Song For A Festival

The festival season has kicked off. I have no interest in going to any as I don’t want to camp and don’t fancy watching a band in a muddy field while the rain is pouring down. But I did tune into some of Glastonbury and will do when Reading is on on the TV. One of the TV ‘highlights’ last year was Guns N’ Roses with a band of 'all boxes ticked for the cliché rock star look' and Axl Rose’s painful performance of November Rain. It was hilarious.
So anyway, a song for a festival… Chillout Tent is one of the stand out songs from The Hold Steady’s breakthrough album (well a breakthrough of sorts) Boys And Girls In America. It’s a song about going to a festival taking too much drugs and hooking up with someone in the tent where you get medical attention. I guess that happened a few times at Glastonbury last weekend.

The Sleepy Jackson - Lovers

Luke Steele of Empire of the Sun has had more commercial success Empire of the Sun than he ever did with The Sleepy Jackson, so a third Sleepy Jackson album might not come anytime soon. Their first album Lovers from 2003 is maybe one of my favourite of the last decade. Well its in the top twenty or so. Its an eclectic mix to say the least. Psychedelic, alt-country, 80s synth pop all mixed in along side one another.
When I saw them play a set in Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street they looked like a mixed up band too. The guitarist had a cut down sleeved Guns N’ Roses t-shirt, shades on and was pulling rock star poses, the rhythm section seemed like a couple of surfer dudes that Steele dragged from a beach in western Australia and Luke Steele himself had the looked like a new romantic crossed with Robert Smith. Still whatever, they sounded great.

Download The Sleepy Jackson - Miniskirt mp3 from here.

Great Cover #6 Drive-By Truckers - People Who Died

For the last show stopping encore of a Drive-By Truckers show Patterson Hood will often downs his guitar, grip the mic tight in hand and frantically spit out the first verse of the Jim Caroll song People Who Died - 'Teddy sniffing glue he was 12 years old, fell from the roof on East Two-nine. Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug, on 26 reds and a bottle of wine. Bobby got leukaemia 14 years old., he looked like 65 when he died. He was a friend of mine.'
The band then come in on the chorus, and the song charges along with more verses about friends who’ve died, choruses that get louder and louder and duelling guitar solos. It speeds up and up until it crashes down into a heap. Then just as you think its about to end it goes back into it at an even faster speed. They’re never released a studio version of the song, though it does appear on their early live album Alabama Ass Woopin', and there’s a much better version on their live DVD at The 40 Watt Club which captures it well.

As does this version on Youtube



Get a pretty good live version of the Drive-By Truckers playing People Who Died from here.

Going back To Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker

Recently I heard Ryan Adam’s 2000 debut solo album Heartbreaker for the first time in maybe two or three years. Rediscovering a really good album all over again is so satisfying. Heartbreaker was my first introduction to Adams as I didn’t know his previous band Whiskeytown, but I soon did and became a fan.
Then his second album Gold soon followed and although not as good as the debut it was still decent (if patchy). Then their was an album held back by his record company. Then came Demolition and soon after Rock & Roll, neither of which I was taken with. Adams seemed to want to release every song he wrote. I would read interviews where he would state that he’d just finished his second song that day. It was quantity over quantity and like many I was loosing interest in his work. It didn’t help that I saw two really bad live shows by him.
The first was at the Sheppard’s Bush Empire where there was a two minute gap between each song as him and his band fumbled around, tuning up and just not getting on with it.
Then I saw him at the Brixton Academy. He came on late and mumbled for a bit while his band sorted their gear out. He drunkenly rambled between songs, the set was sloppy and the crowd became restless.
Still there’s always that great debut, and on the strength of that I might go and check out some of his later work to see if it matches up to Heartbreaker.

Download Ryan Adams - My Winding Wheel mp3 from here.

Top 3 Neil Young Albums

Do I like Neil Young? Yes. Do I like all, or almost all of his work? No, of course not. Surely even the biggest Neil Young fan doesn’t. Still listening to Fork In The Road or This Note’s For You? In-fact for every good album there are almost as many stinkers. But because of the good albums you can overlook the stinkers because, well he’s Neil Young and he does what he wants to do in his own erratic way.
So Here are my top 3 Neil Young albums:

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
Young’s second and the first with Crazy Horse. Only seven songs on it, four of them of decent country-folk but the focal points are the opener Cinnamon Girl and the two long songs that are Cowgirl In The Sand and Down By The River with there improvised jamming. I never get tired of Neil Young’s lead and Danny Whitten’s rhythm guitar interplay on Down By The River.

