAT!!!). Mr. Fedrick gave me the thumbs up and I quickly found some classic country including Cash, Haggard, Springsteen's Nebraska, and then this odd little storefront picture with Elton slumped in the corner. I knew I had heard of this record, but couldn't place it. Had I read about it on The Rising Storm? No, too popular for that, right? What about a reference on the Drunkard? I later remembered that I had heard the second half on 100.3 The Sound's Album sides Wednesday. So I queued the needle and trotted upstairs to where the system was set to play. I literally blurted out "Oh, Shit. This is rockin'." Well......we made it through that first tune and through the second, which is a fantastic ballad and arrangement entitled: "Come Down in Time." Then I was urged to put on one of the old Christmas LPs instead, which was fine because they had a classic compilation with Bing and Nat King Cole. It didn't even matter, though. I knew I needed this album and where to find it on my way back to Berkeley, San Frisco, and ultimately back home. I don't even want to get too technically deep on this record I just want to say thank you very much to Dee Fedrick for turning me on to it and say that I have rarely enjoyed a record's every single song this much on the first listen. The records they shove up your ass and down your throat these days are all designed to sound great on first listen, but they don't reward any further upon subsequent listens. They just sit there like stale bread and they taste much worse. Tumbleweed has lovely arrangements and hooky chorus' and flows like a classically structured work with movements. Happy New Year, kids, one of my resolutions is to post more/post music/study up on me ingles. Throw a brother a comment, talk shit, c'mon!!!

RVOW: Desire by Bob Dylan (1975)

RVOW is back and this week I'm spinning Desire, Bob Dylan's second straight Album of the Year (1975's Blood on The Tracks and Desire in '76) according to Britain's New Musical Express Magazine. Blood on The Tracks is universally heralded as Dylan's best work of the decade; complete with "Tangled Up in Blue," "Shelter from the Storm," and "Simple Twist of Fate," but Desire did top the charts in the U.S. for 5 weeks and is a record that I can never go too long without revisiting. One main reason is the band. Howie Wyeth on drums and Scarlet Rivera on "gypsy" violin are instrumental standouts in this traveling ensemble and show known as "The Rolling Thunder Revue," (see The Bootleg Series Vol. 5). More widely praised, but then less known, is the beautiful face and marvelous voice from Gram Parsons recordings and tours before his tragic death a few years prior, Ms. Emmylou Harris. The duets can't really hold up to Parsons and Harris' country balladry, but Emmylou and Dylan do light up the entire record (Harris is only absent from "Isis," and "Sara," the passionate autobiographical "letter" to Dylan's then recently divorced ex and mother of Jacob Dylan of Wallflowers fame). The best duets are undoubtedly "Joey," the story of the then recently deceased New York gangster "Crazy" Joe Gallo, and "Oh, Sister," which concludes side one. The end of side one also holds the most beautiful and integral violin performances in both the afore mentioned ballad "Oh, Sister," and the arabesque "One More Cup of Coffee." The true power and skill of the band are best represented on "Black Diamond Bay," and the opening epic; "Hurricane," a strophic poem told in "cinematic" storytelling style about the wrongful arrest and conviction of boxer Ruben "Hurricane" Carter. Carter was eventually released on appeal some twenty years later, but was never exonerated for the murder of two men and one woman in Patterson New Jersey in 1966. The song was the biggest hit of the record peaking at 33 on the Billboard charts and remains the most well-known track on the record. It even appeared in "Dazed and Confused," and that scene has since been referenced on shows like "The Family Guy." The last collaborator on this record that absolutely must be mentioned and who could easily be referenced as the most important is co-writer to every track save "Sara," Mr. Jacques Levy. Dylan and Levy have contributed brilliant A-B-A-B rhyme schemed couplets on tracks like "Isis," and the Tex-Mex "Romance in Durango," which stand up next to any lyrics in the entire Dylan catalogue. This record has it all for Dylan fans and together with the live recordings represented on the 1975 edition of the Bootleg series mentioned above represents the height of the 70's and one of the highest peaks of Dylan's career as performer and songwriter. It feels good to have this now certified double-platinum album on vinyl and be able to let it cruise around the needle the way it was originally intended to. Go dig.

