CD Odyssey Disc 404: Bob Dylan

I call this next review Phile Not Found, for reasons that I won't explain out of respect for your intelligence, dear reader.

Disc 404 is…Together Through Life

Artist: Bob Dylan

Year of Release: 2009

What’s Up With The Cover?:  I think this is a photo of a young couple kissing in the backseat of a car.  It reminds me of a simpler time when seat belts weren't mandatory.  Yeesh.

How I Came To Know It: I dig Bob Dylan, so when I heard he’d put out a new album in 2009 to much critical acclaim I was excited to buy it.  Here it is.

How It Stacks Up:  I have seventeen Bob Dylan albums.  Competition is tight among my favourites, and “Together Through Life” is not one of my favourites.  I’ll say 16^th or 17^th, below even the lowly “Planet Waves” that I reviewed way back at Disc 69.

Rating: 3 stars, but only barely.

I love Bob Dylan, yet during the course of writing this  blog entry I have twice left my seat to go and watch an amazing early round tennis match at the French Open, where Serena Williams was finally defeated by Virginie Razzano on her 8^th match point of the game.  Then I left it again to watch a movie with Sheila.

So yeah, the album doesn’t inspire my commentary, but here’s hoping the third time’s the charm.  And this is a damn shame, because I love Bob Dylan.  I’ve reviewed seven previous albums and I gave four of them five stars, and two more four.  However, unlike the many critics that gushed when “Together Through Life” was released, I found it merely good, and in places, decidedly average.

It could be that it suffered from bad timing, since the review that preceded it (Neil Young’s “Le Noise”) is such a ready foil.  “Le Noise” is an album by an aging, but still legendary folk singer/songwriter that is fresh and engaging.  “Together Through Life” is just an album by a legendary folk singer/songwriter.

I don’t expect Dylan to reinvent his style every time he releases a record (he prefers to do that live in concert, I understand) but I still want to be inspired by his genius.  On this album, he has clearly decided to get back to basics, and that alone I’m perfectly happy with (Young himself did it on “Prairie Wind”).

In Bob’s case, basics are very stripped down compositions with traditional blues arrangements made to sound timeless.  This alone is an art – to be able to compose old school music that is original and not derivative.  Unfortunately, the lyrics lack the usual zing that Dylan can deliver.  Dylan seems intent on playing it totally straight, and as a result they are missing their usual provocative quality.

Very little stands out lyrically, although the final track “It’s All Good” resonated with me enough that it bears mention.  “It’s all good” is an expression that has spread like a cancer over the last few years.  It is a terrific example of modern society’s determined efforts to avoid expressing any kind of value judgment.

“It’s all good” almost always means “it actually isn’t good, but I’m going to pretend it is because I don’t want to discuss how it is bad, or how I disagree with it.”  Designed to avoid conflict, it is kind of like “I hear you” only with more self-loathing.

Dylan has picked up on the same problem, with a song full of verses where things aren’t all good to highlight how we’re often not saying very much to each other – and doing it willfully.  One of many examples:

“The widow's cry, the orphan's plea
Everywhere you look, more misery
Come along with me, babe, I wish you would
You know what I'm sayin', it's all good.”

Not a great song, but one that reminds me that I use these expressions as well in moments of weakness, when I should be speaking with more precision and honesty.

Bob Dylan has always had an innate poet’s instinct for phrasing when he sings, and that ability is still present on “Together Through Life.”  The problem is that the very basic song construction mutes the ability for him to use that ability to greatest effect.  I am one of the few that actively likes Dylan’s voice, but these kind of songs are better suited to folks like Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker, or even Leonard Cohen.  It isn’t that Dylan is bad – he’s good – I just wish on this type of music he was better.

The best thing on the record is the fabulous guitar playing, which holds up every song whether it is front and centre like on “My Wife’s Home Town” or tucked in behind an accordion like on “This Dream of You.”  When I looked to see who played I was unsurprised to find it was Heartbreaker Mike Campbell, who usually holds it together for fellow Wilbury Tom Petty.  This type of bluesy, groove-driven record totally suits Campbell’s style, and lets him shine.

Even a weak Bob Dylan album is still good enough, and Mike Campbell pulled this one up to three stars, when I started this review intent on going with two.  However, the music just doesn’t interest me.  Of course, Dylan has never apologized for taking his craft where he wants to go, and fans be damned.  I actually love that about him.  Just don’t ask me to gush over it and say it is all good, when it is just good in places.

Best tracks: I Feel A Change Comin’ On, It’s All Good.

CD Odyssey Disc 403: Neil Young

A weekend in my rear-view mirror, and a short week on the road ahead.  Listening to this next album to and from work and the gym was a fine way to make Monday that much more bearable.

Disc 403 is…Le Noise

Artist: Neil Young

Year of Release: 2010

What’s Up With The Cover?:  I love this cover, mostly because it is evocative of the sound of the record.  Just Neil and his guitar and a flood of light magnifying his presence.  Here is truth in advertising.

How I Came To Know It: By the time this album came out I was already a fan of Young, but in the case of “Le Noise” I remember reading a review of how it was produced, and it intrigued me – enough that I bought it instead of digging further into Neil Young’s back catalogue.

How It Stacks Up:  I have fifteen Neil Young albums, which is only about half his catalogue.  While I love Neil, I don’t know them all that well, having bought many in an explosion of interest, rather than slowly over the years.  This is the occasional downside to buying a lot of music, and another reason to do crazy projects like the CD Odyssey that help you get to know your music better.  All that said, “Le Noise” holds up very well.  I’ll say it is 6^th or 7^th best.

Rating: 4 stars

What can one man and one guitar accomplish sonically?  Quite a bit if that man is Neil Young, and he’s got Daniel Lanois producing him.

The idea of Daniel Lanois working with Neil Young intrigued me.  I already knew Lanois as a great producer (the man produced three of U2’s greatest records as well as Emmylou Harris’ “Wrecking Ball” and Bob Dylan’s “Oh Mercy”) but with Neil Young inspiring him he takes his talents in a new direction.

On those other records, the Lanois sound is big and atmospheric, filling a room with air, like it is an inflated balloon.  The effect is soft and round at the edges.

On “Le Noise,” Lanois’ penchant for big atmospheric sound is still very present.  In addition he’s taken Neil Young’s longstanding love for reverb and built that into the production to the farthest extreme.  Guitar sound is layered again and again, playing both lead and accompaniment at the same time.  Neil’s already haunting high voice echoes in on itself, sometimes once or twice, and sometimes with words fading forward over an over like an eerie chorus of aging-rocker angels.

It is strikingly beautiful in its strangeness, and yet despite Lanois pushing every envelope, every song is unmistakably Neil Young.  Sometimes the technique is used to augment Young’s “Rockin’ In the Free World” hard rock edge, and sometimes it is applied to his more folksy “Harvest Moon/Prairie Wind” sound of recent years.  It works equally well in both directions.

Young’s guitar playing has a unique tone that is instantly recognizable as him, and Lanois takes great care in never losing this core sound.  Young can play every style with equal skill, and delivers rock, classical, western and on the track  - “Love and War” – even a little flamenco.

Lyrically, this album has a very retrospective quality, which you might expect from a singer/songwriter of Young’s vintage.  Unlike some aging artists though, he has not lost the edgy honesty that makes those lyrics worth listening to.