On The Beach
Tonight’s The Night is often cited as one of his best not just out of the so called ‘doom trilogy’ but out of everything. It’s alright but for me On The Beach is much better. It’s mainly a downbeat album in minor keys, like the excellent title track that has the lyric - ‘I need a crowd of people but I can’t face them day to day.’

Ragged Glory
After a long run of dud albums in the 80s Young gets back with Crazy Horse, cranks up the volume and in 1990 released this loud rocking album. Yes this is an electric guitar record with Young thrashing out solos on his trusty black Gibson and Crazy Horse Doing their minimalist backing band thing, but there are great songs there with loads of catchy choruses.
It’s the album from Neil Young that I play the most.

Great Cover #5 East Hastings

There are so many crap cover songs on Youtube, some by bands in a rehearsal room, some by well known bands (like the Red Hot Chili Peppers doing Subterranean Homesick Blues) or someone in their bedroom with an acoustic guitar. But I came across a very good acoustic guitar in bedroom recording of a Godspeed You Black Emperor song called East Hastings. Its from a Japanese guy that for some reason has a scarf wrapped all around his head and is wearing short shorts. He does a great job of taking such an epic song and scaling it down to a basic acoustic guitar arrangement.

Hüsker Dü - Remastered, Reunion, If Only

Hüsker Dü is on heavy rotation at the moment, and what I’ve noticed is that if any band really needs their back catalogue to be remastered then its Hüsker Dü. Zen Arcade is such a good album but the drums sometimes sound as if they were recorded by one cheep microphone at the other end of the room, the guitar sound is so thin and the bass low in the mix. I can imagine is sounding better on vinyl but it needs a brighter sound on the CD and maybe a remix. Their later albums on a major record label sound better but when I have my ipod on shuffle and something from Candy Apple Grey or Warehouse: Songs and Stories pops up its considerably lower volume than whatever was playing before it.
Hüsker Dü are also the one band that I would like to see on a reunion tour, every other band that broke up ages ago seems to be doing it so why shouldn't they cash in? From what I've read it sounds like Brett Hart and Bob Mould still can’t stand the sight of one another so I don't see a reunion or a remastering of their back catologue happening anytime soon.

Download or preview Husker Du - Pink Turns To Blue mp3 from here.

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Ramble Tamble

Sometime around the early to mid part of the last decade I got a copy of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s greatest hits. The only song I thought that I knew by them was the bouncy one about the end of the world coming called Bad Moon Rising. But when playing it I was surprised just how many more songs I recognised from films or a pub jukebox.
After a few listens of the greatest hits collection it wasn’t enough, so I went the whole way and bought the box-set that contains every song they ever did and a bunch of live recordings. It was money well spent.
The bulk of their work is punchy three minute bar band chugging rock &roll. A perfect soundtrack to drink a beer to. But there’s also a few songs with extended jams that stretch out to seven minutes or so. Like Ramble Tamble that’s filled with memorable riffs, tempo changes and an instrumental part that builds and builds until it breaks down and goes back into the original riff. For me it’s a hidden classic.

Download or preview Creedence Clearwater Revival - Ramble Tamble mp3 from here.

The Devil Has The Best Tunes

There are many songs about the Devil, Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub or whatever you want to call the big bad red guy with horns. There’s gospel songs about keeping the Devil at bay and loads of old blues songs like Robert Johnson’s Me And The Devil Blues. To Black Sabbath and other hard rock and metal bands. Then there’s death metal that usually celebrates Satanism to Norwegian black metal which took the joke, well let’s say too far.
My favourite song (for today at least) about the dark side is called Living In Sin by the now sadly defunct The Broken Family Band. It’s about falling in love with a Satanist, something we’ve all done right? Well maybe not.
“You’re a devil woman, your heart is black but your body drives me crazy.
You’re a sick satanic lady, you’re full of hate and I just love that.”

Download or preview The Broken Family Band - Living In Sin from here.

Otis Gibbs - Get Me Out Of Detroit

Otis Gibbs is a county/folk songwriter from Indiana. The first time that I was ever aware of him was when I saw him playing at What’s Cookin’ in Leytonstone. I only caught the last three or four songs but I heard enough to make me by his album Granpa Walked A Picket Line. As the title suggests Gibbs is somewhat of a politically left leaning activist. In the vain of Billy Bragg (who he’s toured with) and Steve Earle.
One of favourite songs of his is Get Me Out of Detroit from the album One Day Our Whispers. As the title suggests it’s not a homage to The Motor City but about a shity time there, getting stopped and stripped searched by the police, being bored stiff in a hotel room and wanting to get the hell out of the place.



Download Otis Gibbs - Get Me Out of Detroit from here.