Book Review: Complicated Shadows "The Life and Music of Elvis Costello"

I stumbled across this gem a few months ago at a store called "Mr. Music Head," in Hollywood. The store sells rock-and-roll photography, no, brilliant rock-and-roll photography. Stage shots, candid shots, concert posters, all from the past and present "big hitters," including Dylan, Cream, the Dead, Foo Fighters, Ben Harper, Deathcab, Aerosmith.....and on it goes. They also represent photographers and therefore can show you countless pics online or in their archives that can be printed and framed for a price. In the front of the store on some tables were books of photography and some just on music. The one that rally caught my eye was a big hard-bound book on Tom Waits (they also had a beautiful photo of the eclectic Waits sitting in front of an old pickup truck in the country- possibly that Ol' 55????- but that mama was like $35 so I decided to pick up the biography on Elvis ($7) since I was listening to both of these brilliant songwriters damn near exclusively at this point. The Costello biography is magnificent. It is a scholarly text that could easily be used in a college setting complete with endnotes and a detailed index. Graeme Thomson has personally interviewed many of the characters surrounding Costello and has not held anything back. I find it also works well as an extremely descriptive discography for the prolific musician. The chapters are labeled by the years of Costello's life and one can easily look up albums in this manner or by the index (which has album and song titles) to find out who played on individual tracks and records and what style Costello was going for- which we know varied greatly-  and etc., down the line. The book is especially good in the beginning and starts to drag a bit in the third act, but only because it continues to be significantly precise and detailed and as a reader I started to "push on,"compared to the slow weeks I spent on the first third, reading, absorbing, and stopping to buy the albums and compare my thoughts to the author's. Still, Thomson tells all and one can't really complain about his thoroughness, especially when the narrative reads much like a novel despite its similarities to a college text. Four and a half stars at least and certainly well-worth the sale price of seven dollars. Thanks Mr. Music Head.

Documentary Review: One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur

Kerouac Films has put out a new documentary on Jack Kerouac's novel Big Sur. If you haven't read this one yet then I suggest you go pick either the DVD/CD combo, the book, or both. Big Sur is considered by friend's and contemporaries of Kerouac's- like Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg- to be his last major gem before passing away from liver poisoning just several years after. Big Sur is the first novel post "On the Road," and Kerouac was beyond famous at the time of writing it. In fact, he was burnt out on all of the young thrill seekers who wanted to buy him drinks and belt their own stories of mischief and mayhem into his ears. It was a little ridiculous for the Jack man at this point. Hipsters were stalking his home in New York and the papers were writing about him every day gossip column style and hailing him as "King of the beatniks." So... becoming overwhelmed with depression and not being able to escape it or even pursue his life's passion, Jack decides to come out west and hide out in Ferlinghetti's cabin in Big Sur for some much needed isolation and attempt to get back to writing. Well, it doesn't work out quite the way he planned due mainly to his own lust for alcohol and San Francisco nights and the book turns dark and evil. The prose is untouchable, as usual, flowing and rhythmic with start-stops and rants. Meanwhile, the documentary includes "Kerouac," as narrator of excerpts and interviews with musicians, actors, literary scholars, friends, and contemporaries of Jack's including Tom Waits, Robert Hunter (Musician and Grateful Dead lyricist), Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and many more. The soundtrack is composed and performed by Benjamin Gibbard of Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie and Jay Farrar of Son Volt and Uncle Tupelo. The songs are folk orchestrations of Kerouac's rhythmic and poetic prose brought to life again in a new light upon the voices of the seemingly odd-couple pairing. The documentary can be purchased at music stores or online and comes as DVD/CD or just soundtrack.