Some of these songs have broad political and historical contexts.  “Angry World” is a song about the clash of ideologies, classes and religions, yet it holds a core of hope that things will turn out alright.   “Peaceful Valley Boulevard” is a historical recanting of America and the dangers of progress.  Young is never afraid to take a stand, and on “Peaceful Valley Boulevard” he takes his time building his point from early settlers in an actual peaceful valley all the way through to cars on the freeway taking the exit onto Peaceful Valley Boulevard.

Other songs are retrospective in a personal way.  “Hitchhiker” is essentially a retelling of Young’s entire career, from a struggling artist hitchhiking for a ride:

“When I was a hitchhiker on the road,

I had to count on you

But you needed me to ease the load

And for conversation too.”

Recanting his journey he leaves no stone unturned, freely discussing every drug he tried along the way, and every mistake he made.  This is a song – and an album – from an artist that still seeks to find the truth within himself, and still willingly shares his own self-doubt with his audience.  “Hitchhiker” ends with:

“I don’t know how I’m standing here

Living in my life

I’m thankful for my children

And my faithful wife.”

Sometimes Young combines both the personal and political into a combined retrospective journey.  The most haunting and beautiful song on the album, “Love and War” does just this.  Young provides his thoughts on that big subject, but he does so in the context of his own mistakes and ultimately, his own limited perspective:

“I've seen a lot of young men go to war

And leave a lot of young brides waiting

I've watched them try to explain it to their kids

And seen a lot of them failing

They tried to tell them and they tried to explain

Why daddy won't ever come home again.

Daddy won't ever come home again

...

“The saddest thing in the whole wide world

Is to break the heart of your lover

I made a mistake and I did it again

And we struggled to recover

Then I sang in anger, hit another bad chord

But I still try to sing about love and war.”

The message here is that you shouldn’t be afraid to stand up and speak up for what is right, but to do that effectively you have to face your own failings as well.  Neil Young has never shied away from doing so and the reverberations and echoes on “Le Noise” don’t drown it out, they amplify it.

Best tracks: Love and War, Angry World, Hitchhiker.

CD Odyssey Disc 402: Soundtrack

Today was International Towel Day, a day that people around the globe wear a towel out in public in honour of Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy author Douglas Adams.

At least that’s the idea – I was the only towel-wearer out there today, although my co-worker’s boyfriend reportedly also took part.  Congratulations to you, Dave!  If the Vogons had vapourized earth today, you and I would have been the only survivors.

Instead, while enduring some 'is he crazy?' looks from passersby, I was mostly ignored by the mostly harmless inhabitants of this big mostly blue and green ball we all call home.

Disc 402 is…TransAmerica Soundtrack

Artist: Various Artists

Year of Release: 2006

What’s Up With The Cover?:  The usual movie soundtrack cover – a take on the movie poster.  Here we have the two main characters in front of their car.  Up ahead is a sign indicating a fork in the road.  Life often features those.

How I Came To Know It: The usual movie soundtrack way – I saw the movie and liked the music.  Mostly I was excited during the credits when I heard the song “Like A Rose” and recognized it as a previously unheard track by Lucinda Williams.  At that time I didn’t have her self-titled debut, and so didn’t have that song.  Sheila came through shortly thereafter, getting me the soundtrack for my birthday.

How It Stacks Up:  I have around twenty four soundtracks, maybe more depending on how you count them.  TransAmerica is a good enough record, but not one of my favourites.  I’d put it in the bottom third of those, but certainly not the worst.

Rating: 3 stars

Life is a journey.  Bring an open mind.

That’s the tag line for “TransAmerica” the movie, and a theme well developed in the film.  The movie is about a woman, born a man and going through the final stages of gender re-assignment surgery.  Before her therapist will sign the final papers though, she requires her to travel across the country to New York and meet the son she ‘fathered’ in her youth.

From there the movie is a heartwarming road movie, that challenges its main character (played brilliantly by Felicity Huffman) to open herself up to human relationships and get to know herself a bit better.  At the same time challenges its audience to open our minds and learn to love one another.  For a species that has been socialized for so long, I still shake my head that we still miss that simple target so often.

The music is a good match for the movie, mostly featuring old style country tunes with a strong spiritual bent.  These songs are tender songs about loving your neighbor and speaking personally to God.  The movie is a very quiet, character driven film and more raucous music would have drowned it out.  I’m glad they went the way they did.

That said, separated from the film, I find that style of music very hit and miss.  “Fish Song” by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was an out of place novelty track, and “Beautiful Dreamer” might be a traditional mainstay, but I found it making me yawn, not dream.  Apologies on this front to actor Graham Greene, who sings a beautiful a capella version of this for the film.  Greene does great for a character wooing Huffman, and I admire the heart he puts into it, but it isn’t professional quality without the context of the movie scene.

On the plus side, I don’t know who the Old Crow Medicine Show is, but their two songs on this record are two of my favourites.  “Take ‘Em Away” is an up-tempo harmony driven song about being poor and proud, but not so proud that you aren’t willing to ask for some help from the man upstairs once in a while.  It is a song that puts a spring in your step and makes you want to sing along, even if you’re not religious.

Their other track couldn’t be more different.  “We’re All In This Thing Together” is a slow and mournful tune that is up there with the Youngbloods 1967 hit “Get Together” as one of the most affecting songs about how we all have to help each other along.  The chorus sums it all up – film and otherwise:

“We’re all in this thing together

Walkin’ the line between faith and fear.”

Of course, the greatest track is Lucinda Williams’ “Like A Rose” – a song that is originally just a simple, heartfelt lovesong that takes on all kinds of extra dimension when applied to a woman trying to get her outside in line with her insides, and shedding all of the shame and painful isolation associated with that hard journey.  This is a song that is every bit as powerful without the film as with it.  I love that Williams has re-recorded it, and chosen a production that is intimate, just a guitar and her singing, smoothing all the roughness out of the edges of her voice.  It ends:

“If it’s love you want

Hold out your arms

It’s alright here, it’s safe and warm

It’s OK to feel good

That’s the way it should be

Everything we have is fresh and new

I will open myself up to you

Like a rose.

Like a rose.”

While this could have ended this record perfectly, Dolly Parton’s Oscar Nominated “Travelin’ Thru” gets that honour – a song that lost out to the rap song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.”  It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp” is a pretty good song, but like Felicity Huffman (who lost to Reece Witherspoon), the Oscar should’ve gone to Parton that year.

Successfully following up on Lucinda Williams is no mean feat, but Parton exceeds my expectations and makes it happen.  “Travelin’ Thru” is another song on this soundtrack about muddling your way through the world.  Not everyone has the challenges of Felicity Huffman’s character in “TransAmerica” but everyone has challenges, and if you haven’t felt a little alienated along the way, then you haven’t lived an examined life.

Parton captures this struggle but in her inimitable way, she does it with an upbeat trill that tells you everything is going to be OK.  “Like A Rose” would’ve served as a fair ending, but Parton’s hopefulness is the right way to end the film, and the right way to end the album as well.  A few lines from it are the right way to end this review:

“God made me for a reason and nothing is in vain

Redemption comes in many shapes with many kinds of pain

Oh sweet Jesus if you're listening, keep me ever close to you

As I'm stumblin', tumblin', wonderin', as I'm travelin' thru”

I don’t agree that everything happens for a reason, but Parton’s conviction on this track makes me want to, and that’s enough sometimes.

Best tracks: Take ‘Em Away and We’re All In This Together both by the Old Crow Medicine Show, Lost In The Lonesome Pines – Clinch Mountain Boys, Like A Rose by Lucinda Williams, and Travelin’ Thru by Dolly Parton.

CD Odyssey Disc 401: Crash Test Dummies

A long day with some bad news is over, and it is time for a young man to turn his eyes to thoughts of music – or in this case, a middle aged man to turn his eyes to the memories of being a young man.

Disc 401 is…The Ghosts That Haunt Me

 Artist: Crash Test Dummies

Year of Release: 1991

What’s Up With The Cover?:  A great cover – one of my all time favourites.  This is Gustav Dore work based on the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.  My guess is that this scene is Death and She that is Life-in-Death throwing dice for the souls of the crew.  The booklet that comes with the CD features song lyrics and many more of Dore’s “Ancient Mariner” series.

Dore is one of my favourite artists.  in fact, my library is partly decorated with two low-budget prints of his.  “Don Quixote in his library” and “Don Quixote and the Windmill.”

How I Came To Know It: Like the previous Ministry review, this album was a big part of my youth.  In this case not from night clubs, but from a couple years earlier when I was attending the University of Victoria.

How It Stacks Up:  I only have two Crash Test Dummies CDs.  This one and “God Shuffled His Feet” which I reviewed way back at Disc 175.  “Ghosts That Haunt Me” is far and away the better record.

Rating: 4 stars

Some memories haunt you like a ghost, fresh and nasty even through the intervening years.  Other memories are like a friendly spirit watching over you; unobtrusive but there when you need them.  “The Ghosts That Haunt Me” is the musical equivalent of a friendly spirit for me.

I first heard this record while attending university.  I spent a lot of time in the local university pub (“Felicita’s”) and this was a mainstay on the jukebox.  Even with limited money, someone at the table could usually scrounge up what was needed to plug a couple songs into the jukebox – and something off this record was very often one of them.  I don’t know what letter/number combination represented “Superman’s Song” but I wouldn’t be surprised if the ink on the key was worn off from students pressing it in 1991.

This album was the Dummies’s big debut and while it went unnoticed south of the border, it hit hard in Canada, making them instant stars on university campuses across the country.

This was the world’s introduction to singer Brad Roberts’ unique bass voice, deep and personal, yet capable of surprisingly high range.  This was also before later albums, where Roberts’ voice can sometimes sound like a caricature of itself.  On “Ghosts That Haunt Me” (hereafter referred to as “Ghosts”) it is the perfect combination of whimsy and heartfelt emotional expression that the songs call for.

The great and famous track on the album is the aforementioned “Superman’s Song” and when it happened to come on (or when we forced it to come on with a spare dollar) large portions of the campus pub would stop what they were doing, and start swaying in unison and singing along.

It is a song that appeals to idealistic youth.  A look at Superman as a guy who sacrifices his life for the people without reward, compared to another early 20^th century hero – Tarzan.  Where Tarzan is revered for leaving civilization behind, “Superman’s Song” reminds you it is much harder to stick it out and try to make things better.  Even though Superman could do whatever he wanted with his powers we are reminded that his greatest accomplishment is that he doesn't:

“Sometimes, when Supe was stopping crimes

I’ll be that he was tempted to just quit and turn his back

On man, join Tarzan in the forest.

But he stayed in the city, and kept on changing clothes

In dirty old phone booths til his work was through

And nothing to do but go on home.”

The song’s chorus is bittersweet:

“Superman never made any money

For saving the world from Solomon Gundy

And sometimes I despair the world will never see

Another man like him.”

Yet despite its simple tune and mournful pacing, as long as a song this beautiful exists about mankind’s better nature, then that better nature will survive.  And if I ever despaired that this wasn’t true in my youth (and I did) watching all those strangers swaying and singing along reaffirmed my shaky faith in the good in people.  It was a room full of folks who wanted to be heroes; if we didn't quite get there, at least the song helped inspire all of us to try.

Other standouts include the title track, which is a song about how all troubles are easier when you’ve got someone in your corner that loves you.  I can attest to that truth.  The song’s combination of low, ghostly guitar notes match perfectly with hopeful plucking on the mandolin.  Yes, the Dummies’ use the mandolin liberally and I thank them for it.

There are plenty of other good tracks as well, many of which give you pause for thought, sometimes humorously.  “Androgynous” is a song about dismissing arbitrary gender roles which although dated now, had a good bit to say in 1992.

Because I know this record so well, and it has been such a large part of my life, I tend to give it a bit of a pass when it gets overly silly, which it does from time to time, and I’m also tend to forgive some of the weaker lyrics .  “The Country Life” is overly goofy, and tune doesn’t do enough to rescue it.  “The Voyage” – about backpacking across Europe with your girlfriend – is too much of a college stereotype to be fully forgiven.  It also features some painful rhyme crimes:  “the youth hostels they have there would be perfect for /Cause we’re both youths, so they would really suit us,” and “After that we’d go to Yugoslavia/O how I’d love to travel with ya.”  Yech – that is some bad tasting stuff.

That said, for the most part the humour is good, and the album tends to make the right musical choices for each song, whether it is the electric guitar riff backing the story of the boorish “Thick-Necked Man” or the tinkling piano making you feel homesick and nostalgic on “Winter Song.”

The music isn’t particularly complicated, but playing simple music tightly is not as easy as it seems – usually you only get noticed when you’re doing it poorly.  Ellen Reid adds high and breathy tones also act as the perfect background vocals to Roberts’ lead.

The album ends with one of my favourite songs, “At My Funeral,” which serves as the Dummies’ version of “Crossing the Bar.”  If I were the Dummies’ manager I’d push for them to emulate Tennyson, and make "At My Funeral" the final song they played at every concert, and the one that ended every compilation of their work.

Starting with a lone piano and Roberts’ mournful voice, it slowly builds momentum like a funeral march, adding in the distant crash of drum, mandolin, it is a song I would like played at my own funeral.  Quoting the lyrics in this case wouldn’t do them justice – they aren’t the same without the careful cadence of the song.

This is a song that needs to be soaked in, and if you let that happen then when it ends you’ll feel like you’ve had the chance to be at your own funeral.  Not as a vengeful spirit, either, but peacefully watching over your pals as they lower you into the ground.  Kind of like this album musically watches over me.

Best tracks: Superman Song, The Ghosts That Haunt Me, At My Funeral.

CD Odyssey: The First 400

Three years ago I started this crazy project to listen to and review every one of my albums, and to not stop until I had gone through the entire collection.

Now, 400 CDs in and still not quite halfway, it is amazing how much in my life has changed since I started.  I've lost my job, and then found a new job.  I've paid off my mortgage.  We've lost both our cats (Othello and Inigo) and have a new one (Vizzini).

Oh, and shameless plug - I've written a novel.  If there are any agents out there, I could use some representation.  One thing you'll be able to count on is my dedication to finishing a project.

Percentages on what decade the albums come from continue to hold fairly steady, although there were slightly more seventies albums reviewed in the past 100 (21) than eighties or oughts (17 each).  The nineties continue to hold a commanding lead, which is odd, because I don't think of myself as being particularly fond of that decade for music.  Here are the current standings:

Sixties:  27
Seventies:  88
Eighties:  91
Nineties:  106
Oughts:  90
Tens:  8

Note that I had to add a new category as I began buying music from the current decade, although one of those was a Rachmaninoff symphony from the previous century.  I'm also up to six albums from the nineteenth century with some classical music.

One hundred albums ago, Alice Cooper and Tom Waits led the way with 9 reviews each.  Alice has taken the lead all by himself now with 14 reviews.  Tom holds onto second with 11.  Steve Earle and Queen are tied for third with 10 reviews.

Five star reviews are holding steady at about one every 9.5 albums or so.  In the last hundred albums twelve achieved that mark, including three by Bob Dylan.  The twelve five star reviews were:

Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde
Queen - A Night At The Opera
Pink Floyd - The Wall
Townes Van Zandt - Self Titled
Led Zeppelin - IV
Simon and Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Waters
Shins - Wincing The Night Away
Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
Great Big Sea - Up
Tom Petty - Wildflowers
Blue Oyster Cult - Some Enchanted Evening
Bob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changin'

Two albums achieved the lowly 1 star - Jully Black's Revival, and Rare Air's Space Piper.  A third album, the soundtrack to Natural Born Killers was the first record so truly awful it achieved the infamous 0 stars.  I sold Revival, but Natural Born Killers was protected by Sheila and Space Piper has too cool an album cover for me to part with.  I also sold Roger Watters' The Pros and Cons of Hitch-hiking.  I gave it 2 stars, but I just couldn't see myself putting it on and listening to it when this is all over, and that's what it's all about.

More albums to come, and may you always have a ready answer for when someone asks you 'what are you listening to these days?'

CD Odyssey Disc 400: Ministry

I managed the hat trick today – a term I’m going to start using when I get to the gym three times in one week.  This is the goal every week, but you’d be amazed just how intrusive fun can be on a workout schedule.

Anyway, today I hit another big milestone – my 400^th album review!  Still miles to go before I sleep, but I like my journeys dark and deep.

Disc 400 is…Psalm 69:  The Way To Succeed And the Way To Suck Eggs

Artist: Ministry

Year of Release: 1992

What’s Up With The Cover?:  A shadowy angelic figure surrounded by a variety of objects that would be at home in a Twilight Zone intro – clocks, eyeballs, razorblades.  You know, creepy stuff.

How I Came To Know It: Two nightclubs – Scandals in Victoria, and Love Affair in Vancouver, played the hell out of these songs in 1992/93.  I was there.  My roommate Greg owned the album in the day, and after we stopped living together I looked for it off and on for years.  I finally found a used copy at a local record store about a year ago.

Coincidentally, one of my friends today, Catherine, worked the coat check at Scandals back when I was going there to drink and mosh my face off.  We didn’t know each other then, although she probably checked my coat more than a few times, but she also has fond memories of this record.  So this review goes out to all the former coat check girls out there, but mostly to Cat, the coolest of them all. 

How It Stacks Up:  I only have this one Ministry album.  I’ve heard another one – the deliciously titled “The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste” – but I only own “Psalm 69.”

Rating: 4 stars

Sometimes you need music that makes you feel like you’re part of society, and sometimes you need music that makes you feel alienated from society.  This record is for those times when you need music that does both at the same time.

In the early nineties, my friends and I frequently needed the combination, and fortunately at that time there was lots of music that fit the bill.  The best nightclub for this combination back then was Love Affair in Vancouver, but I only got over there infrequently.  A smaller, but equally enjoyable time could be had in Victoria at Scandals.

Scandals was located on Yates street, and today it has become Lyle’s Place records – if you go there take a good look at the stylish big wooden counter where the cash registers are – that used to be the bar.  It is a fine local music store where you can buy old CDs, especially classic rock and heavy music.  Fittingly, it is the place I found my copy of “Psalm 69” after all those years.

As a CD, “Psalm 69” occupied a tiny part of a shelf of music, but in 1992, “Psalm 69” filled that space with the best industrial rock the Ministry has ever made.  We’d go down there on the weekends, of course, but the great day was Alternative Tuesday, when the music was even heavier.  Sunday was also pretty good – being “Three for One” night.

I have a minor beef with part of industrial rock’s legacy, which (to my mind) partly led to offshoots of electronica dance music, and eventually that weird, goes-nowhere sound of bands like Massive Attack.

Yeah, I just called out Massive Attack, the most inappropriately named band I’ve ever heard.  If you really want a massive attack, then get the Ministry’s “Psalm 69.”  This record is an assault of sound; heavy, driving music that is oppressive and powerful.  When I heard it I had the experience I used to get as a teenager discovering metal.  It was so low down and angry, and yet the music filled me with visceral, strangely positive energy.

The opening track, “N.W.O.” is instantly recognizable with its drumbeat, its sampled siren and some guy going “heh – heh – heh” over and over again.  Then the guitar riff comes in, by which time the dance floor at Scandals was full.  The bouncers would close in and watch closely for the mosh pit, ready to break it up when it got out of hand, but it would always reform at least twice during “N.W.O.” – the song couldn’t be denied.

Other huge tracks on this album included “Just One Fix” and “Jesus Built My Hotrod” – great for essentially the same reasons.  The songs had a layer of different sounds, repetitive and yet organic, which gave you all kinds of leeway on the dance floor to work your hands and feet into furious action.  Or, if you weren’t feeling terribly creative that night, to just bump into other people, who would in turn bump into you.

This album is not about lyrics, although the spoken word intro to “Jesus Built My Hotrod” is pretty hilarious:

“Soon I discovered that this rock thing was true.  Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil.  Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a profit.  All of a sudden I found myself in love with the world so there was only one thing that I could do.  It was ding-a-ding dang my dang-a-long ling long.”

Not much to add.  We’ve all felt from time to time the need to ding-a-ding dang our dan-a-long ling longs, I suppose.

“Scare Crow” and the title track also deserve honourable mention, if only for their awesome heaviness.  Sadly, the record peters out a little bit with “Corrosion” and “Grace,” two songs that reminded me how Love and Rockets songs sound on a bad day.  These were not enough to dent the four star rating of the record though.

Years later, listening to it walking to work in a spring morning didn’t cast this album in its best light, but it somehow still maintained its energy.  It just made me miss the mosh pit.

Best tracks: N.W.O., Just One Fix, Jesus Built My Hotrod.

CD Odyssey Disc 399: Bob Dylan

I suppose it is fitting that after reviewing Steve Earle we take a step twenty-five years back to someone he would have grown up listening to.

Disc 399 is…The Times They Are A-Changin’

Artist: Bob Dylan

Year of Release: 1964

What’s Up With The Cover?:  Bob as a young man.  He looks a little gaunt in this picture, reminding me of Alice Cooper’s strung out photos on the “Flush the Fashion” album.  It wouldn’t kill Bob to crack a smile and eat a sandwich here, but that’s not the mood of this album.

How I Came To Know It: Although this is the remastered version, the original CD release of this album is one of the first CDs I ever bought, and definitely my first Bob Dylan album in any format (I was a late bloomer).  I bought it because I’d grown up listening to a remake of “Ballad of Hollis Brown” by Nazareth, and wanted to hear the original.  Also, I really dug the title track, as everyone with ears does.

How It Stacks Up:  I have seventeen Bob Dylan albums and competition at the top is stiff.  Still, this is a damned fine record.  I’ll say it is 5^th or 6^th best, depending on my mood.

Rating: 5 stars

At some point everyone has a moment when their social conscience starts to blossom, or at least everyone should.  “The Times They Are-Changin’” (hereafter referred to as “Times”) is as good a companion for the experience as you’ll find.

If you’re looking for Dylan’s trademark humour as part of the social commentary, look elsewhere.  “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” had “Talking World War III Blues” the year before, and “Another Side of Bob Dylan” would give us a satirical laugh on “Motorpsycho Nitemare” later in 1964, but “Times” is an album devoid of any such emotional let-up.

If an album is going to be this heavy in tone, it better be a damned fine album, and “Times” delivers, starting with the iconic title track.  A song that had me thinking about New Testament forgiveness, social upheaval, and the Taoist Wheel of Fortune, and the common threads between them.

It is a song about how the last shall be first, and if you aren’t ready for the rising flood, then you should either step out of the way or risk being swept away by it.  Whatever level of revolutionary zeal you might be feeling in your life, “The Times They Are A-Changin’” reminds us that there is always a new generation with something to teach us.  What’s more, it deftly manages that revolutionary zeal without ever feeling angry.

Not so with other songs on “Times” where Dylan unloads heavy, unpleasant cargo with a full dose of fury.  “With God On Our Side” speaks to the pointlessness of war, and the ever-present efforts to justify it with misplaced religion.

“Only A Pawn In Their Game” highlights how the disenfranchised can be so easily turned against one another with hate and fear, and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” calls out a justice system that Dylan perceives as being different based on wealth and place in society. 

“Hattie Carroll” is a great track, telling the tale of socialite William Zanzinger kills a poor, black barmaid.  Dylan’s repeated, pleading refrain of:

“But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain’t the time for your tears”

implies that while the grief over a pointless crime is great, the need for justice needs to take precedence over sorrow.  That is until the very end, when Zanzinger receives a mere six month sentence for the crime, at which point the final chorus alters to:

“Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now’s the time for your tears”

Justice has failed poor Hattie Carroll, and all that’s left now is our sympathy.  Dylan makes it clear he doesn't think it's enough.

Not all the characters have defined heroes and villains to go with their misery however.  “Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “North Country Blues” are stories of people living subsistence lives and scraping to hold onto their dignity through poverty.  Both are about impoverished parents trying to put food on the table.

Hollis Brown is a dirt farmer, facing drought and starvation with a wife and five children to feed.  The female protagonist in “North Country Blues” has three children of her own, and has to raise them through the deaths of her father, mother, brother, husband and – ultimately – the mining industry that supports them all.

Hollis Brown seeks his dignity in seven shotgun shells, murdering himself and his whole family rather than let them starve.  While he gets escape with his crime, Dylan is quick to point out:

“There’s seven people dead

On a South Dakota Farm

Somewhere in the distance

There’s seven more people born.”

In “North Country Blues” a woman raises her children through all adversity, only to be left with the knowledge they will leave the dying town of their birth – and her with it – as soon as they’re old enough to do so.

But if you thought Dylan was done laying a heavy trip on you, then you don’t know Dylan.  He doesn’t do half-measures, and on “One Too Many Mornings” he delivers one of the greatest break up songs of all time (and one of “Times” greatest songs musically as well, with gentle guitar picking holding a wistful, mournful tune).  Dylan concludes the song with some of my favourite lines of poetry:

“It’s a restless hungry feeling
That don’t mean no one no good
When ev’rything I’m a-sayin’
You can say it just as good.
You’re right from your side
I’m right from mine
We’re both just one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind.”

Musically, Dylan perfectly matches the stark topics of the record with bare guitar playing and insistent, demanding harmonica solos.  These solos can downright annoy you until you realize that’s just Dylan making sure he still has your attention.

When I first bought this album, I was only twenty, fresh from being one too many mornings behind on both my grocery bill and my first love affair, and filling up the empty spaces in my heart and stomach with ideas and ideals.  All these songs spoke to me.

 “Times” is an album for those early hard times, when life is red and raw, just as effective on twenty year olds in 1990 as it was on twenty year olds in 1964.  I expect it is impacting twenty year olds right now as well.  It isn’t just an album for those times, though, because as I approach the age of 42, it speaks just as strongly as it ever has.

It is fitting that an album that begins with a call for change, and ranges through such human misery, ends with “Restless Farewell,” a song that could well serve as Dylan’s eulogy on that dark day when he leaves us.  He sings:

“Oh ev’ry girl that ever I’ve touched
I did not do it harmfully
And ev’ry girl that ever I’ve hurt
I did not do it knowin’ly
But to remain as friends
And make amends
You need the time and stay behind
And since my feet are now fast
And point away from the past
I’ll bid farewell and be down the line.”

At this point, two stanzas in, it almost feels like Dylan’s apologizing to his listeners for the dark journey he’s taken us on.  But it isn’t Dylan’s way to apologize.  The last three lines of the same song end the album with:

“So I’ll make my stand
And remain as I am
And bid farewell and not give a damn.”

 “The Times They Are A-Changin’” is uncompromising greatness that still punches me in the solar plexus more than two decades after I first heard it.  The day it is no longer appreciated – that’s the time for our tears.

Best tracks: all tracks, but my favourites are The Times They Are A-Changin’, With God On Our Side, One Too Many Mornings, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, and Restless Farewell.

CD Odyssey Disc 398: Steve Earle

On Saturday, I went to the bank to do some business still requiring a teller (this still happens on rare occasions).  While I was there I asked how much we still had owing on our mortgage.  When the teller told me I realized this was less than the amount I had in my bank account.

So today I went to the bank and paid it off – all of it.  We are mortgage free!  Giddy with excitement I went straight to the liquor store and bought a $140 bottle of scotch to celebrate.  Hell, I can afford it now.

Disc 398 is…Copperhead Road

Artist: Steve Earle

Year of Release: 1988

What’s Up With The Cover?:  At last!  A Steve Earle album not featuring Tony Fitzpatrick’s art!  Instead we are treated to iconic sleeve patch that has become synonymous with the modern expression of outlaw country music.  Skull and crossbones – with bloodshot eyes and fangs, so you’ll know they’re super serious.

How I Came To Know It: Since I just reviewed Steve Earle about three or four albums ago, you’ll remember that I’ve known Steve Earle since his first album in 1986.  “Copperhead Road” propelled him to superstardom, however, and like most people in my home town, I got a heavy dose of this record everywhere I went.

How It Stacks Up:  This may be the record most people know Steve Earle for, but that doesn’t make it his best.  That said, it is very much top half.  I have fourteen Steve Earle albums of original, non-live material.  I’d put “Copperhead Road” around 6^th or 7^th best depending on my mood.

Rating: 4 stars

There are a few albums so iconic that from the opening notes, you know exactly what you’re listening to.  The ‘chuk-chuk’ of guitar on “Back in Black,” the first discordant note on Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut and the opening bagpipes of “Copperhead Road.”

If I were Steve Earle, “Copperhead Road” – both the song and the album – would probably annoy me for casting an unfair shadow over the rest of an impressive body of work.  At a recent concert I was at, a drunken idiot in the audience kept yelling “Copperhead Road!” at regular intervals – even after Earle had already played it.  I doubted the guy knew any other songs on the album, let alone that Earle has as impressive a discography of any artist I’ve ever heard.

And while I’d love to play the hipster douchebag iconoclast and spend this whole review talking about the two better albums that come before it, (yet to be reviewed) this one’s for “Copperhead Road” and all those who love it.  Even that idiot from the concert, who would’ve had a far better time if he’d just settled back and listened to the music.

“Copperhead Road” may be unfairly top-of-mind, it is still one hell of a good record, and the title track is a five star anthem of rock and folk and country all rolled into one that fires me up just as much now as the first time I heard it.  I swear that hearing Earle sing “I still remember that rumblin’ sound” about John Lee Pettimore’s Dad’s whisky-running big block Dodge has more to do with me wanting to own a Charger than anything else I can think of.  However, this album has a lot more going for it than a single song, no matter how great that song is.

The album is replete with tales of tragedy of ordinary men stretching from the American Civil War through to Vietnam.  Some of my favourites include “The Devil’s Right Hand” about a boy who grows up obsessed with owning a pistol, a notion that horrifies his mother:

“About the time that Daddy left to fight the big war

I saw my first pistol in the general store

In the general store, when I was thirteen

Thought it was the finest thing I ever had seen.

So I asked if I could have one someday when I grew up

Mama dropped a dozen eggs, she really blew up

She really blew up and I didn’t understand

Mama said the pistol is the devil’s right hand.”

Of course, in a country song if your Mom warns you away from guns and you get one anyway, there will be tragic consequences (e.g. Johnny Cash’s “Don’t Take Your Guns To Town”) and “Devil’s Right Hand” is no different.  What is different, is that Cash’s reckless youth is killed in the bar fight, whereas Earle’s is arrested and put on trial where, before he is executed he professes his innocence, proclaiming, “nothing touched the trigger but the devil’s right hand.”

This is no surprise, as Earle wants to take his messy anti-heroes to greater extremes, and he wants to incorporate society’s institutions into the decisions that they make, so we can all feel a little bit responsible.

This is very evident in another favourite of mine, “Johnny Come Lately”, which tells the tale of two generations of soldiers coming home from war.  The first about the narrator’s grandfather, who came home from Europe:

“But when Johnny Come Lately comes marching home

With a chest full of medals and a G.I. loan

They’ll be waitin’ at the station down at San Antone

When Johnny comes marching home.”

Of course when the story turns to our narrator, he sees a different reality:

“Now I’m standing on a runway in San Diego

A couple Purple Hearts so I move a little slow

There’s nobody here, maybe nobody knows

About a place called Vietnam.”

Ah, Steve, always ready to twist the knife, and remind us that the wars might change, and we might think differently about each of them, but the soldier experiences just the same horror regardless.  When it comes to giving a shout out to the forgotten veterans of Vietnam, I’ll always tip my hat to the master, Kris Kristofferson.

My last favourite is fitting, given the fact that I paid off my mortgage earlier today.  “Back to the Wall” is a song about being a man who visits an old friend who lives homeless under the bridge who’s lost it all.  It is a song that reminds us that the wolves are never that far away, and for all our self-satisfied financial success, we’re all just a couple of bad turns away from having nothing at all.

The words to these songs are vintage folk, but the music is the simple, energetic guitar strumming of traditional country, with a slight rock edge.  It was a combination that Earle would use to translate his career across genres, but one that he is quick to point out he did not invent (on the bonus live disc I’ll comment on later, he credits Emmylou Harris, among others).

Not every song is great, but even the lesser tracks (“Snake Oil” and the devotional “Nothing But a Child”) are still better than what most artists put on their album.

The Bonus Album

For years I had the regular version of “Copperhead Road” but a couple years ago I bought a deluxe twentieth anniversary edition, with a bonus disc of live tracks, which I’ll give a quick word to before I go off to randomly select my next album.

Firstly, full marks to Earle for leaving the original album alone and intact, and putting the bonus material on a separate disc so I can choose if I want to hear it or not.  Pogues?  Jethro Tull? Are you listening?  Apparently not.

The majority of the music is a show Earle put on in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1987 while promoting the upcoming “Copperhead Road.”  A single track is from a 1988 show and then there are five more live from Calgary in 1989.

I like that the music comes from the same period as the album, and the live tracks show that Earle has always had a knack for live performances (he’s still great, by the way).

Just like when I’ve seen him, the concert is mostly just the music, well played, but with a few short intros and outros to some of the tracks.  With only three albums under his belt, Earle doesn’t have as much material, but that is fun as well.  First because you get to hear some songs he doesn’t play that often anymore, and second because you get to see what has survived the years of changing set lists.

My favourite thing on a live album is hearing something that an artist likes to perform, but isn’t on a studio album.  In this case, we are treated to Earle playing Gram Parsons/Emmylou Harris classic “Wheels,” Springsteen’s “Nebraska” and the Rolling Stones’ “Dead Flowers,” among others.  In each case, I’d take the original artist, but Earle does a fine enough job to make it close.

I wouldn’t say everyone needs the special edition “Copperhead Road” but in terms of the stand-alone album, don’t let the excessive play of the title track turn you away – this is a fine record, and well worth your time.

And if you find yourself mortgage-free and are looking for a fine scotch, here's one you'll like.

  

Best tracks: Copperhead Road, Back to the Wall, Devil’s Right Hand, Johnny Come Lately, You Belong To Me.

CD Odyssey Disc 397: Rush

After a long day of work, I was tired when I got home and not in the mood to write (I have been writing all day).  Of course, if you only exercise a muscle when it isn’t tired, you never get stronger.

Speaking of which, I missed the gym today.  One muscle at a time, I suppose.

   

Disc 397 is…Grace Under Pressure

Artist: Rush

Year of Release: 1984

What’s Up With The Cover?:  A pretty typical prog rock cover.  A bald albino watches a seascape melt, Dali-like, into the border of album cover itself.  Even though it is collapsing in on itself, it is still beautiful.  Get it – grace under pressure!

How I Came To Know It: Although this came out shortly after “Signals” and was therefore in the musical wheelhouse of my teenage years, I didn’t get “Grace Under Pressure” until about six or seven years ago, as I was finishing up my Rush collection.

How It Stacks Up:  I have all eighteen of Rush’ studio albums.  Competition is fierce at the top, but “Grace Under Pressure” doesn’t have to worry about that, because it is near the bottom.  I’m going to say 16^th, since there are a couple of albums I suspect might slip underneath it.

Rating: 3 stars

I have eighteen Rush albums, so I should hardly have to defend how much I like the band.  And yet, “Grace Under Pressure” tried my patience over the last couple of days.

This is the album that launched Rush in a new direction, with a lot more keyboard and a lot less of Alex Lifeson’s guitar wizardry.  They had taken tentative steps in that direction on “Signals” but on this record they push all their chips into the digital centre of the music board.

Lest you think this is the reason I don’t like this album as much as some, I would point out that 1987’s “Hold Your Fire” is one of my favourite Rush albums, and it is very much one of their eighties synth records.

I prefer “Hold Your Fire” for a couple of reasons, the first being that it is strongly melodic.  Not so, “Grace Under Pressure” which seems very experimental.  Rush has found a new artistic expression here, and they are determined – in Rush-like fashion – to explore it to its very edges.

It is an admirable quality, and it delivers a couple of brilliant songs when it feels like all the creative energy is rowing in the same direction.  When Lifeson’s guitar is mixed with the keyboard sound, like on the instrumental section of “Afterimage” it is a thing of beauty.  This song strongly reminded me of Blue Oyster Cult’s album from the previous year, “The Revolution By Night” and this was a good thing.

Unfortunately, at other times they seem more interested in combining as many disjointed sounds together as humanly possible.  The beginning of “The Body Electric” is a spastic combination of drum machines stripping Neil Peart of his power, and guitar licks that are good, but so far back in the mix for most of the song that they are an afterthought.  At one point I swear I hear someone playing the triangle because – well, because.

Then, “The Body Electric” brings the second reason I prefer “Hold Your Fire”; better lyrics.  “The Body Electric” is a song about an android trying to escape its programming and realize true intelligence.  At least I think that’s what it is about.  It is actually a pretty cool concept, but the chorus is “1-0-0-1-0-0-1.”  Seriously.  I’m sorry, but that’s just a bit too binary for my organic chemistry to appreciate.

“Kid Gloves” has fairly strong lyrics about the loss of innocence, and although I don’t like the song that much, I’ll give it credit for that.  Not so, “red lenses” which follows up with some terribly strained rhymes:

“I see red

It hurts my head

Guess it must be something

That I read.”

Peart is one of rock and roll’s great thinkers, and great lyricists, and it is sad to see him miss like this.  The tune was also practically unfollowable musically for me, although I did appreciate the gratuitous cowbell.  There is no such thing as too much cowbell.

So, that’s the bad stuff, but fortunately there are a couple of absolute gems on this record that make up for a lot, and have me still pulling this off the shelf despite its shortcomings.

The first is the single that was released, “Distant Early Warning”, a reference to the DEW line, set up to monitor Canada’s north from Soviet incursion.

It needs to be remembered that “Grace Under Pressure” came out at the height of the Cold War.  Reagan was demanding the Russians tear down the wall, and a barrage of missiles from the two superpowers pointed at one another ready to destroy the entire human civilization.  If you were a teenager back, you seriously doubted our chances to get out of it alive.

“Distant Early Warning” somehow captures the spirit of that age, but thoughtfully, rather than in an angry or panicky way.  The tune is sublime and the use of keyboard and synthesizer is absolutely perfect for the mood.  Whatever production challenges this record has elsewhere, I wouldn’t change a thing about “Distant Early Warning.”  The keyboard chords are stark, and full of ill omens and portents.  The guitar driven chorus follows on, before the song returns to a simple and subdued bass line.  Again, Lifeson’s guitar work had me thinking of similar work from B.O.C.’s Buck Dharma, again in a good way.  Atop it, Lee’s vocals give voice to Peart’s lyrical plea for the world to embrace some common sense:

“Left and rights of passage

Black and whites of youth

Who can face the knowledge

That the truth is not the truth?

Obsolete

Absolute

Absalom.”

The other amazing track on this album is one of my all-time favourite Rush songs, “Red Sector A.”  Musically, all of the perfect notes struck in “Distant Early Warning” are hit again, an appropriately troubling bass-line that would be home on “Another Brick In The Wall,” and keyboards as grandiose as church organs and even Peart’s drums sounding tough in the mix.

The song is about a family living in a concentration camp, starving and bereft of hope.  It could very easily be about the Nazi death camps of World War Two, given that Geddy Lee’s mother was an actual survivor of one of those camps.  The best image:

“For my father and my brother it’s too late

But I must help my mother stand up straight.”

I like the way this evokes an image of a young boy being comforted by a mother’s arm around his shoulder, but in his own mind he is standing up straight and supporting her.  This basic human response is important to me, because the chorus of “Red Sector A” asks”

“Are we the last ones left alive?

Are we the only human beings to survive?”

Speaking of basic human response, this section makes you wonder what it might be like in some apocalyptic future where the earth itself is conquered, and instead of putting each other in concentration camps, our entire race ended up there.

Like any great song, it leaves that open to interpretation, and just focuses on the emotional core even in the most awful of experiences.

While “Red Sector A” and “Distant Early Warning” are rock classics in my mind, they aren’t enough to elevate the entire album to where it needs to be all on their own.  They are enough to elevate it from simply average to good, however.

Best tracks: Distant Early Warning, Red Sector A.

CD Odyssey Disc 396: Johnny Cash

I’ve had a lovely and restful Sunday.  Earlier this afternoon Sheila and I watched “Thor” and we are just home from going to the theatre to see “The Avengers.”

I grew up reading The Avengers comic book, and it is a great that movie making technology can finally faithfully represent them in live action on the movie screen.

But this isn’t a movie review website it’s about music, so let’s get on with the show.   

Disc 396 is…American Recordings (I)

Artist: Johnny Cash

Year of Release: 1994

What’s Up With The Cover?:  Johnny stands in a field, with a guitar and what I assume are his favourite dogs.  I’m more of a cat person, but Johnny strikes a suitably imposing glower, so I’m not going to argue with him.

How I Came To Know It: I’ve known Johnny Cash since I was a kid, but I was introduced to the American  Recordings series late, when Volume IV (reviewed back at Disc 242) released a video for “Hurt.”  From there, it was just me drilling backward through the collection.

How It Stacks Up:  I have six Johnny Cash albums, but one is a live record and another is a best of.  The others are the aforementioned quartet of American Recordings.  Of those four, I’d put this one third.

Rating: 3 stars

For those who didn’t read my review of American Recordings IV, and can’t be bothered to click on the link above, these started when Cash was dumped by his old record label, picked up by American and through a very fortunate set of events, paired with brilliant producer, Rick Rubin.

Rubin’s greatest strength is his ability to get down to the essence of an artist, and cut away all the extraneous stuff that gets in the way of that artist’s work.  In the case of Johnny Cash, he strips everything away except Cash’s vocals and a single acoustic guitar.  The result is that you can focus on Cash doing what he does best, telling a story.

Sometimes that story features a character, like the Vietnam veteran struggling to assimilate years later, on “Drive On” and sometimes it is Cash being introspective about his own failures on “The Beast In Me.”

“The Beast In Me” is not written by Cash, but he channels his own troubled past so well into the lyrics it might as well have been.  The song begins with the ominous line:

“The beast in me

Is caged by frail and fragile bars.”

The song drips with Cash’s own regret, and you can’t help but feel that he is mentally going through all the people he hurt in his wild youth.  It is also a tale of caution for any listener who thinks that they are in full control of themselves, to be aware that our darker natures lurk in all of us, and how we’ll never keep them in check by pretending they’re not there.

Only four of the thirteen tracks are written by Cash, but they are generally some of the better ones, including the aforementioned “Drive On.”  He also writes a couple of spirituals, “Let The Train Blow the Whistle” and “Redemption” which are good regardless of what you believe.  The album opens with the fourth original, a song full of dark humour called “Delia’s Gone” about a man who hunts down an unfaithful woman and shoots her.

As is the case with a number of these American Recordings records, some of the song choices don’t work as well as they should.  In particular, I was surprised how little I liked Cash’s rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird On A Wire” which is a song that should be right in his wheelhouse.  It might just be that I’ve heard the Cohen version for so long I don’t like to hear it by anyone else (and yes, that includes Jennifer Warnes).

Also, surprisingly “Why Me Lord” drags a little, and doesn’t have that deep inspirational quality Cash usually has when he talks to God.  It is particularly surprising because “Why Me Lord” is a Kris Kristofferson song, and Cash has mined Kristofferson’s songs successfully many times over.

One song that only grew on me in the last hour or so was “Thirteen” which is a remake of a song originally by the metal band Danzig.  While writing this review, I went and looked up the original on youtube.  It is a great song, and hearing the original – which, yes, is better – it made me appreciate what Cash does with it, drawing out its sad melody and making it his own, as he always does with the songs he borrows.

Overall, this record has a feeling of an older artist making peace with himself, and it is interesting that he’d go one making that peace for another four records – all collaborations with Rubin.

More than any of the other of this series, this first record is the softest, and most understated, and it takes a few listens to get an ear for it.  Once you do, it won’t blow you away.  Instead, it will put you in a thoughtful and relaxed state where the simple beauty of Cash’s voice and guitar will steal its way into your heart.

Best tracks: Delia’s Gone, Let The Train Blow The Whistle, The Beast In Me, Drive On, Like A Soldier.

CD Odyssey Disc 395: Steve Earle

I am about to review another album by one of my favourite artists, but first a word on one of my favourite poets, Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

I’ve been reading his Arthurian-inspired series of poems, “Idylls of the King” for about a month now.  It is taking a while, and at places where I’m seen periodically with a book in my hand (the local Subway, my office cubicle at lunch, etc.) I feel oddly embarrassed it is taking me so long.

The truth is, to read Tennyson too quickly would be a mistake.  He is one of the greatest poets of all time – top three in my books – and the master of sound and rhythm.  If I take a little longer to let his words roll around in my head, or read passages twice, it is only because I want to grok him in his fullness.  As an example, here’s a piece from “Lancelot and Elaine,” where Elaine has just told her family she is fine, but in truth she continues to pine for Lancelot, who will not love her in return:

“But when they left her to herself again,

Death, like a friend’s voice from a distant field

Approaching thro’ the darkness, call’d; the owls

Wailing had power upon her, and she mixt

Her fancies with the sallow-rifted glooms

Of evening, and the moanings of the wind.”

And that whole piece of glorious writing is a single sentence.  It’s enough to want to give up as a writer, knowing I’ll never equal it.

Instead, I will press on, and review an album that like “Idylls of the King” I gave a bit of extra time, so I could enjoy it all the more, and let it soak in for the hundredth time.

Disc 395 is…El Corazon

Artist: Steve Earle

Year of Release: 1997

What’s Up With The Cover?:  Another piece of cover art by Earle collaborator Tony Fitzpatrick.  I’ve often maligned Fitzpatrick’s covers, but this one works.  In fact, it makes those Valentine’s Day hearts and arrows look positively foolish by comparison.  Fitzpatrick’s heart is real and beautiful, wound and all.

How I Came To Know It: I’ve known Steve Earle since his first album in 1986 (“Guitar Town.”  However, after “Copperhead Road” I lost track of him for a while.  “El Corazon” was my reintroduction to his work, after I saw a music video on CMT for “Telephone Road” and loved it.  Since then, I’ve not only been faithfully buying every release since, but I’ve gone back to get the four I missed.  So yeah, “El Corazon” is a big deal in my relationship with Earle’s music.

How It Stacks Up:  Very well, despite stiff competition.  I have sixteen Earle albums, but one is live and another is an album of Townes Van Zandt songs.  Though both of those are excellent, they don’t really stack up.  Of the remaining fourteen, “El Corazon” ranks 3^rd or 4^th best, depending on how I’m feeling about the equally brilliant “Exit O,” but more on that one when I roll it.

Rating: 4 stars, but close to 5

“El Corazon” starts out with a somber song about U.S. politics and ends with a somber personal song about the death of his close friend and mentor, Townes Van Zandt.

In between these opposite poles of Earle’s inspirations, he treats us to expressions of failing and failed love affairs, and the varied dreams and experiences of the far-from-ordinary man.  Musically, he ranges from the early influences of Hank Williams, through bluegrass, barber shop, rock and roll and various combinations of each of these.

At no time, however, does this record ever sound disjointed or patched together.  Through it all, Earle is still Earle, his southern twang weaving stories in your mind, vocally better than you expected and with more emotion than you’ll find in ten years of new Nashville country clones.

The opening track is “Christmas In Washington” a song that simultaneously celebrates the re-election of Clinton in 1996, and bemoans that the American dream is still eroding (Earle is unapologetically left wing and his political rants at his concerts are legendary).  It is a slow, introspective song, that calls for social activists no longer with us like Woody Guthrie to “tear their eyes from paradise/and rise again somehow.”

As is often the case with Earle’s political songs, he overstates his case, but does it so beautifully you not only forgive him for it, you genuinely appreciate it.

Next up is “Taneytown” a song about racism and violence.  A gritty song about one man’s willingness to stand up to discrimination, and the tragic consequences, what caught my attention this time was that the song features a “Randall knife” which had me thinking of Guy Clarks’ masterful song, “The Randall Knife.” I could probably research the connection, but as long-time readers will know, I like the CD Odyssey to be more personal and Modernist in its approach, so I’m just going to let that notion roll around unresolved in my mind instead.

The song that first caught my attention was “Telephone Road” which is Earle once again mastering the subject of young men caught in small towns with few prospects.  This song features a fellow who is “working all week for that Texaco cheque” only to have his buddies ‘convince’ him to blow it all at the honky tonks on Telephone Road.  It reminded me strongly of the classic “Someday” from the “Guitar Town” album, which also features a gas worker with big dreams, going nowhere.

My MP3 player has little space, and a lot of it is taken up with my decision to keep large chunks of the last thirty albums I’ve reviewed on it.  That leaves me about 200 other songs I can fit on there, selected from over 900 albums.  Competition is fierce, but “El Corazon” has three stalwarts that never seem to get removed, and “Telephone Road” is one of them.

The second is “N.Y.C.” which is a hands-down five star rock anthem about small town southern boys thumbing his way to one of the world’s greatest cities, if for no better reasons than he’s “heard the girls are pretty” and “there must be somethin’ happening there, it’s just too big a town.”  The song is a powerful rock anthem, and Earle makes the clever production choice to slightly distort his vocals so they blend perfectly with the killer guitar riff as he kicks out the first few lines:

“He was standing on the highway somewhere way out in the sticks

Guitar across his shoulder like a 30 ought six

He was staring in my headlights when I came around the bend

Climbed up on the shotgun side, told me with a grin

‘I’m goin’ to New York City.”

Simple as this song is, I never get tired of it lyrically or musically.  It is just too real and raw to ever feel dated, even after hundreds of listens.

The final song that always sticks with me is “Ft. Worth Blues,” an introspective and simply-arranged eulogy for Townes Van Zandt, who had lost his battle with alcohol a few months earlier, not long after Earle himself had successfully gotten clean.  Earle’s album “Townes” is a brilliant, full length homage to the late great Townes Van Zandt, but “Ft. Worth Blues” puts all those heavy emotions into a single song, delivered in Earle’s own words.  It begins:

“In Ft. Worth all the neon’s burnin’ bright

Pretty lights, red and blue

But they’d shut down all the honky tonks tonight

And say a prayer or two

If they only knew.

You used to say the highway was your home

But we both know, that ain’t true

It’s just the only place a man can go

When he don’t know

Where he’s travelin’ to.”

It isn’t Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King” but when set to music, and with Steve’s slow and reverent voice drawing you in, it gets close.  “Ft. Worth Blues “ends the album, and in the liner notes is followed with a simple dedication, “To Townes:  See you when I get there, maestro.”

“El Corazon” may start off getting your attention with political protest, but it holds you strongest with its honest and open emotion.  This is a great record, and space permitting I’d talk about almost every song, but I don’t want to go on too long, because I want people to actually read this one, and maybe get inspired to buy themselves a copy.

Best tracks: Christmas in Washington, Telephone Road, Somewhere Out There, N.Y.C., Here I Am, Ft. Worth Blues.